The Big Guns

We're all of course aware of the disaster in Haiti at the moment. And I hope we've all been in prayer and giving to charity whenever possible in the last week or so. Outpouring and response from the musical world has been astonishing. The first musicians I heard speaking up were Arcade Fire; a great band, but it was difficult to see how their rallying call could spread ripples outside of the devotee indie community.

Now, they've brought out The Big Guns.
This article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8473739.stm

will tell you how Simon Cowell has been put in charge, allegedly by Gordon Brown, of a charity single to raise money for the disaster. The chosen song is a cover of "Everybody Hurts" by REM.

Many of us have a LOT of problems with the X Factor. Simon Cowell divides me. He's an extremely clever and entertaining man. However, he has established a grip on chart music which has lowered musicianship, passion for real music and turned chart music into something focussed largely on instant fame, but more so on turning a profit. He's constructed an incredibly powerful monopoly, which, more often than not, a lot of us despise.

But now, I think we all have to be glad of the power that Simon Cowell and his business empire have. We've all seen that he can quickly and easily organise a track that millions of people will buy (even if it's just a cover!), market it effectively and turn a massive amount of money. And despite all of my gripes about reality TV, the state of the charts, the X Factor etc I'm now very glad for the powerful and wealthy position Cowell is in. One that will allow a massive amount of money to go towards helping Haitians.

This really could be the first true and organic charity single since the original Band Aid. The attempts to emulate it since have been:
a) rubbish
b) failures
c) more about profile than charity
But this one is fast, organic and clearly heartfelt, and also looks set to have a cracking line up. Even if the line up isn't incredible, even if it were DJ Ironik, N-Dubz, JLS, Chris Brown and the rest of that useless bunch; if it's going to raise as much money as possible in as short a time a possible for Haiti, I'm all for it. It may even get a few folks into REM.

In related news:

http://pitchfork.com/news/37649-kanye-not-invited-to-haiti-telethon/

The people organising the main Haiti charity concert in the US have refused to invite Kanye West to perform, thanks to his impeccable live television appearances in the past i.e. "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and of course "Im'a let you finish..." You know what? Good. The last thing anyone wants is someone taking the attention of a charity event and focussing it on themselves. I await Kanye's response.

Please folks, buy this charity single when it comes out, watch or attend any concerts for it that you can, I hear Radiohead are planning something as well. Most importantly, pray for and donate to the efforts. The people there are desperate for both.

To Croon or Not To Croon?

When it comes to Bono, there are three kinds of people.

1. Those who love him for, apparently, being awesome
2. Those who see his an unbearably arrogant self made Messiah
3. Those who get it right

Now, this is largely irrelevant, but I just want to establish that, whilst U2 are hugely overrated, they've written some quality sons amidst the drivel, and so this gives Bono enough credibiliy for me to base a blog on something the dude said.

I won't quote it directly, but a while ago I read a Rolling Stone article on the greatest vocalists ever. Bob Dylan placed in the top ten. Now, this may seem a strange notion at first if you've heard him sing (especially nowadays) because, he's hardly a soaring lyric tenor. However, Bono, who wrote the article on Dylan, made the the point that, after Bob Dylan, rock and roll vocals changed. People stopped trying to a have smooth, beautiful voice like Elvis or Sinatra, and it became about the voice being individual, particular, one that jarred against the ears and made you listen up a bit more, startled and yet captured in the headlights.

And that's awesome. Really. I rejoice massively in that fact, I love vocalists with strange voices.

But I'm incredibly sad that popular music has lost out having crooners. Men with beautiful, smooth voices who actually sing wonderful songs. Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Bobby Darin.Anyone with a kilogram of brains can realise that 9/10 artists in the charts nowadays CANNOT sing and have had their collective torsoes split open in a bloody spattering mess of gore, flesh and artistic integrity by the auto-tune monster. This leaves precious few crooners in the ol' fashioned sense of the word.

Michael Buble is holding the fort on his own at the moment really. Don't dare suggest Harry Connick Bloody Junior. Or Katherine Jenkins.

However, one man has crafted himself into a subtle, subversive, dark horse of a crooner for the 21st century.

Adam Green.

Who? What's that you say? Well to those of you not it the know, the colloquial description would be: The dude from The Moldy Peaches... who wrote that song they sing at the end of Juno
But seriously, Adam Green has this wonderful tonal, deep, velvet like voice that is incredibly individual but really does croon! This blog is basically a plug inspired by his new album.

