Two completely unexpected TV appearances from Random Jon Poole (Cardiacs/Wildhearts/God Damn Whores) on prime-time telly!
In the first one, Random Jon and his mother-in-law appear in support of his wife Louise as she scoops a tidy win on a 2005 episode of BBC1's The Lottery Show. Dale Winton calls him "a bit camp", which is a pretty funny thing to be called by Dale Winton.
Then there's this appearance on Chris Tarrant vehicle It's Not What You Know in 2008, which is honestly maybe the most contrived quiz show format i've ever seen, apparently involving the contestants trying to defeat Johnny Ball, Dr Fox, Toby Young, Brian Sewell and Miranda Krestovnikoff at knowing the answer to trivia questions.
The couple seem to be doing quite well, but i have no idea how it all turns out because the uploader didn't manage to tape the whole thing. The highlight is probably Random Jon hilariously pretending to find Tarrant's crap jokes funny, and also mocking his frankly weird impersonation of Sylvester Stallone.
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
— 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.
My pal Andy from Out From Animals wanted to demonstrate to me the peculiar genius of Oingo Boingo, so he remastered "Little Girls", the opening track from their first album Only A Lad, and to his ears their best song.
Says Andy:
I remastered this myself as the original song didn't have enough kick.
It's Danny Elfman's band and this song is from 1980. He also did the voice for Jack Skeleton and wrote all the songs for A Nightmare Before Christmas. So just imagine Jack Skeleton singing about being a paedophile 80s style!
About being a whatnow? Yes, indeed... quoth Allmusic:
It's probably a good thing that this particular Oingo Boingo collection never reached too high a level of prominence, though, because the lyrical content of Only a Lad could have landed them in serious hot water. Although never vulgar, the album brazenly shuffles through taboos without compunction, writing from a pedophile's point of view in "Little Girls," not-so-clandestinely discussing masturbation in "Nasty Habits," and generally adopting a socially whimsical and irreverent attitude.
(They've also got one called "Capitalism", a kind of Republican swipe at the same collegiate anarchist types targetted on the DKs' "Holiday in Cambodia" (and named one of National Review's 50 greatest conservative rock songs), which includes damningly hilarious lines like "I'm so tired of hearing you whine / about the revolution / bringin' down the rich / When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!" and "You’re just a middle class, socialist brat / from a suburban family and you never really had to work / and you tell me that we've got to get back / to the struggling masses (whoever they are) / You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain / Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain", sentiments which in certain cultural sectors are undoubtedly more taboo than either public masturbation or lusting after minors.)
i'd actually been eager to check out Oingo Boingo for a while anyway, and had coincidentally been listening to Only A Lad after my curiosity was finally piqued enough by the discovery on Spodify of last year's compilation oddity Nightmare Revisited, a cover album of the entire Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack featuring a couple of re-recordings by Mr Elfman himself. Only A Lad's most noticeable parallel for me was the recurring hint of a US slant on what Cardiacs were doing in the late-70s/early-80s.
It certainly makes sense that OB were "a semi-theatrical music/comedy troupe" before they were a band, performing everything from Cab Calloway covers to Russian ballet music to Balinese gamelan instrumentals, sometimes with up to 15 band members handling 30 instruments, some of which were hand-built; and the New Wave and ska leanings have got some parallels to the likes of "In a City Lining" or "The Breakfast Line" off A Little Man and A House and the Whole World Window, especially when you factor in the turn-on-a-sixpence time changes and excursions into modern classical and jazz territories. By way of comparison (as if we really need any excuses to throw up a Cardiacs video on here), here's the stone-cold classic "R.E.S.".
Oh, and speaking (tangentially) of things not having enough kick, does anyone else think The Loudness War would be a great name for a band? Their sound would be somewhere between Black Flag in their sludgy metal phase and Merzbow maybe.
