#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.

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.

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.<sup>1

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

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)

One woman's horrific story

Definitely the best thing i've seen on the front of a women's magazine for a while.


mp3: 14 Year Old Girls —"Grand Theft Auto 3"
mp3: Don Caballero — "Slice Where You Live Like Pie"

In defence of Milli Vanilli (or: towards an authentic fakeness)

Reading a BBC piece the other day about the legendary "miming vocalist" fallout surrounding Black Box's 1989 hit "Ride on Time", i got to thinking that Milli Vanilli got a pretty raw deal out of their whole experience with same. The point's been made before that their biggest crime was essentially being twenty years ahead of their time (see this DKPresents piece for a concise and interesting precis). But was it? Or was it more serious for MV that they failed to pay lip service to pop culture's bizarre and uneven obsession with "authenticity"?

Universal Pictures currently has a Milli Vanilli biopic in development. Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson told Variety that “I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of fakes and frauds, and in this case, you had guys who pulled off the ultimate con, selling 30 million singles and 11 million albums and then becoming the biggest laughing-stocks of pop entertainment.”

"The biggest laughing stocks of pop entertainment"? Really? After all, everyone from Britney Spears to the Antares hip-hop movement¹ to Yo-Yo Ma is Milli Vanilli nowadays, and no-one's suggesting narcotically-assisted slow suicide as a suitable penance.² No-one's ever excoriated Jack Nicholson for not actually being a tormented wife-terrorising failed writer living in a decrepit hotel in the middle of nowhere. And anyone whose dreams were shattered upon finding out that Johnny Depp is not in real life a flouncy dreadlocked buccaneer has only himself to blame; Walt Disney Studios is not accountable for "misleading" him.

Much of the discourse around Milli Vanilli has the "disgraced" group being "stripped of their Grammy" for "trying to fool" the listening audience. But surely this only holds true if you're the kind of person that believes Mike Batt should be done for fraud because an actual Womble is not vocalising on "Remember You're A Womble". Is it really that hard to comprehend that artistic spectacles aren't meant as literal truth? In the press, Milli Vanilli are now framed exclusively as a hoax, or even an elaborate practical joke (witness their entry on the Museum of Hoaxes website and J. Nathanson's "ultimate con" quip above). But the NYT article quoted above that broke the "stripped of Grammy" story even includes these paragraphs:

Virtually all recorded music is the product of studio manipulation. Classical albums are typically pieced together from the best of multiple takes of a work; even live albums, classical and popular, are often patched up to correct wrong notes. Most popular music is created on multi-track tape that allows dozens of separate elements to be perfected and combined.

Dance-pop like Milli Vanilli's album can be recorded with the efforts of a small group of people. A single songwriter-producer can generate all of the instrumental sounds, from computerized drums to synthetic horns. All that needs to be added is human voices, so it is possible that only the producer, the recording engineer and the performers would know who appeared on the album.

So it's not like this was some great shady record company conspiracy; it was all out in the open even then. The pained howls of dimwit Proper Music™ enthusiasts about how the sonic reality of Girl, You Know It's True does not exactly correspond with the physical movements made in the studio during its creation should thus be ignored as epic point-missing at best. To consider the very nature of performing on electrified instruments artificially amplified over a public address system for an audience larger than could possibly ever assemble to hear such an ensemble play "naturally"³ just emphasises that the stadium cock-rock of, say, Pearl Jam or Stereophonics, is exactly as (in)authentic as Milli Vanilli were. But, for whatever reason, only one of these inauthenticities must be censured as "artificial" or "dishonest".

No, Milli Vanilli's real mistake was to trick an establishment whose authenticity game they weren't playing into rewarding them with its highest totem, The Mighty Grammy Award. When the Grammies' inadvertent endorsement of MV was discovered, someone was going to have to fall on a sword just to restore and reperpetuate the authenticity illusion. After all, if they hadn't, someone might have pointed out that Girl You Know It's True was, qualitatively and content-wise, exactly the same record the day after the miming revelation that it was the day before. The group were stripped of the Grammy not because of a reconsideration of the work's merit, but because of an arbitrary political decision regarding the process of its fabrication.

Maybe they should just have been blatantly up-front about it. i used to be in a group called Saigon High Chair Pirates, and like all good groups, we had a theme song. In the middle of "Theme from Saigon High Chair Pirates" (maybe the "middle eight", who the fuck even knows what that actually means tho) we included a repeating vocal vamp with harmonies saying "Saigon, ooh yeah baby!" — a classic pop hook, i think you'll agree. At the point in the song, the three of us (the other two now have a different band) would step up to the mics, let our instruments hang by the straps, and perform handclaps along with the vocal harmony. This would carry on for a couple of bars, after which time we'd slowly start to back off from the mics — still singing, still doing the hand claps — while the vocals, pre-recorded and mimed all along, carried on without us. This always got a laugh, but i was always secretly hoping we'd have baited a more guillible audience member into protesting that we'd been miming our whole set.

Maybe Milli Vanilli should have had women mime the male vocals. Or been accompanied onstage by a ludicrous backing band armed with instruments obviously incapable of producing the sounds coming out of the speakers: say, one guy with a set of cardboard boxes of various sizes arranged and mimed as if a real drum kit, one guy struggling to carry an eight-foot wooden railway sleeper ("bass guitar") above his head, one guy with a toilet bowl strapped around his body like a sousaphone with a fifteen-foot length of hose coming out the back attached to a baritone sax mouthpiece at the other end. (For example). That would more clearly have said, "These guys clearly aren't playing this shit. We're not singing it either. Enjoy it for what it is or grow the fuck up and go listen to something you do like."

Or maybe it's time they got their own tribute band? All-female, probably. A tribute both to them and to their concept, the perfect isolation of song from performer. The pioneers who got scalped.

Twenty years. And we are where now?

mp3: Binary Star — "Reality Check"
mp3: Pumpkinhead — "Fake vs. Real"
mp3: Saigon High Chair Pirates — "Theme from Saigon High Chair Pirates"

¹ Tangential note: calling for the "death of autotune" is like calling for the death of reverb, or the death of flutes. It's a completely inane, nonsensical generalisation.

² Though in poor Britney's case, it's kind of a moot point.
³ i.e. free from such accoutrements.

Carol Vorderman, Mark E Smith and Gustav Holst walk into a bar

Anyone else noticed:

• The Countdown theme is basically a better-played instrumental rip-off of "Psykick Dancehall" by The Fall;

mp3: The Fall — "Psykick Dancehall"

• Both of them are basically rip-offs of the first part of Gustav Holst's "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity" (@ 01:51)?

mp3: Gustav Holst — "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity"

i feel a medley coming on.