Musical Snobbery – Page 40

Songs, Songs and more Songs

I’ve had a rather rough week all told. First of all the ridiculous heat, then the huge problems upgrading my computer at work, then the lunatics who decided to move their party out into the carpark last night. You’ve got to love it when you’re woken from a very pleasant dream about Rose McGowan (not that kind of dream, get your mind out of the gutter!) at 1:00am by people shouting, laughing, smashing bottles and screaming just outside your bedroom window. Happily they decided to call it a night around 3:00, and I was able to get back to sleep, Ms McGowan however was nowhere to be seen. Oh well.

Anyway, computer problems.

Ever since I inadvertantly dragged the windows directory into the wrong place on the hard drive – and then panicked and reinstalled Windows 98 over the top – my work computer has been acting fairly erratically. Rather than erase everything and do a complete re-install (not smart since most of our sites are backed up on my machine) we decided to get a new hard drive, set that up as the master and install Windows on it, while keeping the old one as a slave. Good idea no?

No, not really. The installation process (which took the better part of two and half days) went something like this…

Take off case and install new hard drive.
Spend a good two hours trying to get the correct master/slave settings.
Spend several more hours trying to match the office’s many copies of Windows 98 to the office’s many Windows 98 registration codes.
Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend about two hours installing Windows 98.
Spend a further half day re-installing all my software and configuring Windows.
Realise I’ve installed Windows 98 First Edition when I need Second Edition to recognise the new 80 gig hard drive as an 80 gig hard drive instead of a 2 gig hard drive.
Spend an hour searching through office for Second Edition CDs.
Spend two hours trying to match Second Edition CDs to second edition registration codes.
Find a CD and code that will work together. Spend an hour trying to get the installation to upgrade without crashing. Fail miserably.
Despair.
Convince Dale to buy a copy of Windows XP.
Spend an hour trying to convince the Windows XP CD to recognise the correct hard drive. Eventually force it’s hand by taking out the wrong one.
Spend two hours installing Windows XP. Spend a further two hours reinstalling all my software and settings. Again.
Realise I don’t have enough memory to run Windows XP properly. Canabalize chips from other computers until I have enough.
Go home.

So yeah, not the most productive week.

I’ve had a pretty productive weekend though. I’m not going to go into details just yet, but expect some big changes to Wyrmworld. And maybe to the Wyrmlog too if I can muster the energy 🙂

About the only other thing I’ve got to mention is that I did my patriotic duty today *g* and voted in the Triple J Hottest 100. For reasons best known to themselves the powers that be down at the J’s have decided that this year each person can only vote for ten songs, which was a bit of a problem for me personally since there were at least 131 songs listed that I would have voted for. But I eventually whittled the list down to the following ten tracks – my official ten favourite songs of 2003 (in no particular order)…

Biftek – Read To Me
Downsyde – El Questro
Eels – Dirty Girl
Electric Six – Gay Bar
Nofx – Franco Un-American
Screamfeeder – Ice Patrol
The Herd – 77%
The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around
The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed
The Waifs – Lighthouse

There were four other songs that almost made the cut, specifically…

Hilltop Hoods – The Nosebleed Section
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Bomb The World
Magic Dirt – Watch Out Boys
Spencer Tracy – Ocean

And I suppose I might as well list the rest of the 131 songs. You know, just for the sake of completeness 🙂 (the best of these are bolded).