Look the man up. Listen to "Drugs", "Castles and Tassels" and "Friends of Mine". Most of you probably won't like him. Or get him. But hey. Your loss. Such if life. Just stop listening to Chris Brown!

10 For 10

I don't know about you (or maybe I do, it depends who you are really) but I am a HUGE fan of start of year and end of year lists. I scour all of the lists for books, films, games, music, events etc. and so, you guessed it folks, I'm going to lay down the ten things I'm most excited about/anticipating in 2010. There's some (should-be-let's-hope-it-is) awesome stuff to come this year, so let's crack on!

1. Toy Story 3
Start with a biggie! Who in their right mind ISN'T excited about this?! 1 and 2 are inarguably two of the most brilliant animated films of all time. We're all a bit worried about the third installment being a flop, like most sequels, but it's Pixar so if we're playing the odds, it's going to be legendary. Pixar are very aware that they've got a tough act to follow after Up And there's going to be a Spanish Buzz Lightyear. There's a whole lot of win already.

2. Laura Marling
If you haven't heard of Laura Marling, hang your head in the direction of iTunes. She released her stunning debut Alas I Cannot Swim in 2008 and since then, us devoted fans have been gagging for me. The tracks I've heard sound much more grown up than the (endearingly) juvenile debut. She released a single in December- Goodbye England (Covered In Snow) which has been knocking around for a while, and is a gem. Ryan Adams and Ethan Johns (responsible for the holy trinity of the first 3 Kings of Leon albums and the good Ryan Adams albums) are producing so, as far as I'm concerned, this one's watertight!

3. Iron Man 2
The Marvel films in the superhero revival of last decade were hit and miss, but Iron Man was undeniably head and shoulders above any of them. Sterling performance from Robert Downey Jr, propelling him to superstar status, and it didn't simply try to follow the 50% emotion, 50% action format of most of the other films. Now the sequel is packing Iron Man's ebonic sidekick War Machine and Mickey Rourke (who as we all know is back in the game) as classic baddie Whiplash. And instead of generic whips, he's repping up some nutty pulsating tesla coils which can slice a speeding F1 car in half. I'll be watching this one.

4. The UK General Election
It's heating up already, and it's going to be pretty intense. The television debates between the party leaders will definitely be a highlighy. My predictions are a new Conservative Government, but with Labour retaining more seats than we'd think, the Lib Dems taking more seats than before and the SNP doing very well over the border.

5. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
New book from Phillip Pullman, famous of course for his religion bashing secular fairytale His Dark Materials trilogy. The trilogy was an extremely gripping read and whilst Pullman's atheist stance is of course wrong, it was fascinating to see him present that in the way he did. I don't know much about this forthcoming title, but it looks set to be a controversial literary talking point!

6. The Road
Vigo Mortensen (Aragorn from Lord of the Rings to you and me) vanished from the popular radar after Return of the King. Now, the king has returned again. The apocalypse is in big time at the moment, and The Road, an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy book, takes us to a post-apocalyptic world where an unamed man (Mortensen) is roaming a decimated America with his son, looking for food and trying not to be devoured by cannibals. It's been laded as the first great film of 2010 and this blogger is, as they say, "well up for it".

7. Skippy Dies
I love a bit of sci-fi I do. It's a bit of me is what it is. And as soon as I heard the premise for (little known) Paul Murray's new book Skippy Dies I was ready! An overweight genius attempts to open a portal to a parallel universe, but then his roomate Skippy falls in love and (!shock!horror!) dies and all sorts of secrets come out of the woodwork. Bring on the parallel dimensions yo.

8. Every Good Boy Desrves Favour
A little known play by Tom Stoppard with a huge orchestral score written by Andre Previn, it's the story of two men called Ivanov locked away in a mental asylum- one because he is mad and believes that he is surrounded by an orchestra and the other because he is a political dissenter. A revival is running at the National Theatre at the moment and is only on until 17th of February and has gotten rave reviews so I definitely want to go and see it before it vanishes.

9. Odd Blood
Sophomore album from psychadelic Brooklyn boys Yeasayer (dark horses to leap unexpectedly into the charts if you ask me) looks set to be brilliant. Their first was as lush and colourful as a Jackson Pollock painting of the rainforest. Then last year they gave away 'Ambling Alp' for free on their website- one of the best pop songs of the last ten years. Seriously, it's incredible. Listen to it. And it's gotten me quiveringly excited for the whole album (which has been leaked but I refuse to listen to, coz, y'know, I'm like that)

10. Rupture
A novel from unknown Simon Lelic, Rupture tells the story of a young police woman investigating a high school shooting committed by a gun toting teacher. Uncovering a traumatising picture of the months leading up to the attack, she finds that she has a lot in common with the murderer. Usually, I despise crime novels, it's a massively banal genre as far as I'm concerned. But something seems different here. Maybe because it's based on a bizzarre 21st century phenomena- high school shootings. I very much look forward to reading it anyhow. Not to sound morbid.

