LJB July mixtape: Hey There's a Dog Over There!

The ever-missed John Peel used to theorise that any record with birdsong on it would probably be automatically good. (The title track of Bridget St. John's Ask Me No Questions, which Peelie produced and released on his Dandelion label, even takes a break at the end for an interval of church bells and hand-picked birdsong clips from the BBC Archives).

i sort of feel the same about records with the sound of barking dogs on. i will pretty much always listen to a track that features a dog barking, even if it is completely gratuitous, silly or unrelated to the song. This holds true even if the dog is hamfistedly sampled (DMX), not even a real dog (Slim Gaillard), or even both at the same time (the truly egregious Woofers and Tweeters Ensemble). i'm still not quite sure why this is.

Anyway, July's mixtape is entitled Hey There's a Dog Over There!¹ and each of the 20 tracks feature either real or simulated woofing. Weirdly, i've got enough of this sort of stuff to make another mixtape again of it, so i might drop that some time in the future.

Click track names for individual files or the link at the bottom for the mixed version.

HELLO RILEY

1. M.I.A. – "Bamboo Banga" (from Kala, 2007)
Dog action? Some barking samples, most notably the confusingly sexy bit where she sings about "doggin' on the bonnet of your red Honda" (blimey) and a vicious-sounding snarl abruptly breaks the reverie.

2. Bilge Pump – "Sling Yr Hook" (Let Me Breathe, 2002)
Dog action? Full-on free jazz barking solo from 01:42 to close.

3. Frank Zappa – "Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel" (Broadway the Hard Way, 1988)
Dog action? In the form of Obvious Samples played as percussion on what is presumably some sort of early sampling keyboard, presumably by Bobby Martin, live in concert. Pretty silly.

4. Jane's Addiction – "Been Caught Stealing" (Ritual de lo Habitual, 1990)
Dog action? Iconic. They open the tune and attempt to keep the beat over the first few bars, with varying success.

5. Black Sheep – "Similak Child" (A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, 1991)
Dog action? Wins extra credit for actually interpolating the barking into the beat as a percussion instrument, as two dogs stage an enthusiastic bark-off.

6. De La Soul – "Dog Eat Dog" (Stakes Is High, 1996)
Dog action? Freeform barking underpins chorus and parts of verses, emphasising cannibalistic nature of rap game.

7. The Mighty Underdogs – "Doglude" (Droppin' Science Fiction, 2008)
Dog action? Rhythmical, dense, layered - total dog win basically. Even a series of epic howls to conclude in proper style.

8. Slim Gaillard Trio – "Serenade to a Poodle" (1947-1951, 2002)
Dog action? Slim is evidently pissing himself all the way through this tune, possibly at the instigation of questionable dog impersonator Jim Hawthorne, whose overdone barking refrains turn frankly ridiculous by the end of the track. But in kind of a good way.

9. Le Tigre – "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" (Le Tigre, 1999)
Dog action? Dogs contribute jubilant barking coda to discussion of art cineaste reputation.

10. Tom Waits – "Buzz Fledderjohn" (Orphans: Brawlers, 2006)
Dog action? Providing rough bluesy ambience to a tune that could well have been recorded in a barnyard.

11. Cassetteboy – "Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs Oh Yeah Dogs" (The Parker Tapes, 2002)
Dog action? Dog sample nirvana. "No cats here, of course..."

12. Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown – "Alligator Eating Dog" (No Looking Back, 1992)
Dog action? Fearsome introductory growling totally misrepresents really rather jolly song.

13. Contrastate – "Poodles in Practice Dress At the Battersea Dogs Opera" (Four Years In 30 Seconds : A Collection Of Music From Around The World, 2007)
Dog action? Fucking weird spoken word/noise action. Dogs saturate its 34 seconds. The second half of the parent album also features it (along with all the other tracks) played backwards. Damn, last.fm, you don't half dish out some fucked-up recommendations sometimes.

14. Cassetteboy – "Yeah Duggan... Austin, TX" (Mick's Tape, 2005)
Dog action? Backing up The World's Whitest Rapper as he pays tribute to the dog in question.

15. Woofers & Tweeters Ensemble – "We Can Work It Out" (Beatle Barkers, 1983)
Dog action? Oh man, this whole record is made of really poor primitive sampling-keyboard arrangements of Beatles songs. "Guys, this is just RIDICULOUS, and totally disrespectful to the music of The Beatles. I mean WOW....jeez." comments one Heather. Well, i agree, but i think that's why it's so good. (Commonly misnamed as "Beatle Barkers"; that's actually the album title).

