Here’s a clip of Werner Herzog getting shot during an interview with Mark Kermode. He seems to take it all in astonishingly good spirits. I like the Herzogian (?) poigniancy at the timing of the shooting, just after he says ‘Nobody cares about my films.’ WARNING: When showing the bullet wound he reveals some pretty swish purple boxer shorts.
And here’s a longer clip (20mins) of Werner eating his shoe. Don’t worry, he’s doing it for a perfectly good reason.
I was as shocked as anyone to learn of recent accusations of plagiarism levelled against Coldplay. After all, this is a band who came up with an album title as meaningful and imaginative as X+Y. Their bland reworking of ‘Computer Love’ ruined one of my all-time favourite Kraftwerk tracks, but that wasn’t plagiarism it was ’sampling’. The singer from the the Creaky Boards posted the video below outlining the similarities between his band’s ‘Songs I didn’t write’ and Coldplay’s recent Apple ad soundtrack.
For some strange reason these tunes are so similar, yet I like the Creaky Boards one and hate the Coldplay one. I suppose I find lyics about teen angst a tad more compelling than some internalized Impreal nostaliga dirge.
Much as I’d love to add another reason to my extensive list of reasons to hate Coldplay, I’m not entirely convinced that they nicked this. Musical coincidences like this happen quite frequently.
The Flaming Lips and Cat Stevens
I think the Lips acknowleged that ‘Fight Test’ sounds like ‘Father and Son’ by Cat Stevens but I don’t think they ripped him off. It’s just a coincidence.
Also, Cat looks remakably like Wayne Coyne in that clip
Belle & Sebastian and Cliff Richard
As far as I know I’m the only person who’s noticed any similarity between the choruses for these tunes. But then nobody listens to Cliff so that’s not so surprising.
Silence vs. Silence
John Cage and Mike Batt went to court to settle a dispute over plagiarism of silence. The court heard performances of each silent workand in the end the composers managed to reach an amicable settlement. (I won’t waste your time with youtube clips of this.)
Newton vs. Leibniz
This isn’t music-related but it is another interesting case of synchronicity. Leibniz and Newton both invented calculus at the same time, independently of eachother. Newton set up a kangaroo court that stiched up poor old Liebniz, which resulted in him being ostricized from polite society until his death.
From one of the best bands of all time, this should be on anyone’s list of all time funny videos . Oddly prescient in its depiction of a KISS-inspired school of rock (but this is far more amusing than that dreadful TV show).
And here’s Yo La Tengo preforming ‘Today is the Day’ from their inspired Summer Sun, with a great introduction from John McEnroe. (By the way, the album version sounds nothing like this.)
It’s been a while since I’ve gone out on a limb and bought something on impulse, but two Harry Nilsson albums on once CD for three quid as pretty hard to resist. I picked up Skidoo and The Point in Fopp on Thursday and the CD hasn’t left my discman since. The beats and keyboard lines on Me and My Arrow are decades ahead of their time, crying out to be sampled.
In fact, that’s exactly what Blackalicious did to produce this this juicy rump-shaker.
Both of the Nilsson albums have the charm and humor that you rarely see in comtemporory music these days. On ‘Cast and Crew’ Nilsson sings the credits for the Skidoo movie. ‘I will Take You There’ and ‘Are You Sleeping’ are two classic-cuts of infectious late sixties/early seventies string-laden pop. The Point is an alegorical children’s fable written by Nilsson about a boy named Oblio who is banished to the Pointless Forest only to learn that everything has a point. The narration is class, you can even hear him turn the pages while he’s reading. It’s hard to imagine anyone making records as much fun as these two albums nowadays, but who knows - maybe everyone’s ready to lighten up a little.
One of my favourites from the Beach Boy’s excellent 20/20. I love the surpise echo effect on the ‘deep and wide’ part around the 1.46 mark. There is an interesting story about this song. Brian Wilson actually wrote it for Redwood (who would later become Three Dog Night), but the rest of the Beach Boys had no intention of letting Brian write for other bands.
According to Chuck Negron: “It all came to a head…when Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine came to the studio and heard our version of ‘Time To Get Alone’…They manoeuvred Brian into the control booth and reduced him to tears. It was a cruel and pathetic scene. Danny, Cory and I were in the studio and could see it all happening through the control-booth window. It was as if Brian had turned into a little boy. The conversation appeared quiet and calm, but we could tell it was emotional and intense. The others were doing most of the talking, like overbearing, controlling parents. Brian would move away, and they would block his escape. We couldn’t hear what was being said, but I think a good lip-reader would have picked up something like, ‘We don’t give a shit about these guys, and we want those songs for us.’ We could actually feel Brian crumbling, and when he came out of the booth, a tear dropped down his cheek. His head was lowered and his shoulders sagged. It was the body language of a child who had just been scolded and punished. And this brilliant musical icon - whose songs defined one generation and influenced another - weepingly told us, ‘We can’t do this. I have to give the songs to them. They’re family and I have to take care of my family. They want the songs. I’ll give you any amount of money you want to finish an album, but I can’t produce it. They won’t let me.’”
It’s saddening that such a beautiful rendition of this song can have such torment behind it. As with most of the Beach Boys work, there’s a lot of sorrow behind the splendor. Brian’s autobiography Wouldn’t it be Nice is one of the most harrowing music memoirs I’ve ever read, but at it’s core it’s an inspirational story of redemption.
Not content with being in one great band, Letitia Sadier now fronts two. Monade’s third album Monstre Cosmic is as wonderful as anything she has done previously. Beguiling melodies, exotic rhythms, complex harmonies - it’s all there. Easily one of the best realeases of 2008 so far.
I would also add though, that Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor has had very few Platinum selling albums…
In fairness to Marv, he handles the whole thing with a nice big smile on his face and he does get really close to the bull with the two darts that bounce out.
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Cinema, Funny (Haha), Jimteresting, TV | Tagged: Werner Herzog, Mark Kermode, Shooting, Interview, Purple Underpants | 
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