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No need to take it out on me wee man. Click here.

Bleeeeeeaaaaaaccccccccchhhhh!

I’ve never been a fan of mash ups. They’re all over the internet like a bad rash and apart from 2 Many DJs, most of them are rotten. Stars On 45 for the iPod generation. Except…

I heard this the other night and loved it. Eddie Cochran‘s ‘Come On Everybody’ mixed with Snoop Dogg‘s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’. It was done by DJ Prince (from Norway) in 2005. It isn’t current. It has nothing to do with anything topical. But it’s worth the time to download.  

Eddie Cochran, Glasgow Empire, date unknown

Proper blogging will resume in the next couple of days.

No downloads today, just a bit of news.

I read today that 60s pop star Wayne Fontana is off to the loony bin after he admitted setting fire to a bailiff’s car when he turned up at his house with a warrant. The Mindbenders singer (better known to his mum as Glyn Ellis) let the bailiff in, then while he was in his house, he poured petrol over the bailiff’s car.  “I’m going to burn you,” he told the bailiff. That’ll teach them to show up unannounced with a warrant. Wayne is now off to a psychiatric hospital in Manchester where he will be assessed. Not that he will need much assessing….

As you can see he turned up for court yesterday dressed as the Old Bailey’s Statue Of Justice. He carried a sword, wore a crown and a cape and wore dark glasses because he claimed that “justice is blind”. Apparently he told the judge he was just arson about with the petrol and matches.

He used to be quite normal.

I have a prize for the first person who can name me 3 Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders hits. No Googling allowed. Leave your answers in the comment box. Answers will be checked using the Guiness Book of British Hit Singles.

Simon le Bon. Wanker. As everyone knows. Anyway, as everyone also knows, Prince gave away his new album free with The Mail On Sunday and we’re all up in arms about it. “We supported him when he was nothing” moaned the record shops. “We can’t name his last 2 albums” admitted the public (‘3121’ and ‘Musicology’, if you don’t count the ‘Ultimate Prince’ Warner Bros Christmas cash-in). “We just download stuff for free” said the iPod generation. “And who is this Prince anyway?”

So it is a big deal, but not that big a deal. If it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the Killers who had done this, it would have been a huge deal. Massive. But they’re signed to record companies. Prince is a one-man band in every sense. He picks and chooses who’s going to release his next record. He can do what he likes, and he did. He won’t make any money from album sales. Relatively speaking, not that much. ‘3121’ sold 82,000 copies. At £1 a sale, that’s £82000 he’s made. It probably cost him more to record etc. Next month he plays 20-odd dates in London to 20,000 folk a night, at £31.21 a ticket. That’s (quickly does mental maths) £624200 a night. After he’s paid all his overheads and stuff, he won’t be much short of making half a million a night, or £10million for the series of shows. So maybe the tax man takes a big chunk of that, but add merchandise sales on top (how much is a concert T-shirt nowadays?) and it’s easy to see he’s raking it in. His name is Prince and he is funky. And he is loaded. Everyone who bought a ticket for his London shows got a free album as well. So giving his album away to a newspaper means nothing to him. It’s been said that the Mail On Sunday gave him £250000. Small change. I also read that they sold an extra 600,000 copies on Sunday. At £1.30 a pop, that’s a tidy wee profit they’ve made. Quarter of a million is small change. But most of those ‘new’ readers won’t be back next week, or indeed any time soon until they start giving away the new U2 album for nothing.

Thing is, ‘Planet Earth’ isn’t that bad. But because it’s free, most folk’ll play it once and file it away, or bin it. If I’d bought this album, I’d be playing it over and over until all the songs sink in. The sequence of songs seems to follow a slow-fast-slow-fast order and I prefer the fast ones. The first track’s pish. It’s drippy, slushy romantic drivel and goes off into Barry Manilow’s ‘Could It Be Magic’ at some point. No matter how many plays, I’d still be skipping it. But ‘Guitar’ sounds great, even if the intro sounds like Razorlight ripping off U2’s ‘I Will Follow’. ‘The One U Wanna C’ looks and sounds like old-skool Prince, like ‘Raspberry Berry’ with extra slappy bass, and ‘Chelsea Rodgers’ is as funky as they come, all Mavis Staples vocals (I think), clipped Chic guitar and Bootsy Collins slap bass (again). ‘Lion Of Judah’ begins like my old band trying to play ‘Purple Rain’ but speeds up and sounds all the better for it. There’s the odd falsetto number that doesn’t do much for me, and the last track ‘Resolution’ sounds like it was written by a Primary 7 pupil, but overall the album’s OK. Honest! If you don’t already have it by now, you’ll find all the tracks in this folder here. Click on the + sign on the right hand side of the song title and download in the usual way. And here’s the sleeve…

Footnote. Apparently Madness will be the next one’s to do the big giveaway, with a whole album of new stuff cover mounted with The Sun. Shame on you Suggs, Chas ‘n’ co. That’s one step too far beyond.

