Category: Musical Snobbery

Waiting for the Royal Dawn

So, it turns out that I had the lyrics of M83’s brilliant Midnight City completely wrong.

I thought it went…

Waiting for the call,
Waiting for the royal dawn,
Tonight the city grows,
Who can see the royalty glow?
Waiting for the call,
Waiting for the royal dawn,
Drinking in the love,
Following the neon signs,
Waiting for the world,
Looking at the mutated skyline,
City is my church,
It wraps me with sparkling twilight,

Which sounds downright mystical. But in actual fact it goes…

Waiting in a car,
Waiting for a ride in the dark,
The night city grows,
Look and see her eyes, they glow,
Waiting in a car,
Waiting for a ride in the dark,
Drinking in the lounge,
Following the neon signs,
Waiting for a roar,
Looking at the mutating skyline,
City is my church,
It wraps me in the sparkling twilight,

Which is OK, but more…. mundane than I figured.

Oh well, It’s still a damn good track, and I’ll still sing along with my words! 🙂

A Windmill full of Corpses

Spent much of the weekend down in Busselton at Ryan and Jackie’s place, along with Fabes who was kind enough to drive us both down there and back. Rather than appreciating the natural wonders and relaxing pace of the southwest, we spent all our time indoors playing games. Well, that’s the people we are, what are you gonna do?

The big hit of the weekend was Cards Against Humanity. I’ve been wanting to get a copy for ages and Paula was kind enough to give me one for my birthday, so we tried it out. The results were appalling, which is exactly what they should be. Good taste (and the fear of being raided by the Federal Police) prevent me from repeating the best combinations we came up with, but I can share a few of the slightly less offensive ones that had us in hysterics…

“When I was tripping on acid, an endless stream of diarrhea turned into the cool refreshing taste of Pepsi!”

“Bad life choices + a robust mongoloid = my sex life”

“Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and here is a windmill full of corpses”

Such fun! We also learnt about Aaron Burr, object permanence and the three fifths compromise, so you can’t say it’s not educational!

Changing course entirely, here’s an unreleased KLF track I stumbled across the other day. It’s from 1989, was the basis for Last Train to Trancentral and Wichita Lineman was a Song I Once Heard, and is awesome! So everyone, Go to Sleep.

So that was April Fools

Joy!
Joy!

So, did you think spammers had taken over the Wyrmlog? Did you? Almost certainly not, but hey, at least I did something.

In any case, for an Easter treat pop open this link in a new window, and watch the gif to the right. Isn’t that most perfect combo of sound and vision you’ve ever encountered? 🙂

(Assuming YouTube doesn’t stick an ad on front)

You mean it’s not me gullet, it’s me noggin?

Well, did another sleep study last week while hooked up to a CPAP machine. Good news is the machine did a good job at keeping my airways open so I could breathe unobstructed. Bad news is I still stopped breathing, which means I have Central Sleep Apnea – which is where the brain periodically decides that this “breathing” thing is so last season, and it’s not going to do it any more. This isn’t completely disastrous, as the rest of the body soon notices and start slapping the brain around until it gets its act together, but it’s still not the kind of thing that’s conducive to restful sleep or cardiovascular health, so it has to be dealt with. With a different, much more expensive type of machine that I’m probably going to have to end up buying, or at least renting, damnit!

In any case, I don’t like to end on a down note. Here’s a song.

Oh, they’re apparently re-burying Richard III in Leicester. Good! Glad to hear it. Leicester’s a lovely city but it needs some more tourist attractions after the railway viaduct got pulled down, and that Liberty statue sure isn’t pulling in the big bucks.

Automusic

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quod,
So little time, so much to blog!

So much indeed! But instead of blogging about any of it I thought I’d just hop in to mention that I was recently reminded of how Tonight She Comes and You Might Think by the Cars are two of the best songs ever written.

I mean, that keytar riff – particularly when backed up by the guitar – is just glorious! Of course from a modern perspective the video clip has something of a stalky vibe about it, but it was the 80’s when people didn’t know any better, and the computer effects were groundbreaking for the period (go Quantel Paintbox!).

That’s all I have to say right now. Stay tuned!

And Here’s Another Thing

In a follow up to yesterday’s surprising Eurovision news, there’s a petition begging TISM to reform and represent Australia in Vienna.

Naturally I have signed it. Can you watch this performance, and dare to claim that TISM would not fit right in in Eurovision?

Of course they couldn’t perform any of their classic tracks, one of the rules being that songs cannot have been commercially released prior to competing, but I’m sure they could whip something appropriate up. In any case a song like I Might be a C**t, But I’m not a F**king C***t would probably give Europe a collective stroke.

We’ll see, we’ll see…

Well, Here’s a Thing

Apparently, in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest and the fact that a lot of Aussies (including myself) watch it, Australia is going to compete in this year’s contest!

We get automatic entry into the final (along with all the usual suspects) and – assuming that they can figure out how to do it in a sensible fashion given the time difference – we’ll get to vote! In the event that we win (not entirely impossible given the huge novelty factor) next year’s contest will be held somewhere in Europe with heavy Australian involvement. It’s also the only way we’ll get to compete in 2016 – if we don’t win then it’s a one-off.

This is going to be interesting…

Of course I can hardly mention this without posting the greatest Eurovision song never to be entered in Eurovision.

They really must lose that sax solo.

Music of the Ghosts

A few hundred years ago – according to legend – an inhabitant of one of the Blasket Islands off the west coast of Ireland heard a strange, eerie tune floating out of the night air. He grabbed his fiddle and tried to imitate it, creating a tune that was eventually named Port na bPúcaí – the music of the Ghosts. And there the tale remained, with the resulting tune becoming part of Ireland’s rich heritage of traditional music.

Until the mid 1990s when musician Ronan Browne was going through some tapes, and to his great surprise heard the opening notes of Port na bPúcaí. What was on those tapes? Recordings of the songs of killer whales, which are well known to swim by the Blasket islands on their migrations.

We can’t ever know for certain that the tale of the composition of Port na bPúcaí is true. But if it is, then think of that islander, out alone at night, hearing the mysterious songs of the whales wash across the island and frantically scribbling down the notes of a tune from another world.

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