In my ongoing attempt to entertain you by unearthing the worst cover songs of all time, I offer you this particularly putrid gem: Pat Paulsen adding an extra dollop of poop to the already pretty execrable “Hey Jude.”

This is actually quite funny in a smart funny type of way. Paulsen is skewering the whole hippie dippy thing, youth culture in general, and the cornball sentiment of a song that has all the lyrical depth of a Hallmark greeting card. So, in fact, this may actually be a brilliant cover version of “Hey Jude” in that it shines a light on the mindnumbing banality of the tune. Whatever the case, the Indian gets the last laugh.
 

Danzig is so close to the ground as it is, it’s hard to tell when he’s falling.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying (actually there probably is) as watching bigger than life pop stars being reduced to human proportions. Particularly when they’re macho numbnuts like Axl Rose and the odious Glenn Danzig. So kick back and enjoy this compilation of rockers slipping, sliding and face-planting their preening snouts on the floorboards of fame. Set to the theme from the Benny Hill show (“Yakety Sax” by Boots Randolph).
 

 
Lee Perry and The Orb? That’s a match made in psychedelic dub heaven!

Taken from the forthcoming collaboration album The Observer In The Star House, which is out in September, ‘Hold Me Upsetter’ is a neat little slice of bass-heavy shuffle-house. You can download it for free below, and if this is a good example of the rest of the album, then both electronica and dub aficionados have a lot to be excited about.

There’s more info on the album (and some funny pictures of a very young Dr Alex Patterson) over at theorb.com.
 

 
‘...I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews.’

Niall O’Conghaile aka The Niallist is talking about the music that inspired him to become a musician, a producer, a DJ, a one-man-disco-industry, and a Performer Extraordinaire.

Niall makes music that moves you “physically, mentally and emotionally. Dance music, for want of a better term!” But it’s always been about more than that.

Let’s turn to the history book…

When Brian Eno was working with David Bowie in Germany, he heard Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” in a record shop. Eno bought the single and ran, holding it aloft, back to Bowie in the studio, where he announced, like a pop John-the-Baptist, ‘I have heard the future.’

Niall is part of that future and his musical output is quite phenomenal and brilliant.

But it’s not just music that Niall has made his own, you’ll know him as a star blogger on Dangerous Minds, and perhaps through his work on the blogs Shallow Rave, Weaponizer, Menergy and his site, Niallism.

Niall also DJs / organizes club nights with Menergy and Tranarchy, and is the keyboard player with Joyce D’Ivision. All of which, for my money, makes The Niallist one of the most exciting, talented and outrageous DJ/producers currently working in the UK. Not bad for a boy who started out spinning discs on one turntable at school.

Now, it’s strange how you can spend much of your working day with someone and yet never really know that much about them. Wanting to know more about the extraordinary Niallist, I decided to interview him for (who else?) Dangerous Minds, and this is what he said.
 
DM: Tell me about how you started in music? Was this something to moved towards in childhood?

The Niallist: ‘Yeah, music is something I remember affecting me deeply as a kid. My sister, who is older than me, was a huge Prince fan and naturally that teenage, female, pop-music enthusiasm rubbed off on me. I would read all her old copies of Smash Hits and create my own scrap books from the magazines, even though the bands were, by then, either non-existent or pretty naff.

‘My brother was into more serious, “boy” music, which I didn’t like as a child, but which I really appreciated when I hit puberty. He had a big box of tapes that was crucial to me, even though he didn’t like me borrow them, but he had pretty much all Led Zep’s albums in there, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bowie, The Stone Roses, and I particularly remember him getting a copy of Nevermind when it had just come out, which was a key discovery. That box smelt of Dettol and musty cassettes, and to this day the smell of Dettol still takes me back!’

What were your early tastes in music? What were those key moments when a song a record made you realise this was what you wanted to do?

