Here we have a guest post from a new addition to the MCT carousel of scribbling talent. He goes by the nom of Nick Bryan, and he "maintains" a blog called Feeding The Black Dog . GO NICK GO. Anyone remember Robbie Williams from earlier in the decade? Pop star, successful, rich, prone to whinging about how hard and unfair it all was? Actually, maybe you're too young. You only remember the recent Robbie Williams, the less-successful reject member of the unexpectedly popular reunited Take That. He did that bug-eyed thing on [...]
Earlier this year I went all frothy over Two Door Cinema Club's rather zingful "Something Good Can Work". I even offered it as a free download, which would seem to be the ideal opportunity for me to link to it again. Only, er, in changing my hosting and whatnot that link don't work no more. PISS. Oh well, here it is again: In't that nice? (Yes.) Now they're back and they've got a noo single called "I Can Talk", the video representation of which you can see over the internet [...]
I remember, when I was about fifteen, suddenly arriving at the terrifying realisation that all the good music that was ever going to be written, that ever *could* be written, had been. That was it. Music was over. How, after human beings existing for so long, and with so many great songs having been created, could people keep on producing amazing music? With a boundless pessimism people who know me in real life will recognise all too well, I settled on the answer: they couldn't. Yes, I probably spent a bit too much time in my [...]
Aw, lookathis. Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald & The Roots. In sailors' caps. With two drummers. Doing 70s taxicab classic, "Ride Like The Wind". S'nice!
That little snapshot up there is from Snoop Dogg's new video, "Gangster Love" "Gangsta Luv". It's an odd moment - amongst all the usual lady-based booty-quaking and gyrationalisms, there's Snoop in the back seat of his whip having noodles chopsticked into his mouth by an Asian "lovely". I suppose after a few years in the game you probably run out of ways to humourously objectify women, so it's heartening to see Snoop and his video director switching things up a bit. Kudos also for the moment when, while zipping along in a speedboat [...]
The first - and in all likelihood last - of My Chemical Toilet's video tutorials shows how to teach yourself Calvin Harris's awesome "You Used To Hold Me" on the stylophone. "RATE AND SUBSCRIBE"
My Chemical Toilet's roving review machine John-Scott Croly went to check out some up-and-comers on the latest Levi's Ones To Watch Tour, so he did. The band selector for the Levi's OnesToWatch tour (for argument's sake let's call her Jean) is seemingly able to predict with unerring accuracy the bands that will be soundtracking our iPod commercials and adorning our NME-reading teenage relatives' bedrooms walls twelve months down the line. Given the name and premise of the tour, this surely makes her very good at her job. Of course I'm fully aware [...]
As revelations go, the above is about as surprising as waking up in the morning. But Karin Dreijer deserves credit for not giving up on that whole "I'm going to spook the bollocks out of you" vibe she's been mining for a while, even if she is tipping over into self-parody. Not that you'll be thinking in such an analytical fashion when you see her with a big "V" on her face for no particular reason in the vid for "Stranger Than Kindness". Nay, you'll be doing your darndest not to shityapants. Merry Halloween, everyone!* [...]
John-Scott Croly skipped along to Wimbledon's Watershed to see Band Of Skulls ( above ) support some people called The London Punks t'other day week. Hotly-tipped Southampton blues-rockers Band of Skulls were this show's not-so-secret support act, squeezing in a quick one on their way back home for a well-earned weekend off. They blew the sweaty roof off the Watershed's dank back room - not that any of the 20 or so glass-eyed punters noticed. Without their own following, the trio had to make do with the headliners' early crowd [...]
John-Scott Croly skipped along to Wimbledon's Watershed to see Band Of Skulls ( above ) support some people called The London Punks t'other day week. Hotly-tipped Southampton blues-rockers Band of Skulls were this show's not-so-secret support act, squeezing in a quick one on their way back home for a well-earned weekend off. They blew the sweaty roof off the Watershed's dank back room - not that any of the 20 or so glass-eyed punters noticed. Without their own following, the trio had to make do with the headliners' early crowd [...]
