Life Just Bounces

...so don't you get worried at all. (A weblog of music and otrogenerica)

Thursday 24 September 2009

Weird BBC headlines #2: Facebook is Satan

Screencaps of odd, amusing or plain WTFworthy headlines from the BBC News website or BBC Ticker.


@Lucifer RT @Satan they're on to us http://bit.ly/BYxg3 #hellisotherpeople

Tuesday 22 September 2009

New Sugababes: now with 100% less Sugababes!

So Keisha, the last remaining original Sugababe, has been sacked, leaving only Disproportionately Large Head Girl, Anonymous Session Singer #1 and Anonymous Session Singer #2 and effectively rendering them the Frankenstein of girl bands, a reanimated corpse stitched together from leftover body parts.

("They're like Sugababes FC", comments my 30KB co-conspirator J, correctly.)


Maybe, like someone on The Social Network for Short Attention Spans said (sorry, can't remember who), this is as good an opportunity as any for Keisha, Mutya and Siobhan to reform and tour as The Original Sugababes.

(edit > ah, actually, it was Simon Price.)


i can't stomach the thought of putting up Sugababes music on here no matter how relevant, so here's some vaguely thematically-connected material from the Juno soundtrack, Boris with Merzbow and DOOM instead.

mp3: Michael Cera/Ellen Page — "Anyone Else But You"
mp3: Boris with Merzbow — "Farewell"
mp3: DOOM — "That's That"

Monday 21 September 2009

another new layout

One day, one day, i swear i will design an original look for this place.

Until that day, however, we are rolling with Tekka by Blorgspot users Evhead and Glish. cheers guys!

Weird BBC headlines #1: Gaza

Screencaps of odd, amusing or plain WTFworthy headlines from the BBC News website or BBC Ticker.

The Gaza strip: NOT, apparently, a picnic hotspot

Thursday 17 September 2009

And the prize for fastest-aging meme EVER goes to...

— BANG! ...first joke off the starting line (within about 20 minutes... RIP Pat);
Kanye West interrupts your website;
Punctuation FAIL;
Apology generator;
— Entirely formulaic and lame "Hitler disses Kanye" modified Downfall clip (for the 400th time this year)1;
Image macro compendium;
— Piss-weak "topical" cartoon strips each including a semi-relevant and tangential reference to the cartoonist's area of interest (perfect example).
— Post-match meme analysis in The Grauniad (tardy).


How i actually feel about the Kanye incident:

(via Joe King @ Tw*tter)





(came up with this one all on my own.)




And finally: Terry Moran and his ABC compadres should have been fired from a cannon for violating an off-record agreement with an interviewee within minutes of it being made. All the little Che Guevara wannabes on the net going "there's no such thing as off-the-record! If the President said something, he said it! Da Troof™ is all that matters!" miss the point comprehensively and utterly (as usual). There is such a thing if you've just agreed to it as a professional, actually. Google that word, "professionalism". You'll be surprised.

The following is the only piece of music by Kanye i've ever felt the need to listen to (hint: somebody else produced it).

mp3: Kanye West — "Love Lockdown (Bean Butler rubdown)"

1 Seriously. You don't have to be Alejandro Jodorowsky or anything, but why not at least try subtitle-modding a scene from a different movie even, you lazy, unfunny, desperately unoriginal rehashing tedious internet pricks?

File under "religious vomit".

The Telegraph printed a story the other day that atheists are more successful at online dating than our religious counterparts. Unable to concede absolutely anything that might paint a non-believer in a slightly favourable light,1 they've subsequently got their Religion Editor, the blessed and benighted George Pitcher (right), to redress the balance by suicide-bombing logic on behalf of insecure deities everywhere.

When i first saw the title ("Atheists are no good in bed") i jokingly thought "perhaps his argument will be based solely on the fact that atheists don't shout out "Oh God!" at the moment of climax". After reading the piece, i am forced to conclude that this would actually have been among his stronger arguments. Instead, he delivers maybe the most specious, disingenuous, flimsy, illogical, non-sequitous blend of ineffectual insults and bollocks i've ever seen condensed into a mere two paragraphs.

i suppose i shouldn't really be surprised that a Christian preacher would have some trouble with logic, but is the Telegraph really that desperate for writers these days? Or is it easier just to troll for clicks than it is to bother getting any proper content?2

religious vomit

They just takes care
Of Number One
An' Number One ain't you
You ain't even Number Two...

mp3: The Persuasions — "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"
mp3: Dead Kennedys — "Religious Vomit"

1 Even though the original piece was hardly serious anyway.
2 Judging by that sexy byline photo, i bet George gets his pick of the Christian ladies, latex-faced hottie that he is.