16. DMX – "Stop Being Greedy" (It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, 1998)
Dog action? Maybe the single most prolific dog-sampler in music, it'd be remiss to skip him. Sometimes his sampler doesn't work so he just does the dog voices himself.

17. Man Parrish – "Hip Hop, Be-Bop (Don't Stop)" (12", 1982)
Dog action? Seminal throw-everything-at-the-wall-see-what-sticks '80s electro groundbreaker finds time for a snatch of pitch-shifted canine in the mid-section. Then promptly on to the next thing. Brill.

18. The Flaming Lips – "The Big Ol' Bug Is the New Baby Now" (Zaireeka, 1997)
Dog action? Gorgeous semi-spoken tribute to Stephen Drozd's dog (and Zaireeka closer) ends in an cacophonous eight-channel avalanche of barking (if you're doing it right).

19. The Orb – "Towers of Dub" (U.F. Orb, 1992)
Dog action? Takes up all of side three of U.F. Orb. Man's best friend makes an early bid for glory as Kris Weston and Dr Alex dub the piss out of him.

19. Can – "Aumgn" (Tago Mago, 1971)
Dog action? It's a prerequisite of making a groundbreaking, extended sample collage that a barking dog will be required at some point. This set that rule.

20. Wonder Dog – "Ruff Mix" (12", 1982)
Dog action? Wow. This is why everybody hates the '80s.

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD

Previously:

[january]|[february]|[march]|[april]|[may]|[june]

¹ Inspired by an entirely throwaway line in an early episode of Friends. Janice asks who of the group have nearly slept with one another, and they all attempt to change the subject swiftly. "There's a dog out there!" was Joey's priceless effort. i've only just found the actual script just now, but i misremembered it as "Hey there's a dog over there!" for years, so that's yer title. Yeh, so maybe it was a Seinfeld rip-off, but there was still some great comedy writing on that show at times.

Desert Island Dicks — "Stretch Marks" (GC049/AMP004)

Desert Island Dicks are an arcane international noise collective who have released numerable musical recordings of various styles. Little is known about their number or demographics, but acknowledged compositional influences include BBC Radio 4; hip-hop; strong coffee; The Conet Project; '60s jazz avant-garde: Coleman, Cherry, Taylor, Dolphy, Ra; John Zorn; The Evolution Control Committee; Zappa; The Fall; Metal Machine Music; Cassetteboy; Futurism; Dada; Reich; Cage; Penderecki; The KLF; John Watermann; WFMU.

Stretch Marks is the group's second full-length album. Recorded in 2007 and 2008, it was released jointly by Britain's Amoebic Industries and Australia/Netherlands-based Glitch City on April 30, 2008. The album inverts the concept of the previous album Bring Me the Head of Miles Davis..., which compressed three Miles Davis albums to a universal track length, by taking three of the biggest contemporary female-vocal pop music 45s and expanding them to vastly distended lengths, thus applying the jazz tenets of breathing space and free improvisation to a mode more traditionally defined by much stricter methodical structuring.

Track listing

1. "Toxic (Niigata Minamata mix)" (Bloodshy & Avant, Dennis, Jonback, Dicks) – 10:32
2. "Genie in a Bottle Bank (long version)" (Frank, Kipner, Sheyne, Dicks) – 18:32
3. "Rehab (Betty Ford mix)" (Winehouse, Dicks) – 42:00

Personnel

• Christina Aguilera – vocals
• David Frank – production
• Christian Karlsson – production
• Steve Kipner – production
• Mark Ronson – production
• Britney Spears – vocals
• Amy Winehouse – vocals
• Pontus Winnberg – production
• Desert Island Dicks – post-production

DOWNLOAD:
Stretch Marks (GC049/AMP004)

[mediafire]|[megaupload]

– Desert Island Dicks @ last.fm
– Desert Island Dicks @ myspace
– Desert Island Dicks Facebook page

#8: Led Bib — "Sensible Shoes" (Cuneiform, 2009)

Remember that bit in Milos Forman's Amadeus where the Emperor dismisses the burgeoning genius Mozart's radical new composition with the words "... too many notes" (aka the best piece of music criticism of all time)? Well Led Bib's Sensible Shoes has fucking thousands of notes, and they're all completely necessary. Sometimes there's so many notes that the London quintet have to play different ones on four instruments at the same time with the speed of a broken fairground waltzer, just to get through them all before the song ends. Truly, this album has notes coming out of its ears.

