For the past month and a half or so I’ve been in the sticks of North Goa with just a 3G modem for internet, the trade off being that I get to cycle about like a mad fool for hours everyday in the sunshine and the salty air with house music blasting in my earphones and occasionally I get to take photographs like the one above. Fun!
There have been a few close calls while cycling about though and last week I was almost run down by a local bus with a large JESUS SAVES! logo on the back and a small, maniacal driver in the front. Almost.
That would have been the most ironic road death ever but I digress. When I haven’t been doing permanent damage to my ear drums with house music this album from a few years back called Leave It All Behind by the American-Dutch group The Foreign Exchange has been on a loop on my iPod.
Some would say that is way too over produced but this has to be one of the smoothest and most delightful sounding R&B albums I’ve heard in a long time and is even better than their next album Authenticity, which came out last year. This track is called All Or Nothing/Coming Home To You. Enjoy!
So this morning, while I was stuck in traffic on Valentine’s day or as I like to call it VD (coz i’m cool like that yo) I saw a guy driving to work in a bright green shirt with an equally bright yellow tie on and I thought ‘Theres a man that definitely had Love Machine by The Miracles playing in his head as he got dressed in front of the mirror today.’
So, in honour of green shirted, yellow tied going to work and getting his love game on guy I present to you Love Machine which has to rate in my book as one of the best ever doin’ it songs, specially the starting few seconds (which is all the time I need ladies…)
You can steal the MP3 from the internets here and get your own sexy, sexy moves on to the stylin’ sounds of this motown classic.
The hair, the clothes, the moves, the make-up and of course the track are all ingredients in the awesome sauce that is this video that you will be watching on a loop for hours.
The track is ‘Gare du Nord’ by Carte Blanche from the album Black Billionaires.
So. The year has scampered by like a rabbit and the temperature has started to drop down into the single digits once again. With the transition to writing work as my bread & butter now almost done and an output of up to five thousand words or more on a good day to be able to keep body and soul together I just haven’t felt like updating this site. Also I have been travelling around a bit. (The photographs are on Flickrhere) Recently the hosting and domain for this site were about to expire and instead of renewing both for a year I thought I’d go nuts and pay for two years at once.
Cuz it’s how I roll bitches!
In truth though, hard as it is to believe, this drivel has gotten me a few writing gigs, some of which might work out to be quite lucrative in the future, or at least that’s what they told me.. (Why do I feel like those cartoon characters that realise they’ve been had and then their head turns into a donkey head?)
So, I thought that since I’m paying good money for this damn site I might as well update it with more self-indulgent lameness that no one reads. So here goes….
First up is the song, Faster from the second album by American artiste Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid: Suites II and III released earlier this year. Inspired by the classic sci-fi film Metropolis, this has to be one of my most favourite albums of the year. With styles that are all over the place from funk to R&B and just flat-out pop songs, all brilliantly produced and with Monáe’s supremely confident vocals it just works, much like Outkast’s SpeakerBoxx/The Love Below album from 2003 did. A couple of the tracks like Cold War are distinctly Gnarls Barkley-esque which is high praise in my book. Other stand-outs include Wondaland, Tightrope and Locked Inside.
I thought ArchAndroid would just be something light and fun to listen to (and dance like a mad fool to) till Cee-Lo’s new album The Lady Killer came out but the more I listen to it the more it grows on me and when Lady Killer finally did come out last month it just didn’t measure up to his previous work with Danger Mouse as Gnarls Barkley. Or to this album in fact, not by far…
A friend recently revealed that she writes some pretty risqué prose that she would rather not be revealed as the author of. (So we shall just call her ‘Emm‘)
She has allowed me to post one of the more sober pieces that she wrote (which is still pretty racy and may cause some dryness of the mouth in anyone who reads it)
It also reminded of the equally hot song above. This is Use Me by Bill Withers. Fiona Apple did a cover of it that was perhaps even better than the original here but more on that some other time.
Get the MP3 for the song here. Hat-tip to ‘Emm‘, your talents never cease to surprise..
Feeler in Dreams.
There was life and it grew though the mold in the carpet.
The air in the tiny one room apartment hung heavy, reeking of musk and stale cigarette smoke that gathered around the cobwebs forming clouds. Tiny beams of sunlight that fluttered through thick, light retrenching curtains were a stage for dust particles to do their shimmy.
In spite of the revelry of gloom, she slept open-eyed, staring at the ceiling that was peeling away like her mind.
