Covering a kids TV theme is a tried and tested way to attract a little nostalgic attention. Whole  shoddy albums have been based on the idea that the theme tunes we sung as kids, week after week, we’ll buy as adults. I like a bit of nostalgia, but I’ve no desire to listen to Matthew Sweet sing the theme tune to Scooby Doo. Though, if there’s an original recording of Scatman Crothers singing Hong Kong Phooey floating about, I’ll take it.

So, this short, melancholy interpretation of the Flintstones song may not bring a tear to my jaded eye, but it does pull off the trick of transcending it’s gimmicky roots. I’ve searched around and there are a LOT of Flintstones covers out there, but no info on this one. I can point you to the site where I found it. The blog is inactive, due to the owner’s book coming out, but the links still work: http://www.aprilwinchell.com/ I can also recommend  the version of Darth Vader’s theme, on ukelele and penny whistle, that can be found there. Plus, if you’re into musicians recording their hits in German, you’ll hit paydirt by clicking that link.

Anyone think Ricky Gervais in the animated show bears a passing resemblance to Fred? James Gandolfini definitely does and Adult Swim hit the nail on the head with their  Dabba Don episode of Harvey Birdman-Attorney At Law:

We are about due a Flintstones re-boot, re-imagining, reworking and re-haul in 3D. Maybe that’s what the piano player was thinking about.

Thanks for listening!

Head Chef

Here’s R2-D2 Dance Like a Horse, in which Frank really is twirling an R2-D2 collectable figure on a piece of string:

And here’s Frank covering The Fall, with David Soul on keyboards and what looks like Nicolas Sarkozy on bass:

Frank’s alternate universe was a uniquely absurdist domestic Northern throwback that pre-dated Graham Fellows’ John Shuttleworth by several years. Both were singer-songwriters with minor indie/punk hits in the late 70′s, and both later segued into deliberately half-arsed synth accompaniments, although John preferred Yamaha to Casio. Irrespective of instrument, both men were hilarious, but Frank was the trailblazer. Here’s a Jon Ronson article from the end of last month, celebrating his spell in Frank’s ‘Oh Blimey Big Band’ as a prelude to one of Frank’s last shows at the Tate Britain, and here’s a heartfelt obituary from Rohdri Marsden. Both paint a picture of a comic genius in his own crazy world, a man we need to remember and celebrate.

To this end, in another startlingly hypocritical twist on my part after my previous slagging of the RATM vs Joe McElderry Twitterfight, I’m urging you to get behind a Facebook push to make Frank’s World Cup song a posthumous No.1. It’s called ‘Three Shirts on my Line’ and will be available from iTunes from Monday. Here’s a taster

Come on! The least this man deserves after his decades of surreal effort is to beat bloody James Corden in the charts. Join the Facebook Group and Twitter Page and wait till the call – it might not be Monday, they might want to save it till the World Cup Final if we get there (ha!) – then buy! buy! buy! to say bye-bye to the wonderful man that was Chris Sievey, aka Frank Sidebottom.

+++UPDATE: 24.06.10 It turns out that Chris was a bit of a ‘spend it while you’ve got it’ man, and died without a penny. Consequently he was facing a pauper’s grave until Twitter stepped in with a campaign to raise funds for a decent send-off. Check out the official Facebook page here for details on how to donate. They’re over fourteen grand already+++

+++UPDATE: 28.06.10 The funeral appeal has closed having raised £21,000. All extra funds will go to cancer charities. Well done everybody+++

After the Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters triple punch I wanted to be a stuntman, then an actor, then a director. I was the kid with a Super-8 camera filming a confused bunch of friends and telling them where to stand. Later, I’d hire clunky VHS cameras from Radio Rentals and confuse a different bunch of friends. I was the kid who begged the closest kid with a VCR to show me Jaws after he’d recorded the television premiere. He wouldn’t. A couple of years after that I finally taped a TV showing, but had to split it over two tapes and accidentally erased the first tape. So, I’ve seen the last hour of Jaws many more times than the first. After I left school I worked on 16mm films and community video schemes and then on to film school. I’ve also arranged for my body to be fed to Great Whites after my death. Ok, that’s not true, but you get the picture. And let’s clear something up here while we’re jabbering about Jaws, the special effects (apart from maybe the shots of the shark leaping out of the water and flopping around on the boat) are not bad. Most of the time the shark is on screen it is a terrifying, hardly glimpsed, unstoppable maneater. Totally believable.

So, I’ve made the pilgrimage to Martha’s Vineyard, where the film was shot, bought the t-shirt and got a bit emotional on the Universal Tram Tour when that big hunk of rubber shark popped out of the water. And how did I celebrate my recent 41st birthday? A shark dive. Spielberg took a flawed and deeply troubled production and somehow created a masterpiece. He also changed my life.

