The Good, The Bad, and the… No.1

Welcome to our new regular blog digest, The Good, The Bad, And The… where each day (or thereabouts) we'll be picking something good, something bad and something… well, something.

So keep an eye out, and if you feel like letting us know about something good, bad or otherwise that you've seen, then don't be shy, let us know!

Widdle me this...

The Good: Something great actually, the line-up for this year's Belfast Blues festival has been announced, and the super talented, Big List favourite Rab McCullough is all over it like blue on sky. The Belfast born bluesman, hailed by Eric Clapton and gracer of the same stage as Jimi Hendrix, is a local legend and will rightly be featuring heavily in the festival's schedule.

Rab plays a free to enter gig in the Belfast Empire every Thursday night, and as well attended as it usually is, the fact that Rab never broke the big time means that NI gets to keep him for itself.

The Bad: The very wise and honourable Belfast city council. They've managed to, once again, ensure that the moral fibre of the city maintains its high standard by keeping the current restriction on bar opening times during this November's MTV Europe Music Awards.

"Cocktails?! Flip sake, just get them in love!
It's half 12!"

Far from making us the laughing stock of Europe, the decision to close the bars at every venue at 1.00am means that our continental neighbours will find a new respect for our preservation of decorum and piety. We will be the Shepherds, and they the lambs as we lead the 21st century western world to a new-found respect for the Sabbath day, to a purer future instilled with the right values and a rewarding sense of propriety.

Sure, our entertainment and tourism sector will likely lose a multi-million pound opportunity, but this is a small price to pay for Christian observance of the Sabbath and a considerable reduction in paper work. Ok, so the Sabbath is originally supposed to be Saturday, but since when did we worry about adhering to the doctrine of tradition, eh? Oh, hang, on… wait just a minute now…

"Uh, Giorgos? Man, you've got something on your...
actually, never mind..."

The Worrying: It may be all Greek to most people, but some late night radio-listening last night revealed something a bit scary about Europe's economic 'situation' (read: untethered bungee jump). Yes, apparently, according to some expert types, on Radio 4 so it must be right, Greece is going to inevitably ("There's no other option, it's simple mathematics, there's no other way") default on it humongous debts. This will mean Portugal, Ireland and eventually Spain will follow, and the end of the Eurozone. What happens after that is anyone's guess, but we're envisaging some kind of cool Mad Max style world, so start stockpiling petrol. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!

NI Gets Glastonburied

So Glastonbury is over, huh? Well, for some bands it may just be starting.

I'm of course elliptically talking about the BBC Introducing stage that featured two Northern Ireland acts (not counting Two Door Cinema Club, of course!), Rams Pocket Radio and Yes Cadets.

The sweaty performance of RPR's startlingly good track, Dieter Rams Has Got The Pocket Radios, is a striking example of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Peter McCauley's musical chops.

You can also check out an album's worth of his songs on Soundcloud by clicking on this lovely little link.

What's floated our proverbial boats here at The Big List is its rock arrangement and subtle complexity, lifting it above the plague of purge-worthy puerile pop pish and into the erstwhile exclusive, elevated and escalated echelons of excellence.

Here's some BBC footage of the song we're talking about, and you'll see stage right (your right, not her's) none other than the sassy songstress Silhouette on bass. 

Another talented singer, Silhouette, AKA Shauna Tohill, is usually seen behind the ivories in her alternate incarnation, and has made significant headway in her band's career, featuring heavily in new music radio stations and all that kind of stuff. Here's a look at her impressive ongoing efforts.

They could just combine the two bands into some sort of super group, but I suppose two different entities improves your chances of being spotted, and going by their Glastonbury selection, it's worked.

The other Northern Ireland ambassadors at the Worthy Farm festival was, as above, Yes Cadets. These indie dance pop minstrels have been going for several years and have been firm favourites with kool kidz everywhere, including those in the NI 'industry'.

Here's their stab in the Glastonbury limelight. 

