Apparently Prince Harry has aspirations to become a reggae selector. From The Sun:
The 27-year-old has become obsessed with the music since his trip to Jamaica earlier this year — where he met Rita Marley, widow of legend Bob.
Harry has been learning how to mix records old-school style on the decks, getting tips from a club DJ who is a close pal. And recently he has been adding to his huge house music collection with reggae on vinyl, snapped up from specialist online stores.
A source said: “Harry has always been interested in music, but Jamaica was a real eye opener. He started looking into reggae as soon as he got back to the UK.
The young prince now hopes to get good enough to play at parties. The source added: “He’s unlikely to ever DJ in public — but if he did it’d be the party of the year.”
Gor any Veras Arry? I suppose the fact that Harry has a “huge house music collection” shouldn’t come as surprise, as he has made a cheeky wee visit to rehab in the past. But reggae?! That’s madness I tells ya! Madness!
This was Mick Jones’ last performance with The Clash in front of an audience of 140,00, headlining at the New Wave Day for the US Festivals, Saturday May 28th 1983. The support was an odd mix for New Wave, consisting of Divinyls, INXS, Men At Work, Flock of Seagulls, The Stray Cats and Oingo Boingo. The quality is rough and watery VHS, but it all adds to its appeal.
Manchester, England three piece The Peddlers were a very cool 1960s jazz and blues group with a hip look and a bit of a rock n’ roll vibe.
With Trevor Morais on drums, vocalist Roy Phillips playing keyboards and Tab Martin on bass (check out his technique), The Peddlers did an amazing job of creating a rich, innovative sound which was later echoed in groups like The Style Council and Fine Young Cannibals.
Despite the support of major labels, The Peddlers never managed to find the audience they so richly deserved. In 2003 a two cd compilation of 42 of their recordings was released and is available here. The tunes are mostly standards but The Peddlers bring something fresh to the mix.
All three members of The Pedllers are still alive. Roy Phillips continues to record and tour in New Zealand where he lives.
Check out their cookin’ version of “Last Train To Clarksville” and Elmer Bernstein & Hal David’s “Walk On The Wild Side” after the jump.
“Ghost Lover” is a photograph shot by Lydia Lunch. The image is printed on high quality silver halide Fuji photographic paper and signed and numbered by the artist. “Ghost Lover” comes in an elaborately designed box along with a certificate of authenticity and a poem by Lunch titled “Sandpit” in both English and Spanish.
Lydia Lunch was recently named the #84 best guitarist of all time in a SPIN magazine critic’s poll. I’m fairly certain that this is an honor Lydia never expected to receive.
Listen to “Red Alert” from 1979’s No New York album produced by Brian Eno.
The documentary Dub Echoes explores Jamaican dub and its influence on electronic music and hip hop via interviews with some of the music’s leading practitioners.
Directed by Bruno Natal and featuring reggae legends and dub pioneers King Jammy, Sly and Robbie, U-Roy and Lee “Scratch” Perry, as well as beat experimentalists like Bill Laswell, DJ Spooky, Mad Professor and Basement Jaxx, Dub Echoes gets deep into the groove and takes you inside the echo chamber.
As I mentioned previously, I am transferring all my dj mixes and mixtape compilations from Soundcloud to Mixcloud (I have been having a lot of bother with Soundcloud lately, in fact it’s making me wonder if a premium account is really worth it?) But in doing so I came across this mixtape I made in late 2009, and thought it was worth sharing.
In contrast to my previously posted disco and 808-based mixes, this Is the more downtempo side of what I like to play and listen to. I guess you could call it “chill-out” (though I find there’s something cheesy about that term.) Dream On is a compilation of synthy, woozy, dreamy, lo-fi-kinda stuff that will appeal to fans of Ariel Pink, John Maus and other “haunted” acts. There’s also a smattering of lo-fi, post-crunk and alternative rock in there too. Remember, this mix was made two and a half years ago, back when Fleet Foxes were still kinda cool.
It’s also pretty fitting for the amazing night skies we have been having lately, what with that beautiful glowing supermoon and all. So don’t classify this mix as being “shoe-gaze”, think of it more as being “sky-gaze”...
