Bear market rally: Wandering Bear

The slightly mysterious Wandering Bear is the self-described IDM project of one Edward Newton, described by his record label's site as "an electronic dude from Canberra, Australia".

Don't know if he's named after the Native American guy who asked Cheryl how her vagina was in that one Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, or alternatively for a real-life wandering bear — such as the hapless wild black bear in Franee, Mississippi who got a 2½-gallon plastic jar stuck on his head and was then shot for his troubles after he wandered into a nearby town during its local Turkey Days celebration (a sad story indeed. Although, let's face it, you don't fuck with Turkey Days) — though at any rate, he makes great electronic/IDM/breakcore-type music.

So here's three to check out from Wandering Bear, for people who dig the said styles and those similar. i particularly like the plunderphonics on "Derk Simsauns Hicks", although in view of its title and general contents, it shouldn't really have taken me two plays to work out the sample source. Must have not have been listening properly or something.

If, perchance, you want to listen to or own the whole of the parent album of these tracks, its name is Pencil and Paper and it is obtainable for free from the aforesaid record label, Glitch City (or click the album cover to the left).

Glitch City continue to put out quality noise, plunderphonic, breakcore, etc. releases with an almost terrifyingly regularity, so expect more dispatches from them on here in the near future.

MP3: Wandering Bear — "Derk Simsauns Hicks"
MP3: Wandering Bear — "Luca Native Bear"
MP3: Wandering Bear — "Midbreak-Lunchbreak"

100 dumplings & 1,000,000 peas: the further adventures of Mr. Greedy

I used to have a tape of kids' songs themed around Roger Hargreaves' deathlessly wonderful Mr. Men characters. There were about five or six songs on each side of the tape, i seem to recall, up to a total of about twelve.

They were mostly third-person narrative tales about the adventures of the better known Mr. Men or some of their character traits: Mr. Happy's track, for instance, was a (rather soppy, i recall) paean to positivity, while Mr. Bump's chronicled his accident-prone nature. The odd few were told from a first-person perspective, a highlight being Mr. Nosey's painful account of the consequences of constantly sticking his ample nose in everybody's business.

(Thanks to this ace site for the cover scan.)

The best song, however, which ended side one, concerned (and was entitled) "Mr Greedy's Little Light Lunch".

One hundred dumplings and a million peas
Twenty marmalade puddings and a cheddar cheese
Bread and butter and a roll or two
Bread and butter and a roll or two, three, four

Then boiled beef and carrots in a casserole stew
And a bucket of custard, vanilla cake too
Bread and butter and a roll or two
Mr. Greedy is having a little light lunch

And then a treat for him to eat
It's roly poly pudding...

Apparently, Greedy also ate "ice cream in tons", "a gallon of soup", "bunches of bananas", and, somewhat underwhelmingly after all that lot, "plum duffs". Dunno about you, but to me that sounds like a hearty meal.

An unhealthy appetite was also the downfall of Mr. Greedy's namesake this week. The suitably rotund-looking Clive Greedy (right) was suspended from his job as a paramedic on the Isle of Wight after eating a stick of celery while attempting to revive a patient suffering from a heart attack.

According to the Beeb:

Darren Claydon, an emergency care practitioner... told a hearing in London on Monday: "My attention was called to Clive Greedy, by him saying, 'Nice celery'"...

This story just gets more and more improbable. Not just because at the time of the celery consumption, Greedy's partner paramedic John Jones was also "jesting with a prawn" and speculating as to whether said seafood would be cooked if the patient was defibrillated while it was on his chin; but also because, who, i ask you, has ever used the phrase "nice celery" before?

Obviously i wanted to give away "Mr. Greedy's Little Light Lunch" with this post, but my Mr. Men tape got lost about fifteen years ago (there's good money in it if you can get me a rip. More for a hard copy) so that went out the window. So here's some good general songs to go towards your five-a-day instead.

MP3: Minor Threat — "Salad Days"
MP3: Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention — "Call Any Vegetable"
MP3: The Vegetable Orchestra — "Greenhouse"

The first in an occasional series of giant wankers

A Ryanair flight carrying British holidaymakers has been forced to make an unscheduled landing due to a loss of cabin pressure, the company has said.

Probably experiencing a sudden extreme blast of turbulence from Michael "Cunt" O'Leary's gargantuan, shit-puking ego.

Take that bass out your voice, you talk to me in treble.