The result is that Sensible Shoes is great, obviously. It's a hundred miles too good to win the Barclaycard Mercury Prize,¹ but for once in the Mercuries' existence, at least, we have something to thank them for, that being the spread of Led Bib's exuberant skronking glory to a wider range of ears (they were the only nominee not to have a Wikipedia article when the twelve were announced).

There are obviously going to be Zorn/Naked City parallels drawn with their "jazz with a punk aesthetic", but Pete Grogan and Chris Williams' two-pronged alto sax blitzkrieg also alternates satisfyingly with melodic vamps that skilfully display the group's Ornette Coleman influence. Toby McLaren adapts the Fender Rhodes equally well to dusky melodic passages and the frenetic, everyone-in soloing of "Squirrel Carnage"; and as you'd perhaps expect from a group with a drummer as bandleader, the rhythm section is also commendable, going balls-out on "Call Centre Labyrinth", building and just as suddenly dropping clouds of Bitches Brew-esque static/dissonance on "Water Shortage". By nine-minute closer "Zone 4", it's clear that, while a token indie act will scoop the Mercury, it's five thrash-jazz outsiders that have made the most interesting album nominated in '09.

mp3: Led Bib — "Sweet Chilli" (YSI)




¹ i can understand changing the name when they get a new sponsor, but why have they seen fit to drop the word "Music"? Should we be reading something into this?

The ever-brill truth-or-bullshit website Snopes reports on a forwarded email satire piece which "reports" that the US presidency is being outsourced to India. Apparently a lot of people are wondering if it's actually true. Snopes' estimable researcher Barbara Mikkelson writes:

As we've noted on many occasions, really good satire hews a fine line between plausibility and absurdity, so it's not surprising we often receive "Is this true?" inquiries about satirical articles that circulate widely via e-mail — the receipt of an out-of-context, news-like article with a premise that seems vaguely credible with a quick read-through can easily leave readers confused about its authenticity.

i think Barbara's being too kind. The thing is, this isn't good satire. It's clumsy, predictable, punch-you-repeatedly-in-the-face-till-you-understand-the-point satire. You'd have to be basically a complete idiot to think it was real. Most of the time, the jokes don't even make sense, let alone hit home as effective parody. Take this excerpt, for instance, about the president's "stand-in" being trained by call scripts:

Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all. "We know these scripting tools work," stated the spokesperson. "Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about."

Ha ha ha ha ha! DO YOU GET IT? He's used call scripts for years to fool people into thinking he knows what he's talking about! How hilariously funny! Never mind that he's only been President for less than a year, thus rendering the joke totally fucking meaningless. WE KINDA IMPLIED HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT? FUNNY, RIGHT?!

Well, no, actually, just more witless mulch for people who don't get either politics or humour. "It's a bit of a puzzle why we've received so many inquiries about this particular article, as its premise isn't at all plausible," admits Barbara. Don't worry about it, B: the target audience aren't generally known for being the sharpest tools in the shed.

Ah well, any excuse to throw "I'm a Mindless Idiot" by the Meat Puppets up here. (YSI)

Swine flu stock tips

buy Tamiflu
buy Relenza
buy shares in Big Pharma
buy waste bins (for catching & killing)
buy dust masks and party hats.

sell everyone on fear.
sell farms, sell sensationalism, sell newspapers by the truckload.
sell off natural immunity.
sell insecurity. sell NWO conspiracy horseshit to irresponsible posers.
sell common sense down the river.

if this keeps up
they'll have to call it bull flu

Here's four pieces of pig-related goodness and one piece of simple common sense.

"Year of the Swine" (YSI) is by New Englandite metal/hardcore heads Converge. I wish i had the mighty voice of their singer, Jake Bannon, so i could use it to scream at both patronising, scaremongering officials and media outlets and the idiots that think everyone's going to die unless they start rocking those stupid snout-resembling (how's that for irony) cardboard respirator masks and immersing their whole bodies in rubbing alcohol four times daily.