So there are my ten. I'm pretty excited. There's lots I've left out, albums mainly. There are a LOT of albums to get psyched about. A separate blog maybe? How about you? What are you excited about this year? Leave me comments and feedback!

Slowly Going GaGa

Back in 2008, when Lady GaGa's lead single 'Just Dance' hit the charts, I was immediately skeptical and dismissive of the latest chart phenomena.
Signed by Akon?
Straight to number one with her first single?
Pretensions to Queen songs?
A not particularly musically inspiring song?

I was most definitely sensible to not think much of her.

And, for a good while, that's how things stayed
An immediate rise to chart fame, nowadays, nearly always indicates being placed there by manipulating record companies, motivated only by the profit margin. Lady GaGa coming out of nowhere simply seemed like another record company plot, not someone who had gigged and worked for years to earn a visible spot in the music industry. And my feelings about that were only made worse by the ridiculously extravagant persona, calling her debut "The Fame" and, of course, the flaming nipples. It all just smacked of arrogance and pretension and, to a degree, attetmpting to jump in Michael Jackson's grave.

However.

However.


Time has worn on, and mellowed this stony old heart of mine.
Gradually, I've realised that all of Lady GaGa's extravagance is her simply, cleverly and subversively playing the game. There is no one around in the charts any more with any degree of real showmanship. So, GaGa saw that. And she took it on.

All of her posturing, posing, dressing and grandeure are really, it seems to me, just one big lampoon of the arrogant, self-absorbed morons clogging up the charts nowadays! It's mocking the zombies in the charts, and at the same time saying "this is how you do it!" There is a real innovation about Lady GaGa I've realised. Look at her MTV VMA Awards performances! The blood, the ridiculous costumes! (Which, in my mind, is a nod to Nirvana's 'Rape Me' controversy at the 1992 MTV Video Awards) She's taken the absurdity to such a level that it's clear she's definitely not after fame for fame's sake. She's playing fame like a game! She's put herself up there with the great female eccentrics like Bjork, Karen O. And she's on the way to the halowed halls of true performers and exhibitionists e.g. Freddie Mercury, David Bowie.

Next, she is an extremely talented musician! Other than most pop chart acts, she writes her own music! The instrumentation on some of her tracks in fantastic e.g the dirty whirring robotic synth underpining everything on 'Papparazzi'. The chord progression in 'Bad Romance' is just captiviating, definitely on the most well written and performed songs of last year. She has an undeniable ear for a genuine melody, not one that simply invites itself into your brain to sell units i.e 'Poker Face'. The power balladry of 'Speechless', the fact that performing live she has the creativity and the innovation to perform her own songs in different styles! She has a great voice! And she doesn't rely on a sodding auto-tune!

And the thing that really got me in the end was the fact that she's a modern chart pop star who has actually worked to get where she is, and truly honed her craft, as this video here shows:



So there you have it folks. I fold. My heart has melted. I followed her until I loved her. I let down my Poker Face. I'm now speechless. And next time I hear her, I might Just Dance.

Pop Culture Icons

I've noticed that the term "Pop culture", despite whatever it's proper definition may be, is used by a lot of us to refer to popular features of modern life when we want to be skeptical. It's, of course, massively different from the term "popular culture". They're nowhere near the same thing, of course. Popular culture is an official term, important enough to warrant it's own coveted place as the last section of nearly every Wikipedia page.

Anyway, "pop culture"- the easily recognised figures, the cultural in-jokes, the memes etc. is obviously dominated by "pop culture icons". But the majority of these icons, through becoming hugely easily recognisable, lose a their original significance. They're lost beneath mockery and Simpsons and Family Guy cameos. Let me give some examples:

1. Elvis Presley
It's Elvis season on the BBC at the moment and The King was actually what got me thinking about this. He's the most impersonated man in history. He's probaly been lampooned in nearly every major American TV show in the past 30 years. We remember the "uh-huh!", the glittery suits, the impersonators, Vegas. However. My generation, just doesn't appreciate what an incredible artist Elvis was! What he did with his voice was true art, true rock'n'roll. He performed some incredible tracks. There's also a hefty amount of crap in his back catalogue, but that doesn't negate his brilliance. And nor should the glittery pop-culture steretype.