The bathrobe was worn so much it became her skin. Stripping it away meant peeling away her skin. Eventually, it meant death. She was a figure of doom that was rife and waiting to burst. The bed was her stagnant pond, she the algae. Floating silently, not wanting to reach shore, instead exist lifelessly through just breathing. She licked her dry lips like a serpent and swallowed her saliva and lit cigarettes.
She existed but only in space.
She waited for sleep, where the clown visited her with his cherub like face, painted in colours myriad. He changed his costumes to suit her fantasies and sometimes his soft elbows were cased in silk shirts like concierges. The services he offered to her were those of amusement, shock, anger and bitterness.
The choice was unlimited, like the colours on his face.
As sleep cajoled her today, he came to visit with boots and cape. He told her he liked how she smelled. Maybe it was vanilla, a flavour of ice cream she loved as a child. He then asked if he could hold her. Today the passion was not there, as it was occupied by surprise. She allowed, was weary and fell asleep. He then slowly started to pleasure her. He touched her boy chest and felt the ribs that knocked on the skin so sharp. He trailed his soft chubby hands over to her crab shell rib cage, which beckoned to rude hips. Then he felt her moist insides and touched them very gently. She woke up and didn’t want him to play the feeler in dreams today.
She protested, her struggle was soft against him, almost whimpering. He rocked her like a baby and let her wake up.
So people constantly send me links to music and email me tracks that I am going to absolutely ‘lurrve’ (yes, spelt that way) and despite the fact that I am flattered that they took the effort for the most part my general reaction is Meh!
Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I just don’t get the music that those crazy kids are listening to these days but yesterday that changed. I was IM’ed a track that saved my frakkin’ lame-ass weekend and has been on single repeat on the iPod and the MacBook for most of last night and all of today. The big THX rated sub-woofer that sits at my feet has never been happier (Note to self: Stop anthropomorphising objects. They hate it!)
Despite its distinctly French sound it is actually by a German duo called Sirirusmo and Dana and it is called Gummiband, which means rubberband in some language according to the Google.
The first comment on the Youtube page on which I heard this song went something like ‘If this song went on for 12 hours I would never have a bad day ever again.’
I totally agree. If this track doesn’t make you want to get up and shake your ass then you are dead inside.
Jack Johnson’s new album To The Sea was just released and its more of the same mellow sounds, he doesn’t cover much new ground here and these tracks could just as easily have been off pretty much any of his previous albums. Some would call this album middle-of-the-road and non-offensive derisively and they would have a point. If you are looking for artistic progression you’re going to have to keep looking, there’s none of that here. This track in particular, ‘My Little Girl’ is indicative of most of the album, simple if jaded lyrics and all.
But it isn’t all bad and I’m just happy to have new driving music that helps keep thoughts of vehicular homicide at bay. Honestly.
I also got sort of suckered into going to watch the new action film starring Angelina Jolie, SALT and here are some things I would rather do than watch that film again.
1> Be kicked really hard in my nuts by every single person in the cinema hall that night.
2> Be slapped really hard in the face by every single person in the cinema hall that night.
3> Listen to an entire Black Eyed Peas song.
4> Listen to Bono spew bullshit about starving kids in Africa for the duration of a Black Eyed Peas song.
This is one of them. Its a track called Swing, off Zero 7′s new album, Yeah Ghost. Even though the album is sort of all over the map in terms of style and noteven half as brilliant as their previous effort (2006′s ‘The Garden’ which featured José González and Sia from Sia & Sophie) it still has a few single-worthy tracks like this one and ‘Medicine Man’. It may not be a great album but at least there’s some jewels in there.
So, when the heat, the dust, the frakkin power-point presentations in the year 2010, the script-writers that throw hissy-fits and the less-than-ideal working environment get to me I turn up the iPod, listen to the steel drums and the AIR like vocals in this track and do deep breathing. Try it, Ihaven’t gone apeshit.
A couple of people have complained that all I have been posting for a while now are crappy music video links so here goes one last post before what I promise will be a full, angry letter to the internets type post about things that are eating my lunch, with the usual generous portions of cursing and vitriol.
In the meantime, enjoy this Scottish Anthem ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers from their 1988 album Sunshine Over Leith. I cannot explain how much fun it is to break into the chorus of this song at the top of your voice, in public, preferably in a heavy, butchered Scottish accent with an equally talentless friend harmonising with you. Joy!
You can then relax in the smug satisfaction of having disrespected another proud and historically rich culture by reducing it to a catchy song sung a cappella in a bad accent.
Scotland. CHECK!
Get the MP3 for your iPod here and sing it aloud with the voices in your head.
