This is… wow. You watch the guitarists and think, “damn, they’ve got moves”, and they do, but then BOOM! the lead singer shows up and your world is turned upside down. Sir, your moves blew my mind. Sir, we meet because of destiny. Sir, my heart loves you.
music
Wish You Were Here
My favourite Pink Floyd song. And this performance is just… very emotional. There’s something about four old fellers, guitar, bass, keyboard and drums, ditching the backing singers, percussionists, saxophones and synthesisers, putting aside a lifetime’s worth of animosity*, and just playing the damned song. It was for a good cause, but you know, the music is cause enough sometimes.
It’s a song whose spirit transcends the actual lyrics, I think. I’ve never traded my heroes for ghosts, but it still feels like it’s for me and about me. That’s a kind of musical alchemy.
I was crying when I watched it on the telly in 2005, and… yeah. Wish you were here.
*although I do like to imagine the conversation when Roger decided he wanted to sing a verse: “but Roger, you… you know, you can’t really, uh, it’s maybe more suited to somebody who can, um… sing?” Can’t blame him though.
Andrew Preview
Because it wouldn’t be Christmas without it. “I am playing all the right notes…”
Island in the Sun
So this is how I want my 2010 to look. How’s yours shaping up?
Ode to Joy
Mee mee mee mee mee. Meeeeee mee meee meee mee. Mee mee.
The Science of Music
A proposed series of experiments designed to test the scientific validity of Britain’s songwriters.
Experiment 1.
THE HYPOTHESIS
That the lyric “slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball” is not only coke-addled, cod-psychedelic whimsy of the very worst kind, and so irritating that I’m still furious about it 14 years after I first heard it, but that it’s also unworkable in a universe of Newtonian physics.
MATERIALS
Noel Gallagher, 1 Cannon, 1 Cannonball.
METHOD
We set Noel Gallagher walking down a hall as slowly as he likes. We load the cannon with gunpowder and a cannonball. We aim the cannon at Noel Gallagher. We fire the cannon.
PROBABLE RESULTS
General fun and merriment at the very least.
CONCLUSION
Somebody really needs to fund this experiment, in the interests of expanding human knowledge, and in the interests of expanding Noel Gallagher’s surface area all over a corridor. Come on!
FOLLOW-UP EXPERIMENT:
HYPOTHESIS: “You and I are gonna live forever.” MATERIALS: Liam Gallagher, 1 Cannon, 1 Cannonball.
ps this was my 200th post. Glad I used it for something worthwhile.
Song of the Year
Revenge. From the album of the year, Dark Night of the Soul by Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and David Lynch.
The Major Lift
From the eponymous album by Years. Epic!
The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody
Animal steals this one. “Mama?”
This is the latest in a series of original Muppets virals, sorry, virmups, beng posted to the web. Hard to see how they’ll top this one though.
Answer me this – how is calling somebody a muppet supposed to be an insult? I’ll be pleased and proud next time someone points at me and says “you f*ckin’ muppet!”*
*which happens all the time, usually when I’m doing blags with some tasty geezers and I’m norsing fings up good and proper.
Thank You World
Because I’m a damned, dirty hippie, that’s why. I was a big fan of World Party back when paisley shirts and Lennonspecs were not only acceptable but positively encouraged. I’ve not heard this for years. The guitar is slinky dirty, innit? The vocal is saying “save the planet” and the guitar is saying “mm mm let’s get frisk-ay” (cos that’s how guitars talk. They’re weird). Well hey. We can do both. Friends of the Earth, with benefits…*
*terrible, terrible, terrible. 🙂
Ramshackle Charm 