2. Chuck Norris
This man is the internet. He probably accounts for a good 78% of jokes told in the past 7 years. And yet masses of people who indulge in the Chuck Norris meme haven't the foggiest who he is! The man made some awesome kung-fu and action movies! He taught Bruce Lee how to kick properly! Also, he's a Christian!
Here's some of his awesomeness:

Chuck takes down a car with his feet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f67LgpJBPPE

Chuck takes on Bruce Lee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLO1YIWQuXE

3. Jesus
It was inevitable that I'd get here really. We can all recall Jesus appearing in Family Guy. Or he's a nodding plastic car toy. Or a slightly subversive option for a Christmas fancy dress party. Or the harmless baby in the manger, appearing less and less amongst all the Christmas propoganda. He's become a character who can be written into any TV programme as easily as anyone else, taken down from a stock of fictional characters.

Well he's so much more than that.
He's the Son of God and God incarnate.
He's the through whom the universe was made.
He's the one who left the glory of Heaven and died on a cross, beaten, alone and judged so that you might not be punished yourself for your sins, but that you might live in Heaven with God for all eternity.
Don't lose Elvis and Chuck in the seas of popular culture. But more importantly, definitely don't lose Jesus.

Predictions for the Decade

Technological prophets, political commentators, inventors, software developers, film reviewers and radio presenters have all been making their forecasts for what lies head of us in the next ten years. I think we can safely say that a lot of them are wishful thinking, aimless stabs in the dark and some perhaps the results of interpretting the entrails of birds. Whilst never claiming to scale the dizzy heights of a modern social commentator, I, as a humble blogger, would like to hazard a few guesses (and point out a few inevitabilities) of the coming decade:

1. Collective Devices
We're already well on the way to this. If you're not immediately sure what I mean, I'm talking about the gradual collection of different devices- cameras, phones, mp3 players, personal planners, maps, games, internet access- into one simple device. Like I just said, we're well on the way to this, and it's a branch of tehcnological development that is inevitably going to become a huge battle between different technology companies in years to come. And gradually, more and more devices are going to be integrated into what I reckon we will still refer to as phones. Maybe we'll have real-time TV, on-demand films, remote controls, perhaps even our primary games consoles, and even more, until all entertainment appliances are replaced by one device.

2. Conservative British Government
This is almost certainly inevitable. Even in the (unlikely, but more likely than you think) event of Labour staying in power in the upcoming 2010 elections, they will most certainly be voted out in one of elections we'll have this decade. Even without New Labour's atrocious debacle of a record, the British public has never kept one party in power for more than four successive terms in the past 100 years, and it's nearly impossible that THIS government will break that trend.

3. The Continuing Decline of the British Music Charts
The charts of the latter part of the Noughties are a virtual epitaph on the British Music industry, resting above the grave of a once exciting and dominating behemoth which died bleeding boiling liquid plastic and wheezing out it's last tortured autotuned breaths. In a few years, all of current the "big names" - Taio Cruz, T-Pain, TI, Chipmunk, Chris Brown- and other talentless autotuned minions of extortionate and shallow svengalis, will have faded from public gaze and memory, but more identical looking and sounding clones with 3 semitones and one repetitive hand-clap-rhythm between them will fill their unremembered graves.

4. Big Reality TV Will Sink or Swim
Big Brother is nearly over, RATM4XMAS#1 showed that there is a silent majority of people with taste, common sense and individuality hidden in Britain, so the big names that dominated reality in the Noughties are on their way out. Reality TV is here to stay now, but it will either have to get seriously inventive if it wants to maintain its monopoly on Saturday night TV or be relegated to the side roads of TV, to channels like Living.

5. The Fall of Facebook Within 5 Years
Hey Guys! Are you on Bebo?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures! Cool right? Ah now you can create a profile! You put all your details up and connet with your friends! Wow! Hey guys, have you seen these applications?! Yeah they're so cool! I'm gonna fill my pages with them! Oh wow, "groups"! This is so cool! People who share my opinions! Now all I need to do is join these groups my friends have rather than enter into meaningful and interesting talk abbout our shared interest! .... *a few years later* Guys, I'm tired of all this clutter and crap in my feed and profile on Bebo. Hey Guys! Are You On Facebook?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures!

