reeperbahn 3

the beatles are exerting their domination by this stage. they play the fats waller classic your feets too big. now fats was good but the beatles are doing the definitive version here. macca's voice was never better. the middle bit "bah do bah dop do dah" was just a small bit in the original but macca makes it the best bit. he would remember things like this later eg the coda in ticket to ride, hala haloa in hello goodbye (tho this may be lennons idea) and at the end of cry baby cry (can you take me back where i came from). sort of little kiss-offs that only the beatles could do.

next lennon takes to the microphone for what sounds like twist and shout. however this is arthur alexander's "where have you been all my life". lennon was listening intently to this guy and its no wonder. the guy is a genius although pretty much unheard of. like anna (go to him) lennon's voice is really suited to this. like all the backing here, harrison's guitar fills and licks (which arent in the original) really add to the song. similar crucial licks would appear a few months later when the beatles were working on "she loves you". during these fills lennon can be heard "where you been brother"

paul? - oooh we're gonna hurry?

beatles at the reeperbahn 2

lennon lets rip into a crashing sweet sixteen.

john - "sweet little sixteen". sounds like "la rube"? or maybe "for ruby"?

to begin with, the beatles were always a great cover band. even if they didnt write their own stuff they would probably still have been the biggest band in liverpool. perhaps, thirsty for stardom, they would have released "how do you do it" as their first single. maybe taking whatever songs came their way. because they were better singers than most of the other bands (billy j, pacemakers, freddie etc) they would have got the better songs. they kept on playing shows in hamburg becoming huge in germany and europe due to their rock n roll style. anyway...

straight into the carl perkins number "lend me your comb". you can hear the 3 part harmony here. they would go on to record this one later in 64 but it failed to get on an album.

after that

paul - "afa sound? (german?) " "thank you very much indeed, thank you. Your Feets Too Big"

beatles at the reeperbahn

in december 62 the beatles played their final few gigs in hamburg. a month earlier they had recorded 2 of their own compositions - please please me and ask me why. please please me would be released as their second single in the UK 11 days after their final hamburg gig on december 31st.

luckily enough somebody recorded one of these gigs which was released as the live at the star club lp. the quality is poor but the songs are great. one can only wonder what it would be like if it had been recorded with good equipment.

strangely enough, the beatles didnt perform please please me but did do the other song they recorded in november - ask me why. its an interesting choice - not to play your forthcoming single. perhaps epstein told them not to play it until it was released.

the songs on this are great. almost all of them are covers. these songs were like the beatles training ground as future songwriters. a full tracklisting along with the original performers, can be seen here - http://www.jpgr.co.uk/bls5560.html. info on the four omitted there are:

Where Have You Been All My Life - Arthur Alexander
Sheila - Tommy Roe
I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry Over You - Elvis
Till There Was You - Peggy Lee

the unreleased song - My Girl Is Red Hot could well be a ronnie hawkins or carroll bros tune. of course, this is probably the same tune with ronnie covering the carroll bros one.

the first 5 songs are standard rock n roll fare. its not till the end of the 4th song - hippy hippy shake that we hear some on stage banter. it sounds like:

john: thats a good tune!
paul: thank you my son. thank you masumba?

hard to make out. could be german either? the beatles were probably pissed by this stage. i will be trying to make out what they say in between songs for the next few days - a sort of historic document before all hell broke lose - beatlemania...

well actully its just a beatle dork thing but anyway...

bear grilled

on this blogspot we like to keep one step ahead of the pack

http://owenmartin.blogspot.com/2007/05/bear-necessities.html

earlier this week bear grylls was exposed as a fake.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=474866&in_page_id=1770


as a medium, television is becoming worse everyday. the shows are either set-ups, boring, depressing or operations on someone's stomach.

Anyway, now Channel 4 are considering issuing a disclaimer before each programme "stating that Grylls receives help from survival experts and health and safety officers."

Somehow, that aint good enough. How about:
certain dangerous situations are faked in this programme to ensure the safety of bear and the crew. The island that bear is stranded on contains a five star hotel. Grylls is not alone, per se, some survival experts and safety officers help him out a bit."

all tv needs is a bit more integrity.