"Pig" (YSI) by Sparklehorse is the first track of their brilliant second album Good Morning Spider and is pretty uncharacteristically angry-sounding amid their usual, more reflective alt.country-informed style. i've always loved the lines "I wanna try and fly / I wanna try and die / I wanna be a pig / I wanna fuck a car". Well, you've gotta keep your dreams, haven't you?

The Streets' "He's Behind You, He's Got Swine Flu" (YSI) is apparently a track that M. Skinner has "unofficially" released recently through his Twitter page. It's one of those songs that makes you want to slap your forehead at the sheer groaning ridiculous topical inevitability of it all, but it wins you over anyway by virtue of its extreme silliness and advice to "decapitate your mate" in the event that he shows any porcine or influenzaic tendencies. As advice goes, it's no more useless than the patronising "Catch It, Bin It, Kill It" campaign.

Cumbia is one of the two main musical and dancing styles considered representative of Colombia, although Cumbia group Agrupacion Cariño actually hail from Mexico, ground zero of the H1N1 horror. Nonetheless, the scary scary pandemic doesn't seem to be worrying them overly: the classy "Swine Flu Cumbia" (YSI) opens with the hilariously straight-faced couplet "Please be careful with that flu / don't you know we're gonna die" before finally invoking Indiana Jones to save us all. Again, probably beats NHS Direct. They haven't got a nuke-proof fridge, have they?

"False media / We don't need it do we?" — Public Enemy, "Don't Believe the Hype" (YSI). Word.

i thought it was weird that Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood did not have a Wikipedia article

... so i made this one for him.

* * * * * * *

Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood (b. May 8, 1942, Arkansas City, Kansas) is an American rock musician notable for playing soprano, tenor and baritone saxophone, tambourine, vocals and vocal sound effects in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. He appeared on all the albums of the original Mothers line-up and the posthumous releases Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, as well as certain subsequent Zappa albums. He also appeared in the films 200 Motels, Video from Hell and Uncle Meat.

Biography
Sherwood and Zappa met in high school in 1956. Sherwood was in a class with Zappa's brother Bobby, who introduced the two after learning that Sherwood was a collector of blues records.^[1] Sherwood sat in with Zappa's first band, R&B group The Black-Outs,^[2] at various performances, where he was often a highlight:

“

...he did this weird dance called 'The Bug', where he pretended that some creature was tickling the fuck out of him, and he rolled around on the floor, trying to pull it off. When he 'got it off', he threw it at girls in the audience, hoping that they would flop around on the floor too. A few of them did. — Frank Zappa[2]

”

Sherwood and Zappa subsequently played together in Ontario, in rock'n'roll/R&B group The Omens. After Zappa's first marriage began to break up in 1964, he bought local producer Paul Buff's Pal Recording Studio, renaming it "Studio Z", and he and Sherwood lived in the studio for a time.^[1][3] Sherwood first joined The Mothers of Invention as a roadie and equipment manager, also contributing sound effects (using both his voice and saxophone) to their first album, 1966's Freak Out! He became a full member around the time of the group's experimental residence at the Garrick Theater in 1968, of which future bandmate Ruth Underwood, then an audience member, recalls that "there were some nights that you just heard pure music, and other nights, Motorhead'd be talking about fixing his car, with Jim Black's drum beat in the background".^{[attribution needed]}

Zappa disbanded the original Mothers line-up in 1969. Sherwood was one of several members that would play for him again in subsequent years, appearing on 1981's You Are What You Is, the Läther box set, and the last album Zappa completed before his death, Civilization Phaze III. In 1973, Sherwood played on For Real!, the first album of Los Angeles doo-wop group Ruben and the Jets, who Zappa had granted permission to use the name of his fictional group, also producing the record and contributing arrangements and the song "If I Could Only Be Your Love Again". Allmusic's Bruce Eder notes the record's "beautifully crafted breaks on sax"^[4] by Sherwood and Robert "Buffalo" Roberts. Ruben and the Jets toured in support of Zappa on the West Coast in 1972 and produced one other album, but split after lead singer Rubén Guevara was offered a solo recording contract. There were also financial difficulties, Sherwood noting that the group played "too many benefits and not enough paying gigs".^[4]

The nickname "Motorhead" was coined by fellow Mothers member Ray Collins, who observed that Sherwood always seemed to be working on repairing cars, trucks or motorcyles, and joked that "it sounds like you've got a little motor in your head".^[1] Sherwood was also occasionally credited as his alter ego "Larry Fanoga"^[5] or as "Fred Fanoga".^{[citation needed]}

In later years, Sherwood has contributed to various projects alongside his fellow Mothers alumni, including records by The Grandmothers, Mothers keyboardist Don Preston, Ant-Bee and Sandro Oliva.

