British film composer John Barry died of a heart attack on Sunday aged 77.
Barry was best known as the creator of the music for the James Bond film, including the famous Bond Theme, although he was the recipient of no fewer than five Academy Awards: two for Born Free (best original score and bestoriginal song) and best original score for Dancing with Wolves, Out of Africa and the Lion in Winter. Other notable scores and soundtracks included Midnight Cowboy, Goldfinger and From Russia with Love.
Barry is survived by four children and three ex-wives.
Brazil is a pretty lax place.You can get away with a lot of things most of the time: looting, mugging, rape, murder… even mullets are allowable. You can even form a four-piece rock band to play outdated mid-tempo rock at what appears to be some sort of outdoor festival for people who have no room for a proper stage.
But Lord help you if you screw up the guitar solo while the singer is backstage combing over his bald patch. You have been warned.
It is often said of Kurt Cobain, the late Nirvana singer, that he wasn’t half as good a musician in life as he became after he died. Much the same could now be said for Mark Knopfler who, while not dead, has suffered a fate far more damaging to a musician’s spirit: censorship.
Knopfler, whose popularity peaked at the dawn of MTV era as frontman of rock band Dire Straits, has seen his previously unheralded lyrical ability upgraded in some quarters to that of a master satirist in light of a Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) ruling on his band’s 1985 hit ‘Money for Nothing. The CBSC, the Canuck equivalent of the United States’ FCC, informed the nation’s radio stations that in future broadcasting the unedited recording of the track, which features repeated use of an offensive term aimed at homosexuals, would be considered a violation of the its Code of Ethics. In short: don’t play it.
The prohibition came about in response to a complaint from a member of the public – a 21-year-old gay woman from Newfoundland – who heard the full unedited version broadcast on regional classic rock station CHOZ-FM. The song contains the word “faggot” three times in quick succession, spoken from the perspective of a character voiced by Knopfler. The track was heavily criticised at the time of its release for vague implications of racism and sexism, though the CBSC’s edict relates only to the actual wording of the song.
Anybody with an ear for this kind of thing knows the Live Lounge, BBC Radio 1 feature originally presented by Jo Whiley, and now by the lovely Fearne Cotton.
Live Lounge, on which artists are invited to perform an original alongside a cover of their choice, is renowned for its tendency to throw up interesting and unexpected takes on well-known tracks (Arctic Monkeys doing Amy Winehouse’s ‘You Know I’m No Good,’ Robyn taking on Alicia Keys’ ‘Sleeping with a Broken Heart’). Being the BBC, it’s all lovingly archived, bizarrely frequent recurrence of N-Dubz and all.
Hawaiian singer-songwriter Bruno Mars is the latest to grace the BBC studios, and his debut performance is everything a cover version should be: beautifully arranged, personalised and performed in the light-hearted manner in which it was intended. He even throws in a couple of lines from the Beach Boys’ similarly-titled ‘California Girls’ and a clever take on Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’
I’m not sure how much I can actually say about this.
I mean, the first time I watched I was sure – I was convinced – that 1:10 was going to the moment I remember for the rest of my life. But then I saw 2:03 and, honestly, Oh my fucking God. And I mean that literally.
Any lingering fears that Patrick Stump’s second chin had imbued him, Samson-like, with his precocious musical talent have thus far proved unfounded – and a good thing, too, because the weight appears to be staying off and the erstwhile Fall Out Boy frontman has a solo career to launch.
As a prelude to the release of his first album on his lonesome, Soul Punk, in February Stump put together a fairly impressive medley of Grammy-nominated tracks, performed a capella with the man himself providing back-up vocals. Impressively, it’s all done on camera, so we quite literally get to see Stumpy playing with himself – he performs a fluid mash of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ ‘Empire State of Mind,’ Eminem and Rihanna’s ‘Love the Way You Lie,’ Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now,’ B.o.B. and Bruno Mars’ ‘Nothin’ on You’ and Cee-Lo’s ‘Fuck You’ (mercifully uncensored).