The first in an irregular series(?), today's Awesome '90s Verse of the Day is from Talib Kweli on Reflection Eternal's "Chaos", from the Soundbombing II comp.

[Talib Kweli]
Call us Liberty like the Bell in Philadelphia scenery
Me and Bahama-D style free like Mumia need to be
Seein me, feelin me, we right here on the level
Turning hard rocks to pebbles, exposin the devil
Lyrical Olympian like John Carlos winnin gold medal
Take that bass out your voice, you talk to me in treble
I'm "Serious" as Steady B so you know I ain't playin
I'm stimulatin, makin crowds move like organizations
in Philly. Keep it positive, my prerogative is exercise
See through the chaos with my third eye, Word I
Exhibit the exquisiteness, since a child I was vivid
Throw your hands in the air if you with it, dig it

...and every time some windbag fence-sitter from the International Olympic Committee or whoever comes out with some bullshit platitude about how the Olympics are above criticism because sport is like waaay too important to be affected by trivial real-world concerns like people's imprisonment and torture or forced disappearance or people's countries being invaded and occupied or funded for self-destruction or people having to apply for unattainable permission to speak their minds or the general quasi-Fascistic suppression of views that don't fit...


i think about how much we need a John Carlos.

Although Talib got it slightly wrong:
Tommie Smith got the gold, Carlos the bronze.
But still. IT'S THE THOUGHT PEOPLE

MP3: Reflection Eternal feat. Bahamadia — "Chaos"

Endearing bungling; more Dark Knight

To Birmingham, and the news that the council there has printed up 720,000 leaflets to thank the residents for their diligence in recycling, but unfortunately illustrated them with a picture of the wrong Birmingham — the West Midlands city's redneck American counterpart of Birmingham, Alabama.

Sparing literally no expense whatsoever, they also appear to have lifted the image of the Birmingham, AL skyline directly from the aforelinked Wikipedia article:

Here's a picture of the Birmingham, UK skyline for comparison purposes:

Hmmm, yes. You can maybe see their point. Personally, i'm wholly in favour of this sort of thing; you can't fault their commitment to recycling stuff, at least.

However, the most charming bit about the whole story was the authorities' initial insistence that nooo, of course they hadn't made a mistake! Y'see, they were planning to display, ummm... a generic skyline "intended to symbolise an urban area"! Yeh, that's right! Any old skyline, that'll do! And... erm... it was just unfortunate coincidence that the skyline in question was from a city with the same name as theirs while also not being the right one. Yeh! Coincidence!!

That line of reasoning lasted for nearly a whole 5 minutes, until presumably everybody who'd heard it had been fully incapacitated with laughter and told the Council to stop pretending they hadn't been going in the biscuit tin, as everyone could plainly see the chocolate plastered around all their mouths. Sterling effort.

In other news:

Dear All My Friends,

I would very likely have come to see The Dark Knight with you if you'd told me Maggie Gyllenhaal was in it.

YouTube: Gang Starr — "Nice Girl, Wrong Place"

The world is burning down, kids, watch it on the TV.

Cracker of a remix today, with El-P flipping Kidz in the Hall's "Drivin' Down the Block (Low End Theory)", itself pretty decent to start with, from a debonair summer breeze into a bug-eyed apocalyptic noise-funk whir via the addition of an extra verse and some ace subversive paraphrases of Naledge's original second verse.

Original KITH lyrics from OHHLA.com so don't blame me for getting those wrong (just El's bits).

[Chorus: Masta Ace]
Driving down the
Driving down the
Driving down the
Driving down the...

[Verse 1: Naledge]
[Driving down the block] It's the flicker of the year
Flicker on my ear make a hater shed a tear, When I'm
[Driving down the block] Got my seat on recline, turn up the Alpine
with the [Bass crazy kicking and]
[Driving down the block] See my black lady gossip
Passenger side with my hand on her thigh, while I'm
[Driving down the block] Chuck a deuce to the sky
For the boppers in the stands rubber necking on my ride
[Driving down the block] My Low End Theory tape in
Playing number six "Show Business" is my shit, when I'm
[Driving down the block] Bass kicking man sorta like Fred A-do
And I'm looking blessed like I said A-choo
I'm so damn clean, polo rugby and Jordan 16s while I'm
[Driving down the block] Wifey feeling intimate
Park up at the lake and turn the car into a cigarette

See the wheels on my car go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my truck go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my car go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my truck go (rouuunnnnndddddd)

