Blog: This Here Boogie

Was just looking at TV when the new Heineken commercial came that features this really old and classy song. The song here is an adaptation by Louis Prima. There is something very catchy about the song and the old school rythm... Just a Gigolo After a long hiatus - we will be back up and running shortly... Add to Digg, del.icio.us, etc. [...]

A couple of years ago, Calvin Harris came out with ' Acceptable in the 80s ', a song that seemed to collate every single jaw-clenchingly bad cliche from that decade - flatulent bass, tacky synthetic synthesiser, a bad impersonation of Bowie vocals, drum machines - and turned it into something that was pretty good. In a knowing, ironic, aren't I clever type way. Well, who'd have known it? The '80s appear to have become cool again. Critically esteemed (ahem) acts like Keane, The Killers and The Ting Tings have blasted away the prejudice against that most disdained of [...]

The latest in a long line of faux-androgynous English guitar bands, Suede burst onto the scene with an image that threw Bowie and The Smiths together, with one of the best guitar players of his generation and a lead singer who would surely have been a hit in the PR industry if he had failed in music. Yes, Brett Anderson had all the right headlines, and Suede's first singles - 'Metal Mickey', 'The Drowners', 'Animal Nitrate' - and their eponymous debut delivered on their promise. But second-album syndrome can be a bitch, and the [...]

We've been absent here for the past week or so as we focusing our attention on fattening up over the Christmas period and decided to give the blog a break while we done so but in light of the events of the past 48 hours or so in relation to Steve Gerrard and with me being a Liverpool fan I decided to do a quick post to honor the man , the legend. Liverpool fans will already know this Pink Floyd song as towards the end it incorporates the song " You'll never walk alone " which of course is [...]

Suicide are a band hailing from New York and consists of Alan Vega and Martin Rev. While not achieving much critical acclaim in the late 70's and early 80's, their stock has risen significantly these past few years and they no longer remain within the depths of the underground scene. You can read more about the band here . Suicide were first brought to my attention after seeing a Bruce Springsteen acoustic show here in Dublin a few years ago in The Point. I think it was when he was on tour promoting the Devil's and Dust [...]

After The Jam and The Style Council (the former the biggest band in England in their heyday, the latter an oft-misunderstood genre-hopping collective who released records to declining returns in the '80s), Weller decided to go back to roots. Roots for Paul Weller means the '60s. Mining the guitar licks of The Small Faces and Traffic, and marrying it to lyrics about pastoral yearning and changing seasons (influenced strongly by Nick Drake), Weller created a career resurgence that broke the rules for aging ex-rock stars. 1993's Wild Wood album brought [...]

Oklahoma born J. J. Cale is one of these artists that always fly under the radar in terms of commercial success but is, in his own right, a hugely successful artist. I remember a couple of years ago seeing a documentary about him called To Tulsa and Back which gave some insight into the man and his easy-going almost lethargic musical style. He seems to effortlessly make the guitar talk. The song is taken from his debut album Naturally which also contains some songs worthy of a blog post on their own - [...]

On his tour of America in 1979, a brash young songwriter by the name of Declan MacManus made some unfortunate comments about James Brown and Ray Charles while out drinking. Costello's statement that Charles was nothing but a "blind, ignorant nigger" was intended to provoke Stephen Stills' entourage, whom Costello and bass player Bruce Thomas had encountered in a hotel bar. But when one of Stills' crew went to the papers, and Costello displayed an abrasive attitude and unwillingness to apologise at a subsequent press conference, his Stateside career was over. Albums continued to be released, but to diminishing returns. [...]

This little gem did the rounds on the indie music blogs for a while a few months back. I dunno whether I've got the album version or a demo version but either way I hope that the song remains pretty the same on the album as it's raw and under-produced which is a good thing for this song. The song is taken from the second solo album of Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley fame , which is also called Acid Tongue released earlier this year and describes a fairly exuberant night out on the twon [...]

The White Stripes are one of the most consistent bands around today. Each of their albums contain at least three excellent songs, and at least that many slow burners. Hello Operator', 'Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground', 'Fell In Love With a Girl', '7 Nation Army', 'Hardest Button to Button', 'Blue Orchid'...and really, those are only the cream of the singles off of their first five albums. So I had high expectations coming into the Icky Thump album. Turns out they've trumped all of them. Built over a lot of noodling, [...]

