Thursday, 30 July 2015

That's Entertainment : Devo


Dun dun dun dun dun…

Whip it…whip it good!

Ha!  Right through my childhood and teens, Devo’s Whip It was one of those ‘novelty’ songs, like Mexican Radio or Rock Lobster, that seemed to be played at Blue Light Discos or on late night TV video shows and always got the crowds jumpy and happy…like some sort of nergasm fun-time button had been pressed.  Funny to think it was written as a pi$$-take theme with then-American President Jimmy Carter in mind as a way to get Americans to ‘work harder’.

It was only later that I learnt and appreciated what an envelope Devo pushed.  Taking New Wave synth hooks, dry wit, whacked out experimental art and visual style along with punk rock trappings, Devo combined these elements to release surreal, satirical observational songs and albums that cut at the core of 1980’s American society.  Devo - a contraction of de-evolution - were seen as weird, nerdy, out there by the mainstream yet today they seem to have been prescient pioneers.  That’s right, the nerds inherited the Earth but we didn’t listen to their warnings.

Where George Orwell spoke of Newspeak, Devo predicted America’s reliance on Doublespeak - language that deliberately disguises the stupidity and sinister cynicism of those in control of the media and the governments.  And funnily enough, where we’ve had a generation of political spin, Devo were embraced by Australia early on in the piece by Countdown (although for it’s popularity, Whip It only made it #77 here).  

Not only Devo in name, Devo made famous songs their own, covering Working In The Coal Mine as well as appropriating both the Rolling Stones’ I Can’t Get No Satisfaction and Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?   They also utilised the new video format to produce quirky and arty video clips which were often visually opposed the lyrical content of the song.  

By the end of the 80’s, Devo had had their day, slowly becoming bigger than their cultish status allowed.  Now, Devo are acknowledged as pioneers and originals, paving the way for popular culture to be skewered, remixed, rehashed, reheated and re-examined.  Their songs are used for ads - often the band thinks it is subversive but it pays the moolah and they get to laugh.  For me, every time I watch Yo Gabba Gabba! I laugh out loud - lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh is the resident artist and I can’t help but think he is ‘corrupting’ a whole new generation of independent thinkers.  Ha!

Whip it?  Whip it good!





Mongoloid          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6lY8UmMIUY   [fan made video]



Gates of Steel         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goV57pGmiCk










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Friday, 24 July 2015

Plug It In: Big Black Delta


Big Black Delta is back with a stomping, synth boogie pop dance rocker called It's Ok that will slam itself in to your head and force your knees to angulate and your feet to tap.  Soon, you'll be smiling like a Cheshire Cat and burning a whole in the floor as it infuses in to your brain.

This new one reminds me of ELO, Marc Bolan and that song from Flashdance - Maniac whilst being totally fresh and contemporary - almost peerless.

Check out the track here:


And seriously, the last album was AMAZING, if It's Ok is a taste of things to come, get ready to have your mind blown.  Currently taking Pledges for the new album, sign up here http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/bigblackdelta and get in to the goodies on offer.

And to reacquaint yourself, check out BBD's previous hits.



This is the past, present and future served up in delicious 4 minute feasts.  





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That's Entertainment : Death Cab For Cutie




First up, let me allay your fears:  Death Cab For Cutie are not some death metal act intent on excising you of your soul.  They are, however, a rock act who like to twist your heartstrings and leave you  an emotional wreck, killing you with heart aching, heart breaking, gloom-pop that’s great if you want to get yourself up for watching The Notebook.

With poetic song titles that evoke emotional turmoil, love lost and the human condition, Death Cab For Cutie are a band that have been around for almost 20 years.  They were appropriated as a flag waver for the 2000’s ‘emo [emotional] rock’ genre because of their downbeat sound and poetic lyrics however it was in 2003 via Adam Brody’s Seth Cohen role in The O.C. that DCFC gained widespread notice.  Appearing on the soundtrack for 2009’s Twilight : New Moon caught them more ‘teens’ looking to sob in to their diaries.

A number of brilliantly crafted albums have seen DCFC slowly become a big-selling rock band with an impeccable live act.  Having seen them a few times in the past couple of years, the lads in DCFC certainly serve up a live show that is impossible to ignore.  And despite the ‘emotional’ leanings of their music, the band are jovial chaps, well versed in rock history and ply their trade with much gusto. 

Singer, guitarist and writer [the main man] Ben Gibbard was also briefly married to Zooey Deschanel and the latest DCFC album, Kintsugi, is a result of that marital disintegration.  Better still, Ben Gibbard was one half of another band The Postal Service which release a masterpiece in 2004 [their single Such Great Heights was used by Telstra in the past 2 years for ads].

And if you want to cry - like quite literally sob uncontrollably - try listening to What Sarah Said.  A song about a true-love dying, the dying patient’s words to her lover are “Love is watching someone die”…So who’s going to watch you die?  

