Dieter Meier

Dieter Meier - half of Yello - has a neat way of explaining why we shouldn't be scared of failure: "I think to stumble and fall is great art."

I don't normally turn to Swiss electronica for guidance when considering the more serious questions of life, but I quite like this quote. And not just because I fall over a lot.  Besides, some people call Yello 'the Godfathers of Techno' and godfathers are pretty wise as a general rule.

Yello, if you don't know the name, are responsible for "Oh Yeah", which most people will have heard at the end of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  The other guy is Boris Blank, which is almost as funny a name as the Riff Raff cinema in Zurich, where a documentary made about the band premiered in 2005.  He's blind in one eye because of a childhood accident involving empty bullet shells and gunpowder, and taught himself about music by playing a home-made bamboo flute.

Dieter Meier comes from a Swiss banking family, and is normally never seen without his signature cravat. When he's not busy being half of Yello he's busy being a millionaire industrialist with interests in the technology industry, or playing professional poker, or designing silk scarves, or making organic wine on his ranch in Argentina, where he also breeds beef-cattle. He's written a children's book and for a brief period he was a member of the Swiss national golf team.


In 1972, as part of an art project, he installed a plaque in a German railway station.  It read “On March 23 1994, from 3 to 4 pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque.”.   in 1994, he did.

This Day in History

"1932: Rockabilly singer Sleepy LaBeef born."

I expect I’m not the only one who read that and immediately needed to know more about Mr LaBeef.

Sleepy is 6’7’’ tall, comes from a place called Smackover (it’s in Arkansas) and grew up on a melon farm. After a brief stint as a gospel singer he started recording rockabilly and country songs; his biggest hits were Every Day and Blackland Farmer which reached #73 and #67 in the charts respectively.  In between records he found time to star in a horror movie called The Exotic Ones.*

Live performances are what Sleepy is really all about.  He began recording in 1957 and has been on the road more or less ever since, except for in 1977 when his bus caught fire. From his website: “he still performs two hundred shows a year and plays with such energy that people a third of his age are annihilated when they attempt to keep up with him.”


People seem to like him. The Detroit Metro Times says “He possesses one of the most distinctive and compelling baritone voices ever to be heard in rock”.  Someone else ( I forget who, and don't have time to check) described it as a voice which can rattle windows.  And from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner: “Some music cooks, LaBeef roasts."



*Also called The Monster and The Stripper. Sleepy played a swamp monster.

Sunday Night Music Club

You know those times when you really, really really want Wikipedia to be true?  This is one of those times.

John Phillip Sousa is best known for composing marches and if you've ever heard a marching band, or seen practically any film ever set in an American high school or watched the opening credits of Monty Python's Flying Circus then you've heard a Sousa march. 

(You might think if you've watched Bridge on the River Kwai then you've heard a Sousa march, but the march you are thinking of, which is called the Colonel Bogey March (or occasionally, 'that one about Hitler's balls') isn't actually one of his. That was written by a different King of Marches, Kenneth J. Alford (real name Kenneth J. Rickets; it doesn't take a genius to work out why he changed it).   Since we're talking about the Colonel Bogey March I may as well mention it's the only march I know of which was a) composed during a golf game and b) named after an imaginary person.

But both of those things are by the by, because Sousa looks like this

which is exactly what I expected to him to look like.  The moustache, particularly.

His father sent him off to the marines at thirteen to stop him from joining the circus, then he left the marines and joined the pit orchestra at a theatre (definitely the most fun kind of orchestra to play in), where he learned to conduct, and then he went back to the Marines to lead their band.

After that he started his own marching band which ran for forty years and marched in a total of eight parades.  One of the parades was in Paris and the band also toured Australia.  (This was a much better story until I realised that, while reading about the band I missed the line about them playing 15,632 sitting down concerts also.  For a while I genuinely thought they'd performed once every five years, and managed to turn two of those performances into overseas jollies.)

He wrote a ton of marches (what's a better collective noun - a stampede maybe?) and also a bunch of operettas, most of which had propera opera sounding names like El Capitan or The Smugglers, and one which was called Chris and the Wonderful Lamp, which sounds more like a children's story.  Also several novels, and a memoir called  (rather pleasingly) Marching Along. 

He was around when commercial sound recording was starting to develop, and wasn't a fan of the newfangled technology.  "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country" he said, and I suppose there are a few people around today who'd agree with him about the state of the recording industry.  Fewer, I imagine, who'd agree with his prediciton that recorded music would lead to the eventual elimination of vocal chords via the process of evolution.  Although maybe that's all part of Simon Cowell's grand plan.

He was also a keen trap-shooter.  A line from his Trapshooting Hall of Fame biography:

"Let me say that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call, ‘pull,’ the old gun barks, and the referee in perfect key announces, ‘dead’."

