Music Blog

Not much to say lately; I’ve been laid up with a painful case of shingles. So I’ll review the most recent CDs I’ve purchased

First, “Star One”, the latest project by Dutch prog-metal artist Arjen Lucassen of Ayreon. Like Ayreon’s music, it includes an ensemble of guest singers whose names will be familiar to those who follow the European prog-metal scene and totally unknown to those of you that don’t. No sign of Fish or Bruce Dickenson this time, sadly. It’s heavier and more guitar-based than much of Ayreon’s recent work, although widdly synth solos are still much in evidence.

Lyric-wise, all the songs are based on well-known science-fiction films, and are excessively corny. It’s not hard to guess which film each song is based on, whether it be Dark Lords and Princesses, or alien spaceships trying to communicate with whales, or even Blake’s 7! We’re spared any Dr Who or Gerry Anderson references, to which I refer you to Geezer Butler’s “Black Science” album.

Second, the live album “The Voice of the Wretched”, by British doom-metallers My Dying Bride, very Ãœmläütesque. I miss the violin, though, which was a distinctive feature of early MBD albums.

At last! Nigel Williamson, in this Guardian article for once challenges the standard Stalinist NME view on music history.

Tonight is the dreaded Eurovision Song Contest, where various nations of Europe and beyond compete see who can come up with the most banal song. The voting is always more entertaining than the actual music – Greece and Cyprus always give each other 12 points, every year, without fail. Sadly Norway (nul points) weren’t in it this year.

This years winner was Latvia.

Am I the only person that thinks the British entrant next year should be Mötorhead?

I’ve also been wasting time reading www.railcar.co.uk – a site telling far more than you ever wanted to know about diesel multiple units.

For non-Brits, Room 101 is the BBC programme hosted by Paul Merton in which the week’s guest is invited to nominate half a dozen things they hate to be dropped in it. A few people have become infamous, like Anne Robinson nominating the Welsh, or Michael Grade nominating Dr Who – “We’ve seen Star Wars, we’ve seen ET, then we had these cardboard things clonking across the floor. I hate sci-fi anyway. So I cancelled it”.

What would I put in Room 101?

First up, music journalists.

The late Frank Zappa described this species as “People that can’t write writing about people that can’t play for the benefit of people that can’t read”. As a species, they have this ridiculous idea that popular music isn’t actually about music at all, but is really all about ‘style’ and ‘attitude’. All real music gets dismissed by these Stalinist idiots while they champion talentless rubbish. Unfortunately they’re read by 17-year olds that have yet to learn to distinguish facts from opinion, and can be convinced that ridiculously overrated acts like The Smiths really are the most influential band of all time.

A couple of Gypsycons ago, we had a fun time playing Gother Than Thou, a card game which mercilessly takes the piss out of goth subculture. Along with cards like ‘Fun With Eyeliner’, ‘Pet named Hecate’ and ‘Visit from Mum’, there’s one called “Sing This Corrosion for Me” – worth Goth Points if you can sing it, negative Goth Points if you can’t. None of us could (One individual who shall remain nameless tried singing it to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday to You”)

Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, and I obtained The Sisters of Mercy greatest hits, containing the said song.

Now I’ve got the tune stuck in my head and it won’t go away. Arrrrggghh!!!

At least it’s not Rod Stewart’s “D’ya think I’m sexy”….

Ümlä&uumlt will have to cover this song, I can tell. With spooky flanged electric violin replacing Jim Steinman’s choir.

Some people don’t bother to check facts, do they?

A couple of years ago I put up a web page about the ficticious death metal band Ümläüt as part of an on-line Call of Cthulhu game in which I was playing at the time. Part of the back-story featured the gruesome murder of one member of the band.

Looking at my web site access statistics recently I found references to my site from something other than the usual phoenyxs, googles and yahoos, so I investigate the site. It turns out my spoof web page had been taken as genuine, and my dead NPC is listed on a The Dead Rock Stars page alongside Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain – See it at users.efortress.com/doc-rock/1995.html

Of course, the band have been recyled into a different game, the said member is not due to die until some time in 2003, and I updated the page to reflect this.