Johnny Rotten/John Lydon is a bit of a tool, really. Isn't he? I mean, look at this interview with Tom Snyder , and this nasty little PR junket . While he might have had a bad experience with the Sex Pistols, he's since shown a bad habit of firing his band while at a creative peak. That said, he did have Malcolm MacLaren for a mentor. Must have been hard. But I digress. He's made some brilliant music, from 'Anarchy in the UK' and 'No Feelings' with the Sex Pistols, and also with Public Image Limited [...]

The Wire provided some excellent tv for me towards the end of this year and provided a great substitute for The Soprano's . The tv program is set in the city of Baltimore, Maryland which is the reason this song perked my interest as I had done a search for the word Baltimore in my music collection and came up with a few songs of but I think this is the best of the bunch. The song is taken from his sixth studio album called Little Criminals from which backed by [...]

I stumbled across this great song a couple of months ago while traversing the world of music blogs when I hit upon this music blog that's mainly focused on Irish musicians so kudos to the blogger from keeping it local as its a great source if ur interested in what's going on musically in this wee country. The song is from a now defunct band called The Mary Janes which was fronted by the late Mic Christopher. Prior to visiting the weblog, I didn't even know that Mic was even in a band. In [...]

I watched Stanley Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory (the 43rd best movie of all time, according to the IMDb top 250 ) the other night, and was thinking of a good anti-war song that could be written for the blog. Then, yesterday at lunchtime I called into the National Museum of Ireland to see "Soldiers & Chiefs: The Irish at War at Home and Abroad from 15503, and got thinking about it again. Now, Des has already written a post on Edwin Starr's 'War' , so that's out. [...]

I guess you could say that Audioslave could be termed a Supergroup on the basis that all members of the band were members of successful grunge and rock bands in previous incarnations. I don't know about you but I was curious when I first heard of this band was forming, after all we had one of the most powerful voices in rock Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) and one of the most distiintive guitar players still giging in Tom Morello ( Rage against the machine ) but I wasn't excited enough to go out and buy their [...]

I'm drinking a lot of coffee this weather, and was thinking about songs about coffee. 'One More Cup of Coffee' by Dylan is an obvious one I guess, but we've got a couple of posts about old Bob already. Ahm, apart from that, it's the easy option of Google to discover other songs about coffee. Then I thought about Blur , and Graham Coxon 's charming little ditty from 1999's 13 album. In between all of Damon Albarn's wallowing in lost love, comes a great song about giving up booze and overdosing [...]

I've spoken before about my love of Gomez. In my opinion they are still the best indie band to come out of the UK in the last ten to fifteen years. All the guys in the band are talented artists and all contribute to the lyrics as well as the music in all the albums plus there is at least two singers in the band that compliment each other very well. This song was the third single from the band's fifth studio album called How We Operate and is the first album that they didn't produce [...]

Ah, the rock opera single. Much maligned, it has nonetheless had its enthusiastic exponents. Notable highlights of the genre include 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Good Vibrations' and The Beatles' 'Happiness is a Warm Gun', a direct inspiration for this song. Radiohead updated the template for the late-90s with this tense, unsettling observation on fashion, culture and vapidity - and created a song that artistically rivalled all of the above. While The Bends was an excellent album, with a top-rate set of guitar-based songs that dealt with isolation, paranoia and a general feeling of dread, 1997's OK Computer [...]

Elbow are receiving some long overdue credit this year due to the winning of the Mercury Prize winning album The Seldom Seen Kid released earlier this year. Their music deserves to be up there with the best indie band in the UK like Radiohead and Gomez. What's most appealing about them is their ability to draw the listener into their world and make you listen to the album repeatedly as the couple of albums I've listened were real slow-burners and you only begin to appreciate the album once drawn in. The downside of course is that [...]

I like this song, but I think I'd have liked it more if it came out in 1965 or 1976. Black Lips claim to be "flower punks", but if this is anything to go by they're just unashamed retroists, plundering every trick in the riffbooks of the Kinks, the Clash, the Damned or the Ramones. An extremely simple song, both musically and lyrically, it's still an exhilirating listen, and would make an excellent song to drink to or put on at a party. The bass and power chording guitar play the same riff the whole way through, while [...]