Musical Snobbery – Page 31

Saint Anger

Hahahahah! Eat me Lars!

Saint Anger was the angriest of all the Saints,
Much angrier than Saint Francis of Assisi,
Or Saint Cuthbert the Kind,
Saint Anger used to steal the other Saints’ Bibles,
And punch little children in the face,
And when they cried he didn’t mind…

I didn’t write that. It’s from a song called Saint Anger which predates Metallica’s rather dismal work of the same name by several decades. The thing is, I only know that much of it and have no idea who sang it, and it doesn’t seem to exist on the internet at all. So I’m putting it here, lest the tale of Saint Anger vanish completely from the world.

SPISPOPD

We can’t stop here, this is mondegreen country…

While we’re on the subject of Disarm, I discovered the other day that the song does not go…

…bitterness, the one whose laugh I loathe…

and in fact goes

…bitterness, the one who’s left alone…

Billy Corgan is clearly nowhere near the songwriter that I imagined him to be 😀

Soundalikes

PAY FOR THE BLOODY SONG!

There are two ads that are really annoying me at the moment. Not because of the products they’re advertising (although car ads, as these are, annoy me anyway), and not because of the inane claims they make about said cars (because you really need a racing pedigree engine to run down to the shops), but because of their music.

Both adds use absolutely blatent soundalikes.

A soundalike is what you get when an advertising executive decides they want to use a particular song in their ad but are refused permission by the artist, or simply don’t want to pay for the rights. So they hire some poor schlob to write and record a song that’s close enough to the orignal to sound like it while being just different enough to avoid lawsuits.

Basically it’s a legal way of bastardising a song for commercial purposes.

The songs ripped off in these two ads are Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins, and Packing Blankets by the Eels. Disarm – being a fine example of the Pumpkins’ bleak milieu – may seem like an odd choice for advertising anything apart from selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors, but they’ve ripped off the power chords and matched them with moody shots of their pestilential vehicle while a serious voice over person makes pretentious statements about how seriously awesome it is. The Packing Blankets add is full of shots of happy families driving to the beach and having picnics and things, with the car front and centre in each shot.

Both ads drive me to distraction. I find myself yelling “PAY FOR THE BLOODY SONG YOU BASTARDS!” at the TV every time they come on.

It’s my problem. I’ll have to deal with it.

Later: OK, the ad that rips off the Eels is actually for a land development up at Alkimos. Shows how well it held my attention doesn’t it?

Listen and Learn

I’m talkin’ to you baby! I’m talkin’ to you sugar!

All you people listenin’ tonight! Yes I’m that preacher everybody’s talking about! I’m Doctor Williams givin’ out them red hot lessons, ten dollars, New York and New Jersey every week, all the way down the east coast! From Boston clean down to Atlanta Georgia last week! I told down the east coast!

Do somethin’ to help you, do somethin’ to help yourself!

Come get your mojo hey! Go down Atlantic City and be a winner! Go down to Atlantic City come back fat as a rat! Why should you be a loser when you can be a winner? Yes ma’am, yes sir!

Brooklyn New York! Brooklyn New York! Get ready! Doctor Williams will be in Brooklyn New York, tomorrow evening, Monday evening, 6 pm until 8 pm. I’m talkin’ to the hot red hot big money blessing straight! And you be there 6 o’clock tomorrow evening!

Bronx New York! Get on the telephone and call 50 of your friends! Tell all your friends who need some help! Doctor Williams is comin’ to the Bronx New York! Doctor Williams is comin’ to the Bronx New York!

Doctor Williams will be in the Bronx New York with a straight, straight hot! Hot hot hot hot! Red hot! Big money blessing! Can’t nobody can stop me! Not even the dead in hell can’t stop me!

I’ll get ready to leave tonight! I want you to know, I love you! I’m talkin’ to you baby! I’m talkin’ to you sugar! Listen, Doctor William’s car comin’ down man! I love you! I love you!