I'm not one for R&B ballads, really. They tend to be syrupy and over-emotive, which is obviously a generalisation but, you know, given the choice between a ballad and a club "banger" it's the bangful one that wins me over 85% of the time. However, like the very best pop songs, Brit soul type McLean 's "Broken" manages to transcend the genre with which it would be most closely associated. It's a heartbroken, overwrought fist-clencher which, in a landscape of overproduced, autotuned pop spaff with half an eye on ringtone sales, actually makes you believe the singer [...]
Look at that image, and listen to this song, and like me you might just come to the realisation that Kid Sister is surely destined to be a bona fide, proper, soon-to-be-sullied-by-a-guest- rap-from-Akon pop star. Her songs are ravey enough for clubs but accessible enough for the pop charts, she's collaborated with Kanye West already and she gets remixed by people so cool you haven't heard of them. Although she has been "up and coming" for a while now, so let's hope her moment hasn't passed. Her [...]
Jack Daniel, despite being dead, still gets to have a birthday. Or rather his "product", Jack Daniel's Tennesee Whiskey , does. That Jane Bradley went along to see Brett Anderson, Carl Barat and Jon McClure perform at a special bash t'other week, and this is what she thunkabourrit. The Jack Daniel's Birthday Set is an exclusive sort of affair. Tickets for it can't be bought; it's competitions winners and media only. There's only capacity for four hundred in the Village Underground vaults, so you'd assume some elitism about the kind of riff-riff they [...]
Interesting tactic from Ali Love's PR folk here - sending out an email as if it's actually FROM Ali Love. There was me thinking a nascent pop star was getting in touch to say hi, but nah, it's just another email full of remixes. Still, it got me to open the message and now I'm giving their "client" "coverage", so job done really. The email contained his new video "Diminishing Returns", which you can see below. It's all a bit dull (unlike the song, which is rather good) until Ali decides to don some chainmail. An [...]
Poor old Akon , he's always got summat on his mind. If it's not accidentally dry-humping a child , physically throwing a teenager off a stage , or lying about his bad-assedness and his age , it's something else. "Something else" is currently illustrated in the lyrics to his latest smash hit, "Sexy Bitch" - a collabaration with Fronch deeshay David Guetta: She's nothing like a girl you've ever seen before Nothing you can compare to your neighbourhood whore I'm trying to find the [...]
God knows what this number was about. "A juicy red apple is nice, but not every apple is red," preached a pointdexter-y chap repeatedly over a breakbeat. The piano breakdown still sounds great today though, with the vocal line "my juice is sweeter" at least providing some kind of dirtily tangible lyrical content. Er, because that's what you were after from rave music in 1992, wasn't it?
It's a new month! This one's called October. And with this Octoberishly-named month comes a bunch of new Levi's Ones To Watch residencies, where you can go and see numerous acts of an up-and-coming nature in various Londontown hostelries. The October batch of shows includes future stars/cabbies such as Citadels, Exlovers, Kurran And The Wolfnotes, Young Rebel Set, Turboweekend and presumed GCSE French flunkers, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. Also on board are Mirrors, whose "Look At Me" is playing in a YouTube embedded video near you. Like, really near you. Like, here: [...]
You can find anything out on the internet these days. Anything. And when one is investigating an act one is unfamilar with it's good practice to check out Wikipedia, wait 11 minutes for the artist's MySpace page to load, and so on. For once, with Bertie Blackman, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to wait and see if the information comes to me. I'll pretend this is a fun "experiment" rather than a symptom of my laziness. Do you know anything about Bertie Blackman? Leave information in the comments. All I know, thanks to [...]
I will never get tired of watching this scene.
‘09 Been Kind
WKND PLYLST!! This has nothing to do with NEW MOON!
Vampire Weekend - Cousins
remixed: the beach boys, lady gaga, duck sauce, ellie goulding, shakira, la roux, madonna, & more!!!