Discography

With the Mothers of Invention

• Freak Out! (Verve, 1966)
• Absolutely Free (Verve, 1967)
• We're Only in It for the Money (Verve, 1967)
• Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (Verve, 1968)
• Uncle Meat (Bizarre, 1969)
• Burnt Weeny Sandwich (Bizarre, 1970)
• Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Bizarre, 1970)
• Ahead of Their Time (Rykodisc, 1993)

With Frank Zappa

• Lumpy Gravy (Verve, 1967)
• You Are What You Is (Barking Pumpkin, 1981)
• You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore (sampler) (Rykodisc, 1988)
• You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1 (Rykodisc, 1988)
• You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 (Rykodisc, 1991)
• You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5 (Rykodisc, 1992)
• Civilization Phaze III (Barking Pumpkin, 1994)
• Läther (Rykodisc, 1996)
• Mystery Disc (Rykodisc, 1998)
• The MOFO Project/Object (Zappa, 2006)

With Ruben and the Jets

• For Real! (Mercury, 1973)

With The Grandmothers

• Grandmothers (Line, 1981)
• Lookin' Up Granny's Dress (Rhino, 1982)
• A Mother of an Anthology (One Way, 1993)

With Ant-Bee

• Snorks & Wheezes (K7, 1993)
• The @x!#*% of.... (K7, 1993)
• With My Favorite "Vegetables" and Other Bizarre Music (Divine, 1994)
• Lunar Musik (Divine Records, 1995)

With Don Preston

• Vile Foamy Ectoplasm (Muffin, 1993)

With Sandro Oliva

• Who the Fuck Is Sandro Oliva?!? (Muffin, 1995)

Filmography

• 200 Motels (1971)
• Video from Hell (1985)
• Uncle Meat (1987)
• The True Story of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (1989)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} James, Billy (1998). Necessity Is...: The Early Years of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. SAF Publishing Ltd. (London). ISBN 0-946-71951-9.
2. ^ ^{a b} Zappa, Frank; Occhiogrosso, Peter (1989). The Real Frank Zappa Book. Poseidon Press (New York). ISBN 0-671-70572-5.
3. ^ Miles, Barry (2004). Frank Zappa. Atlantic Books (London). pp. 82–83. ISBN 1-843-54092-4.
4. ^ ^{a b} Eder, Bruce. "For Real! > Review". Allmusic. Retrieved on July 12, 2009.
5. ^ Couture, François. "Lumpy Gravy > Credits". Allmusic.Retrieved on July 13, 2009.

External links

• Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood at Allmusic
• Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood at the Internet Movie Database

Categories: 1942 births | American rock musicians | American saxophonists | American rock singers | Living people | The Mothers of Invention members


mp3: Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention – "King Kong III (as explained by Motorhead)" (YSI)

Hey Ryan Reynolds, stfu. Love, LJB

It's galling to me that serious people actually give enough of a shit about what slick Hollywood sleazoids like Ryan Reynolds think to commission Written Articles About Stuff from them, especially when it's ostensibly reputable blogs like Huffington Post doing the commissioning.

Take this bleating piece, for instance, in which Ryan takes the moral high-ground re: the decadent wastefulness of competitive eating contests, mainly by invoking a variety of third-world children he has made up. "Young Mustafat, who maintains a strict diet of inner turmoil and bleached hope, looks forward to watching the ESPN-televised event to better understand what gigantically wasteful, fucking super-retards we all are", he wails, rending the air around him with concern.

Without, of course, pausing at any point to consider that: (a) competitive eating contests are at least 5 times more entertaining than any film Ryan Reynolds has ever starred in, and his self-congratulatory writing and poor stabs at Socratic irony too, for that matter; and (b) the combined staging and costs of every competitive eating contest in the United States wouldn't exceed the budget of a wack summer tossbuster such as, ooh i dunno, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.¹ (Ryan's condemnation of the excess promotional budgets of 7-11 convenience stores, Papa John's pizza,² the California Milk Processor Board and Schick razors is also strangely absent.)

