4 posts tagged “muse”

Yesterday, I remembered a band I used to like called Colour Of Fire. I bought a couple of their singles and their debut album, Pearl Necklace, back in like 2004; saw them live once, then got so caught up in other bands that I forgot about them. It turns out they split.

They were kinda like a very youthful, more energetic Muse. Hear me now!

Via a sparse, supposedly official site, I found a link to the new band of one of their two singers - called Grammatics. So I went to the Grammatics site and listened to them. They're very different - trading the dual-guitar assault for cellos, keyboards and a slightly more danceable sound. They're... really good. Listen to this one through so you get to hear the gorgeous build up.

As I've mentioned before, when I moved to the US, I had to leave all my CDs behind so I ripped all 11,000+ songs to my portable hard drive and back them up to a second hard drive I bought here. Any new CDs bought since the move have also been ripped to the hard drive - whether Jess bought them or I did - and the number of songs is creeping up.

Today, we both bought a handful of CDs. I got...

- Juno (Official Soundtrack)
- Origin Of Symmetry, Absolution and Black Holes & Revelations by Muse

Jess got...

- Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World
- The Con and So Jealous by Tegan & Sara

The best part of having such similar tastes is that we can split the cost of buying CDs. So I ripped them and the b-sides to the recent Radiohead single, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, before deciding today was the day to start tackling something I had put off for so long: ripping all the CDs Jess owns that I don't.

There's albums I don't have by bands I like, albums by bands I've never heard of, and albums by bands I personally would never by albums by (I won't mention names in case Jess is embarassed by some of them). I'm guesstimating that there's around 100 CDs to rip in here, at least. By the time I'm done, I'm sure the number of songs wll be over the 14,000 mark.

This is how I'm spending my Sunday.

I spent my Friday at work. I didn't leave the office until 2am as we had to get the two sites we're working on into the staging environment and working ahead of a client demo on Monday. That was fun. I have a few issues to fix tomorrow morning, but nothing scary.

My body wouldn't let me lay in yesterday, so I got up and played some Burnout Paradise. After cleaning the house and watching Waitress (a great film made more poignant by the fact writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelley was murdered before she got to see the finished product), we went out for dinner and drinks with our friends Jason and Brad.

All in all, it's been a fairly relaxing weekend. Now we're just waiting for Rock Of Love to come on before getting an early night.

I'm turning into a right old man.

Lately, all the kids have been batshit crazy over some tweenie bimbo called Hannah Montana. I later discovered that this is the name of a television character played by Miley Cyrus, the daughter of Billy Ray - yes, he of 'Achy Breaky Heart' fame. The mind boggles.

Of course, this discovery made me think of two things.

1. Resuscitating my plan to invent a time machine to go back and kill Walt Disney for the sins of the company bearing his name (Hannah Montana is a Walt Disney Company property; and the latest 3D shitfest Winnie The Pooh film with some random little girl instead of Christopher Robin is the final straw in said company's arse raping of classic children's books).

2. Other musicians who followed in their parents' footsteps.

And so I present: my Top Several Songs By Musicians Whose Dads Were Also Musicians. This post would have featured music, but Vox now block everything I upload and I can't be bothered to put these songs on my own hosting right now.

1. 'Dinner At Eight' by Rufus Wainwright
His dad, folk singer Loudon, once sang a song called 'Rufus Is A Tit Man'. Nowadays, Rufus is good friends with Elton John and Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, so I think we can all agree that Loudon was wrong. This song is about the younger Wainwright's relationship with the elder.

2. 'Falling Out Of Love' by Sean Lennon
While his older half-brother Julian tried to forge a career by sounding like a boring clone of his dad - some little-known musician called John Lennon, Sean was much more of a hipster: signing to Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys' defunct label; dating a member of/joining quirky Japanese duo Cibo Matto, and guesting on albums by Handsome Boy Modeling School and Albert Hammond, Jr (one fifth of The Strokes, who also makes an appearance on this list). His second album, Friendly Fire, is awesome.