This clip is The Liberty Bell, one of his most well-known marches, but performed  in a way you've probably not heard it played before: on an accoustic guitar. It's Sunday night, after all. Let's not go too crazy.

Sunday Night Music Club - an experiment.....

In an exciting development, I've worked out how to set up automated blog-posts. So even though I'm writing this post on Sunday morning, you won't get to read it until later on tonight, which is when it would make more sense to read it but is also when I'm much more likely to forget to publish it.

Isn't technology marvellous?

(Oh yes, the song. It's a cover version. It's great, and I say that as someone who loved the orginal.)

Sunday Night Music Club

I was spoiled for choice tonight.  So spoiled for choice, I very nearly picked something else.  But like the jackdaws, that something else will just have to wait.

This band are, in my opinion, criminally underrated.  Yes, they are "modern".  Yes, they are slightly mass-produced and yes, they are (or at least they were when they recorded this) barely post-adolescent, testosterone fuelled, pimply faced boys; making them - let's face it - just about the most undesirable creatures on the planet. *  But you know what?  They sing a darn good pop-song.  I'm not afraid to admit it - I love them.  Even though I'm probably not supposed to, what with being old enough to be their mother and all.

If jangly guitars, catchy vocals and sunny, innocent lyrics are your thing, then you will love this.  If not, then more fool you.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present for your enjoyment: McFly.



If you ever wanted to woo me with music (I know you've been wondering), this song would probably do it.  They also do an excellent cover version, as per here (Town Called Malice) and here (Queen's "Don't stop Me Now")  and here (beatles)
* Unless of course you're a barely post-adolescent, testosterone loving pimply faced (or otherwise) girl. 

Sunday Night Music Club

Sunday Night Music Club

I am excited about this.  Properly properly excited.

I turned on the telly when I got in this evening, and guess what I found?  Flight of the Conchords.  Some of the Glee cast.  In THE SAME EPISODE of The Simpsons.  I am pretty sure that I have died and gone to TV heaven.

For the un-initiated, Flight of the Conchords are a musical comedy double act who come from New Zealand, make a TV show set in New York and are just about the best thing sinced sliced bananas.  In fact, I'm astounded that I haven't done a FOTC themed SNMC club before now. *

In The Simpsons they play two camp counsellors who work at a Performing Arts summer camp attended by Lisa.  You know what the weird thing is?  I spent today with a friend who I first met when we were both working as counsellors in an American summer camp.  And you know what's even weirder? I was wearing (and am still wearing*) my favourite t-shirt, which looks like this:

Do you know who those people are? Do you? DO YOU?  Only FLIGHT OF THE BLIMMING CONCHORDS, that's who!!!

Any-hoo, here they are:



Also exciting: according to the credits, that is Stephen actual Hawking singing.  I really really hope the credits aren't lying. 

* So astounded, in fact, that I'm almost starting to think that perhaps I have, and I've just forgotten that I did it. If anyone has a better memory for these things than me, or just more of an inclination to trawl through old posts and check, then knock yourself out.  And please let me know.)


**Possibly not any more, by the time you are reading this.  I do take it off to wash it, sometimes.

No Longer Sunday Night but Let's Just Listen To Some Nice Music Anyway Music Club

So here's the thing. 

Yesterday was my friend's birthday.   His birthday lunch was in Soho and on the way to the restaurant I vaguely thought about songs I might use for Sunday night Music Club when I got home.

Three courses, several bottles of wine, one pub, two gay bars , one and  a half cigarettes  (I don't even smoke) and a failed attempt at signing up for karaoke later, I realised two things: 1) I couldn't remember which songs I'd thought of and 2) it didn't really matter anyway because it was was already half past midnight.


If I'd been able to karaoke, what I almost definitely would have sung is this

Sunday Night Music Club

This is one of those sunny, cheery songs which it's impossible to listen to without smiling a bit.  Just try it and see:

Sunday Night Music Club

My favourite Christmas song of all time:



While this is just silly:

Sunday Night Music Club

It's CHRI-I-I-S-S-T-M-A-A-A-A-A-S!*






*nearly

Sunday Night Music Club

2005: Australian man threatens to shoot down chopper with tomato-bazooka*.

I *love* the Today in History web gadget.  Especially today.

 

On a less violent note, today also saw the world's first jukebox unveiled, the debut of Life Magazine, Dr Who being broadcast on TV for the first time, and the invention of the horse-shoe making machine. 

 

If it happens to be your birthday, you share it with Otto the Great, Alfonso the Wise, and John Wallis, who invented the infinity symbol. (If you're not as wise as Alfonso, that's the one which looks like a sideways number eight.)  Also Harpo Marx (from the Marx Brothers),  and Maxwell Caulfield (from Grease 2, also known as The Worst Movie Sequel Of All Time) and a bunch of musicians, namely Bruce Hornsby, a rapper called Tha Dogg Pound and Ken Block.  Ken Block is the lead sister of Sister Hazel, who are a band you might (probably) have never heard of, but probably (might) have heard, because loads of their songs are used in films and TV shows.
 