I'm sure, after seeing the bulging crowds and blissful atmosphere, the rest of NI's musical upstarts will be foregoing their homework in order to, er, do their other homework, so bets are off on the 2013 representatives.

Terrible Lyrics Is Terrible...

What is it with the recent flood of pop songs with terrible lyrics? It's a new kind of terrible, the sort of terrible that has managed to go unnoticed because no one's terrible-radar is scanning that low.

And five minus one is... Nicole?

It simply must be the case that those buying Nicole Scherzinger's latest effort – Right There – either simply haven't noticed how laughably awful the lyrics are, or possibly believe the schoolyard chanting is laced with some kind of esoteric, impenetrable poetry. I fear it's more likely the latter.

"Me like the way that you hold my body

Me like the way that you touch my body

Me like the way that you kiss my yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it"

Yeah, you see the thing with good or acceptable song lyrics is that they convey more than just what's said. For a song lyric to work, it doesn’t have to provide some hugely revealing fundamental truth about the plight of humankind as we flash through the barely tangible plain that is existence with just our imperfect senses to guide us. To be of some value all it has to do is make an observation worth sharing or trigger an emotional response. "Me like the way you hold my body" just says nothing.

All it does is tell us that Ms Scherzinger loves the way some anonymous person holds her body, but that doesn't tell us anything about her, or us - everyone likes to be held a certain way. It's like me saying, "I like the way this food tastes". That doesn't tell you anything about how said food tastes, if you'd like that food, or what it says about people who do or do not like the food, all of which are the only things of any actual use to anyone.

Taken altogether, the only between-the-lines message that the lyrics do contain is that Scherzinger enjoys physical relations with the subject of the song, and enjoys oral sex. I'm not pointing that out to be opportunistically crude, but it's a barely concealed conclusion from the lyrics –

"Me like the way that you kiss my yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it"

"Me like the way he goin down down down down down"

Again, this doesn't tell us a lot about her or ourselves, just the bare and slightly discomforting fact that she likes these activities. Why she telling us these things, though, is maybe the interesting part.

And what about this lyric from the end of the song:

"Do you feel good for your let down good for you yeah...

"When you got up on that you do you right back"

I mean, I don't mean to be overly pompous, but seriously, that's barely English. 

"What? No, this is how I always stand..."

Jennifer Lopez is another who has just decided to throw any consideration for worthwhile lyrics to the proverbial wind. She even goes one step further in her much-loved classic, On The Floor:

"London to Ibiza

Straight to LA, New York

Vegas to Africa."

Firstly, she should be commended for rhyming Ibiza and Africa, but then we get to this section after being told, ad nauseam, to "get on the floor"

"Its getting ill it’s getting sick on the floor

We never quit, we never rest on the floor

If I ain’t wrong we’ll probably die on the floor"

Getting ill then sick on the floor isn't exactly the imagery I'm looking for in a fun dance tune. Plus, it would be difficult to "quit" or be at rest on any floor covered in sick.

I realise the meaning of those words has been changed by rap and afro-American culture - there's nothing wrong with that - but their use in this context is just bizarre.

Meanwhile, the last sentence, "if I 'ain't wrong, we'll probably die on the floor" is one of the strangest lyrics I've ever heard. As far as I understand it, Lopez is saying: "the music so good here that you won't stop dancing, leading in all probability to your unceremonious death in an unnamed nightclub".

I think it's time we all lowered our aforementioned radars – and fast.

Where's The Music On The TV?

After happening upon the www.fromthebasement.tv website, during a little research about our Radiohead story today, it occurred to me how little live music there is on TV.

That being said, we're just about to see the BBC's usually fantastic coverage of the Glastonbury festival slosh onto our screen this weekend, so I can't complain too much.

But it is strange there are not more specialist music TV shows anymore. At the moment we've got Jools Holland's also usually fantastic Later show, although his line-ups have been pretty shocking in the last few weeks.

The Old Grey Whistle Test - Nice...