1200 Techniques – Eye Of The Storm
A.R.E. Weapons – Hey World
Amiel – Love Song
Andromeda – Something White And Sigmund
Architecture In Helsinki – The Owls Go
Audioslave – Show Me How To Live
Beastie Boys – In A World Gone Mad
Ben Folds – There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
Billy Bragg – The Price Of Oil
Bob Evans – Friday Come Five
Bob Evans – Turn
Chemical Brothers – The Golden Path
Chumbawamba – Jacob’s Ladder (Not In My Name)
Cody Chesnutt – The World Is Coming To My Party
Coldplay – Clocks
Curve – Want More, Need Less
Dallas Crane – Ladybird
Dallas Crane – No Through Road
Dan Kelly – Counter Meal Kim
Dan Kelly/The Alpha Males – Summer Wino
Dandy Warhols – I Am A Scientist
Dandy Warhols – We Used To Be Friends
Dandy Warhols – You Were The Last High
David Bridie – Hotel Radio
Dirty Lucy – Nothing Is Free
DJ Format – Ill Culinary Behaviour
Dropkick Murphys – The Outcast
Dsico – Smells Like Electro
Eels – Saturday Morning
Electric Six – Danger! High Voltage
Epicure – Armies Against Me
Freeland – We Want Your Soul
Frenzal Rhomb – Hippy Song
Frenzal Rhomb – Russell Crowe’s Band
Full Fathom Five – Built You A Gun
Futureshock – Pride’s Paranoia
Genshen – Nothing Quite Like This
Givegoods – We’re Here About The Budda’s
Gorgeous – Air Balloon
Gorgeous – Do Do Do Song
Grandaddy – Now It’s On
Hedrock Valley Beats – How Do You Feel?
Hot Hot Heat – Naked In The City Again
Idlewild – A Modern Way Of Letting Go
Jack Johnson – The Horizon Has Been Defeated
Jack Planck – Fit, Slender And Attractive
Jet – Are You Going To Be My Girl
Jewtown – Jewtown
Junkie XL/Peter Tosh – Don’t Wake Up Policeman
Klonhertz – Three Girl Rhumba
Ladytron – Evil
Layo And Bushwacka – Love Story
Lazy Susan – Sometimes
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Legends Of Hip Hop – Fifth Element
Liam Lynch – Still Wasted From The Party Last Night
Liam Lynch – United States Of Whatever
Living End – One Said To The Other
Living End – Tabloid Magazine
Magic Dirt – Plastic Loveless Letter
Mark Ronson – I Suck
MC Honky – 3 Turntables & 2 Microphones
Mclusky – There Ain’t No Fool In Ferguson
Michael Andrews/Gary Jules – Mad World
Michael Franti/Spearhead – Everyone Deserves Music
Mint Royale – Show Me
Nick Holder – No More Dating DJ’s
Nina Simone – Sinnerman
Nofx – The Separation Of Church and Skate
Nokturnl – Woomera
Offcutts – Break It (Down James Brown)
Outkast – Hey Ya
Panjabi MC – Jogi
Panjabi MC – Mundian To Bach Ke
Placebo – Running Up That Hill
Radiohead – There There
Rancid – Red Hot Moon
Relaxed Muscle – Billy Jack
Sahara Hotnights – On Top Of Your World
Salmonella Dub – Slide
Screamfeeder – 1 2 3 4 5
Screamfeeder – I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself
Scribe – Not Many
Sir Veto – Underneath A Burning Sun
Sodastream – Blinky
Sonic Animation – (This Is Not) A Love Poem
Spearmint – Left Alone Among The Living
Starky – Girl Talk
The Bumblebeez – Pony Ride
The Casanovas – No Time For Love
The Cat Empire – The Chariot
The Fergusons – Sinner Is Red
The Fiery Furnaces – Don’t Dance Her Down
The Go! Team – Ladyflash
The Guild League – Jet Set…Go!
The Herd – Burn Down The Parliment
The Libertines – What A Waster
The Mountain Goats – See America Right
The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
The Postal Service – The District Sleeps Alone
The Raveonettes – Attack Of The Ghost Riders
The Raveonettes – That Great Love Sound
The Shins – Mine’s Not A High Horse
The Spazzys – Lets Get Spazzy
The Strokes – 12:51
The Thrills – Big Sur
The Weekend – 80’s Rockstar
Trash Palace – The Metric System
Turbonegro – F.T.W.
Two Up – Why Do I Try So Hard
Underworld – Dinosaur Adventure 3D
Vassy – Cover You In Kisses
White Stripes – Girl U Have No Faith In Medicine
White Stripes – In The Cold Cold Night
White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Youth Group – Shadowland
Yunyu – A Prayer

Whew! That’s that over for another year. Oh, and my tip for the winning song? Either “Hey Ya” by Outkast or “Gay Bar” by Electric Six. I’d be very surprised is neither of them ended up in the top 10 anyway.