Monday 14 September 2009

A tribute to Tupac

Yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of the passing of Tupac Shakur, musician, actor, one of the most widely-acclaimed rap lyricists and performers of the 1990s.


Ever ones for the obvious here at LJB, today we celebrate 'pac's life and work with a tribute song written by lunatic hyper-caffeinated octogenarian former NYC postal worker Bingo Gazingo (from his self-titled album, and accompanied by a song that sounds a little like the Beavis & Butthead theme tune, as played by R. Stevie Moore and various other WFMU DJs.)

It's ridiculous, of course, but it doesn't seem like a pisstake — more like an actually pretty heartfelt tribute. There's probably an argument to be made somewhere that this very unlikeliness says a lot about the universality of Tupac's appeal.

Rock'n'roll, the American soul
to the American dream

Hard blast to your chest

Blood all over your breast

Why didn't you wear your bulletproof vest?

You lost your left testicle

And your right lung

Why did they have to shoot yer?

And take away your future

when you were so young?

Tupac Shakur: it's a heartbreaker

It's a ballbreaker

Your mother was a Black Panther

And your father was a political criminal1
But you had a voice as sweet as a Jewish cantor

Singing from the hymnal

On a high holy day...

I remember the words you sang which
changed the English language

Friday the 13th... you lost your dream...
And then he starts rapping. Dear lord, you have to hear this.

mp3: Bingo Gazingo — "Two Pack Shaker"

1 Yeh, stepfather in actuality. Whatever. You better hope you're this cool when you're 70-odd.

Saturday 12 September 2009

#9: The TV Theme Players — "Then and Now" (Big Eye, 2009)

Or: "things i have learned from listening to The TV Theme Players".

— My god but there are a lot of TV shows. This double CD has 110 tracks. And they're pretty much all American shows, the only UK representative being the really crap Skins.

The Blind Boys of Alabama version of "Way Down in the Hole" is apparently the definitive Wire theme. Which is balls, of course, as everyone knows it's the Tom Waits original.

— Hardly any TV themes are in irregular time signatures. There's Mission:Impossible (5/4), of course, and stalwart Britcop drama The Bill (7/8). And that's literally about the lot. Wasted opportunity, this.

— No kind of treatment could make the theme from Nip/Tuck sound like a decent piece of music. That isn't on this album, i'm just sayin'.

— A lot of shows nowadays don't have proper themes so much as an inoffensive little ambient sound-squiggles (see: Lost, Heroes etc.) This, too, is a waste of potential.

Ben Butler & Mouse Pad absolutely must cover the theme from Tequila & Bonetti. possibly also Jump Street. It's ok, i've told them already.

— The 80s were truly halcyon TV theme days.

— i've really gotta watch Twin Peaks soon.

— i do not find the theme from ER to convey the requisite sense of urgency, being far too relaxed for this purpose. In hospital terms, i think it would be a much more convincing soundtrack for somewhere like the Ear, Nose and Throat department.

— The TV Theme Players are likely a group of highly competent session musicians capable of convincingly switching between myriad styles and instruments with ease. However, the reason i say "likely" is because there's no clue anywhere on the internet who's responsible or why. Their last.fm page has no comments and no bio. In the absence of any sort of personality or obvious motive to the group whatsoever, what we're left with is the '00s equivalent of those weird Top of the Pops albums they had in the '60s where groups of session musos would perform ten Top 40 covers — mostly quite passable, sometimes incomprehensibly awful — to skirt licensing regulations.

Considering the potential audience for this creeps me out a little. Who is it aimed at? Prankster radio stations with archive space to fill? People who think TV shows are just a waste of 40 minutes between the cool music bits? The sort of people that listen to anime soundtracks, or consider Jonathan Larson their favourite composer?