It’s interesting to note that Stump’s studio looks more like an oversized emptied closet than a state-of-the-art recording space, though perhaps that’s fitting given his rather unfortunate choice of clothing.
How bad does a song have to be to get rejected from a free-to-download tribute album? Listen to Thursday’s cover of Bad Religion’s “Generator” and decide for yourself.
While Geoff Rickley & co. manage to redeem themselves ever so slightly in the song’s straightforward second half, it’s no small feat how the first half of the track turns a punk classic into a bunch of moaned gibberish. Listening to the first half of the song had me thinking that it might be the worst thing I’ve heard all year, and I just finished listening to a song by Clown from Slipknot’s side-project. How’s that for context?
If you think I’m being hyperbolic you obviously haven’t heard the cover, so click the play button and decide for yourself
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Your ears not bleed out? Why not listen to the original in it’s un-neutered glory.
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Oh, and if you want to download Germs of Perfection: A Tribute to Bad Religion, click here. Don’t worry, this song isn’t on it. Instead you’ll get covers by the Weakerthans, Frank Turner, Tegan and Sara and many more.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “songs about Satan are great and everything, but I really wish more death metal bands wrote about dinosaurs,” then this track’s for you.
Here’s “Reptilian Age,” the fourth track off Blood Rainbow’s Lethal Message.
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THE BLOOD OF PREHISTORIC ANIMALS WAS FLOWING LIKE WATER
WHEN THE T-REX WAS TEARING THEIR FLESH
SCALED TITANS WERE WANDERING THE BLEAK LAND
THEIR RACE EXTINCT THOUGHT, THEIR GENES ARE WAITING FOR THE COMEBACK
FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME
GIGANT ANCESTORS
THEY ARE RUSHING TO US THROUGH THE FOG OF AGES
HAVE RECORDED THEIR NAMES AMONG THE IMMORTALS
YOU CAN BE A HERO IN A PAST ERA
COME WITH ME AND WE WILL FLY TO THE REPTILIAN AGE
THE FOAM OF THE ANCIENT OCEAN IS COLOURED RED WITH BLOOD
THE WILD SEA REPTILES ARE BITING EACH OTHER
GIGANT PTERADONONS RULE THE SKY
THEY PROUDLY LOOK DOWN AT THE LAND SEEKING PREY
FROM THE DEPTHS OF TIME
GIGANT ANCESTORS
THEY ARE RUSHING TO US THROUGH THE FOG OF AGES
HAVE RECORDED THEIR NAMES AMONG THE IMMORTALS
YOU CAN BE A HERO IN A PAST ERA
COME WITH ME AND WE WILL FLY TO THE REPTILIAN AGE
REPTILIAN AGE! A PAST ERA
REPTILIAN AGE! FROM THE DAWN OF EARTH
REPTILIAN AGE!
FORGOTTEN WORLDS
Here at Sputnikmusic we have an unwritten editorial rule not to get involved in politics (at least as much that’s enforceable on a site staffed mainly by college-age pinkos) so I’m going to more or less throw this out without making reference to left or right, conservative or liberal.
Hell, I’m not even American – I couldn’t really give a shit what Congress does so long as it doesn’t show up on my doorstep.
However, I find something profoundly odd in ‘The Sarah Palin Battle Hymn,’ and it’s more than what musicologists often refer to “just being self-evidently dreadful.” It’s the myopic adulation of a popular political figure – in this case the lovely Ms. Palin – and her elevation to almost prophet-like status in its lyrics. This is made implicit by the choice of music: it’s a countried-up variation on ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic‘ (often known as ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah), a Messianic patriot song from the American Civil War, now popularly used in religious services as well as Presidential inaugurations.
It would be easy to view ‘The Sarah Palin Battle Hymn’ as the work of a couple of mad oldies in a church somewhere, but it raises the wider point of how music is often used to serve a particular party-political agenda, and whether this is really something that we want to see more of. Many were similarly uncomfortable when, prior to the 2008 Presidential election, will.i.am and a cast of left-leaning musicians put together ‘Yes We…
I’m not somebody who’s prone to hyperbole, so I’ll say this in my own typically understated manner: this is the best thing ever to happen to me in my life.