Poor Travis. They’ve had their day. Back in ’97/’98, you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing them. They were everywhere. Every other trolley in the checkout queue at Tesco had a wee copy of ‘The Man Who’ next to the nappies, bottled water and whatever else the masses were buying. Everybody loved them. As Noel Gallagher said of ‘Wonderwall’, “Once the nerds get involved, man, it goes insane. That song made me £4 million, £4 million count ’em, in one year alone.” And boy, the nerds loved Travis. I say ‘loved’ in past tense, cos they don’t love them anymore. They’ve all moved on to James Morrison or Paulo Nuttini or Coldplay (are they still relevant?)  or bloody Snow Patrol or someone. Point is, no-one buys Travis albums anymore. Which is a shame, cos they’ve still got a good knack of complementing the jangling 12 string acoustic ‘n’ electric guitars with a decent melody. Like this. Selfish Jean. On constant repeat round our house. I don’t care that it’s square, nerdy and not trendy. I don’t care that it sounds like ‘Lust For Life’ on Smarties rather than heroin. I don’t care that there’s a daft line about wiring chocolate biscuits to a car alarm. I don’t even care that Teenage Fanclub and the Trashcans do it better, it’s a fantastic record and that’s what matters. Travis are an outdated band for outdated people like me, but more fool you for disgarding them around 2002. It’s not too late to redeem yourself.

Still got it 10 years later

Sorry folks. My PC has been virused to within a millimetre of death for the past 2 weeks. I think I’ve cleared it up, so new stuff will be up here very soon. In the meantime here’s some advice. If you find yourself virused, attach one of these onto your modem. It seems to have done the trick…..

 Julian Cope ‘Safe Surfer’

It’s weird, this blogging thing. The number of hits I’m getting is quite astounding. So thank YOU and you and you and you and…….

 ……especially the poor soul who was looking for ‘teenage fanny’ and came across this site. Well, I hope he didn’t come across this site, but maybe he found something worth downloading. Who knows?

Anyway. New stuff soon. Been on holiday and had no time to blog. Thanks for visiting. Especially if you were looking for some decent porn and found this instead.

There’s a new Stooges album out. Apparently it’s really poor. The Plain Or Pan spies out there tell me it’s one outdated heavy metal solo after another. So. I won’t be listening to it. I like my Stooges just they way they were. Great music for washing the floor to. You can really mop with attitude to ‘1969’. Sometimes I even get the hand claps in as I mop. Takes practise, but it’s worth it. Why do old bands insist on reforming? Actually, we all know why. Ker-ching. But the Stooges could’ve just done a one-off Greatest Hits tour and be done with it. At least the Police are sticking to that part of the deal.  In this month’s Mojo, Iggy says how he wanted credibility, and didn’t want to do an Eagles (ie, Ker-Ching). My friend worked at Hampden a few years back when the Eagles played. She said they flew in on 4 separate planes, drove to the show in 4 separate cars, got handed 4 separate play lists and left at the end in 4 separate cars. None of this new album crap. In, out give us the money. Iggy. You have let me down.

Back in the days when the Stooges were long dead, Iggy should’ve been long dead, and his credibility was certainly dead, he recorded some stuff for Virgin. What we have here is a curio – the Long Video edit (whatever that means) of ‘Wild America’. This track is interesting for 2 reasons. 1. It was only ever released on promo, and 2. Iggy breaks off from singing now and again to tell you the story of his life. Talking about Pop music, if you will. It’s pretty weird, but pretty excellent too. You’ll love it.

Wow! To date, I’ve had thousands, yes, thousands of hits, and over 800 downloads of the tracks posted here. By far the most popular is Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Mama, You Been On My Mind’. You people have good taste! Remember to add me to your favourites and drop by again. I should have more new stuff up by the end of this week.

Any requests?