At times the atmosphere is uncomfortably close to being stuck in an office Christmas party in Purgatory. The instrumental themes tend to fare better than, for instance, the Tesco No Frills version of Happy Days, which is like being badgered by a hyperactive Butlin's redcoat while trying to eat a cooked breakfast in peace. The most wretched of the lot are the themes which are actual songs: Jane's Addiction's horrible Entourage theme was bad enough to start with, and an anonymous cover of a bastardised excerpt, as here, only adds a sheen of gloss-eyed vacancy to the usual cock-rock bluster. Gruesome. Likewise, South Park illustrates the folly of trying to sound like Primus,1 and Massive Attack's "Teardrop" gains nothing by being oversimplified and renamed "House". And let us never speak of "Jackass" (a.k.a. a horrible bowdlerising of the Minutemen's "Corona", but with all the "Corona" removed). If anything, the themes-that-are-bona-fide-songs mainly serve to reinforce the earlier point that good TV theme composition is a rarefied art, to be increasingly valued over the lamer and more prevalent options of licensing some generically hip alt.rock or setting a synth to AutoBloop.

Jack White of The White Stripes shows up to do backing vocals on the Friends theme.2

— By the 85th consecutive theme i have started to feel as if someone has injected my entire face with Lidocaine. Only another 25 to go...

— The L.A. Law theme sounds like Christopher Cross playing "The Little Drummer Boy".

Highlights: Six Feet Under (wonderful theme in general; includes inventive rendering of the discordant modern classical mid-section vamp); Quantum Leap (which i've always felt to be quite a mediocre theme); Justice League Unlimited (too much metal for one hand); Dragonball Z (session-muso metal is just too hilarious); The Cosby Show and any of its jazzy cod-new-Jack-swingin' 80s contemporaries, against all odds (just unashamedly joyous and daft); Twin Peaks (atmospheric); Prison Break (rare class for a modern theme); Quincy M.E. (parping, clownish); New York Undercover (sounds like an MJ Dangerous outtake); Magnum PI (even, say, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain would have trouble fucking up a tune that good); Young Indiana Jones (a class rendition of Laurence Rosenthal's Boingo-esque theme); Boston Legal (just because i'm pretty sure the original did not feature someone imitating a guitar solo by going "wow waow waaooowww....").

Lowlights: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (no version of this will ever escape lame-o student-disco ironyland); "Woke Up This Morning" from The Sopranos (it was a terrible song to start with, this is just a straight cover. How have Alabama 3 managed to wangle the role of "the Gomez it's ok to like" anyway?); One Tree Hill (shockingly bland college rock crap); Walker, Texas Ranger (widdle widdle widdle); Murder, She Wrote (generally pretty good, but reorchestrating out the flatulent quacking trombone sections is total desecration); Baywatch (always was fucking awful, with its sand-in-the-joints phallic sax breaks farting all over everything, but this version is egregiously bad. it actually sounds like MIDI programming); the aforementioned Heroes (good effort, though); Chappelle's Show (funny for the first thirty seconds, excruciating for the next five lots of thirty seconds); Flintstones (wailing lead/synth revisionism).

mp3: TV Theme Players – "Prison Break"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Justice League Unlimited"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Six Feet Under"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Young Indiana Jones"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Tequila & Bonetti"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Twin Peaks"

1 Even if you are Primus. No, especially if you are Primus.
2 Not really.

Thursday 10 September 2009

If you're looking for miserly pricks, it's like Christmas come early!

Some genuine radicals in Yorkshire1 have decided they're going to make everyone's life better by supergluing the locks of charity shops they deem to be 'selling Christmas stuff too early'.

The writer claims to speak for the "Movement for the Containment of Xmas".

Clive Barker, manager of the Oxfam shop in Otley Road, said the letter was posted through his letterbox on Monday evening.

He said: "It is very odd. Every morning I wonder if I am going to be able to open up or will the lock be glued up.

"We are not going to take our cards down as we are a charity and we raise money for all the Oxfam projects.

"The cards are important for our fundraising. Like the rest of the High Street there are Christmas cards on display as early tasters.

"Four shops have been targeted and I just hope that nothing comes of it. The police say they are treating it very seriously and have taken the letter for fingerprints."

The letter states: "This is a very polite but very serious reminder not to display Xmas cards until 1st Nov. We will put super glue into your locks if you do. Peace and goodwill."


Truly revolutionary, guy(s). You are doing a sterling job of reclaiming Christmas from the forces of capitalistic greed and back towards the true Christian message of charity to others by, erm, vandalising a charity shop for attention.

i'm starting a counter-movement called "Movement for the Proliferation of Xmas" just to spite these pricks. And i'm going to find out their identities and send them Christmas cards and serenade them with carols ALL SUMMER.