Moral? i guess it's partly this: if you once starred as Van Wilder: Party Liaison, your right to diss anything on the grounds of taste is pretty fuckin' limited. And so, unless your salary for the next brainless superhero mindsore is all being donated to, e.g., MSF, it might be best not to single out one business's pefectly legitimate promotional tactic as if it were the major cause of the West's entire ethical downward spiral.

So, in summary, then: shut-up, pretty-boy. Now somebody pass the frankfurters.

Eine kleine wurstmusik:
mp3: Men's Recovery Project — "New Talking Sausage" (YSI)
mp3: Sam White — "Polish Sausage"

¹ FYI: The only reference i can find to a budget for the Nathan's annual Hot Dog Eating Contest is a 1995 NYT piece which postulates that Nathan's, as a "smaller" chain "with only 30 company-owned restaurants and fewer than 170 franchisees", can probably afford an annual advertising budget of "less than $1 million". Now i know that's old, and deals specifically with TV spots; but factor in the cost of staging the contest and then adjust for 14 years' inflation, and i still don't think you're near the same ballpark as X-Men Origins: Wolverine's $150 million budget. i'd speculate that maybe the X-Men catering budget might be nearer the mark. Assuming that's even vaguely close: so for the cost of promoting 30 restaurants and 170 franchises for a full calendar year, you could also achieve a small fraction of 107 minutes of celluloid! Positively bargainous, no? Well... no.
² Why the fuck would you want to eat at somewhere called "Papa John's"? It just reminds me of Papa Doc Duvalier. Preusmably if you displease the staff, you don't get your food gobbed in, you just get fully fucking hexed and then "disappeared".

Cake review: Pip's birthday cake

It occurs to me that i have never written a cake review before. Partly it's because the need for such a thing has never really occurred to me. Mostly though, i'd say, it's because i'm not much of a cake person. i find most cakes incredibly rich, even cheap supermarket ones, probably because that much sweetness in one entity just makes me to start to feel like a post-chocolate-chute Augustus Gloop after about two mouthfuls, but possibly because real cake never lived up to the reality of the ur-cake of cartoons, that perfect condensation of the essence of sweet flavour.

Take Battenberg, for instance, the belladonna of the cake world. It looks incredible, the ultimate cartoon food manna, its day-glo squares laden with the flavour-Nirvana of double-barrelled pink-and-yellowness. Then you bite into it, and your dreams are all ruined by the horrifying emetic almondpaste that is marzipan.

Nevertheless, i agreed to eat this cake because it was Pip's birthday cake, and because she said i should write this review of it. So instead of just cake, i now had cake and effort. Not sure what kind of bizarre reverse psychology is involved in that, but it fooled me anyway — kudos, Pip.

Anyway, the cake was in the form of popular undersea cartoon favourite Spongebob Squarepants, and of all the Spongebob cake pictures i've found on the 'net, it looked most akin to this one, only somehow sort of better. For one thing it was more lifelike (to the extent that this means anything when we're talking about cartoon baked goods), probably thanks to the fact that Spongebob was posed in this kind of one-legged action stance, as if about to hurl a baseball or administer a savage beating to a cakey opponent.

(Bonus round: StonedBob; PancakeBob; PointillistBob; AmputeeBob; ShowtunesBob; DementedBob; WarholBob; FuckingCreepyBob; WherethefuckismynoseBob; EforEffortBob.¹)

i ate it while enjoying the start of Anthony Gormley's latest artwork, One & Other, wherein 2400 people spend a total of 100 days on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, noting the sense of mild irony in solitude atop a public monument being about the furthest atmosphere from that of a typical birthday party; including this one, its time divided between garden and densely-packed garage, its occupants' conversational streams weaving and buzzing in and out of each other in all directions. The cake was pretty good, actually, for a non-cake person. It was perhaps a little squashed, but for that i've no-one to blame but myself, and it didn't hurt the cake too much. Inside it was composed of a time-honoured jam and cream combination between two sponge sections (a Victoria Spongebob, if you will)². My portion came from the section surrounding, and partly including, Bob's grinning mouth, so i also gained a good chunk of icing for variety. Overall, this was an excellent piece of birthday cake, amply filling its twin roles of pudding and celebration, and even for one without the infamous "sweet tooth", it is nonetheless always heartening to mark the passing of another year of a friend's company with such delicious and comical foodstuff.