I have a special phone number, where you can call me, so that I can send you a special gift…

(Listen)

A Musical Cornucopia

Doing what every sane person did years ago

Caught up with Fabes and Juan over the weekend. We got the last of the boards flocked and had a quick scratch-up game of 40k. Fabes totally kicked my arse again – this time in two rounds – but that’s cool because I wasn’t actually trying to win. I was actually using the game to test some different strategies and gathered some very interesting data for further consideration…

(Fabes may think I’m just saying that after the fact to excuse my execrable performance, but I said as much to Juan before the game began, so there! :))

I’ve also started work on another project. While hanging around at Fabes’ place it occurred to me that I haven’t actually sat down and listened to a CD in ages. In years in fact. I listen to plenty of music, but it’s all via iTunes on my computer. I’ve got a couple of two metre tall IKEA racks full of CDs that I never touch, and I desperately need somewhere to store all the 40k models I’ve been buying. The solution is obvious – pack all the CDs up in a cupboard somewhere, and use the racks to hold my army. Brilliant!

So how is that a project you ask? It’s simple, I’ve got to go through and rip all the CDs before I put them away.

You see, I’ve never properly ripped most of them. When I first started listening to music on my computer I was cursed with a small hard drive, and a highly tempermental CD drive, which meant I could only afford to rip the songs I really liked at comparatively low quality to save space – and I usually had to rip them multiple times to get versions without annoying drop outs. In the end about 10% of my music collection actually ended up on my computer.

But now I have a huge hard drive and a CD/DVD drive that reliably rips tracks at close to the speed of light (or so it seems compared to my old machine). So I’m going to go through every single CD I own and get it ripped, imported and organised at high quality. It’ll be a marvellous cornucopia of music! And I’ll have somewhere to keep my Valhallans. Everybody wins!

Yeah, that’s really all I’ve got to say 🙂

(Watch this)

Foolish Story Ideas No. 1

Fffffffffffffffffffffrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddddddddddddddddddddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Anthropologist records complex, ancient, multi-instrumental and multi-vocal religious chants from obscure South East Asian tribe. Accidentally messes up playback, speeding chants up by factor of eight. Chants are transformed into insipid modern pop song, complete with good approximation of modern instrumentation and English lyrics.

Considerations…
How did insipid modern pop song end up thousands of years in the past?
How did insipid modern pop song thousands of years in the past end up slowed down by eight?
How did insipid modern pop song thousands of years in the past and slowed down by eight become religiously significant enough to be repeated and preserved for thousands of years?
What is effect of this revelation on culture and religion of tribe?

Discuss.

Out of the Mouths of Pigs

Didn’t we have more gravy in the 30’s?

You know, I swear that sooner or later I’m going to get back to writing actual posts, rather than just linking to amusing/stupid stuff I stumble across online. Sooner or later.

In the meantime I presume that everyone has seen Pig with the Face of a Boy’s magnificent retelling of the history of the Soviet Union via the metaphor (and music) of Tetris?

Well, the other day I decided to check out some of their other work and was extremely impressed. For instance, did you know that World War II was actually about securing Britain’s gravy supply? Or that Hitler was obsessed with junk food? And who knew midwifery was so deeply disturbing?

I think my favourite however is the one about busking.

I will have to give serious thought to buying their album.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of entertaining internet music, how about the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie’s War of 1812. That chorus is so catchy! And humiliating to Americans! ;D

Sax Crime

Random saxophone assaults

There’s so much going wrong in the world at the moment, but as long as a saxophone wielding maniac still has the freedom to randomly attack people with George Michael songs we’re probably doing OK.

The Weather is Trying to Kill Me

Pirates are all we can be!

Seriously. We’ve had two weeks of maximums in the mid 30’s and minimums in the low 20’s, and this week it’s ramped up to high 30’s with minimums in the mid 20’s. If it doesn’t cool down after that, I’ll be dead.

Until then, what could be cooler than a Scottish metal cover of a Eurovision song about pirates? In my opinion, nothing!

That is all.