The fact that they've given themselves a fancy yet slightly wacky name screams "clever-clogs students" to me. (NB: Sarah, who knows about these things, says "I guessed those student sorts too. Then I read the article and it says that some of the beef happened in Headingley which makes it a 99.9% cert.")

He/they probably meant it sincerely, too, but pound-to-a-pinch-of-shit that if the po-po pick do them up from the fingerprint evidence, they won't even have the balls to cop to it, and will instead say "Oh, it was meant as an art statement, on the nature of capitalist society and how it erodes our basic humanity. We were SATIRISING the sort of people that put glue in locks."

Weak as plankton piss. A plague on all their houses.

See also this Facebook group, where they're actually compiling lists of shops that they think are selling Christmas stuff "too early", putting in complaint letters and boycotting the shops in question. Good job that such a list could also be used as a guide to where to shop if you want to spite the kind of bores that find it necessary to join such a group!

Debenhams, the target of their ineffectual bleating, wrote back very patiently with a stock letter explaining their position. (Incidentally, some geniuses in the group seemed to think they were the next Sherlock Holmes for spotting this fact. "
I received an almost identical, and obviously canned response", smugs one complainant. Well, yes. The reply is very similar to the reply received by others who complained, perhaps because you all put in the same fucking complaint.) If i owned a shop, my fantasy reply letter wouldn't have been quite so cordial. It would have more likely been along the lines of:

Dear Complainant,

It's our store, and therefore our prerogative to sell what we want whenever we see fit. We are not bothered in the slightest that your ignorant arse will not be crossing our threshold this year.

Fuck off,
tom dissonance.

Ho, ho, and indeed, ho.

mp3:___dREàgänN|||||| — "This Is My Christmas"
mp3: Cutting Pink with Knives — "Merry Fucking Christmas, You Spineless Fuck"

1 Well, one guy at least. Probably two at most. They will be plural for the time being.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Spodify advert reviews pt. 1

Who/what: Amy McDonald
The gist of it? "Hi, youu can broowshe throoough maaa baack cataloogue on Shhpodifyyy..."
Net result? Sounds like it was recorded onto a tape Walkman pissed after falling out of a Yates' Wine Lodge.

Who/what: Frankmusik
Gist? "Boom, ka-BAPhi, i'm-boomboom bap Frankchkkachkkamusik. I'm boom-ba-KA!doing that boof chk-chkreally annoyingticktick ba-ba-ba beatboxing-and-speaking-widdly-BOOM-chk-chkBOOM-bababa-duggadugga...AT-THE-SAME-TIME thing that boomBOOMboom Rahzel's been doing since der-der-derrrr before we were all spunk. Chkka-chkka-chkka."
Result? Like someone dug up Les Rhythmes Digitales and gave him an even stupider name and worse music and made him spew his Urban Tourette's™ all over my fucking playlist every half an hour. Wank.

Who/what: Little Boots
The gist of it? "Hi, ...Spodify." Followed by her music.
Result? You hear Little Boots' music and wish you hadn't.

Who/what: Mika
The gist of it? Promoting his new single
Result? Twofold. Initially there's dismay that Mika is still out there making music. This is then tempered by a kind of nauseated amusement at the way his new song simultaneously rips off Jason Donovan's "Too Many Broken Hearts", "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle, Kiss, Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer", The Darkness and about eight other really bad songs.

Who/what: "The Spotify answerphone"
The gist of it? Britain's Got Opinions (whether it deserves them or not)
Result? "Hi there... errrr.... Spotify's like amazing like, but the only fing that'd make it better is, ummm, y'know, if you could like, save the music, like, onto your EmPeeFree playa like, yeah?"

i can't even write suitably sarcastic commentary about how dumb that sentence is.1

1 Yes, it's obviously a paraphrase. But the meaning is consistent with that of the original.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

30KB Delusionists remix

ahwhatthefuck... might as well post this since it's ready & i'm bored & in work...

i remixed the Delusionists' "Parallel Worldz" (featuring Invizible Frenz) from the recent Certified Banger On the Radar Vol. 4 compilation for their remix contest.


BEETS LAYING ABOUT

Hopefully it is good enough for the first guy from Invizible Frenz not to "literally shit on" me.

mp3: Delusionists — "Parallel Worldz" feat. Invisible Frenz (30KB mix)