Now for some cake-related music.
mp3: Fire Party – "Cake" (YSI)
mp3: Young Marble Giants – "Cakewalking" (YSI)
mp3: Melt-Banana – "Creeps in a White Cake" (YSI)

¹ Photo credits to original uploaders.
² Sorry.

30KB live in Liverpool

Yes yes... lesser-spotted North-West hip-hop phenomena 30,000 Bastards (aka my rap group) are soon to be found in Liverpool for a hip-hop/d'n'b night at The Magnet. July 11th, three quid door tax.

We're playing with Children of the Damned of Blah Records (who supported RZA in the 'Pool recently), A.R.T., Dalema, and Doc Strange. i should probably know all of those guys and their music more than i actually do, but fortunately i've found a load of webby links so you and i can both catch up ahead of time and know all the words by then.

— Brick Pelican (The Greatest Mystery Of All) by Children of the Damned @ last.fm (full album stream)
— 30,000 Leagues Under the Scene by 30,000 Bastards @ last.fm (full album stream)
— From Part to Park: New York Hip-Hop mix by Dalema ("This mix is full of DJ Premier beats. And its got a cheeky intro that features the Ghostbusters and EastEnders theme tunes.")
— 30 Minutes of Dubstep mix by Dalema

Facebook groups: Children of the Damned; 30KB (page); Dalema; Doc Strange;
myspazz: A.R.T.; Children of the Damned; 30KB; Doc Strange

Phew! That's a lot of links. Enjoy...

The Glorious Om Riff 2012: get fully psychedelicised!

Something you don't typically encounter every day is a plan to create "one massive 'sonic beacon' resonating with the greatest riff ever written while this world ends". To be honest, i don't recall ever encountering such a plan. But Kavus Torabi, of LJB favourites The Monsoon Bassoon¹ and Cardiacs, and latterly of Knifeworld, plans to rectify this situation.

Shamefully i was unfamiliar with the Torabi-proclaimed "greatest riff ever written" (you'll see in a minute) but it is, admittedly, a beast. An event not to be missed, i feel. Links to the tune(s) in question "after the jump" (which is idiot blogger-speak for "further down the page").

So this is how it is, folks. As you may have heard, the 'time obsessed' Mayan's calendar runs out on the 21st December 2012.² Terrence McKenna also predicted that 'this' world would come to a close on the said date by using the I Ching. On top of this, any amount of crazies are predicting that the aliens will reveal themselves, there will be a trancendental apocalypse, that we will all become 'fully psychedelicised', THAT THE VERY COGS OF TIME WILL GRIND TO A HALT etc etc.
There have been many doomsday cults pertaining to particular dates before, but this one really seems to have legs. Get on line and Google the twat. You'll see.
Me? Who knows? (Although I'm quite into the thing but that's beside the point)
I had this idea for the Millennum but typically I never saw it through. This seems like a significant enough date, though, so let's immerse ourselves...
There can be no doubt that Steve Hillage's Glorious Om Riff (or you may know it as Gong's Master Builder) is the greatest riff EVER. This is not up for dispute here. The plan is that at a pre-determined time on that fateful day someone (perhaps 'The Man' himself?) starts playing that neurone re-wiring, DNA altering riff REALLY LOUD.
As this happens more and more people, upon hearing it take up the mantle. Soon, even sooner if we use, like, computers and shit, everyone hip to the idea joins in.
Basically, if you play an instrument, any instrument, then just get out in your back garden or on your roof or on the streets and just start rocking out the holiest of holies. If you don't, then start chanting "IAO ZA-I ZA-O, MA-I MA-O,TA-I TA-O". The end result being that sonically it will kick-off some kind of cosmic audio-chain that vibrates the planet to it's doom or enlightenment or both.
Or neither.
The important thing is that we all come together through love and music and just play this beautiful tune.
It's an easy riff to play, and besides, you've got three and a half years to learn it.
Now, I'm no facilitator, but someone out there is. The internet seems to be very good for uniting large groups of people to celebrate utter mediocrity,³ let's show 'them' what it's really all about.
Really though, think about it...this could be fucking brilliant. If the world ends then let's go out on a good one. If, as is more likely, it doesn't, then what an amazing thing to have done. Maybe the world does become 'psychedelicised'...AS A RESULT OF US DOING THIS and by God we have the riff to do it with.
Get on board, spread the manifesto and come on, let's go.
Seriously.
Love
Kavus Torabi
xxx

