My Top 6…cover versions

Posted on April 2nd, 2009 by Andy

Here are my submissions to Cover Me, Volume 17 of Splotchy’s Green Monkey Music Project (visit the link to download the two 36 track compilations the first one has the selected cover versions, while the second has the original versions of the same songs).

Your selections should all be songs which are not the original versions, but are rather another artist’s interpretation of the original. I want the cover of the song to be meaningful, or important, or special to you in some way that distinguishes it from the original, and I’m going to want you to explain the significance when you discuss your selections after the mix has been published.

Obviously I could have had six Galaxie 500 songs…or Luna ones, but resisted the temptation to be quite that unimaginitive.

Ceremony – Galaxie 500 (originally by Joy Division) – Ceremony is, unquestionably, the greatest cover version anyone’s done of anything ever. In 1990 I saw Galaxie 500 at the Subterania and they finished the set with Ceremony, joined on stage by Kramer. If I had to throw away all but eight minutes of my gig going memories – those would be the eight minutes I’d hang on to.

Blue Christmas – Low (originally by Elvis) – I first heard this on the car radio in a supermarket car park (I think it must have been Peel sitting in on an earlier show as he did occasionally – or I was out shopping late!). Mimi’s voice just left me breathless – I had to sit in silence for a minute or two before heading off to do the shopping.

Flaming Telepaths – Espers (originally by Blue Oyster Cult) – I’d never heard the original before hearing this. Greg and Meg’s voices work so well together and this one really opened up a prog seam that I wasn’t sure I had or at least had long covered up. The original is only fair – the cover is immense.

Leaving Here – Motorhead (origially by The Birds) – In 1979 Motorhead was my escape into musical individuality – one of the key moments in that escape was on 1st May 1980 when Motorhead mimed to “Leaving Here” on Top of the Pops. Music changed pretty profoundly at that point. The live version of the Golden Years EP (which the TOTP performance was promoting) was head and shoulders above the weak studio version on On Parole.

Cast a Shadow – Yo La Tengo (originally by Beat Happening) – Two of my favourite bands. Stuart had this on a 7″ – was it on the back of Speeding Motorcycle? – I was jealous and have been careful to buy pretty much anything Yo La Tengo have released since.

Indian Summer – Luna (originally by Beat Happening) – I was really sad when Galaxie 500 broke up but in Feb 1992 Dean came through London with the first Luna incarnation (Stan, Justin and Grasshopper) and played a show at the Underworld that reassured me that maybe a positive spin could be put on the split. They played Indian Summer that night. It was also the last song the played at their last London show in 2005.

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I love living in the future – #1 – covers on YouTube

Posted on January 20th, 2009 by Andy

My favourite thing about YouTube (and its ilk) is folk sitting in their living room, or bedroom playing cover versions of songs I love. Not always great covers but the very fact that they chose to cover a song I love makes them special – and often they’re not too damn bad…

One of my all time faves (and one that I’ve blogged about before is this awesome steel pan version of tugboat…

Hers’s MsPennyCandy’s take on Decomposing Trees (she’s also covered Oblivious and Leave The Planet.

Earlier in the week I came across this cover of Damon & Naomi’s Laika (and there aren’t too many D&N covers on YouTube so that was a treat.

And of course there’s this great video of Ira and Georgia doing the YouTube thing 15 years before YouTube existed!

I love living in the future!

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You will passion to watch this “want to savvy” movie

Posted on January 15th, 2009 by Andy

I have a Google blog search set up to track down bloggers posting about Luna, unfortunately most of what it catches are splogs – which should piss me off but they make me smile so I can’t really hate them too much! Here’s a selection of my faves. Note…

  • the constant use of Lee Wall (II) which clearly shows that IMDB has been raided for film names.
  • the mis-use of “passion” in the last one that suggests that a thesaurus has been used for variety.
  • the spelling throughout that proves that the spammers didn’t bother using a dictionary.

Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me also has some exceedingly splendacious photography! The plot line is just positively terrific. The terrifically glorious cast includes Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden.

If you love watching Lee Wall (II) or Dean Wareham, you are deffinetly going to want to watch Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me

I think Lee Wall (II) and Dean Wareham worked wonderful in Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

The stupendous cast in this movie is eye-opening: Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. For certain an award winning work with characters.