Yep.  Choked up.

Anyway.  It’s not all miserablism.  There’s some lovely pop gems as well.

But I’ll leave that up to you.  I’m out of here!

Taxi!!!!

Ahem…Death Cab For Cutie.




Death Cab For Cutie




You’ve Haunted Me All My Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AKCne5vvaQ


The Postal Service

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Thursday, 2 July 2015

That's Entertainment : Charli XCX


After self-recording and producing a handful of indie singles as a 14 year old then recording a debut album and handing them out at raves, Charli XCX came to notice after writing Icona Pop’s I Love It.

And with the quick release of her first and second studio albums, augmented by a string of snot-nosed, J-Pop inspired, bombastic, booming party anthems and video clips, Charli XCX has hit the mainstream in a big way.

Playing up the Lolita pop image and rocking and raving harder than most ‘rock’ acts, Charli XCX is brains too.  She writes (or co-writes) her own material, acts the brassy badass and tears up the stage.  She swans in to town, glams up, reaches in and rips out your heart, and sneers her way through what could only be described as the ultimate feminist fantasy.

Move over Madonna, clear off Rihanha.  Charli XCX is beauty and the beast.

Don’t believe me?  Check out Boom Clap (a song attached to the teen movie The Fault In Our Stars).  It’s a glam stomper Marc Bolan would be proud off.  Funny story too - in-between balls at the cricket all summer they play snippets of songs.  This boomed out every so often and for weeks I couldn’t pinpoint a lyric to search and when I did, I came up empty.  It was only when I went to the Australia Vs England One-dayer at the SCG that a young English backpacker and his mate used Shazam to tell me who it was.  

I ended up buying the Japanese version of the new album Sucker cause it had all the hits sung in Japanese as bonus tracks.  Ha!

I’d like to think Charli XCX has a big future.  I’m kicking myself I didn’t go see her at The Metro in April.  Least of all because I could have scored a cool t-shirt or two.  That said, no one wants to see a thirtysomething lurching around a gig full of young ‘uns daubed in gloss and glitter and dressed like jailbait.

Charlie XCX!  Better than candy in your pocket outside a school!  Check it out!














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Thursday, 25 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Duran Duran


Do you like the Eighties?  Or the Nineties?  The Noughties?  Now?

Well, today is your lucky day.

Duran Duran owned the 1980’s pop charts, lived the glamorous fantasy jet-set lifestyle, married beautiful women and re-invented themselves enough times to form a dozen different bands.  

With charismatic singer Simon Le Bon, dandy Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor and rock guitarist Andy Taylor [funnily enough, none of the three Taylor’s were related], Duran Duran cemented themselves as the template for pop/rock bands.

As Durandemonium swept the world, they ruled the airwaves with a string of classic hits - including Hungry Like the Wolf, Rio, Is There Something I Should Know?, Girls On Film, The Reflex and The Wild Boys - and dominated the nascent MTV channel with their pioneering video clips.  Duran Duran took post-punk, New Romantic, synth pop trappings and meshed them with funk, pop and rock sounds recorded with state of the art production and in turn, enamoured millions.  A Brummie band, they’ve always done things differently too - coming from the industrial heavy metal fields of the English Midlands; a boy band who wrote their own songs AND played their own instruments.

The classic era culminated in the US #1 James Bond theme A View To A Kill whereby they splintered - briefly - in to the two equally successful side projects Arcadia (the great “lost” Duran Duran album) and The Power Station [with Robert Palmer - Some Like It Hot].  Then they lost 2/5 of the band but picked up a new guitarist in Warren Cuccurullo, who along with Nick Rhodes carried the band in to the 90’ with hits like Notorious, Skin Trade and All She Wants Is.

Rediscovering their mojo after 1990’s Liberty and a Greatest Hits package with 1993’s The Wedding Album, Duran Duran scored their biggest hit in 5 years with Ordinary World.  Duran Duran were cool again but things were falling apart.  Their record deals collapsed and they became a ‘greatest hits’ act that lurched in and out of the public consciousness.  In 2000, they released Pop Trash which is littered with gems - like their 2nd attempt at a Bond theme - but it flopped.

Then in 2001, all five original members of Duran Duran reconvened and the adulation began again.  With Astronaut, Duran Duran were back with (Reach Up For The) Sunrise and What Happens Tomorrow, but the fractures re-appeared with Andy Taylor leaving DD for a second time.  An entire album was recorded and scrapped before release before hitching their sound to Timbaland and Timberlake to poor results.  But if it’s one thing Duran Duran know, you fall in and out of fashion and if you keep doing what you’re good at, eventually, the pendulum swings back in your favour.

Dropping All You Need Is Now in late 2010, early 2011, Duran Duran were back once again with a blistering pop album.   Trendy with an ‘elder statesmen’ of pop tag, they continually tour the world adding to, never detracting from, their legacy.