There’s one part of Jaws that everyone of my generation knows and has probably imitated at some point: the “der-dumm” that signals the presence of the shark. You can’t talk about Jaws without talking about John Williams’ soundtrack, and the piece here - ”Out To Sea” – captures all the exhilaration and trepidation of the three main characters (four, if you count the shark) as they’re drawn farther away from shore in their battle with the beast. Williams uses harps, bells, and sea shanties, along with the “der-dumm”, as a terrified Chief Brody, an over confident Matt Hooper, and a stoic Quint, unable to process that there could be shark out there that can beat him, head out to face their fears…oh, and six year old me in the middle of it all.

Happy Birthday Jaws!

Personally, computers have brought about a major change in the way I approach and listen to music. Before, I would read the magazine interviews (a witty one helped) and check out the band’s “look”; then I’d read various reviews, and if that was enough I’d buy the CD/vinyl. I would then listen to it while studying the cover art and lyrics and, if a band passed all these tests, I was then a convert and am probably still playing it today.

Looking back, I was pretty uptight about what did or didn’t get through, but today it’s a different story. I have a vast collection of faceless, nameless music that I enjoy simply for what it is. I almost always listen to songs on shuffle. My iTunes leaps from Arvo Part to The Housemartins to B-Movie radio ads in way that I find endlessly entertaining. I think it’s a healthier approach and partly the reason bands and record companies are flailing around trying to work out how to sell music to people who don’t care what sort of haircut the lead singer has. It seems somehow more honest to me, and no longer am I put off an artist by insignificant details.

Which brings me to this band, and I’m presuming it’s a band: Get Well Soon. They had a song, “Witches! Witches! Rest Now In The Fire”, on a free Word Magazine CD that I liked but never bothered to find out who it was. After downloading the album “Vexations” from iTunes and writing this, I now know precisely this about them:

1: They sound like Scott Walker mixed with a bit of Ennio Morricone, Elbow and John Barry

2: The iTunes artwork is an oil painting of guy pulling at his face as it melts.

Sold! I don’t actually want to know anymore. I like it and that’s enough.

They have two albums available on iTunes right now. If you like the sound of this, go check them out.

Thanks for listening

Head Chef

P.S After looking for an image to go with the piece, I found out they are from Germany.

As the father of a five-year-old who’s on a major Star Wars kick, I’ve loved re-visiting the first films. God knows how many times I’ve seen A New Hope. I wore a VHS tape out that I’d recorded off of the TV in the 80′s, yet it never gets old. That’s why George is smiling in that picture. The forthcoming Blu-Ray release will be enough to get me to shell out again on films I’ve bought in three different formats.

So, Happy 66th Birthday George. Here’s family band The Bordens covering the Star Wars theme in their own inimitable style. My favorite bit? Mama Borden, on keyboards, launching into the cantina theme and then giving up halfway through and playing the sand-dance.

Pull the ears off a Gundark and enjoy!

Yessir, I remember when lil’ Chef came to me back in ’78. He’d seen some Eyetalian movie with a couple a’ spidey-legged continental types doin’ the big jiggy and wanted to get a bit of the action for his birthday – poppin’ his cherry for the big 1-0. I had to set him straight. I said ”nossir, I ‘aint no whoremonger” and gave him a clip for his trouble but he said “no, no, Old Man Roomy, I don’t wanna do it with a lady. I wanna do it with Godzilla.”

Indeedy, young Chef had got it into his mind to mate with a block-bustin’, moth-wrestlin’ alien T-Rex and no mistake. I told him I didn’t have access to no fire-breathin’ demon, but he told me to rustle up a rubber suit and stick it on any ol’ female and that’d do. So long as her fins lit up when he poked her in the mimsy. 

 So I found me a woman – Madge, her name was, from down the Bingo – and I gave her the suit to live with for a few days, just to get the feel of it, y’know. I gave her ten bucks too, with another fifty on a promise if she showed lil’ Chef a fine time. Anyhow, turns out she died that night testing the suit on her husband. He poked her in the mimsy and she was fried by her own fins. Fire guys put it down to loose wires, and the fact that she was 72 with a dicky ticker. The husband didn’t notice she’d died, though, for a day or two. Said he thought she was just having a long lie down. Jesus, when I got that suit back it stank so much of Madge’s ripe butt I had to throw the whole enchilada in the garbage.

Lil’ Chef was mighty disappointed, but I had me a back-up plan. I knew he was obsessed with that animal TV show All Creatures Great and Small, starring Doctor Who Jim Davidson – ‘specially the scenes where the guy’s got his arm up a cow’s steamy ass. So I got him a cute lil’ Fresian by the name o’ Daisy. Daisy n’ Daley. It was Kismet.

So the next Sunday’s ’lil Chef’s birthday and I go round his house with David Essex. Dave’s a top guy, and owed me a thousand bucks for a horny badger, so he’d agreed to distract the oldies with an acappella rendition of  ’Silver Dream Machine’ in Head Chef’s kitchen. Meanwhile I was pushin’ Daisy into the lounge where the birthday boy was waitin’. I tell ya, when their eyes met it was like a Kentucky lightnin’ storm. Turns out I’d timed it to perfection, ’cause just then All Creatures Great and Small came on the TV and lil’ Chef leapt on Daisy like a mongoose on a cobra, bitin’, scratchin’, wormin’ his way round her back end like a devil possessed by some insatiable bovine lust.