Possible Dylan Album

1. Tell Me Momma
2. She's Your Lover Now
3. Positively 4th Street
4. California
5. I Wanna Be Your Lover
6. I'll Keep It With Mine
7. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence
8. Can You Please Crawl out your Window?
9. Love Is Just a Four Letter Word
10. Farewell Angelina

Well Ive just been listening to this quite a bit and i have to say its a pretty great listen. It would be very much a lyrical tour-de-force, like the end of BIABH. I had to leave out love is just a four letter word coz joanie's singing didnt fit in well at all. Unfortunately, there are no known recordings of this song by dylan. Anyway, it works great - you've got dylan joking around on some tracks too which is always a bonus. And as Paolo says in the comments the new Dylan Box-set is a waste. So maybe, instead of re-buying the same old songs, you could play around with them like this..

The Lost Single

Great singles that were not on albums are a thing of the past. Only the great show-offs could really do it. You could include B-Sides too - in that case Oasis were the last band able to do it. But in terms of great A-Sides that were not on albums you'd probably have to go back to The Jam for the most recent group. Nowadays, the purpose of a single is to promote an album. Back in the old days you were expected to produce new product every few months. Anyway on to the (preliminary) list:

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street
Bob Dylan - Can you please crawl out your window? (B-side)
The Jam - Going Underground
The Jam - Butterfly Collector (B-Side)
Oasis - Masterplan (B-Side)
Beatles - She Loves You
Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand
Beatles - This Boy (B-Side)
Beatles - Hey Jude
Beatles - Dont Let Me Down (B-Side)
Beatles - Rain (B-Side)
Beatles - Strawberry Fields
Beatles - Penny Lane
Beatles - Daytripper
Beatles - We Can Work It Out
Beatles - Ballad Of John & Yoko
The Who - Substitute
The Who - Pictures of Lily
The Who - Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
The Who - Can't Explain
The Who - I'm A Boy
The Who - Happy Jack
The Who - The Seeker
The Who - Magic Bus
Rolling Stones - Jumping Jack Flash
Rolling Stones - 19th Nervous Breakdown
Rolling Stones - Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
The Kinks - Dead End Street
The Kinks - Berkeley Mews (B-Side)
The Kinks - See My Friends
The Kinks - Days
The Kinks - Autumn Almanac
The Kinks - Wonderboy
The Kinks - Polly (B-Side)
The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais (released on belated US album)

Of course, its all a matter of taste. you could easily pick 5 or 6 more from the beatles, for example. These are just songs I can think of at the moment. There are probably plenty more. As can be seen from this list, the single was the most important thing in the pre-Sgt Pepper era and then that album kind of changed things. As Paul Weller said recently "You'd never get away with that now"

if there's an original thought out there....

bob dylan once said "The world don't need any more songs"(1991)* and he probably had a point. there's a song about everything...well, just about everything. so maybe he came to this conclusion sometime around the Oh Mercy and Under the Red Sky albums. Afterall, he released no original work for 6 years after that interview. An album that was his last real statement - on aging and mortality of course.

After Time Out of Mind, he released 2 albums which were practically cover albums. Using these old tunes and styles (mainly from the 20's, 30's and 40's) he wrote lyrics which reflected his worldview, old codes of conduct, and themes on love. There are also plenty of quotes and allusions from books such as The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and Confessions of a Yakuza (released in 91 - is this what bob spent his time studying for the next few years instead of writing songs?). There are also plenty of re-arranged lines from the poetry of Henry Timrod in there. I dont buy the argument that these lines slipped into bob's songs unconsciously. Bob probably marked out lines from these works that he liked and incorporated them into the songs.

The desire to write new songs is gone, but bob dylan now is like some out of time crooner from the 30's in a world that has moved on - a time when bing crosby regularly topped the charts. It's hard to imagine a similar singer regularly topping the charts today. But Bob has moved full circle. When he was just a young kid in new york he used to say in interviews "I had to write these songs simply because nobody else had and these were the kind of songs i wanted to sing"

*http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/1991zollo.htm

Harry Potter! OMG!

OMG! the new harry potter book is out! OMFG!!!

so without giving anything away and spoiling it for those who havent finished reading it, ron marries herpies and harry becomes pregnant. gordon gimpweed gets turned into a toad by the evil witch vordbitch. dumbdinger and dubby fall down a cliff but dubby's double chin saves the day. gibblygibb finds the secret potion of eternal everlasting snot and picks his nose happily ever after. Mr.Snitsnatsnob sat on his arse...again...while the dark lords army ran rampant but they were eventually defeated thanks to some cunt sacrificing himself....

you would have thought this wizard and ork crap would have gotten old by now...but alas human nature has a tendancy towards fantasy kind of stuff. great stuff for kids but grown adults wetting their pants for this stuff...im sure a psychologist or philosopher could write some interesting stuff on the appeal of wizards.