[Verse 2: El-P] [Masta Ace]
[Driving down the block] Past a military cop
Got his blickers in his paws it's a Blackwater op, when I'm
[Driving down the block] See the cinders of the city
Try to get to higher ground before the riots set off, well I'm
[Driving down the block] Whether the hooptie or the Ranger,
Debasement is the fashion, i'm lashed to the great danger
[Driving down the...] not until petroleum drops off
from 4 dollars a gallon, you can suck on my cock, watch...
The summer was hot shit, the city could shapeshift
Cops'd just spray ways, get off every day quick [And they...]
[Driving down the block] Humming a irrational anthem
No crackers in bags, scram and run to the van,
Grab your handgun and scoop up your fam; this land's done.
Try to make it out the section 'fore they notice you've run [They got me...]
[Driving down the block] They barricaded every corner
Got a creeping suspicion i might not make it to the border...

[Verse 3: Naledge & El-P] [Masta Ace]
Polo on my back, Nike on my heels
D's on my Caddy, nigga I'm so trill
Diamond in the back, sunroof top
Low End Theory tape cause I'm so hip-hop, when I'm
[?All pulled out?] again, more likely to kill
Shackles on my ankles baby, life's so real
Drama's coming back (back), innocence is shot (shot)
The highway is a vein and i whip in a metal clot, when I'm
[Driving down the block] lights, camera, spotlight
Feel like the Howard marching band at the stop light
[Driving down the block] see the cameras like scanners
Feeling like a [digi-pet?] with invisible handlers
Yeeeaah, my car like a shop right?
Got cheese, got bread, yea yea I shop right
Yeeeaah, food is getting sparse right?
No cheese, no bread, no rice, not nice
On stoney in the turning lane tipping
Down 87, my presence is a present
Pimp in my own mind, bumping my music
Brainiac dumb dumb, [Yo!] got a degree stupid!
Not a degree human, robotic consuming up
Any and every privile-, keep him from thinking busily
Is he that little dot on that grid? Oh god, fuck no,
Producto with a middle finger waving out the truck. (Go!)
[Driving down the block] I'm stunting like David Blaine
Oh look, it's Major Payne sorta like Damon Wayans
Girls fantasize bout having labor pains
Cuz they see my ride and they thinking that I make it rain
Got a Cadillac car and a dream girl
Merrily merrily, my life is a dream world
Two miles an hour so everybody see me
The world is burning down, kids, watch it on the TV...

See the wheels on my car go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my truck go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my car go round and round (uh-huh)
See the wheels on my truck go round

[Chorus: Masta Ace]
Driving down the block, Low End, Low End Theory tape in
Open up the trunk, ba-bass crazy kicking
Driving down the block, Low-Low End Theory tape in
Low End Theory tape, bass, bass crazy kicking
Driving down the block, Low-Low End Theory tape in
Open up the trunk, ba-bass crazy kicking
Driving down the block, Low-Low End Theory tape in [See the...]
Open up the trunk, bass crazy kicking

PS: Swerve the West Coast remix, it's rubbish.
PPS: Reading this on Facebook? Go here, it'll make more sense.

MP3: Kidz in the Hall – "Drivin' Down the Block (Low End Theory)"
MP3: Kidz in the Hall – "Drivin' Down the Block (El-P mix feat. El-P)"

Unsurprising breaking news: PETA still morons

The clever souls at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are at it again, continuing to collect the public's unflagging sympathy and support for their worthy cause. Yep, the organisation that gave you such sane comparisons such as slaughterhouses with The Holocaust have apparently now decided that comparing every meat-eater with a psychopathic killer is really going to play well with the public. Genius. Hey you - enjoyed a tasty burger recently? THEN YOU'RE JEFFREY DAHMER!! Watch the membership requests flood in after that one.


People who genuinely care about animals – as opposed to slaughtering them while pretending to give a fuck – must surely be embarrassed to near-suicide every time PETA issue a new statement and make them, to a (wo)man, resemble some kind of insane cross between Bobby Sands and Beatrix Potter.

Personally, i just hope Ingrid "i'm getting my body made into meat, see what i did there?" Newkirk carks it soon, so i can order a load of "Newkirk Nuggets" and then shun them in favour of something tastier. (Let's face it, she looks like a stewed old boot, and there's no reason to suppose she'd taste any better.)

Like a big fat kangaroo steak, for instance. Mmmm... game-y.

MP3: The Meat Puppets – "I'm a Mindless Idiot"