The field has had a long history, with probably the most vaunted show of the ilk, The Old Grey Whistle Test (here's the video of Hocus Pocus' famed performance) experiencing a nostalgic renaissance. But there have been many more.

Cult 80s music show The Tube was an influential and innovative if slightly inconsistent incarnation of the format. Introduced by Jools Holland and Paula Yates, the show was commendable for forcing all acts to perform live and featured some impressive talent of the day including Madonna, Judas Priest, The jam and Tom Waits.

The show was also notable for it's on edge feel where anything could happen, inspiring shows such as The Word and TFI Friday, where common on air swearing and catastrophe led to huge audience appeal.

Jimmy Saville. Still in full cammo after
operations in Oz - the land of.

The daddy of all UK music shows is undoubtedly Top of the Pops. Although generally sterilised, family friendly, and notorious for artists miming and cringe inducing presenters, the show was more or less at the mercy of the charts, leading to some interesting performances.

Greenday's first appearance on UK Television saw them forced to mime their instruments and sing live, leading to Billie Joe's T-shirt of protest that reads "Who am I fooling anyway".

Nirvana were also forced into the same predicament, but decided to make their legendary protest a bit more audible - that being, one octave lower.

Oasis did a similar trick in 1995, during their performance of Roll With It. The introduction by Robbie [bloody] Williams is also probably one of the reasons why no one ever took the show seriously.

In fact, Top of the Pops' audience size and side-stepping of the less commercial acts went as far as incensing some bands and even television producers. Producer Mickie Most decided his reaction would be to make an ITV music based series called Revolver. Irreverent and fearless, the 1978 show, which ran for only one series, took the rising punk scene to unsuspecting audiences. Giving an early platform to bands such as Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Elvis Costello and Siouxsie and the Banshees, the show also featured a slot by chaos inspiring comedian Peter Cook, who would ridicule the acts and the audience: "Don't touch the acts, you don't know where they've been", for example.

Here's an example of Peter Cook's typical anarchism on the show.

Among the other notable shows that never quite took off was a forerunner of Dermot O'Leary's Saturday sessions, Re:Covered. Bands were asked to come play live and also perform a cover version of whatever they wanted. Although the premise was good, for some reason the show didn't quite feel right. I hope it was nothing to do with our Dermot…

So what about today? Where are the Revolvers and Old Grey Whistle Tests of the 2010s?

Well, if Jools Holland isn't careful and keeps booking chumps like those towards the end of his last series, we may see a revival. R Kelly? …that's all I'm saying.

Best Of The Music Web

Of the one hundred and fifty trillion zillion squillion websites there are in the internet, it's sad that so few are good enough to recommend, but new site www.mapofmetal.com by talented web designer Patrick Galbraith stands out.

Map of Metal - marvelous.

The site features a stylized map moving across time and the multitudinous sub genres of metal music.

Each location gives a fascinating biography of each type of metal, from Glam Metal to Djent, and a selection of the songs and bands associated with the style.

The outcome is a fascinating traipse through metal's history and evolution and explains beautifully the splinter genres and possible reasons for their emergence.

One such bio for Viking metal reads thus: "The genre of Viking metal was pioneered by the Swedish band Bathory. The band's fourth album 'Blood Fire Death' was released in 1988 and includes two early examples of Viking metal – the songs 'A Fine Day to Die' and 'Blood Fire Death'. Eduardo Rivadavia of Allmusic describes this as 'possibly the first true example of Viking metal."

The Guardian's History of Modern Music

The launch of the site comes on the heels of The Guardian's latest fantastic run of musical features, A History of Modern Music. The interactive flash site spans up to 100 years for each genre, from jazz to rock. It provides anecdotes, news stories, biographies and obituaries of the most influential musicians of the day and the most significant events in music over the last century.

Original, engaging and intuitive to use, the guide highlights moments such as the 1978 Rock Against Facism event, the infamous "Judas!" heckle at Bob Dylan and the death of John Coultrane.

If more of the internet were like these two sites, well, we'd probably spend a lot less time putting up pictures that needed de-tagging on Facebook.