Luckily, we’ve been supplied with a couple of advanced screenings from the tape, and today saw Dublin scuzz-pop outfit Squarehead premiere their cover of labelmatesAdebisi Shank‘s ‘(-_-)’ (in single quotes that almost looks like Napster propaganda.) It’s not just a straight cover though: the trio have added a sun-kissed vocal melody so that we can all now sing along to the tune without looking as demented as I usually do.
It’s with a heavy heart and jazz hands that we bid farewell today to two of our longest-serving staff members.
Channing Freeman and Nick Greer have given a lot to the site in their time here – Nick being one of the few to remain from the site’s launch – and we thank them for everything. They’ll still be back from time to time to contribute reviews and blogs, but for all intents and purposes they can now be considered Professors Emeritus of Sputnik Univ… sorry, that’s way too cheesy. They gone, basically.
Vicious Social Darwinists that we are, though, we’ve wasted little time in giving birth to a new litter of contributor-level and staff babies. We decided to break with convention on this occasion and actively began to advertise the position outside the existing community. The result was that we received over double the number of applications as we have in previous rounds of promotions.
Overwhelmed by the quality of applications put forward, we’ve decided to go ahead and bring in four new contributors (on top of the two added before Christmas) and five new staff members -three from the existing contributor pool and two who impressed us so much we decided to take a leap of faith and grandfather them in at the highest level.
We’d like to thank everybody who applied for both staff and contributor positions. We were pleasantly surprised at the consistently high standard of the applications and many of you can consider yourselves…
Watch Ezra Koenig, of Vampire Weekend, and both of The Black Keys slug it out for Stephen Colbert’s “Best Alternative Music Album” vote; the dubiously titled Grammy category introduced in 1991 to recognize the section of the music industry that existed “outside of the mainstream music consciousness”. Past winners include 7x platinum Parachutes and 8x platinum A Rush of Blood To The Head, both of Codplay’s wins to date, UK Albums Chart #1 Icky Thump, the third of three wins in five years for The White Stripes, and Radiohead’s 3x platinum OK Computer, platinum-within-a-week Kid A, and the self-released, 3,000,000+ units sold In Rainbows, amongst a host of other obscure, mega-selling worldwide phenomenons.
Chet Hanks, son of Oscar-winning actor Tom, is the latest celebrity offspring to try his hand at becoming a rapper. Hanks, rapping under the name Chet Haze, wisely sticks to the subjects he knows best. Not quite his cameo appearance in the recent Indiana Jones movie or the dastardly butler forgetting to fold his socks, but as a student at the somewhat prestigious Northwestern University in Chicago he’s clearly keen to show off his school spirit.
Haze’s debut release, ‘White and Purple (Northwestern Remix),’ is a reworking of Wiz Khalifa’s 2010 hit ‘Black and Yellow‘ – white and purple being the school’s colours. It’s a more or less straight re-working of the original, except with lyrics tailored to reflect the life of a rich kid living away from home for the first time. Think a clubbier Asher Roth without the accidental racism and you’re more or less there.
I haven’t been the nicest to Dallas Green over the years but I’ll be the first to tell you that he does one hell of a job on Canada’s first hip-hop anthem of the new year.
That’s right, I said hip-hop.
Last week Consequence of Sound premiered “Live Forever”, one half of Two Songs, the upcoming charity 12” by Shad and Dallas Green. Shad, for those of you who don’t know, is absolutely fucking awesome. Last year he put out TSOL, his third entry into the imaginary Canadian Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. Like Shad, TSOL is also fucking awesome.
Do you know what else is fucking awesome? “Live Forever”, which you can hear below.
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If you like what you hear and feel like supporting the Skate4Cancer you can pre-order Two Songs at MapleMusic. Act fast, though, because with a limited pressing of just 556 copies I imagine City & Colour fan girls will eat this up faster than any fat joke I can make.