I really, really like Sister Hazel.  Their music is great, which would be reason enough to like them, but I also heard them interviewed on a podcast once, and they just seemed like such nice blokes. Other great things about them: their hard-core fans are known as "Hazel-nuts"; they named themselves after a nun who runs a homeless shelter; they have a great song about a starfish, as per the video below. What's not to love?

By the way, if you arrived here because you are off to Tall Tales at the Peckham Literary Festival tonight, and followed that link in the program, then hello. You're in for a real treat. 

 

 

*The tomato-bazooka was home-made, apparently; the man was so irritated by the noise being made by a helicopter flying over his house that he rang Air Services Australia and threatened to shoot it down.  "Fruit is hardly a weapon of mass terror", said his solicitor.

Sunday Night Music Club

The link is tenuous, but bear with me.

I've just come home from a lovely long lunch at Artisan and Vine, one of my favourite places,in the world.  It's my birthday tomorrow, and lunch was the culmination of an excellent weekend of birthday celebrations with various friends, most (all) of which involved quite a lot of wine and all of which were a lot of fun.

A friend gave me some cheese as a birthday present.  Not just any cheese; it's the cheese made by Alex James from out of Blur.  One reason I like Artisan and Vine so much is it's the kind of place where, when my friend said "it's her birthday and she's just been given some special cheese; would you mind if we had some bread so we can all try it?" the waiter didn't even bat an eyelid.

The cheese was ace, lunch was ace, my other presents were all ace, the whole weekend has been ace. It's been the best birthday I've had in years, and IT'S STILL NOT EVEN MY ACTUAL BIRTHDAY YET.  I have some seriously excellent friends.

All this means that picking a song tonight was tricky, becuase I wanted to mark the occasion in some way.  I nearly picked a "getting older" song, and then I nearly picked a Blur song and then I nearly picked an "all my friends are absolutely ACE" song and then I looked up Alex James on Wikipedia and discovered he has a son called Gallileo and then I remembered this:

Sunday Night Music Club -the early edition

I'm going out for dinner later, so thought I'd slip this one in early.

Why this song now?  Well, I'm listening almost exclusively to music which would have been around in Autumn 2002 at the moment, because that's when the story I'm writing is set.  Basically it came down to a choice between this, Westlife and Liberty X.

You're welcome.  Besides, it has that sort of melancholy Sunday night feel to it, don't you think?

Hard-core Stereophonics fans will tell you that this song was actually relased earlier than 2002 and they'd be quite right.  But then I did say I'm listening to music which was *around* in Autumn 2002, and since that's when the second series of The Office was broadcast, and that series used a version (not this one) of Handbags and Gladrags as its theme-song, it was EVERYWHERE in Autumn 2002.  Remember?


 

Sunday Night Music Club

Dark, isn't it?*

I thought tonight might be a good time for this; it's not the version I was originally planning to use, but I was so blown away by the fact that  Bon Jovi have covered this particular song, I couldn't resist.  Besides: it's not half bad. 



*You will probably be more inclined to agree if you live in England (our clocks went back last night.)  Or, anywhere else which is dark.  Like in a cave or something. 

Sunday Night Music club

This is ridiculously late, as is this week's Apprentice round-up, which is still on the way (be still your beating hearts.)  In the meantime, here's something quite lovely.

Sunday Night Music club

I bought a book of Sondheim lyrics yesterday, for reasons I don't fully understand or remember, but it is a lovely hardback volume with notes and annotations and things. 

I thought I knew more Sondheim than I actually do, but it turns out I didn't.  I do now, though. He's great.  Almost as great as Andrew Lloyd Webber, who I know it is completely unfashionable to enjoy, but I don't care.  I like him.*

And look! Here they are together.

 

My favourite of the comments about this clip:

 Loving the look on ALW's face at 1:23. It's the exact expression a cat makes when you put reindeer antlers on its head

* His songs, I mean.  I don't know him personally.

Sunday Night Music Club

Birthdays

Today's birthdays:  Sigourney Weaver (real name Susan; she pinched the name Sigourney from a list of dinner guests in The Great Gatsby), Matt Damon, Kool from Kool and the Gang, one of the Ramones, Chevy Chase,  R.L. Stine who wrote the Goosebumps books (go and ask a ten year old), Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan, Dr Christian Barnard, World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, and Steve Perry of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. 

Also one of my oldest friends on the planet, who is none of the above.

"The Cherry Poppin' who now?" I expect you are asking.  The Cherry Poppin' Daddies.  They are ace.




See?