She & Him ‘Why Do You Let Me Stay Here’

The ‘blogsphere’ has been getting all over-excited about lady actor Zooey Deschanel and man music wotsit M.Ward, erm, making music. It’s not hard to hear why. The stupidly good-looking duo met making even more beautiful music for a film called ‘The Go-Getter’ in which young Zooey starred and the rest, as people like when to say when it’s late and they can’t think of anything clever, is history. Albeit very recent history.

Two points to make here, I think.

Zooey? What is going on with that name? Well… there’s a story in the paper today that, and I paraphrase here, parents are increasingly falling a long, long way, right from the very top in fact, of the stupid tree when it comes to naming offspring… It’s hard to fathom why you would punish your child with Samiul, Lora, Conna or An. There’s more than one Cam’ron in the UK… and there are apparently 23 versions of Isabelle (including Izzabella and Yzabel). Ten parents called their little girl Lily-, and yes, that’s not Lily-Rose, or Lily-May, just Lily hyphen. And a couple in New Zealand were stopped from calling their son 4Real because it contained a number. They called him Superman instead.

Second point? Completely forgotten. It’ll come to me.

More hear…
- Yes. They do have a MySpace
- Doesn’t look like debut album, ‘Volume 1′, has a UK release yet, but you can the thing on import for an unbelievable £7. That’s CD, posted to you, from America, £7. And who says the music industry is in trouble.

The Rolling Stones ‘She’s A Rainbow’

It’s not all new, new, new round these parts. We do like a bit of old, old, old. Ask anyone who knows me well, that’ll be Cuz, and he’ll tell you I’ve never been much of one for ‘old’ music.

I’ve always meant to. Just kind of never got round to it. Too busy filling up on the new stuff. Interestingly, The Maker had a nothing pre-1990 without a reference rule. So if we mentioned The Who we had to prefix it with sixties rockers, The Who… Ridiculous, but there go. Apparently ver kids wouldn’t know who The Who were.

So, The Stones then. The Sony ad isn’t the only one that’s used ‘She’s A Rainbow’, easily my favourite Stones song, and one of the my favourite ever songs. Ever. Apple used it for i-Macs, the ones with, wait for it, the rainbow of colours. I had grape, it’s all I could get in 1999 when I went freelance. It’s still going, if a little slow, I only replaced it year before last. Surely they’re not supposed to be built to last that long? Couple of months past the guarantee is the norm, right?

Anyway, waffling again. The point is Apple and Sony have used a great song by a band who just don’t need the cash when there’s a ton of great bands who do. See, bands are increasingly having to make cash from non-traditional sources, so surely these huge corps should be sticking some money back in by licensing music by new flesh.

And Sony really should know better what with being one of the remaining major labels. Couldn’t they find a band worthy of soundtracking plasticine rabbits among their roster who could do with a few quid?

Fair play to Trident gum who slapped a wad in The Crimea’s direction recently, hopefully that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And who knows, if advertisers start supporting new talent maybe we’ll stop fast forwarding through them on the old Sky+ and watch their adverts. How about advert breaks becoming the new MTV?

Just a thought.

Hot Club de Paris ‘Straight To Hell’

To cover The Clash you need two things. Kahunahs the size Wales or a musical death wish. The only other way you’ll get away with doing The Clash justice would be if you were actually The Clash. And that ain’t going to happen.

So, being a bit behind with listening (I have been slacking over the last couple of years, sorry) I have been doing my homework. I liked the Moshi compilation a lot so started rummaging through their back cat to find they had the fantastic Sukpatch onboard early doors. Sukpatch got me into a heap of trouble once. Got stuck at show in New York during CMJ and couldn’t, literally, make it to the Bowery in time for the ‘Patch. Slow cabs, too much traffic, massive queues, unreasonable bouncers and begging. Nothing. No big deal except Mike D, on whose Grand Royal label they were, paid for my flight specifically.

According to my rave review, they rocked. I suspect they probably did. It was the only time I reviewed a band I hadn’t seen. Honest. I’ll dig it out sometime.

