Ace of Base (right, click image to enlarge) have reformed! Tell your friends. Lessavalook at their YouTube page blurb:
With an all-new line-up, re-recorded songs, new management, the new web 2.0 tools, their social commitment combined with a high tech vision on communication, user interaction and distribution of their music, Ace of Base is again completely in tune with their time and ready to rock the World!

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday October 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm

Well, I remember Dubstar, even if you don’t. They were rather big around the mid-90s, and are one of the few groups to have had a big hit about an old lady getting battered. That was the lovely “Not So Manic Now”.
Now they’re apparently getting back together to record an album with Stephen Hague, who produced stuff for New Order but more importantly did the soundtrack for John Hughes’ Some Kind Of Wonderful. And yes, somehow I knew that without Googling it.
Dubstar’s reformation has understandably pleased many ageing music fans on their Facebook page, who have left comments like:
IM WELL PLEASED DUBSTAR ARE BACK ITS GREAT NEWS IM A MASSIVE FAN OF SARAH BLACKWOOD AND LOVE EVRYTHING SHE DOES AND IN CLIENT BUT DUBSTAR ARE ACE,

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday October 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Get in! Geri Halliwell (right, click image to enlarge) has finished the first draft of her first screenplay, with several interesting details coming to light about the project.
Interesting detail number uno: Geri used the Final Draft tool to write up her script.
Interesting detail part deux: Geri received help on how to put a plot together from “friends and industry experts”.
Interesting detail numero three: Geri won’t tell us what it’s about, the cow.
Chances are it’s going to be something to do with that kiddies’ character she came up with, Ugenia Lavender. But there’s always the chance that it’s going to be a guts n’ guns shootfest, isn’t there? Or something that allows us to see the dirty underbelly of the music business she witnessed back in the day? (Geri used to be a singer, remember, in case you’re wondering why she’s on here today)
Whatever the theme of her flick, the thing for Gezza to remember is that “writing is rewriting”, so make sure you take your time with this baby. Take as much time as you like. Don’t rush it.
[source: Starpulse]

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday October 1st, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Goodness me. Travis were always a “staring out the window past raindrops” kind of band, but this is all a bit whiny-poos even for them.
In new tune “Song To Self” Fran chunters on about “singing a song to myself”, before admitting he’s “making it up in my head”. Hang on, isn’t that how most lyrics come into being? Anyway, they best get used to singing to themselves if they don’t pick their wee chins up, ‘cos nobody else is going to give a poo.
It’ll sound fine over a break-up scene in Gossip Girl, though, and that’s the main thing. See the equally drab video over the page, should you have literally nothing better to do.
By which I mean – click through! Definitely! Well worth it!

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday September 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

When you’re a slave to keywords, squeezing “Shirley Manson”, “Terminator”, “Garbage” and “urinal” into a post header is a gift you just can’t pass up. Even if you basically tell the whole story in the headline and are left with very little else to write.
For (marginally) more information you can read the news story at NME.com about Shirls appearing in Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles; or you can just watch the video of Shirley morphing from urinal to lady, and then poking someone all the way to death, after the jump.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday September 11th, 2008 at 9:00 am

Did you know that Daryl Hall (left, click image to enlarge) from legendary blue-eyed soul combo Hall & Oates has this, like, whole internet TV show thing going on? S’true! You can even buy punctuation-free t-shirts for it!
Live From Daryl’s House sees Dazza collaborating on all manner of tuneage with folk who he’s dragged to his crib. Unsurprisingly a fair bit of Dazza’s back catalogue makes it in, which is no bad thing. If you go here, for example, you can see him perform billowing-curtain classic “Sara Smile” with, um, some dude called Monte Montogemery.
This week’s show, moreover, will feature shitbrilliant electro-funk pair Chromeo joining the smooth old hermit.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Tuesday August 12th, 2008 at 9:00 am

I don’t think I’ve ever actively looked forward to anything The Verve have done. I mean I bought Urban Hymns, like every other person in the country. And I love “Bittersweet Symphony” and “History”. But I’ve never been to see them live because I suspect there would be too much gloopy jamming and all that.
So will the new material make me a Verve convert? It would have to be pretty mind-blowing to do so, and having listened to comeback single “Love Is Noise” I am sad to report that my brain remains resolutely unexploded.
It does have an odd little sample though – it sounds like a very soulful dog doing a singbark. I wonder where you get dogs like that.
The video’s pretty grand, with snow-peaked mountains, bits of fire here and there and Richard Ashcroft sitting on the ground. Let’s hope the new stuff’s a success, if only so that he can buy a chair. He’s getting on a bit.
See the video after the jump.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday July 10th, 2008 at 11:29 am

Neneh Cherry. There’s a name you probably haven’t heard in a while, if at all (depending on your age). Me, I’m ancient enough to remember the classic “Buffalo Stance”, while young ‘uns might recall 1994′s “7 Seconds”, her huge hit with Youssou N’Dour.
Well now she’s BACK as part of an act called CirKus, which is a collaboration with her husband Cameron McVey (going under the guise of Burt Ford) and some folk called Karmil and Lolita Moon. Their album Laylow has been floating around Europe for a while, after being released in France a couple of years back – and it’s now slated for a release in the UK at the end of this very month (28th July to be precise).

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Wednesday July 2nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm

The new video from the recently reformed New Kids On The Block is something to behold. Why? Mainly because the “kids” – in their mid to late 30s now – frolic about as if they’re in a Backstreet Boys video from 1996. Which would be cheesy enough alone, even if this didn’t make you recall that Blink 182 video which took the piss out of such clips.
The vid opens with the guys each getting a call as they get on with their workaday lives – e.g., Danny’s running through a jungle, Joey’s on a big yacht, etc. Then, like pop superheroes, they all meet up to save the world from Justin Timberlake or something.
What follows are windswept scenes on the beach, cavorting in bamboo shacks with barely legal hotties, silhouetted poses and – fuck me – a choreographed dance routine in white suits. And by the way, Joey looks nothing like Joey. He looks like he’s made of wax.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday June 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am

What the hell’s Tricky been up to for the last ten years or so? Well, let’s not worry about that now, because his new single is, frankly, ‘mazin’.
For a start, the lyrics begin with him graphically describing his own birth. My mistake was to be eating cereal at this point in the song. Thankfully the video forgoes literalism for this particular verse.
“Council Estate” builds and builds with scuzzy guitar and pummelling beats, a bit of a semi-bassline interlude, and lyrics encouraging young men to not be rubbish and stuff. As comebacks go, it doesn’t get much better. Check it out over the page.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Thursday May 29th, 2008 at 10:35 am