The Niallist: ‘Well, Nevermind was definitely one. I think that record started a lot of people on a musical journey. But also, I really identified with Kurt Cobain, as he was an outsider in the pop music landscape who spoke up for gay and women’s rights, which really struck a chord with me. He was a man, but he also wasn’t scared of being seen as feminine. He was a pop star, he looked scruffy and spoke with intelligence and passion. He was different. As someone else who was different, and a natural outsider, I guess I saw music as maybe a place where I could fit in and still fully express myself.

‘Call me hopelessly naive if you will, but I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews. Looking back on the early 90s now, it seems like an incredibly politically-charged time for music and pop culture. Public Enemy, NWA, Ice Cube, Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill, The Prodigy with “Fuck ‘Em And Their Law”, Pearl Jam telling Ticketmaster to fuck off, Spiral Tribe, massive illegal raves, Back To The Planet, Senser, Rage Against The Machine, the fact that RuPaul was a pop star, even Madonna’s Sex book and Erotica album for God’s sake! If you weren’t politically active or at least aware back then, you were terribly uncool. That spirit seems to have disappeared from music altogether now, which is sad.’
 

 
More from Niall, including his Top 5 picks, after the jump…
 

 
Sure, there may be one or two synths missing (why no SH-101?), but this is the fullest set of synth-cushions I have yet seen. It would also make a great home studio.

On a related note, today, for one day only, the Arturia company are giving away a soft synthMoog emulator that is usually worth over $200. There is more info on that offer (too good to be true?) on the Arturia Facebook page.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Minimoog Sofa
8G Roland TR-808 USB-Stick

 
I had a good laugh with this one.
 
Via Retrogasm

 
I HAD to share this cartoon, because it really tickled me.

It’s from The Spectator magazine, and is a reference to the fantastic performance by Grace Jones at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, where she sang “Slave To The Rhythm” while hula-hooping non-stop for the best part of four minutes. She’s 64, in case you forgot. And as fierce & fabulous as ever. Grace is the REAL queen:

Grace Jones “Slave To The Rhythm” (live at the Diamond Jubilee)
 

 
I’m a big fan of SSION, but you should know that by now. SSION, aka songwriter, performer and music video director Cody Critcheloe, has just brought out the second video from last year’s dance-pop magnum opus Bent, and it’s killer.

A logical progression from its predecessor “My Love Grows In The Dark”, “Earthquake” sees an androgynous alien-boy moving through a landscape that is simultaneously pop-art bright and druggily disconnected. All the time SSION is beckoning him on, from his iPad, from his TV, from his four-by-four, all the way up to their final, honey-soaked encounter:

SSION “Earthquake”

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Getting Bent with SSION: an interview with Cody Critcheloe
‘My Love Grows In The Dark’: SSION’s springtime pop perfection
Get SSION’s new album ‘Bent’ free for a month

 
Dutch pop duo Mouth & MacNeal had a million-selling hit in 1972 with “How Do You Do” If you are of a certain age, or even if you have only heard this insanely catchy song once, muffled and through a brick wall, you will no doubt remember it, instantly. How long can it be before “How Do You Do” is used in a TV commercial? (They’ve used up everything else!)

But if you were able recall the song and were quizzed, “So who sang it?” would you have known? I’d have to confess, I’m not in that camp m’self, but from the moment I hit play on this video when I saw it over at the mighty PCL Linkdump, I most certainly recalled the song itself. Why is this not on EVERY compilation of cheesy 70s AM radio hits???

In any case, don’t say I didn’t warn you about the $#&@!# catchiness of this tune. You’ll be grinding your teeth to it tonight in your dreams!
 

 
The Philip Glass Ensemble will play a free concert tonight, at Rockefeller Park in Battery City (corner of River Terrace and Warren Street) as part of the River to River festival.

The concert tonight opens with Face the Music, a group of teenage classical musicians who will be playing the composer’s “Glassworks” suite. The Philip Glass Ensemble come onstage at 8pm.

Glass turns 75 this year. A revival of his 1970s magnum opus, the four and a half hour Einstein on the Beach is scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September.

Below, from 1982, The Philip Glass Ensemble performing “Floe” at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. An excerpt from Peter Greenway’s Four American Composers, 1983: