Some things are just wrong

Where is your God now?

Music to sooth

According to this report, this is the most relaxing tune in the world.

Der Katzenklavier

There, I Fixed It looks at the Katzenklavier (cat piano), a traditional instrument that employs (as the name suggests) pussycats.

Personally, I prefer the English version

Help!

Former Miss Canada finalist Miss Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy is the first person to win an MA in Beatles Studies from Liverpool Hope University.

I hope she knows how to make a dry cappuccino because this is when reality starts to kick in.

RESULT!

Sir "Bob" Geldof apologises for writing "We Are the World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?".

This means that all that snow covering Britain must be issuing from Hell.

£1 albums

Rob Dickins, former head of Warner Music UK, says that the way to fight music piracy is to drop the price of albums to £1 and make the real money off volume sales, live music events and merchandise.

Or you can do what the music industry has tried and failed with for the past twenty years by pretending that it's still 1968 and that they can maintain the distribution monopoly that modern technology destroyed decades ago.

Good luck with that.

What a clever chair

From the BBC:

The chair of the Mercury Prize has claimed that black British female artists are being ignored by the British public.

I don't know what is more bizarre; the implication that lackluster sales by "new female urban acts" can only be the result of some sort of musical racism or that the Mercury Prize presented its comment through a piece of furniture.

Tone Matrix

A distinctly neat little music device that is well up on the cool board.

Tip o' the hat to Last of the Few.

Rawhide

One of the lessons I learned as an actor was that chicken wire 'round the stage was always a bad sign.

Cat Culture

And now, your moment of culture: A cat playing a Theremin.

Brand New Key

If you're at a certain age you may recall this quantum of irritation from 1971.


Personally, I've always felt that this cover did far more justice to the song.

Divine Providence

BBC headline:

Abba will 'never' perform again

Thank God and all his ministering angels, we are delivered!

Pacer Suit

The Pacer Suit; a revolutionary concept that allows you to dance, make music and look like an utter pratt all at the same time.

The Proms Are Double-Plus Ungood

Margaret Hodge, the "culture" minister, claims that the Proms are inappropriate as they are thoughtcrime do not promote "new British values."

So, flag-waving; patriotism; singing "Jerusalem", "Land of Hope and Glory", or "Rule Britannia"; or even innocent enjoyment will no longer be allowed in New Labour's glorious utopia.

No doubt this sort of thing is more what she has in mind.

Man in Space With Sounds

Over at Heino und Jerry in Uber Space you can listen to the "supersonic" soundtrack that played in the famous Bubbleator at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

This is a wonderful example of Future Past and I'm not just including it because I find the title of the track "Gayway to Heaven" somewhat ironic, given Seattle's current reputation in the sexual identity stakes.

Illogical

William Shatner isn't the only one with an embarrassing foray into pop music. We present the video that Leonard Nimoy wishes he had every horrible copy of.

As they say on MST3K: Deep hurting.

Pop Time

Grandma gets ready to get down at Glasto

The organisers of the Glastonbury Festival are worried that the attendees are too "middle-aged" and "middle-class."

Would it be too unkind to point out that 1970 was 37 years ago and that Glastonbury is mostly an exercise in nostalgia that appeals less to young people than to aging BBC executives who still yearn after their salad days? The organisers are lucky that the mud wallow they call a festival isn't strewn with abandoned Zimmer frames.

Oldies

Don Surber over at blog.dailymail,com compares Woodstock and Live Earth and has some cogent things to say about the geriatric nature of the latter's headliners

Jonah Goldberg captures the moment very neatly in his NRO column:

"If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!” Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. “If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!”

You just can't beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire — who owns nine homes and has a “carbon footprint” nearly 100 times larger than the norm — hectoring a bunch of well-off, aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children? I suppose she could have said, “Now put your right foot in / Take your right foot out / Right foot in / Then you shake it all about…. That's what climate change is all about.”

Actually, I think the “Hokey Pokey” makes more sense.

This whole episode reminds me of one of my pet peeves, which is the relentless retreading of mid to late 20^th century pop music in commercials and films. Not only do I regard this as cheap and lazy, but the tunes selected often date well back to the '60s, yet the steaming nits who insert this tripe think they're being young, hip and relevant when all they manage to get out of me is an angry snarl about all this "old people's" music every time "Born To Be Wild" creaks out of the screen.

To quote Dr. Evil, there is nothing so pathetic as an aging hipster.