Show Me The Money

This guy has a problem. he spends 1000 bucks on hair products every week and twice that amount on facial creams. he is now 50000 bucks in debt. what can he do? call eddie hobbs of course!

enter eddie. "well son, your hair looks great and all and you've got gorgeous skin, but you're in pretty bad debt here. there is a solution however:

stop spending"

"gee, thanks eddie"

"well that is the first important step billy. the next thing you need to do is find another source of income. you're working 39 hours a week bringing in a nice wage but to pay off those debts you're gonna have to find more income. So perhaps, you could work in a pub in the weekends or something like that."

"yeah i could do that"

another good job done by eddie the hobbs.

next week eddie will be helping out patricia in cork with her financial difficulties.

autobiography no.2 - russell brand

Piers Morgan
'This book is like its subject - hot, raunchy, revelatory and irresistible.'

The Daily Star
"an explosive book"



here's russel brand. part of a new generation of comedians who seem to be multi-sexual. im not sure what their sexual preferences are and i dont really care. i think trendo-sexual is a good word. its kinda trendy nowadays to be sleeping with men, women, transexuals, asexuals - just about anything with 2, 3 or 4 or 1 leg(s). or at least pretend you are.



anyway on to the book - hot and raunchy. wow. that makes me want to read it. my dog gets hot and raunchy whenever it meets the nextdoor neighbour dog. i dont want to read a fuckin book about it. since when is a book thats "hot and raunchy" interesting? guess its part of the dumbing down craze.



"revelatory" - what is it going to reveal exactly? let me guess. he had a hard upbringing. he had it tough. made it the hard way. what else? all the people and things hes slept with. my curiosity is killing me.



i decided to check some reviews of the book on amazon from some people who actually decided to buy it. "I laughed out loud at some of the stuff he used to get up - like walking round the streets shouting 'I am telly!'" damn. i am telly. thats about as funny as falling down the niagra falls. what a witty guy. "I also almost cried when I read about his childhood and came away feeling I understood him" the obligatory hard luck story. is there any celebrity out there who hasnt had it tough?



rating - 3/10. the book looks shite but in fairness to the guy i saw him doing stand-up on tv and he had an idea of sending rose west and peter sutcliffe to iraq to clean it up. it made me laugh. so ill give him some marks for that. but his life sounds as interesting as getting malaria.

bear necessities

bear grylls

a true survivor. in one day the man climbed up a 500 feet 180 degrees cliff, swam across the nile, jumped from tree to tree in a 200 mile forest, got chased by a tiger, swam with crocodiles, and got eaten by a whale and digested out through the other end. all with the help of a pen-knife and a camera crew. perhaps his biggest feat though was getting by the channel 4 insurance people.

you have to wonder when he's stuck in some forest somewhere at night eating ants, and the crew are having their bacon butties, does he not feel like having at least a little nibble on some of those tasty sandwiches. and it must get especially hard for him when the tv crew break open a six pack of coors light and he's drinking from the amazon.

the idea of a television programme about someone surviving on their own in some vast wilderness is what could be called an oxymoron.

autobiography #1 - jack osbourne

im starting a series of reviews of a few autobiographys that we, the public are so privileged to be able to read. not that im going to actually read one of them. but anyway...


#1 jack osbourne - 21 years gone






















"'The revealing book lifts the lid on Ozzy's son's unconventional childhood and his recovery from addiction."


so here we have a spoilt git who sits around playing computer games all day. his dad gives him a pile of money and he goes out and blows it on drugs and partys etc. does a little bit too much drugs. mother sends him to an expensive rehab place. where he recuperates by....playing computer games. now he's clean. he beat it. beat his inner demons. we all have so much to learn from jack - make sure you're born to rich parents and you can party all day and then write a book about it and make a few million squid.

rating - 2/10. 2 marks for being ozzy osbourne's son. doesnt give you a right to write a book about it but you have to by default get some marks for it.

if you bought this book kick yourself hard in the nuts. To rectify your mistake go out and buy the "Paranoid" album by black sabbath.

meanwhile here is some ozzy magic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNppqUotW94

what do you want me to do?

whats the best rock n roll song ever? heartbreak hotel? johnny be goode? whole lotta shakin? jailhouse rock? baby lets play house? one after 909? sweet little sixteen? lawdy miss clawdy? roll over beethoven?

what about a little known number written by jimmy reed called baby what do you want me to do? not that well known yet every great artist has done it at some stage. jimmy reed was a blues singer born in 1925 and released his first album in 1958. he then scored a string of hits including his most famous - big boss man. from wiki:

