New Songs!

I got yer new songs right here!

Step It Up & Go has been our opener since the very beginning, but I think this is the first time I've been confident enough to upload a version of it. The yelps are a bit of an homage to Doug Macleod.

Vanilla Pudding gets more and more filthy the more I sing it. You'll definitely need a shower after this one, especially the third verse...

99 Secrets is probably over represented in our recordings, but its a song of mine that we do well and is well-liked. This version has a vocal, on the first verse in particular, that is very close to how I envisaged the song in the first place trying to be smooth and then rough to represent the passive-agressive sides of the original inspiration.

Dead Drunk & Naked is a brilliant song by the Drive-By Truckers that we've changed to make more of a sad ballad. I really like what I tried to do with my singing on this one and Hannes gives great Dobro on the solos.

Speaking of the music, it almost goes with out saying that the band are all playing wonderfully with fine soloing throughout.

I Was Not Wrong

The Bluesberries were pretty much on fire. I have mp3s to prove it. Expect uploads soon.

Some Videos

A couple of things caught my eye recently and one or two of them may not have been blogged so much:

• Becks & The Bullets: Last Waltz. I think this channels Cure-era Tim Pope quite a bit, but in a good way.


• The Krugman Blues ~ Loudon Wainwright III. Could only have been more aimed at me if the video was made in Lego.


• Brutal Legend first twenty minutes walkthrough. As narrated by Tim Schafer. I don't like heavy metal or Jack Black but this looks like it will rock!

On the Jack Black problem, I also liked Kung Fu Panda very much. Perhaps he's better as a voice over artist where you can't see his perpetual mugging and the animators tone him down a lot.

So, Elvis Costello, Then...

I guess he's adenoidal, at least according to the New York Times.

via TMN.

How To Dismantle U2

No Rock & Roll Fun takes a big chunk out of Paul McGuinness, manager of U2, for applauding the French for their appaling new "creation and internet" law.

To be honest McGuinness doesn't help himself with lines like:

[I]t is about the future of a new generation of artists who aspire to be the next U2

You know what he means, but, seeing as U2 seem to have milked all of being U2 dry and settled into near-self-parody and virtual irrelevance, this isn't quite the prospect it once was.

Anyway, NRRF goes through all that and has the best lines. Including:

Paul McGuinness, manager of Dutch property company U2

And:

Still, someone from the U2 organisation flattering a right-wing President and telling him that his flawed ideas are, actually, signs of genius. That's something you don't see every day.

Ouch.

Photos From The Unplugged Irish Gig

The Bluesberries in Widescreen.


All solos should be this much fun.



Won't someone please tuck in my shirt.



Beer. Foamy.



You talkin' to me?

Laughin' Len Live

Surely part of the thrill of a current Leonard Cohen concert is whether the 74 year-old might, er, croak while urging us to stuff the last tree that's left up the whole in our culture.

His singing voice actually seems more of a slightly breathless rasp than before, just a touch thinner than I remember, on this NPR cherry picking of his recent concert at The Beacon Theatre, but it certainly suits the songs well.

Yet Another Post-Gig Claim Of Greatness

Well, we were great. All the 'Berries were on form. The Marki had any number of fine solos. Walter kept the all the pieces at just the right tempo. Hannes made "Dead, Drunk & Naked". I was glad to get through the whole thing with my voice intact.

The games room at Doherty's Bar isn't huge (I'd guess we got about 30 in — not packed but good enough) but singing with no amplification was a bit daunting. I managed it though. Having to belt out the songs didn't exactly suit all of them (a few songs really need more of a croon and the Tom Waitsy bit in Vanilla Pudding is diffcult to do without close miking) but some of the songs we did we as good as they've been. I personally thought we'd never done a better Prison Grove.

The only really wrong thing I remember was had an odd hesitant moment from me at the beginning of Dead, Drunk & Naked.

Our new song, "Love's Grown Cold", was a blast and just the thing to pep up the second set.

All in all, a fun night.

For The Cheeses: How To Skank

From 1964, apparently. Stiff and loose at the same time.

Via Boing Boing

Yet Another Gig Poster

Yes, it came from Obamicon.me which I suppose sort of makes me a hack, but in Austria where that image isn't really in the public consciousness it makes me a poster maker of very great speed...

Gig Poster

This is the poster for the BluesBerries next gig. I'm fairly proud of this one. Though I may have ripped off this:

Though I like to think I've added something. Subliminal boobies.

Microsoft Not Totally Evil?

I'm so behind on all things at the moment. Apparently Microsoft have released something called Songsmith (it generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice, so the blurb says) and the fun thing to do is to take a vocal track from someone famous and have Songsmith destroy a cherished favourite. Obviously you then have to upload it somewhere to show just how bad MS and some old band singer are.

Except...

Well, except I really like this version of Wonderwall.

First UK Appearence

"Guten Abend. Ich freue mich, hier in Rotherham zu sein"

And Yet We Never Noticed It

When did Damon Albarn turn in to Phil Collins? Or was it always that way?

T To The Rescue

Friend of the blog, Horst (sometimes known as T), sent me a fun link today.

It's something that calls itself a fleshmap and it's bodyparts arranged as to how often they get mentioned in certain types of music. It's kind of not safe for work in that there are very small pictures of the body part in question.

Hip hop's table is ass over head, really. The Blues, on the other hand (in first place), has very few mentions of ass. Something I'm trying hard to rectify personally.

Check Out The Cheeses

Given the large overlap between my readership and fans of the Little Baby Cheeses, then the chances are good that you've already heard the new demo "Do It Yourself".

If you haven't heard it yet click over and have a listen. It's ace!

Lady Love

Jorn Barger over at Robot Wisdom has unearthed this list of, currently, 40 songs about what I like to refer to as "hot lesbo action".

It's a pity, really, that the links are to videos rather than MP3s because I'd probably make them all in to one big playlist and play it every so often down at the Irish pub. Jill Sobule's I Kissed A Girl and Jonathan Richman's Dancing in A Lesbian Bar get regular play there —I have my own "Paul's Drunk" list, it's easier that way— so sneaking in a whole themed evening appeals to my sense of humour.