OK, I’m all typed out now, so I’ll shut up 🙂

Intransigent DNA Influenced Cute Woman of the Week: I happened to see some of a repeat of Undercover Angels yesterday. It’s an apalling show, but ex-Popstar Katie Underwood? Wowee! Actually she bears a slight resemblance to a certain someone else, which may have something to do with it 😉

Back at Work. Bah!

Being back at work sucks.

I narrowly missed out on an extremely embarrassing encounter on the train home on Thursday night. There I was, walking down the platform after getting out of the front carriage, when who should I spy, sitting in the rear carriage(The electric trains in Perth only have two carriages. Or four in really busy periods, but that’s really just two trains end to end.) but Lyndah (Her hair is currently dyed flame red, so she’s pretty hard to miss ;-)).

You know, Lyndah?

Yeah. She didn’t see me, or if she did she did (she did she did? That can’t be good English!) a very good job of pretending she didn’t. And I doubt she would have spotted me down the length of the train since she was right at the back. But of course this little incident raises the question of what would have happened had we ended up on the same carriage and she had seen me (I know what would have happened if I’d seen her. I would have turned as red as a lobster and concealed myself behind some large fellow commuter before scurrying out like a rat when the train got to my station :)).

It’s a very good question.

The hidden variable of course is whether she’s aware of what I wrote about her. I have no reason to suppose that she’s ever visited my website or this blog, but she could have been made aware of the salient facts by my brother, which would provide a very good reason for her to pretend not to see me under any circumstances, let alone a train 🙂

The problem of course is that I don’t know if my brother reads this blog either. In fact I only know of a few people who do read it, Helen, Ali, Stephanie, Rebecca and Ryan (and maybe Mark, in between all that police training). Of course there’s also all those people who wander in looking for the lyrics to the Drug’s The Bold and the Beautiful or after searching for “Billy Idol Religious Fanatics” (I’m not kidding. Two separate search engine queries over the last few months. The scary thing is not so much that people are searching for this, but that I keep coming up for it :)). But I don’t know about anyone else.

So, regard this as an invitation everyone. If you read the Wyrmlog, let me know! Drop me an email! You’re my audience after all!

I’ll get all depressed if you don’t 😉

(By the way, please note that this is not an invitation to send me offers for herbal viagra, discount ink cartridges, penis enlargement pills, human growth hormone, millions of dollars in unclaimed African slush funds or any other such crap. I have excellent spam filtering software and I use it, so your message will be bloody well bounced.)

Anyway, back to Lyndah. I naturally kept half an eye out for her on Friday, but there wasn’t a flash of sexy flame red hair to be seen. Which is probably a good thing all round. I can seriously do without the distraction 🙂

Anyway, on a completely different subject a fair few people have been visiting the Wyrmlog looking for the lyrics to 77% by The Herd. Since I’ve been looking for them myself and the only copy I can find online is woefully inadequate I figured I’d transcribe them and stick them up here. So (with all necessary language warnings) here they are. Enjoy…

77% – The Herd

(samples)

…seventy seven percent of Australians, um, agree with John Howard’s actions on the Tampa.
What happened to the others?..

…the thing is, to use military force, uh, against, uh refugees, isn’t that a little, overkill?..

…a spokesman for the line that owns the ship says Australian SAS Troops are in danger of breaking the laws of piracy…

…undoubtedly this is the most popular decision as far as the Australian public are concerned, the Government’s made during its reign…

…the Captain before entering Australian waters had sent out a distress signal…

…clearly our solution was um, well it wasn’t only farcical – it was um, immoral…

(John Howard) I wish, that this problem were not ours…

Well I’m left sitting here, staring into a beer,
Shaking my head at the same old loathing and fear,
Stranger in my own land, can’t understand,
How the very word ‘Australian’ has just been damned,
I f*****g hate myself, take Aussie from my name,
Erase this endless shame, forever casting blame,
If you don’t act the same will I destroy you?
Everyone looks the same beaten black and blue,