Those are the five biggies. Make of them what you will, and feed back to me please! There's plenty more I can predict. Women in advertising and "music" will gradually wear less and less and eventually perfume adverts will become short art-house porn productions. We'll have a major newspaper crisis thanks to t'internet. The British Government will try to launch a definitive crackdown on file-sharing, just AFTER most people realise it may actually not be such a great thing. Apple will continue to produce great handhelds and terrible computers. Britain and America will cease to have ANY vestige of a "special relationship".

Roll on the 2010s.
Feed back to me please!
God Bless you this year and decade.

A Return To Blogging, Some Shared Music and a Rant About Money!

So. A New Decade. A glittering frontier lays before us. Some would say.
Apologies for my lengthy blogging absence. I had an intensely busy December and then an intensely relaxed holiday.

I had planned to do some specifically "end of year blogs" but sadly never got round to them. Your loss I suppose... ahem. Anyway, I planned to do a big one about my favourite songs of the decade. Intead, I compiled quite a comprehensive Spotify playlist which is...

HERE!

http://open.spotify.com/user/rhysydeesy/playlist/6gpedY8BnOCVH8SnWZmGiB

Please listen and feedback to me, here or on Facebook, Twitter, whatever medium you deign appropriate for this stellar new decade we now find ourselves in. Those songs are my personal favourites, pretty much in descending order. The nearer the top, the more rigid the order. Enjoy! If you don't in some degree then there's definitely somehting wrong with you.

Anyway, I was given a suitable kick to write another blog after reading this page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8438824.stm

One Billion US Dollars earned across the world in merely a few weeks. The human race has ventured out in unprecedented cinematic numbers and poured money into seeing this film. Now, I have yet to see it, and would really like to, I knew about it long before the general public's brouhaha (what a word. And yes, that was a self elevating, perhaps slightly pretentious cultural claim back there). So I haven't any problems with the film, I hear there are some allusions to Christ coming down to Earth as a man, which is always good- you can't escape Jesus in heroes! (See this blog - http://folkpunkgazesblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/knights-in-shining-spandex.html - and also, Part Two of the most recent Doctor Who Christmas special!)

But. $1billion. It's an absurd amount of money. One of those amounts of money which, unless you were a government or a total, TOTAL moron, you couldn't possibly spend all of. In the perception of your average 21st century Western citizen, it's an unassailable amount of money.

What could that money do?

SO MUCH!

SO
SO
MUCH!

It could take a massive chunk out of world debt.

Build homes for millions. Give facilities, clean water, schools, medical care to MILLIONS.

I'm not attacking the film industry as such, but pointing out the readiness with which we'll part with ten quid (which is pretty much the cost of a ticket seeing as it's marketted as almost a necessity that you watch Avatar and many other films at the moment in 3D- an truly devious exploitative ploy by the film industry. I mean what's the fuss with 3D all of a sudden? It adds nothing. I remember 3D as a short fad when I was about 6-10, marketted for such cinematic epics as Sky-Kids 3D)
Tangent over.
How ready are you to part with upwards of £7.50 to see a film?
Very.
That's evident. The whole planet near enough has demonstrated how ready it is.

But how ready are you to part with that amount for a good cause? A charity? A tramp? Heck, even a busker?
Scarcely ready at all, I would say, for most of us. Myself heartily included. In our often selfish and microscopic minds, £7.50 to a charity, collection tin, or busker seems like FAR too much. It's almost ridiculous for us young people to consider dropping that much change into a collection box. A couple of quid or whateveer jingles in your pocket is standard isn't it?

Well it shouldn't be the standard. In your heart, ask yourself, how ready are you to spare your money- whether it be hard earned or your avenue to a good night out- for someone else? I don't want to sound like an Oxfam advert, asking for "just two pounds a month" etc. I want you to think about yourself- your heart, your motives- so that you can think about others, who are as unfathomably needy and James Cameron is now unfathomably wealthy.

We live in an age where selfishness, "treating yourself" CONSTANTLY (hardly a treat then) and self celebration are all on the rise. We're in a world where we're always encouraged to glorify ourselves. That's shown very clearly in this horribly man-glorifying spectacle - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8439618.stm.

So think. Are you selfish with your money? How ready are you to part with £7.50 for someone else, rather than for your own enjoyment? We're a tenth of the way through the 21st cenutury and roughly 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. And yet in just a few weeks, one film rakes in $1 billion from us.
This decade should be fun.