Joy division are not shit.

Joy division are one of those bands that are like Bob Dylan, the songs are brilliant but the execution is a wee bit skewiff. Dont get me wrong, most of the factory records peoples are great and I do own everything ever recorded by joy division thanks to a really awesome box set, but lots of people dont like them, so this is an attempt to ease the people that think Joy division are shit into the world of the Ian Curtis & co.



Baron Zen... 'they walked in line'

Wavves like, isn't it? If you can give me a solitary reason why a song about the holocaust can't be turned into a naughties surf rock classic then fuck off and read a blog about how life isn't fair because people are turning songs about the holocaust into naughties surf rock classics, I'm sure one exists.





Technova... 'Atmosphere'

Lovely, anyone who knows anything about my taste in music will know that this song is the closest thing I will ever get to an orgasm since the accident that rendered me not only impotent but almost female, you don't have to listen to it if you have ever listened to Andrew Weatherall's Fabric album

*Side Note: I am aware that for my entire life I have failed to use the apostrophe correctly and for that I am sorry, if you go back and re-read all my other blogs, try to understand that I didn't mean 2 of everything, I meant it in terms of ownership...apologies.*



Low, the cheeky shoegaze (yes, sorry, shoegaze again) take it down a notch but keep it close to the melody of the original, but my fave version of this is an almost complete re-imagining by Billy Corgan... how I gish wish that I could hate the Smashing Pumpkins, but they are good, they are the pinnacle of grunge, (fuck off nirvana fans!) they took on the sound of bands like suicide and my bloody valentine and made it that bit more palatable, so here goes...



Here is Radiohead performing Cermeony, from the album Closer, as was they walked in line... nuff said.



Below is probably my fave version of Transmission I have ever heard, someone who I worked with once asked me if I had 'heard that cover of joy division on youtube' I knew exactly which one he meant when I heard it, but thats because we had that kind of relationship, this is also the reason why my bum hole is an inch wider than it should be, but that, along with the cucumber is a seperate story.



Shove that up your ears you bummers.

The Mercy Seat

Being discusted by the fact that Leona Lewis and the X factor stable have ruined a 'Hurt' which had become synonymous with Johnny Cash's final years, it, kind of made me want to electrocute Simon Cowell, not necassarily in an electric chair, but preferably so, so its a good job that Johnny Cash covered Nick Caves 'The Mercy Seat' which is about a man's skull being fried after being sentenced to death...

Loud Loud Loud!!!

I could have chosen a dozen tracks from this monumental double album, but before I tell you why, here is a bit of back story for you...

Demis Roussos, the big Greek hairy man, isn't what many people would call the epitome of cool, he might feature on a few of those I heart 70s type albums but its just for the cringe effect really, those soppy romantic ballads sung by a fat man, it just doesn't wash.

Similarly Vangelis is a bit naff too, bar the end credits of Bladerunner what is there to choose from? Chariots of Fire soundtrack? 1492 conquest of paradise soundtrack? No they can all fuck off.

But when you combine Roussos and Vangelis and go back in time in a time machine to 1969 they stop being shit and become the 2 coolest muthafukkin Greek muthafuckazs in the universe along with Lucas Sideras (drums and vocals), and Silver Koulouris (guitars) they become Aphrodites Child, who recorded the album '666' a huge double concept album about the book of revelations which brings us to where the blog started... its a little bit like that bit in Fight Club where Edward Norton has the gun in his mouth.



The track is a little spoken word interlude which is quite haunting... 'Four Horsemen' and 'the Beast' are more conventional rock songs, but this is nice too.

Is it safe?

These guys were a bit on the odd side, strange name for a band, the original video for this songs looks like a low budget Lord of The Rings BUT inspite of being the object of ridicule with Family Guy and Scrubs using it for a cheap laugh, its actually a monster of a track. I've posted the extended mix because you would only listen to the standard version twice if I posted that, and you've seen enough dwarfs recently, I know because I've seen your internet history, you filthy dirty bastards!

...and my last German track for the time being.

Siriusmo. Missed this one when it came out, but it looks like these guys are labelmates of the Mighty Modeselektor, and this might be the best dance record I have heard in forever...

and another thing.

...Fuck it. I am going to put on that Cluster track.

Can- I want more.

Been a long time since I left you, without a dope beat to step to, is what Eric B & Rakim opened their 'I know you got soul' ditty with, and the reason why I quote them is because I have not posted anything here for 4 months, which when you consider that at one point I was posting up to 9000 tracks a day, is pretty fucking poor.

Anyway, for the last 4 months I have moved out to Germany to try to embody the spirit of Bowie, Iggy and Lou, the holy trinity of music, from which all things came and to which all will go again. Of course I'm not actually a fan of Bowie, Iggy or Lou but I am trying to gain extra hipster points by namechecking them.



Lou's earlier outting with the Velvet underground was not only influential on Bowie or Iggy but also proved to be the starting point for German experimentalists 'Can' who not only managed to get the first velvets album but also managed to create a band with a similar sound. By the time the Velvets had disintergrated due to in fighting and drug addiction, the Cologne band had undergone several changes of their own, a name change from 'inner light productions' and the recruiting of Damo Suzuki had led to Can releasing an album which would cast a similar shadow to the Velvet Underground.



Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi are easily in the chin stroking realm that the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' or 'white light, white heat' inhabit, they are all revered with critical acclaim today and often feature in music critics Top 50 of all time, but at the time, no one bought them.




These albums turned on artists like Bowie Iggy and Lou to the music that was coming from Germany, German music at this time had such a profound effect on the 'magic triangle' (iggy, bowie, lou) that they all left New York to live in Berlin. Bowie apparently tried to recruit Ralf Hutter to record with him, while bands like Tangerine Dream gained popularity among the prog listeners of 70s Europe.

Krautrock, in general benefited from the attention it got from Bowie, as did Nine Inch Nails, Placebo and even the Arcade fire who Bowie dueted with on American TV to gain them massive popularity did- But unlike the latter bands, there is an obvious sense that Krautrock helped Bowie, Iggy and Lou develop as artists. All you have to do is listen to tracks like
'V2 Schneider' from Bowies 'Heroes' or all of Lou Reeds 'Metal Machine Music' (go on, I dare you.)

So in my search of the essence of what made Bowie Iggy and Lou so awesome, I have become bogged down in squelchy German progressive music from the 1970s, strangely, it sounds a lot more adventurous than 90% of the music I can find at the moment, but maybe that is just because I am becoming an old man.

Having gone a little bit too far in spouting pretentious bollocks about a genre of music very few people care about, I'll not leave you with the most obscure 'Cluster' track I can find, but a track that the Krautrock purist turns their nose up at because it was Can's crack at the charts, but the hook from it is used as the incidental music on BBC Radio 6 music, and for that reason, its as good a place as any to start with Can.