The whole thing might have lasted only a minute, but it was a beautiful spectacle I’ll hold in my mind’s eye till the day I die. Heck, I even taped it so I could let it’s wonder revive me whenever this crazy world layed me low, so go ahead, knock yourself out, sit back and listen with respect & awe to the precious moment our lil’ Head Chef became a man.

Happy Birthday big fella, and be speakin’ to y’all again soon. Crooooon.

Ok, cheesy title, but then I did turn 40 last month and am allowed a little cheese, just as I’m allowed a mini-midlife crisis crush on this half Welsh, half Greek pop diva who looks like CZJ (even though she does say so herself) and sounds like Robbie Williams channeling Kate Bush. The lyrics can be self-referential to the point of alienation, but they lay bare her ambitions and insecurites with a brutality and intelligence that make Pixie Lott and Ellie Goulding sound like the overproduced simpering starlets they are.

She is Marina Diamandis, aka ‘Marina and The Diamonds’. Her debut album ’The Family Jewels’ is supposedly tipped to hit big at next year’s Brits and she made her ’Later…’ debut this week alongside Paul Weller. Her label – Warners – is certainly hyping her to the skies, bombarding music bloggers like workmate Music Like Dirt with remix after remix till they capitulate, but is the hype justified? Well, yes:

So, that may or may not have been a song about the material temptations of the rational world (“the unforsaken road”) at the expense of instinctive freedom; a plea for identity wrapped in a handy Jungle Book analogy that could not have been written by anyone else to my knowledge. And then she writes what she claims to be a paean to US culture that somehow comes out as a total evisceration of everything American:

She looks amazing but different in both videos, as any star should, but it’s her purposefully untrained voice that is both her stength and weakness. It has too many gratuitous quirks and affectations to be unequivocally loved, and yet its androgyny allows her to counterpoint her own angelic backing vocals with a muscular swoop that sets her apart from faux soul sirens like Paloma Faith. It is a uniquely contemporary British voice that’s unafraid to indulge the masculine  - hence all the Kate Bush comparisons – but I actually think it’s one better suited to power pop like this eleventh hour addition to the album, written as a riposte to Mowgli’s Road:

She’s already admitted a musical admiration for Britney and I can’t listen to this without picturing Marina leading a fully choreographed phalanx of britgirls, pouting round playgrounds & prancing down High Streets, their desires and diseases brazenly displayed. Like ‘Hollywood’, it’s a song that both hates and celebrates, approaching 21st Century culture from a point deep within it yet to one side, transforming her puzzlement & dismay into pure drive.   

And, finally, here’s her appearance on ‘Later…’ performing what she considers to be her most mature song, ‘I Am Not a Robot’. The performance lays out all the bad – the vibrato vocal tics, the inability to fill the stage, the nervous inconsistency so at odds with her stridence in the studio - but there’s an energy and honesty that’s irresistible. And she really gets into it toward the end.

So she isn’t perfect, but I think that’s her point. Maybe she’ll never be the star Warners want her to be, and maybe sometimes she can try too hard to be quirky, but I’ll take her normality over any sanitised supposedly independent pop product you can name. She isn’t trying to be Norah Jones or Lady Gaga. She’s Marina Diamandis, and, under a British sky, she outshines them all.

Aside from the obvious titters at foreigners trying to speak English and singing a song apparently dedicated to mops, I’m guessing that it’s a reference to the Beatles and their “Moptop” haircuts, though maybe the group just really liked mops. Regardless, this is a great snap shot of a time when English music conquered the globe. While British bands were invading overseas territories with a speed that would have made Queen Victoria proud, young Japanese musicians were taking the music scene of the west and filtering it through a unique mix of influences to come up with something of their own. Not a copy, more like Frankenstein’s musical monster.

This track seems to take a bit of Them, The Beatles, and The Doors, then binds it all together with a lyric that has been slightly lost in translation. Give them a break though, imagine The Rolling Stones trying to sing in Japanese.

I hope they had fun, because it sounds like they’re having a ball. Maybe they’re still around (any experts on Japanese Psychedelic/garage rock out there?) but I can find virtually no information on this album and I’ve forgotten which blog I nabbed it from. It just doesn’t seem to be around anymore.

There’s more of the same here and the last track on that blog compilation, ‘Hey Chance’ by Takeshi Terauchi and Bunnys, is also worth a listen. In fact, I’ll give Takeshi Terauchi the post he deserves at some point in the future. I love his surf guitar playing and, at 71, he’s still recording, but that’s another post. For now, let your hair down and be a mop. Subarashi desunne?

Sayonara

Head Chef