And so I’ve had enough of these redneck pricks,
When fact is the only real s**t that sticks,
Watch as I tear the very skin from my face,
So none’ll see my race, my deep disgrace,
You’re not even from here in the first place!
And those who are you wanna further debase?
Nup – no more – never again, whether by fist or pen,
I will defend – ’cause I’m at a loose end,

The shattered remnants of Aussie dignity,
I’m a skip, whitey, round eye, surprise me,
Use your shriveled brain to please explain,
How the clever country just went down the drain?
We rode the sheep’s back now the sheep ride you,
If this is how it’s gonna be don’t call me true blue,
I denounce my ancestors, wounds still fester,
If you say it ain’t so I suggest ya wake up!

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up,
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Talkback? Squawking hacks, won’t relax,
Until Jonesey, Zemanek and Laws are all axed,
Seventy-seven percent of Aussies are racist,
If you’re here – I’ll say it your faces,
Rich redneck pricks still hold all the aces,
I’ll buy you a beer – with a arsenic chaser,
Better off dead? Is that what I’ve said?
Tempting to take for all the blood you’ve shed,

No doubt you’re as bad as your dads and your mums,
Mainsteam media making me so f*****g bummed,
Anglo reality, intellectual cavity,
Channel Nine fostering prejudiced mentalities,
I won’t be a casualty, just mention casually,
I can’t stand for you s**t-eating bullies,
Preying on peeps without a mainstream voice,
Most of yous stay silent but I’ve got no choice,

Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up! These c***s need a shake up!
Wake up! This country needs a f*****g shake up!
Wake up!

Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no avail,
Well I’ve yelled my lungs out, but to no f*****g avail,
That you’re a stranger yourself, now that’s the sting in the tail,

Captain Cook was the very first queue jumper,
It was immigrant labour that made Australia plumper,
Enough is enough, whiteys go pack your stuff,
Don’t wanna live in England? That’s f*****g tough!
I’m sick and tired of this redneck wonderland,
Most of yous stay silent and I can’t understand,
I just can’t understand,
It’s time for you to,

Well that’s a cheery way to sign off isn’t it? 🙂

Snow!

I am shocked. Shocked and appalled.

Every Thursday morning on Triple J they have a sing-a-long. They choose a song on the Wednesday morning, put the lyrics on the Breakfast Show website, and then at 6:30 the next day play it, so people around the nation can join in. This week the song was Informer by early 90’s white boy Canadian rapper Snow.

All well and good. Except I went to the site to check out the lyrics and well, I don’t know where they got them from, but they’re ridiculously wrong!

For instance, they claim the chorus goes…

Informer,
You no say daddy me Snow me I’ll go blame,
A licky boom boom down,
Detective mon said daddy me Snow me stab someone down the lane,
A licky boom boom down,

When everyone knows it goes…

Informer,
You know say diddly sonne I go blam,
A leque boom boom Deanne,
Take the money siddly sonne somme dat,
Slumber down éan,
A leque boom boom Deanne,

And the first verse goes…

Police adumuno commie now they blow down me door,
Bring the capacho to me window,
So then they put me in the botte car at the station,
From that point on I reach me destination,
And the destination is banana east detention,
Where they whipped down me pants look up me bottom,

Not…

Police them come an’ now they blow down me door,
One him come crawl through through my window,
So then they put me in the back the car at the station,
From that point on me reach my destination,
When the destination reached it was the east detention,
Where them whipped down me pants looked up me bottom,

I can understand how they might think their version makes more “sense”, but the fact is that Snow, being a good Canadian, raps at least half of the song in Quebecoi French. Trying to interpret these French bits as English just leads to misunderstandings. I mean, which is a more intreaging and enduring image? A policeman crawling through your window, or a policeman bringing a “capacho” (a tasty Latin American foodstuff) to your window? And the sheer poetry of “A leque boom boom Deanne” beats out the inanity of “A licky boom boom down” any day.

Shame Triple J! Shame! ;-D