3. 'Dream Brother' by Jeff Buckley
Jeff, the son of experimental jazz vocalist Tim, had one of the finest sets of pipes before his untimely demise in the late '90s. Fellow list member Rufus wrote the song 'Memphis Skyline' about him, and took over the reigns of covering Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' on tour. This song, like the Rufus song, is about his dad.

4. 'I Saw Red' by Transister
Singer Keely is the brother of Chesney, who appeared in the film Buddy's Song with Roger Daltrey and sang the song 'The One And Only' before fading into obscurity. Their dad was Chip Hawkes, bassist and vocalist for The Tremeloes (the band Decca signed instead of... The Beatles, an unknown band which featured Sean Lennon's dad). Transister split after one album, which is a shame.

5. 'In Transit' by Albert Hammond Jr
As mentioned, this curly haired guitar wonder is one fifth of The Strokes as his day job, but he also records solo. Albert Hammond Sr was a singer-songwriter who accidentally ruined a whole bunch of parties in the '80s by co-writing 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now', a huge hit for Starship. God I hate him.

6. 'One Headlight' by The Wallflowers
Aren't genes wonderful things? Somehow Bob Dylan, he of the shitty voice and great lyrics, spawned Wallflowers frontman Jacob - he of the great voice and shitty lyrics. Oh cruel fates.

7. 'Sunburn' by Muse
Yes, even Matt Bellamy has a vaguely famous dad - George Bellamy played guitar for The Tornados, who were apparently once rivals to The Shadows. Whoa-ooh-whoa-ooh-whoas! According to Wikipedia, Pink Floyd and The Who namechecked them as an early influence, who am I to judge?

8. 'Is It Any Wonder?' by Sophie Ellis-Bextor
So I'm cheating, her dad - Robin Bextor - was a film director and her mum - Janet Ellis - presented Blue Peter, but I've run out of ideas and this post seemed too short... so sue me, as they say here in America.

Here are the bands I saw, in chronological order.

FRIDAY
- Chin Up Chin Up
- Bang Bang Bang
- The Polyphonic Spree
- Electric Six
- MIA**
- The Rapture
- The Black Keys
- Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

SATURDAY
- Tapes N' Tapes
- Silverchair
- Cold War Kids
- Motion City Soundtrack**
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
- The Hold Steady**
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Spoon*
- Muse

SUNDAY
- Smoosh*
- Rodrigo Y Gabriela
- Amy Winehouse
- Paolo Nutini*
- Apostle Of Hustle*
- Blue October**
- Kings Of Leon
- !!!
- Modest Mouse
- Pearl Jam

* heard an incomplete set, usually while eating/while passing through a section of the site.
** heard while passing through a section of the site, but so shit they were scarcely worth mentioning.

The heat was scorching all weekend, and money seemed to vanish just as rapidly as I perspired. Despite that, and being surrounded by Americans, it was a great weekend.

HIGHLIGHTS
Silverchair - I didn't care for them before (mostly because of their teenage Nirvana wannabe phase), but they were great and put on a great show.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Just really great fun, as I knew they would be. I definitely want to see them live again, and spend more time with their second album.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - They really deserve their live reputation. Karen is as crazy as shit (and looks more than a little like Marilyn Manson), and their set rocks from start to finish.
Muse - Whether you like their music or not, the light show, ridiculous musicianship and 'Sunburn' (played on a piano this time, natch) make them one of the most exciting bands of the weekend.
Pearl Jam - As one of the bands on my list of bands I had to see before I died, it was a given that I was up for it. They played an awful lot of older material including 'State Of Love And Trust' from the Singles soundtrack, and really engaged the crowd.

Eddie took the two encores as opportunities to talk about serious issues. During the first, he talked about BP Amoco dumping shit into Lake Michigan and urged everyone to boycott their products. For the second, he brought out Tomas Young. Tomas introduced Ben Harper, who joined Eddie on a song called 'No More' about the Iraq war.

Then they started playing 'Rocking In The Free World', pulling people up on stage to shake tambourines (they seem to have a lot of them - earlier in the day, Eddie had trashed two while helping out Kings Of Leon on a song). Apparently among the folks on stage with them was Dennis Rodman. I thought he looked more like Wesley Snipes.