Tracklist:
BEN BUTLER & MOUSE PAD - E-Ship
TODD RUNDGREN - International Feel
TODD RUNDGREN - Never Never Land
FRANZ FERDINAND - Ulysses (FoxGut Reshuffle)
BJORN TORSKE - Brus
BRUCE HAACK - National Anthem To The Moon
NITE JEWEL - Kamera Songs
EYES - Clown Lady
LOUTS - The Bubbles
THE BEACH BOYS - Fall Breaks and Back To Winter
MIAOUX MIAOUX - Hrvatski
CHROMATICS - In The City
DAFT PUNK - Night Vision
JOHN MAUS - Do Your Best
DESIRE - Under Your Spell
PHANTOM BAND - Island
FLEET FOXES - He Doesn’t Know Why
If you want to hear more of my mixes, you can find them on this page on my blog Niallism, or you can follow me (The Niallist) on Mixcloud.
BONUS
Here’s a great video for “Under Your Spell” by Desire, as featured on the mix above and also the soundtrack to last year’s fantastic noir/thriller Drive (which tapped in to the whole haunted/synth/retro thing brilliantly.) This clip features one of the best scenes from the film, the staggeringly tender-yet-brutal elevator scene. If you have not seen Drive, be warned, this gets bloody:
As a tribute to Adam Yauch, comedian Neal Brennan, who co-created, co-wrote and co-executive produced the Chappelle Show, uploaded this video to YouTube from the unaired third season (2004) of Dave Chapelle’s cutting-edge comedy program.
I anticipate that we’ll be seeing fresh Beastie Boys photos and video footage in weeks to come. Adam Yauch’s death is hitting music and pop culture fans hard and the amount of attention his passing is generating is testimony to how magic his vibration was and continues to be. Thanks Neal for sharing this.
The Beastie Boys perform “The New Style” on a boat in New York City’s East River. Chappelle gets in on the action.
Years before Bob Seger became a mega-star whose voice is inextricably tied to Chevrolet trucks and gag-inducing images of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear, he was a punkish Michigan rocker that did proud by that state’s hard rock heritage. But he’s never seemed particularly fond of his early garage rock days. His recordings with the System and The Last Heard haven’t been available in authorized versions for decades. His career-spanning cd release of last year doesn’t contain anything recorded by either band. It’s as though Seger has chosen to let that part of his past fade from memory.
It is my opinion (and in this I’m hardly alone) that Seger’s output between the mid-60s and early 70s was his finest, but good luck finding any of it on Seger-sanctioned pressings. With the exception of Smokin’ O.P.‘s and the woefully incomplete and poorly put together Early Seger Vol. 1, Seger’s badass best is is only available as bootlegs or expensive out-of-print rarities.
I saw Seger with the Silver Bullet Band in the mid-70s in a club in Boulder, Colorado. He put on an absolutely ferocious show that rocked HARD. No frills, no bullshit, just good ol’ rock n’ roll distilled to its essence. This was at a time when my own musical tastes were shifting toward punk and I found Seger, in his uncontrived way, to be as raw and tough as some of the new stuff coming from The Clash and The Dictators. I think my buddy Jello Biafra (in his pre-Jello days) was at the show with me and concurred that Seger was the real deal.
In 1976, Seger released the last album that I felt any particular connection to, Night Moves. And that was only because of the title tune, which still poetically evokes a teenage wet dream of cars and girls that I can relate to.
Yes, Seger was cool once upon a time. It’s ironic that the man who wrote “Rock And Roll Never Forgets” seems to have forgotten a big chunk of his own rock and roll past.
I’m a huge fan of Arthur Lee and Love and am always grateful for any new video I find related to Lee or his band. So, I was thrilled to find this fan-shot video of Lee performing in Greece in 2003 on his Forever Changes tour.
The video is a little wobbly but the audio is very nice indeed. “Live and Let Live.”
It’s still sinking in here that MCA-aka Adam Yauch- has died, and that, in effect, the Beastie Boys are no more. What a fucking bummer.
It’s an inescapable fact that the Beastie Boys are one of the bands that define my generation. If you were a child at any point from the mid 80s up until the late 90s you cannot have escaped their influence. And I’m not just talking about their music; their aesthetic reached everywhere, from film and music videos to magazine publishing and clothes lines.
I feel like my generation (and I use that term loosely) don’t have a singular iconic figure they can point too, like a Prince or a Bowie. You know, that one person that unites an entire age group through sheer talent and poise. Well, the Beasties may not have had the incredible album-a-year productivity rate of Prince or Bowie at their prime (in fact they were legendarily slow at making music,) but their extra-musicular activites more than made up for that, and meant that when their albums did drop it was a major event.