"In spite of his numerous hits, Reed's personal problems prevented him from achieving the same level of fame as other popular blues artists of the time, though he had more hit songs than many others"

"The Rolling Stones have cited Reed as a major influence on their sound, and one of the Stones' first recordings was their cover of Reed's "Honest I Do"

here is jimmy reeds original version. slow and bluesy with great harmonica.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1cns30

all the great musicians in the 60's seemed to have picked up on the song - the byrds, Them, elvis, neil young, dion, etta james, jerry lee lewis and buddy guy are just some of the ones i can find with a quick search.

i have to start off with the kings version first - from the comeback special 68:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x163y1MQLic

its no wonder he chose this as one of the songs for his comeback, right? like he couldnt have gone wrong.

next is bob dylans version.(with tom petty) this is from the Farm Aid rehearsals 19 September 1985:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODl1pGQ0iBk

ill finish with Link Wray. he was never that well known in the public but the people he influenced are, like the who, the kinks, and all the punk and heavy metal bands. lets face it no link wray none of the others mentioned. ill give this video a coolness rating of 110/10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E4kFolxUuM

he begins with his classic "rumble" which is about a gang fight, and then ends with jimmy reeds song.

jimmy reed has 2 songs in the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock - big boss man and brights lights, big city. what were these people thinking??

5 steps to becoming a politican

with ardal o hanlon doing a programme on how to be politician ive decided to come up with my own 5 steps for being a successful irish politician -

1. always smile

if you're out canvassing or if your getting your picture taken for posters or whatever, ensure you smile. the right kind of smile can make people think you're approachable, nice, professional, bright, intelligent, working for them, and a man of the people. doesnt matter what your real personality is like or what deeds you've done in the past - a smile can convince voters you're the right man for the job.


enda kelly has got the best political smile ive seen for a long time
















im suave and sophisticated. im very approachable and i like to drink tea in your house.

you can tell he's worked on it for a long time. a true master of the smile.


2. talk about changes


in your manifesto and when you appear on tv or a doorstep, you've go to mention the word "changes" at least 2000 times. when you're doing a party political broadcast you can also insert a frame every few seconds with the word "changes" on it (subliminal messaging).

doesnt really matter what you say you will change - change crime figures, change the hospital bed situation, change the colour of the sky, change your underwear, change your countries geographical position, change your car etc etc. and it doesnt matter what you do when you get in power - you dont have to do anything just keep mentioning the "c" word.

your party slogan of course will be "bring about changes". the combination of step 1, the smile and the aforementioned slogan can be devastating and can leave the competition far behind in popularity.


3. brown envelopes


money talks or in irish politics brown envelopes do the talking. and remember if you end up in a tribunal, just deny everything. and if that still doesnt work, and you lose your job and credibility, wait a year, and revert back to steps 1 and 2 of this list, and the public will be sure to vote for you again. once they see your smiling face on those big posters, everything will be forgotten.


4. Avoid the question


this can be a difficult step for a lot of politicians to master. most masters are old and experienced politicians. it doesnt mean that you avoid every question asked of you. on the contrary, you can answer most questions effectively by using step 2. The trick is to know which questions to avoid - called the "dangerous questions". if these questions arent answered right, your career could be finished.

what you have to do is pretend the interviewer asked a different question, one that was slightly related to the original question, and answer that. this pretend question has to be a safe question and therefore your answer can also be a safe one. it can get quite complex and you have to be on your toes, especially if the interviewer is a master and spots what you're doing - and on live tv.

padraig flynn tripped up badly on this step. in an interview on the late late show he dissed a friend of his, who had given him a brown paper bag. that would have being ok had his friend not being watching the show, got pissed and then ratted on flynn. Flynn's political career never recovered. he tried with step 1 "the smile" but couldnt carry it off as the smarmyness and sneakiness still shone through.


5. live in luxury


a politician should live in a palace, have horses, expensive paintings, large grounds, a few private jets etc. just like in roman times. these items can be paid for by brown paper bags and the taxpayer. the king of the luxury in irish politics was:

















charlie. the man did so much when he was in power - he brought in some artists bill and free transport for the elderly. he lived the high life. whenever he was faced with scandal, tribunals and inquiries etc etc, he just reverted back to all 5 steps here and each time succeeded in winning the hearts of the irish public who duly voted him back in.

a true master and legend.

thats it. just follow these steps and you're on your way. im sure ardal will be showing these steps in his next programme.