Found this interesting article on VillageVoice.com. It’s bascially an I.M chat with a stripper called Bubbles Burbujas in which she outlines what music does and doesn’t work in strip clubs.
For example:
Weezer = crowdpleaser, since these days the guys who like Weezer are pretty much a part of our target audience. And by that I mean guys who were GIANT DORKS about 15 years ago and now have money.
She also suggests that the bewilderingly long-lived popularity of mainstream rock bands such as Nickelback is linked to their popularity in strip clubs. Grizzly Bear’s success, meanwhile, definitely isn’t.
It sounds like it’s tough for modern acts to break the strip club gruff-rock hegemony, although Muse and Yeah Yeah Yeahs seem to get the nod.
Once upon a timepiece, this blog was just about festivals. Heady days they were, with month after month of writing about events to which I wasn’t invited gradually leading me to a severe, excrement-flinging depressive episode.
I jest, of course. Kind of. The fact is, it’s all very well setting up a blog about festivals, but if no fucker’s inviting you to them it ends up being a) expensive, b) dull and c) (see points a & b). No funzies. Ergo dipsum velorum, this particular site broadened its scope to music in general (and jigsaws).
Fortunately there are people out there willing to make a decent fist of covering festivals, and they are less likely to crumble like a Custard Cream when faced with putting in a bit of effort. So if you’re looking for a site of such a nature, ’tis my pleasure to point you the way of This Festival Feeling. Continue reading »
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Friday July 31st, 2009 at
9:00 am
You might not realise this, but there is some amazing disco music out there. God, even just writing “disco music” feels wrong on so many levels. Such are the depths to which disco’s reputation has sunk in popular opinion.
But in honour of the fact that italo disco-fixated “metal band on synths” Heartbreak (left) are due to spend the next month blowing socks off up and down the country – beginning with the latest Levi’s Ones To Watch show at London’s Macbeth on Thursday 23rd April – I thought I’d do a thing about this nu-disco hoo-ha which is probably going to soundtrack a fair few debauched evenings this summer. Continue reading »
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Tuesday April 21st, 2009 at
11:00 am
DJ A-Trak, in case you didn’t know, is Kanye West’s tour DJ, a top producer, and a general all-round turntabling wizardgod. He won the DMC World DJ Championship at the age of 15, and he’s co-founded two record labels. He’s 26 years old.
That gap just there was so you could swallow down your jealousy. Done? OK, well prepare for some envy reflux, because now I’m going to tell you he’s a very entertaining blogger as well.
While Kanye’s blog alternates between wordless, image/video heavy posts and increasingly unhinged, if extremely style-conscious rants, A-Trak’s site covers some of the same territory but in a more subdued, contented kind of way.
As the younger brother of Dave One from the magnificent Chromeo, his big bro can be expected to show up occasionally, like when they encounter a kosher vending machine in a cinema lobby.
The Langley Schools Music Project was a chorus of sixty kids from a school in Canada who, under the guidance of their teacher Hans Fenger, recorded an album of covers of pop tunes in the late seventies. The children played the instruments as well, despite having no sheet music and only a basic ability to play.
The most famous recording to emerge from the ensuing album Innocence & Despair is their version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, to which the man himself gave the thumbs-up. It was recorded on a two-track tape deck in a school gym, so the result is quite a shock to ears used to listening to slickly-produced material.
What is undeniable is that the result is somehow simultaneously haunting and charming… But mostly haunting. Click over for a listen.
I knew the bass line to the song, of course, but I couldn’t quite master this new, different way of playing it.
So sayeth former Nirvana bassist and hairytall legend Krist Novoselic, who found himself having a go at “In Bloom” in a store, bless him. Meanwhile, this kid was watching me fumble with the game. I became self-conscious and took the controller off. I handed it to him, and he proceeded to jam on the song–and was really good! He had no idea that I was the musician he was emulating on the game, and I didn’t tell him.
I wouldn’t have told him either, Krist. He would have laughed at you. And probably not believed you 🙁 Read the rest of Krist’s blog post at Seattle Weekly
[via Fark Music]
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Friday January 16th, 2009 at
12:40 pm
This feels thoroughly unseemly, but if I can pimp other people’s work erry damn day I should be allowed to pimp my own now and again I think.
To mark the forthcoming “official” release of Tinchy Stryder’s unavoidable “Take Me Back”, I decided to help the young man try and find the lady to whom he finds himself begging in said tune.
My quest took me to dark, strangerous places no man should have to visit – like the recesses of the HMV website’s “customer reviews” section (see image above).
If you would like to see how my epic mission went head over to The Lipster, where I done wrote it…
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Friday January 16th, 2009 at
11:40 am
Odd, isn’t it, how you can spend years being aware of an act, and yet somehow manage to never hear their music? As far as I know, for instance, despite knowing the name “Tom McRae” I have never heard any of Tom McRae’s music.
Chances are I actually have heard him on some soundtrack or other, of course – having just checked him out he sounds like he could nestle next to Damien Rice quite nicely. But you know what I mean.
Anywhizzles, the other day I became a fan of him as a result of reading his blog. This is why: I don’t know how many of you vowed to stop throwing toast at Jehovah’s Witnesses this year, maybe it was just me, but I broke that resolution within minutes of making it.
LOL, Tom McRae! LOL! *claps*
If you fancy an alternative list of Christmas tunes there’s quite a good one from the improbable but rather impressive location of The Dallas Observer.
The Top Ten Most Erotic Christmas Songs sounds like a challenging list to put together, and so it proves – “Mr Hanky The Christmas Poo”? “The hottest song ever, if you’re a fecalphiliac,” they say. Good job they qualified that.
I took a shine to this list because it introduced me to Clarence Carter’s terrifically wrong “Backdoor Santa”, which features oo-er lyrics such as “I ain’t like Old Saint Nick, he don’t come but once a year.” You can listen to that at the top of this post. Head to The Dallas Observer’s DC9 At Night to see the rest of the list.
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Wednesday December 24th, 2008 at
4:31 pm
Oh Popjustice. Yesterday they said this:
And then, within a couple of hours, they said this on MySpace (click to enlarge):
So, now you can go here and listen to their version. It will make you weep tears of something or other, and so on.
Do you know what all this “Hallelujah” nonsense really means? It means that at this time of year MUSIC DIES and we are left with nothing interesting to talk about. Srsly.
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Friday December 19th, 2008 at
10:35 am