Randomiser #9: 9 January 2007
Today's song: A House, "I Am Afraid"
Hey, it's the first band I ever saw live! Actually, I suppose that's not strictly true, since the first band I ever saw live would have been their support act, the Jennifers, a teenage indie band remembered mainly for being a proto-version of Supergrass.
This is from "I Am The Greatest", the album which includes their best-known song "Endless Art." It's actually a fantastic, and hugely underrated album. It's clever, it's witty, it's tuneful, it's imaginatively arranged... it sold fuck all. It's an album worth tracking down, and it's a little unfortunate that "Endless Art" gave the impression that they were a novelty act of some sort. Watching the video (and you can see clips here), you could mistake them for a university-level version of the Barenaked Ladies, and they're really much more than that. "I Am Afraid" is one of their best songs - essentially just a resigned list of things they're afraid of, which seems to encompass virtually everything - and more people should have heard it.
Also:
- Morrissey plans to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. He mentioned this back at the time of last year's show, when the UK entered Daz Sampson's appalling "Teenage Life", a record which deserves to be locked in a lead capsule and buried with the nuclear waste.
Not surprisingly, Daz lost, since the Eurovision Song Contest has actually risen above that sort of thing in the last few years, with the occasional record that's actually memorable for the right reasons. For example, here's last year's winner, the ridiculous Viking rock band Lordi. Apparently they're big in Finland. (And how could you not love the band who released "The Devil is a Loser" and "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock"?) The 2004 winner, by the Ukraine's answer to Shakira, was rather good too. (Shame about the 45 seconds of random trumpet noise at the start of the video, but that's eastern Europe for you.)
And who could forget last year's breathtaking effort from Lithuania, We Are The Winners, which defies description. Although it's even better when you find out that they're a supergroup of Lithuanian indie acts. A UK equivalent would have been fronted by someone like Damon Albarn.
I'm not sure Morrissey is quite the man for this sort of thing. He did a Eurovision pastiche for a video last year, and it's, er, very seventies. It's also the sort of thing that would never get past the Song for Europe vote in a million years, and I can't imagine him writing anything that would. Why does he want to do this, anyway?
Hey, it's the first band I ever saw live! Actually, I suppose that's not strictly true, since the first band I ever saw live would have been their support act, the Jennifers, a teenage indie band remembered mainly for being a proto-version of Supergrass.
This is from "I Am The Greatest", the album which includes their best-known song "Endless Art." It's actually a fantastic, and hugely underrated album. It's clever, it's witty, it's tuneful, it's imaginatively arranged... it sold fuck all. It's an album worth tracking down, and it's a little unfortunate that "Endless Art" gave the impression that they were a novelty act of some sort. Watching the video (and you can see clips here), you could mistake them for a university-level version of the Barenaked Ladies, and they're really much more than that. "I Am Afraid" is one of their best songs - essentially just a resigned list of things they're afraid of, which seems to encompass virtually everything - and more people should have heard it.
Also:
- Morrissey plans to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. He mentioned this back at the time of last year's show, when the UK entered Daz Sampson's appalling "Teenage Life", a record which deserves to be locked in a lead capsule and buried with the nuclear waste.
Not surprisingly, Daz lost, since the Eurovision Song Contest has actually risen above that sort of thing in the last few years, with the occasional record that's actually memorable for the right reasons. For example, here's last year's winner, the ridiculous Viking rock band Lordi. Apparently they're big in Finland. (And how could you not love the band who released "The Devil is a Loser" and "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock"?) The 2004 winner, by the Ukraine's answer to Shakira, was rather good too. (Shame about the 45 seconds of random trumpet noise at the start of the video, but that's eastern Europe for you.)
And who could forget last year's breathtaking effort from Lithuania, We Are The Winners, which defies description. Although it's even better when you find out that they're a supergroup of Lithuanian indie acts. A UK equivalent would have been fronted by someone like Damon Albarn.
I'm not sure Morrissey is quite the man for this sort of thing. He did a Eurovision pastiche for a video last year, and it's, er, very seventies. It's also the sort of thing that would never get past the Song for Europe vote in a million years, and I can't imagine him writing anything that would. Why does he want to do this, anyway?
posted by Paul O'Brien at 6:10 pm
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