A fantastic performance by Lee Wall (II) & Dean Wareham make Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me a “ought to mark” movie!

The dazzling cast in this movie is wonderful: Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. Honestly an award winning adventure with characters that you can by.

A enigmatic performance by Lee Wall (II) & Dean Wareham make Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me a “want to savvy” movie!

The great cast includes Lee Wall (II), Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Sean Eden. The movie moves on like a dream and end leaving you wanting for more.

If you love watching Lee Wall (II) or Dean Wareham, you are deffinetly going to passion to watch Luna – Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

The funny thing of course is that it really is a “ought to mark” movie and you certainly will passion it…

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Wordle-ing away my Friday afternoon

Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Andy

I’ve been having a scary amount of fun with the lovely Wordle -here’s the last month of A Head Full of Wishes as a beautiful tag cloud…

More of my idlings.

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My Top 6…music fan sites

Posted on June 13th, 2008 by Andy

As the proprietor of a fan site I’ve always had an interest in what fans are doing on the web, a year or so ago I posted ruminating on the fan site and whether it had a place in the brave new 2.0 world…

Whatever the reason it seems the days of the fan site is over and all that’s left are the few excellent sites run by the few dedicated individuals that will remind the world what things were like in the days before MySpace and Wikipedia and blogs…

David Jennings, the author of the excellent book Net, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll, responded arguing that things maybe aren’t so gloomy…and he’s probably right.

Anyway…I was talking fan sites to a couple of people over a lemonade yesterday (more of which maybe at a later date) and I was asked about what my favourite fan sites were. It was a question I found a bit overwhelming in a noisy pub but a lot easier when I was sitting in front of my computer later on. It seemed an ideal opportunity for the long since neglected My Top Six… category to be prodded back to life.

My fondness is for a lot of information so these are mostly concentrated on content occasionally at the expense of aesthetics. Looking over the list they all seem very “traditional” – very web 1.0 which possibly only reinforces David’s counter that…

the next phase of fan site development will see the development of more collaborative projects, whereby fluid groups of fans work together complementing each others’ skills and filling in when someone drops out.

So here is “My Top 6…music fan sites”…

  • Stereolab
    In the early days of A Head Full of Wishes the best fan site on the web (IMO) and one it aspired to be like was Robin’s Stereolab site. It was packed with every sort of anything and encouraged users to vote and contribute. Sadly Robin closed down (and passed on his site) so it can only be seen in most of it’s glory on the Internet Archive…
  • Go-Betweens.net
    Jonathan’s site is an awesome resource and one that has managed to get an online community going successfully which I never managed to do with A Head Full of Wishes…maybe it’s time to try again…or maybe the time has passed.
  • Low
    Another site that you have to head over to the Internet Archive to see it as it should be. I adored the Low website before it became official (and actually for quite a while after) but sadly a lot of the content has gone astray and it looks less like a fan site and more like what I guess it is now – a promotional resource.
  • Electricity Comes From Other Planets
    Olivier Landemaine’s Velvet Underground site is utterly breathtaking in it’s detail – it makes me feel like such an amateur.
  • Milky Moon
    The Joanna Newsom fan site Milky Moon is a site I like a lot, for a relatively new artist the site has a gorgeously old-fashioned way about it.
  • Sparklehorse: What Kind of Name is This?
    Another site overflowing with content and another one that sadly seems to have been neglected of late.

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I’m just leaving work…I hope it isn’t too windy…

Posted on April 7th, 2008 by Andy

I’ve resisted Twitter for so long…I joined up a few months ago after succumbing to the barrage of online pressure but never got beyond the registration phase. There are so many problems I have with it…the prime one being “who really gives a chuff what I’m up to?” – maybe Hazel (but I see her every day) but that really is probably about it. That does throw into doubt why I should have this blog but there is a whole difference between speaking your mind (and no one caring) and making 140 character posts about being on the bus or listening to the radio…my life is just not interesting enough.

