Every week I post a song, for no reason other than it's fabulous. It may be old or new, obscure or over-exposed. No explanation, no fancy spiel, just solid gold popular music. Oh, and it's a secret, so you'll just have to trust me.
I've never been a musician as I don't have the stones to stand in front of a room of strangers and entertain them. But my passion, and I hope my knowledge, of pop music is deep, profound and an essential part of my being. I trust my ears, they have never let me down, which leads to me believe I could be a great svengali, if you are prepared to ignore the admittedly rather central point that they often have more charisma than their charges.
So when I consider the kind of band I would construct, in order to destroy all other pop music through their sheer brilliance, I like to think of them in terms of other bands. A kind of hybrid recipe, if you will. I want power of James Brown and the Famous Flames, I want the catchiness of Abba, the soul of Otis Redding, the oddness of Screaming Jay Hawkins, the humour of Devo, the punk energy of Little Richard and the authority of Public Enemy. Oh, and the brass of Sly and The Family Stone, because I love brass in rock 'n roll.
There are problems with this plan of mine, mainly the fact that it is impossible to be that good, (and anyway, if it were achieved, surely all other artists in all genres would cease to create as it would become obvious that their endeavours were wasted in the face of this new phenomena.) Secondly, someone has already tried it, and they were called Rocket From The Crypt.
The band was formed in San Diego in 1990, and they recorded several fantastic albums of pure rock n roll music, filtered through decades of soul, funk, glam, punk and hardcore. They took all these influences and melded them to some of the most immaculate pop songs of the nineties. You may even remember them for their number twelve UK hit On A Rope, which gave them the opportunity to perform on Top of the Pops.
Of course in a fair and just world the song would have reached number one, and be played at weddings and funerals across the world ad infinitum. Why we don't live in this world has yet to be explained to me yet.
There were many other reasons to love RFTC, aside from the music (as if that's not enough):
1) They wore matching clothes. All the best bands wear uniform. See Devo, the Beach Boys, Talking Heads, Daft Punk, the White Stripes, Kraftwerk etc.
2) They had a roadie who used to come on stage and dance and sing backing vocals. He also wore the uniform.
4) At Glastonbury, they parted the crowd and persuaded the schmucks to make a huge mud slide.
5) They breathed fire.
6) They had aliases (Speedo, Petey X, ND, Apollo 9, Atom, JC 2000), which is always cool.
But the main reasons, for me, to love RFTC were the incredible live shows and obviously the songs. I guess I was lucky to have been a teenager at a time when bands like this could get on the cover of the NME and been seen performing live on prime time BBC. But this shouldn't be about nostalgia, as even though they split up two years ago, their music is as fresh as it ever was. This is an important band, and should be valued as such. Spread the word and enjoy the punk heat blast.
Every week I post a song, for no reason other than it's fabulous. It may be old or new, obscure or over-exposed. No explanation, no fancy spiel, just solid gold popular music. Oh, and it's a secret, so you'll just have to trust me.
Firstly, he does guest vocals on the new Fatboy Slim project, the Brighton Port Authority. You can say what you want about Norman Cook, but you can't deny he knows his way around a pop tune, so the combination of the two of them, with Dizzee Rascal, is pretty irresistable. Nice cheeky video too.
Secondly, he has turned a building in New York into a giant musical instrument. Well, musical is debatable, but it seems pretty cool to me.
Here's a new feature at jamesinbrasil. Every week I will post a song, for no reason other than it's fabulous. It may be old or new, obscure or over-exposed. No explanation, no fancy spiel, just solid gold popular music. Oh, and it's a secret, so you'll just have to trust me. Solid Gold Popular Music Number One
I haven't had many musical epiphanies in my life (who has?), but one I clearly remember happened about 8 years ago. I was channel hopping in bed, trying to wake up, when I turned onto VH1 classics. They were showing Bo Diddley's Bo Diddley, a grainy performance from sixties TV. Something about it made me sit bolt upright in my bed, utterly captivated by the video. The primal backbeat, the egotastic simplicity of the lyric, Bo's shuffling dance, the bee-hived female backing vocals (which I'm always a sucker for), the screaming, white teenagers and sheer force of the song all compressed into a two minute alarm clock. I can't help but be jealous of everyone involved, existing at a time when music felt truly revolutionary, not just sonically, but socially.
Thanks to the joys of the modern world, I can now share this video with you. I hope you feel ten percent of the joy that I feel when I watch it:
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