Anyway, I found Hot Club de Paris while rummaging in Moshi Moshi’s drawers and also unearthed this cover of The Clash’s ‘Straight To Hell’ which is more than respectable. The Liverpool trio don’t try too hard which is probably the key to this charming performance. Me, I like it. Big ballards then.

More hear…
- Naturally, the old wotsit
- Debut album ‘Drop It Til It Pops’ from last October is going for an unbelievable £2.28 +p&p on Amazon Marketplace. Music has surely never been cheaper. We should really start a campaign… or a site that sells secondhand music. Hm. Thinking.

Elle S’appelle ‘Little Flame’

The end of the month sees the release of the Moshi Moshi Singles Club compilation. It’s a refreshingly good record and it’s giving me a proper headache. See, I’m reviewing it and my brief was to talk about the label, about why they’re special, and then focus on a couple of the tracks. On the face of it, not much of a problem.

The problem is, of the 14 tracks, perhaps four (a real turkey from Kate Nash included) aren’t so hot. The rest are un-put-downable. So I’m trying to choose two from Lykee Li (Swedish, cute, etc), Slow Club (junior Beautiful South), Pacific! (10cc!), The Wave Pictures (Richman meets Orange Juice/Velvets), Elle S’appelle (Altered Images), Friendly Fires (PSB)… oh, and Team Water Polo (The Killers got good) and Late of the Pier (early Human League)… I paraphrase of course, jus’ saving better lines for the review. Ahem.

What’s there not to like?

Oh, and I’ve just put my headphones back on to hear Matt and Kim’s “Silver Tiles” which I didn’t like on Saturday, but it’s sounding pretty damn good tonight… and it also appears I have neglected the very decent Breakbot, who sound like Justice doing wall of sound (or the other way round)…

Decisions decisions. I can’t even decide on a track to go here… what’s it to be? The old iTunes is on shuffle so I’ll post the next track up…

Reviewing music isn’t as easy as it used to be. Either that, or music has got a whole, whole lot better in the last five years.

More hear…
- Huzzah, someone finally with their own website. Here.
- And MySpace, natch. And another Myspace for the Singles Club.
- And there’s a free Moshi Moshi CD on the cover of this month’s Artrocker. There is.

The Crimea ‘Loop A Loop (Root Id Dub Remix)’

Forget about Radiohead, it’s bands like The Crimea who are the true champions of future music. More importantly, they’re the first band to have featured twice on MNFB. We should have a party or something. Or maybe I could just bang on for a bit… oh go on then…

As forward-thinking as Radiohead’s pay what you want scheme was, it’s going to be bands like The Crimea who will change the way things work. It has to be, because if they don’t they’ll have to get proper jobs.

The Crimea’s new single, like their album, is entirely free… in 12 or so versions, from a raft of MP3 blogs. And this happens because? This happens because the amazing ‘Loop A Loop’ has been licensed for use in a TV ad for Trident chewing gum.

Of course, in the old days it would have been a massive sell out, these days it’s just good sense. Funny how things change. See, the band not only get massive exposure and thousands of people asking, ‘what is that chewing gum song?’, they also get a healthy whack in the bank account… and best of all, no proper job.

There’s usually a Peel story for most things in life, and this is no exception. He was a man of principal and refused to do ads for years, then his kids went to university and that needed paying for somehow. Perhaps he didn’t need that swimming pool at Peel Acres, but hey, if Mr Sheen or baked beans are paying, what the heck, eh? Same idea.

I read an interesting piece somewhere or other of late in which it was suggested that historians will look back at the music industry in the 20th century and dismiss it as a blip, put it down to the business folk having collective brain-fade. People thought paying for bands to record and releasing albums was a viable model? My poor sides.

Oh, and you can call Radiohead as groundbreaking as you like, but anyone who downloaded the album for a couple quid soon discovered the payback when they were duly clobbered for £50 (that’s per ticket) to see them play live in big parks across Europe this summer. Just saying.

More Hear…
All human life is here, well, more remixes of ‘Loop A Loop’ than you can eat at one sitting anyway. Enjoy.