More than just the music on its own, more than the Grande Royale magazine and record label, more than fantastic the art work or the trend-setting X-Large clothing range, it was the Beastie Boys incredible videos that set them apart, and brought their diverse fan base together. They really knew how to work in different media while retaining their core identity, making them some of the first and most successful rap music entrepreneurs, and this placed them right at the centre of the 90s golden age of both hip-hop and music videos. And there steering the helm of most of those awesome Beastie Boys promo clips was Yauch himself, often in the guise of Swiss director Nathanial Hornblower.
My God, looking back now it’s startling to think of how these videos have influenced my life and my addiction to (and perception of) pop culture.
I caught the raunchy video for ‘She’s On It” on TV when I was about 8 years old and the image of Mike D sliding an ice cube down a bikini-clad model’s back has been seared into my brain ever since. I didn’t quite understand what was going on in that shot at the time (hey, I was too young and too sheltered) but there was naked flesh and it was naughty and exciting. I still remember that tingly feeling of not wanting my parents to walk in and see me watching the video. Even though that’s a feeling that returned often in my teenage years, I guess I can say that seeing “She’s On It” was one of my first childhood sexual experiences.
When I was 13 the promo for Check Your Head‘s opening track “Jimmy James” was a staple on late night European cable music channels, the kind I would creep downstairs and watch on low volume while my parents were asleep. It was hard to keep the volume on this one down, and the visuals themselves were a hypnotic template for everything I thought rocked in the world at the time - New York subways, vintage go-go strippers, dope looking rappers filmed in fish-eye lenses, burning 8mm film, Jimi fucking Hendrix. At this point the Beastie Boys were a bit of an unknown quantity in the UK press, as their reputation stemmed largely from the License To Ill “frat” period (Paul’s Boutique was still being seen as a costly, if interesting, flop.) Still, “Jimmy James” (and “So Watcha Want”) was THE SHIT, and helped spread the word of mouth amongst listeners and the journos alike about how great Check Your Head was.
Early 1994 saw the release of “Sabotage”. Sure, the clip was directed by Spike Jonze, but Yauch’s fingerprints were all over it. I don’t think I need to write much about this video, only to say that it really was a cultural milestone for people my age. Almost single handedly it ushered in a new era. Out went heroin-chic and woe-is-me grunge, and in came a new sense of fun (with a healthy dose of irony.) Here was an appreciation of pop-culture’s bargain bin that tied in nicely with Tarantino, some new looks that were equal parts vintage and street, and most importantly of all an incredibly broad musical palate where anything went.
Beyond the stone cold classic video, “Sabotage” pushed boundaries musically. Yeah, so it may be a straight forward punk song, but how many ‘rap groups’ had ever done something like that? In fact, me and my friends didn’t really perceive the Beasties as strictly a ‘rap group’ per se, even though (obviously) they rapped. They were more than that. Presumably because they were white and played actual instruments on occasion, they weren’t talked about in the same hallowed tones as Cypress Hill or Public Enemy. But they were very much a gateway to those bands, and the more commercial hip-hop that followed, and their blessing of the above mentioned acts with tours and remixes made it feel ok for middle-class white kids to define themselves as “rap fans.”
Last year’s video for “Make Some Noise” brought the band back in to the limelight, not least for the starry cast list: what other modern act would be able to convince Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and Elijah Wood to play them in a clip AND THEN rope in Ted Danson, Kirstin Dunst and Will Ferrell for additional cameos? But the real fan treat was the clip for “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”, which featured G.I.Joe-style puppet versions of the band doing battle underwater, on ice, and even at a music festival.
Adam Yauch was a visionary, and should be remembered for his film work just as much as his music. In fact, he brought music and film together better than anyone else up to that point, and for that has to be counted as a huge influence and inspiration on the artistic endeavours of myself and my peers. I probably wouldn’t do what I do now if it weren’t for him.
And he did it while wearing a ginger wig and lederhosen. Here’s a strange (and strangely touching) short film of Yauch David Cross [? - what’s going on here?] as Hornblower, shooting the shit on a NY Street and engaging in a game of chess with a labrador:
Adam Yauch, aka MCA, aka Nathanial Hornblower (August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012.)
Rest In Peace.
After the jump, videos for the above mentioned Beastie Boys songs, and a 1992 interview with the band featuring Yauch (yes, definitely Yauch this time) in full Hornblower attire…
