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

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.

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.

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)

"What are you listening to, tomasz?"

...why, this stuff of course! (Just a brief glance at some current rotationals.)

Germlin
Because the only excuse i need to rinse a new Germlin album is possessing a copy.
mp3: "Graves II (feat. Kania Tieffer)"

Ornette Coleman

He's curating this year's Meltdown festival and the line-up looks worth selling a kidney for. There's a show where Ornette, his current quartet and special guests Bill Frisell and the Master Musicians of Jajouka will play "material from his groundbreaking album The Shape of Jazz to Come and music inspired by it". Holy fucking shit. If i could secure tickets to see that, i'd probably literally jizz in my pants. But because realistically i probably won't be able t', i've been going through the whole of the stunning 6-disc Beauty Is A Rare Thing box set on Spodify instead (link). Also, anyone else reckon he looks a bit Stringer Bell-esque in that picture?
mp3: "We Now Interrupt for a Commercial"

Prince

Everyone's favourite Top 40 industrial has-been Trent Reznor recently tried calling bullshit on Prince Rogers Nelson, saying "if you have a hundred great songs or a thousand, how about picking a few and putting them on your record that you've put out because your last several have sucked".

Well, leaving aside the obvious pot/kettle/racial-epithet action of Trent Reznor saying anyone's last several albums have sucked, the fact remains that Prince, as a Jehovah's Witness, is required to spend as much free time as possible going door-to-door trying to save people's souls, which has to be better than spending all your spare time dicking about on Twitter and sucking off tech bloggers till they do a feature crowning you King of Revolutionary New Distribution MethodzzzZzZz™. And even if you don't buy that for an argument, Prince's back catalogue still pisses on Rez's from a great height.

mp3: "7"

Shock G

The received wisdom is that Shock G's solo set Fear of a Mixed Planet was a stunning album that got slept on harder than a showroom of Sealy Posturepedics®. For once, the received wisdom is absolutely on-point. This record should have outsold the majority of rap released in 2004.

mp3: "Your Sun iz a Pimp" feat Humpty Hump & K-Lien

Jon Poole

Speaking of masterpieces no-one knows about:¹ 16 Zappa covers, one Cardiacs/Wildhearts alumnus,² one rubbish drum machine, a couple of guitars, a bass, a synth, voices, and — since it was all done on a four-track recorder — probably one of history's biggest bouncedown tallies.

mp3: "Dog Breath"

Frank Zappa

Cuz you've gotta go back to the source; cuz we're going to see Zappa Plays Zappa in a week and it's going to be outrageously ace; and cuz there are 79 albums and counting to get through and i only own about six. Current selections: Sheik Yerbouti, Uncle Meat, the Cheap Thrills and Son of Cheep Thrills comps, Freak Out!

mp3: "Peaches en Regalia"

Dylan

And not even his own stuff either! Mainly just interstitial material, announcements and informative chat as i progress through the archives of his ace Theme Time show.

Pulp
Found the special edition of This Is Hardcore on Spodify. The extra material on the second disc is nothing amazing, but the album holds up well despite the unfair critical panning it got at the time.

mp3: "The Day After the Revolution"

Marilyn Roxie

("if aphex twin was american and a CHICK")
Distressingly productive American lass who puts out lush electronica/soundtrack/VGM-informed synthscapes as well as teaching Japanese and the history of rock, blogging prolifically and, for all i know, probably composing the odd symphony and constructing a beautiful palace of pebbles in her lunch hour. And her most-played group on last.fm is The Fall. i'm mildly in love.
These plays are for both some old records, and her new one, Non Limerent Object.¹
mp3: "Drift Along/Distortion"

Wavves
Primarily while researching this gig preview for Amsterdam Event Guide, which ended up getting taken down anyway due to Nathan Williams' inability to handle his drugs. Nice one, Nathan!
mp3: "California Goth"

Tom Waits
Bootleg live on Coffee Break Radio Show, WMMS, Cleveland, Ohio, December 3rd 1975.
mp3: "Nighthawk Postcards (on Easy Street)"

Super Furries

A favourite of Joe Germlin, appositely enough. i've always thought that, while their albums have a tendency towards slight slumps in the middle, SFA were one of the very best singles bands to have ever existed. Proof can be found in Songbook: The Singles, Vol. 1, where at least every other track is a classic. Although, having just said that, i've also been listening all the way through to Mwng, which i find their most consistent and cohesive record and which also closes with the simply beautiful "Gwreiddiau Dwfn/Mawrth Oer Ar y Blaned Neifion" ("Deep Roots/A Cold March on Neptune").
mp3: "Gwreiddiau Dwfn/Mawrth Oer Ar y Blaned Neifion"

Cornershop
So my rap group 30KB are playing at Kendal Calling festival (second time lucky! last year we were meant to be playing one of the tent stages at the same festival, but got fucked over by intra-promoter-ial P'n'B (politics'n'bullshit, that is)). Anyway, i'm probably missing the point of the exciting modern-day festival line-up, but the thing i'm most looking foward to seeing at said fest is the 1997 revival on day three with Ash, Idlewild and Cornershop. Wow, it's like being fourteen again! i dug out When I Was Born for the Seventh Time to celebrate and am even currently sporting my fetching beige WIWBft7T t-shirt.

Joe G.³ says they've also got a new album out that sounds "Moog-y, Bolan-y, glam rock, with sitars and trombones", which sounds intriguing, to say the least. The only slightly jarring thing about this festival appearance is their spot on the bill, below Emmy the Great (cute, but musically nothing to write home about) and The Rumble Strips (who?). But hey, at least they're on there.
mp3: "Candyman"

Shitloads of songs about coffee
And versions of "Love Will Tear Us Apart".¹

¹ Of which more later.
² Though both were in the future at this point.
³ Jesus, Joe, how many times do you wanna be in this post?

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"