And now, in 2015, in collaboration with Nile Rodgers, they’ve dropped Pressure Off, one of those pop/funk gems Duran Duran are perfect at.  A new album Paper Gods comes out in September, and it seems Duran Duran are back in favour with the critics though they’ve never had any problem entertaining their millions of fans.

I got on to Duran Duran with A View To A Kill.  That’s my get on, though I knew their other earlier hits from 1982-1984 from LPs we had at home and from Countdown video clips.  But A View To A Kill was “my” Duran Duran song and I’ve been a fan ever since.  Even though things waxed and waned during the ensuing 30 years, I have never been disappointed in their output.  In fact, during the mid/late 1990’s when Duran Duran were desperately uncool (like ABBA had been up to Muriel’s Wedding) they recorded some really cutting edge music that now is pretty much the sounds and production used by most of the Top 10 pop acts around now.

I could also list all their hits.  But stuff that!  Go buy Greatest.  I’m gifting you some lesser known but equally loved DD songs from my playlist.  

Duran Duran are one of the greatest bands I have ever loved.  Despite the criticism that seems to be levelled at the band, they have always been stylish, cutting edge, adventurous, entertaining!  Never boring; never compromised.

Loving Duran Duran?  Na na na na…it’s a reflex!


[Duran Duran, 1980]

[Rio, 1982]

[1984, for the Mad Max fans] OR the 2015 MM4 visual mash up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsy30eHDXnc

[Liberty, 1990]

[The Wedding Album, 1993]

[Thank You, 1995]

[Medazzaland, 1997]

[Pop Trash, 2000]

[Astronaut, 2004]

[All You Need Is Now, 2011]

[Paper Gods, 2015]



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Friday, 19 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Alphaville


There are two things that tickle my fancy - the film Napoleon Dynamite and 1980’s German synth pop.  Bands like Alphaville, Hubert Kah, Nena, Software, Kraftwerk, Muncher Freiheit...

The great thing about Napoleon Dynamite (if you haven’t seen it, you must).

And if you haven’t listened to a 1980’s German synth pop band called Alphaville…you should.

But I’m betting you’ve already heard one Alphaville song (or it’s cover version by Aussie band Youth Group [about a decade ago]) titled Forever Young.

Forever Young is one of those songs slightly nihilistic, almost paranoid Cold War pop songs that Germans did so well as the Americans and Soviets marked their territory in a divided Germany.  There were many songs of this ilk [think Nena’s 99 Luftballoons] and these days, Forever Young is often used in ads or by Eistedford’s or as in Napoleon Dynamite, a song at the prom!

Forever Young…
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young.

Alphaville though were (and still are - sporadically) a group who pioneered a fair bit of synth music and their influences continue today.  Their keen ear for a pop tune is uncanny and on their first three albums - though possibly dated in sound (tinny drum machines; sax!)- never miss a beat.  Best of all, they knew how to get you to dance and were avid users of the remix single for dance halls and discos.  Nor were they immune for the early 80’s love of what was considered at the time the exotic Japan or the ‘big budget’ film clip that plays out like a cheesy cinematic movie.

They released a swag of singles (and 12 inch dance remixes) to a range of success and did quite well especially in Germany.  Their ‘peak’ period included three albums from 1984’s Forever Young LP, 1986’s Afternoons in Utopia and 1989’s The Breathtaking Blue.  

Tracks to sound out would be Big In Japan, Sounds Like A Melody, The Mysteries of Love, For A Million, A Victory of Love, The Jet Set, Summer Rain and of course, Forever Young.














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Thursday, 11 June 2015

That's Entertainment : Tear Council


Alright, keeping in the ‘let’s be quick’ [I know you read these whilst sipping a coffee or sitting in the loo…or in that brief millisecond has you hit delete] and with an eye to ‘fresh’ tunes making (air)waves, here’s a newish indie-pop band breaking out called Tear Council who I had to share with you.

And they’re so ‘fresh’ I don’t actually physically own any of their gear yet, merely two I-tunes downloads…such is the modern world of music.  So no photo of me with anything to hold.

Now according to the band’s Facebook page, Tear Council is a side-project for none other than Matt Van Schie who is a member of another fantastic electro-synthpop outfit called Van She (who you should check out too).  This fact I only found out tonight looking up the band after a week of having listened to their songs.

Tear Council’s two singles (thus far) - My Car and Anywhere - are emotion charged, low-key electro pop slices of heaven and well worth downloading off I-tunes.

Or, you can check ‘em out here on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/tear-council.

Anyway.  I really liked ‘em both.  My Car is a downcast, melancholy toe tapper…if there is such a thing and I really like the sound of it as it’s got ‘something’.

So here’s hoping you don’t mind them either.

Here’s to a cool weekend.  And nothing says ‘cool’ like yellow tints.

Also...follow them on FB: https://www.facebook.com/tearcouncil







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