But anyway – here I am – making those 140 character yawns that no one will care about and wondering if I’ll have a Damascus moment…and it’ll all make sense…

(It aditionally doesn’t help that I almost always forget to have my phone with me)

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I’ve had it with Facebook

Posted on December 17th, 2007 by Andy

I’ve just “deactivated” my Facebook account – after months of tinkering around the edges of it I just can’t see what the point of it is and I think I need my social networks to have a point – Facebook seems to exist purely for it’s own existence, which just isn’t enough (or maybe too much) for me…

The social networks (with “points”) where you can still find me are…

Is there a decent film “network” around? Well…obviously Flixster – as it was one of the few things I discovered on Facebook as being interesting enough to follow up…you can (now) find me on Flixster…

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Coming back into the fold

Posted on December 16th, 2007 by Andy

Six months ago my last.fm subscription ran out just after they had stopped being a feisty London-based indie start-up and jumped into the pocket of media giant CBS. My concerns then had a lot to do with the rather depressing thought that nobody seems to want to try and make a go of it on their own – that every start-ups ambition is nothing more than to be hoovered into one of the Internet conglomerates – it’s all still true and still rather depressing…[1] [2] [3] etc.

But despite that I bought myself a xmas pressie of a 12 month sub to last.fm not because I missed being a subscriber after all the benefits of subscription are pretty minor…

  • No ads – I haven’t seen an ad on last.fm in the six months I’ve been unsubscribed thanks to Adblock
  • Personalised radio – While I’m more inclined to listen to last.fm radio than almost any other radio station I’ve been happy enough with the limited access I’ve had for free.
  • Who’s visiting? is a nice little bonus but hardly a clincher especially given that almost no one vistis my profile…
  • Red carpet treatment (priority server access) – I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed any server access problems enough to make me dig in my pocket to improve things
  • Top secret beta access – I think I can manage without bleeding edge perks.

No…the reason I subscribed is because last.fm is good and, like Flickr, ultimately I’m happy to put a few quid in the coffers of something that I really like.

And despite what Russ from last.fm said in a comment to my post six months ago…

We want people to subscribe because of the features, not because they feel like they’re doing us a favour anyway

…I’m afraid that, while it may not be a “favour”, its closer to that than to anything else.

Along with Flickr and Google (mail, reader, search etc.) last.fm is one of the very few sites that I visit every day – and that’s why I got the urge to come back into the last.fm fold…

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I make up less than a quarter

Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Andy


I make up less than a quarter
(originally uploaded by grange85)

So Everything’s Swirling gets a long overdue overhaul – and a new URL (feel free to update your bookmarks, blogrolls and RSS feeds – although the old ones will probably keep working)

Hazel’s blog Let’s Fold Scarves has also had a refit and is whipping my sorry arse in the who’s-blog-is-more-popular competition…if, of course, we cared about anything as trite as popularity. Just like with music – the more obscure the better!

Posted in blogs and the internet, idle nonsense, my family | 1 Comment »

Corporate rock sucks #16: Rick Rubin and Columbia

Posted on September 2nd, 2007 by Andy

A big feature on Rick Rubin and Columbia in the New York Times is an insight not only into someone trying to pull the record industry out of it’s taildive but also into an industry that sees the way out of that taildive is to screw either (or both) the consumer who they plan to lease music to rather than allow them to own music and/or the artist who they intend to screw even more money out of and give them even less chance of getting out of the debt that the record industry puts anyone but the most successful artists into…

You would subscribe to music. You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television.

Barnett has other ideas, which he is discussing with Rubin. For instance, asking Columbia artists to give the record company up to 50 percent of their touring, merchandising and online revenue.

The future of music requires a downsizing of the expectations of the artist. The (major) record labels exist because they offer the naive and the foolish (mostly) unachievable wealth and success. The fact is that if artists, rather than chase hopeless dreams, concentrated on making music and making a living making music then there would be a lot more successful artists.

While I accept Rubin’s statement that if “music [was] easily available at a price of five or six dollars a month, then nobody [would] steal it”, I don’t see how the “subscription model” that he (and other industry people) are peddling can be considered anything but telling the consumer “you can’t be trusted with our music”. If the industry continues to treat consumers as untrustworthy is it any wonder that consumers turn their back on the industry.

If the future of the industry is concentrating, as it seems to be, on nothing but the future of the industry and not considering the future of music and the needs of the consumer and the artist, then is it any wonder that it is struggling. When the current greedy industry finally dies things will surely be better.

Posted in Music, blogs and the internet, corporate rock sucks | 1 Comment »

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