The riff itself (transcription by someone over @ the Electrical Audio forums):⁴

YOU (1974)

E----------------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------------
G---4--2--------------------------------------------------------------
B---------4--1--4--1-------------------------------------------------
E---------------------3--2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3-2---


Sherwood Forest (1975)

E----------------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------------
D---------------------------------------------------------------------
G---5--3--------------------------------------------------------------
B---------5--2--5--2-------------------------------------------------
E---------------------4--3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3-4-3---


25th Birthday (1995)

E---------------------------------------------------------------------
A---------------------------------------------------------------------
D---------------------------------------------------------------------
G---7--5-------------------------------------------------------------
B---------7--4--7--4-------------------------------------------------
E---------------------6--5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5---

mp3: Gong — "Master Builder" (YSI)
mp3: Steve Hillage — "The Glorious Om Riff" (YSI)

— Facebook user? Join the Glorious Om Riff 2012 group.

¹ Who can be heard in this month's mixtape.
² Expositional hyperlinking by me, as ever.
³ Side note: check this article out for the spot-on evisceration of the idiotic "Salad Fingers" non-joke.
⁴ Slightly off, as noted on the forum, in that the descending bit comes at the end of the cycle rather than the beginning; but hey, if we're playing it till the world ends, no-one'll really notice the join.

Desert Island Dicks — "Bring Me the Head of Miles Davis and Other Jazz Luminaries" (GC008/AMP003)

Desert Island Dicks are an arcane international noise collective who have released numerable musical recordings of various styles. Little is known about their number or demographics, but acknowledged compositional influences include BBC Radio 4; hip-hop; strong coffee; The Conet Project; '60s jazz avant-garde: Coleman, Cherry, Taylor, Dolphy, Ra; John Zorn; The Evolution Control Committee; Zappa; The Fall; Metal Machine Music; Cassetteboy; Futurism; Dada; Reich; Cage; Penderecki; The KLF; John Watermann; WFMU.


Their first known full-length, Bring Me the Head of Miles Davis and Other Jazz Luminaries, sometimes abbreviated to BMtHoMDaOJL, was jointly released in 2007 by Britain's Amoebic Productions and Australia's Glitch City. The album consists of time-compressed versions of three well-known albums by Miles Davis, namely 1969's Bitches' Brew, 1959's Kind of Blue and 1960's Sketches of Spain. Each track on each of the source albums is condensed from its original length to one of ninety seconds, compressing each at an individual ratio relative to its original length. The effect produced has been described as "ironically guidelined free jazz", (Ingus Lovecharts, Modern Jazz: Reflections, pp. 172–4), as "massively compressed, like a shot of Turkish coffee... [a] formula [that] isn't always going to be entirely successful... [b]ut when it works, it can sometimes shock you into hearing the original in something of a new light", and as "either... total win or total fail, but probably the latter".

Despite the title's "Other Jazz Luminaries" appendage, only albums by Miles Davis are in fact processed.

Track listing
All tracks by Davis/Dicks, except where noted.

1. "Pharaoh's Dance" (Joe Zawinul, Dicks) – 1:30
2. "Bitches Brew" – 1:30
3. "Spanish Key" – 1:30
4. "John McLaughlin" – 1:30
5. "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" – 1:30
6. "Sanctuary" (Wayne Shorter, Dicks) – 1:30
7. "Feio" (Shorter, Dicks) – 1:30
8. "So What" – 1:30
9. "Freddie Freeloader" – 1:30
10. "Blue in Green" – 1:30
11. "All Blues" – 1:30
12. "Flamenco Sketches" – 1:30
13. "Flamenco Sketches (alternate take)" – 1:30
14. "Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio)" – 1:30
15. "Will o' the Wisp" – 1:30
16. "The Pan Piper" – 1:30
17. "Saeta" – 1:30
18. "Solea" – 1:30
19. "Song of Our Country" – 1:30
20. "Concierto de Aranjuez (Part One)" – 1:30
21. "Concierto de Aranjuez (Part Two Ending)" – 1:30

DOWNLOAD:  
Bring Me the Head of Miles Davis and Other Jazz Luminaries (GC008/AMP003)

[mediafire]|[megaupload]

– Desert Island Dicks @ last.fm
– Desert Island Dicks @ myspace
– Desert Island Dicks Facebook page