R.I.P. MJ & Sky Saxon

[toomilk]

So many people have passed away recently.

Fuzzhead...then Ed McMahon....then Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Sky Saxon (The Seed's frontman) just today.


RIP everyone.

[MODLAB]

Freaky.

I was just going to post this.

RIP. all of you.



M

[jesus son]

and Steven Wells

[runcible]

I can respect MJ's impact on music but I'm not a fan. A strange and, I think, sad guy with hell of a lot of talent but someone who got stuck way up inside himself and never came back (his performance at what is remembered as the Jarvis Cocker Brits show is unforgettable).

I had no idea about Sly Saxon or Steven Wells. Bloody hell. The Seeds were fairly crucial on the psychedelia scale and their influence stretched into punk (The Damned were big fans for starters). I have a Sky Saxon semi-solo album (with the elephant's eye on the cover - forget its name) which is pretty decent and impressively heavy.

Swells was someone who a lot of interviewees were scared of. I remember when the Manics were at their most revolting (remember these comments by first class cunt Nicky Wire - 'I hope they tarmac over this shithole' at Glasto, 'Let's hope Michael Stipe goes the same way as Freddy Mercury', 'I hate Slowdive more than Hitler') I was praying they'd send Swells to interview them as he was at his prime then. He'd have sorted them out.

Tragic losses of course. It's not been a good period for sadness.

[spzretent]

I'm in the not really a fan camp when it comes to MJ. The info coming out shortly after his death is horrible and damning to his inner circle and enablers. If all this is true. There were warnings and apparently he's been addicted to prescrition drugs for years. Damn, Sounds like Elvis all over again. No one deserved this.
The Farrah Fawcet thing really is upsetting. I was one of those millions of teenage boys who bought that poster and had it up in my room. The first pin-up of my generation.
No idea Sky Saxon died. I guess when this much comes down at once his news got pushed to page 3.
Ugh. Horrible day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlqA3tAGMnw

[Greeny]

I think Paul Gambaccini got it spot on this morning - by dying now Jacko has ensured that only the first two phases of his life (child star and genuine king of pop) will be remembered in years to come, while all the nasty stuff will fade into the background. He compared it to the Judy Garland effect....

[runcible]

I'm just thinking of all those poor people who paid over the odds for tickets on Ebay and are now screwed in terms of getting a refund. Were Seetickets handling the sales? I hope not for everyone!

[lionboy]

For those who've never read Steven Wells, here's one of his greatest gig reviews ever. The fact that it's about Spiritualized is the icing on the cake. RIP

The drugs work. They work like dogs. The hack has fallen in love, seen the future of rock and touched the face of God. Again. Please be prepared for babbling sycophantic hyperbole verging on the hysterical. Spiritualized dribble onstage looking like a dole queue on smack, then wank and noodle for a bit while similarly satorially inadequate audience sway gently in a stoned manner. Oh no. Your brain screams for catharsis for crescendo, for violence! You get it. In the space of ten breathtaking seconds we savagely accelerate from a mild surburban Woodstock to May 2, 1944 - the day the Americans dropped 20,000 tons of high explosive on Berlin Zoo. This - there are no other words for it - is heavy bastard metal. And that's all that Spiritualized do. All night. They whisper, they throb and then they scream. Then they f--k your brains out. And then they f--k your brains out some more. It`s as if a mosquito had been encased in amber after sucking blood from the huge hairy '70s RAWK! dinosaur just seconds before it was ripped apart by punk rock monkeys. It's as if scientists had then extracted that dinosaur's DNA and filtered out the crippling shit of pomposity and misogyny and somehow distilled and boosted the remaining atomic thunder to create a new monster - just in time to greet the millenium. Spiritualized have Genghis Khan-ed the past. Their genius is their realisation that any new rock song about love and drugs in the jaded, pasty-faced, parasitical New Labour '90s has to scale the same peaks as Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day', Jefferson Airplanes's 'White Rabbit', Ike and Tina Turner's 'River Deep, Mountain High', The Beatles' 'Helter Skelter', Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' and Patti Smith's 'Piss Factory' all at the same time! The result is an ENORMOUS sound, the like of which hasn't been heard since John Zorn had the brilliant idea of combining envelope-bursting avant-garde jazz with Napalm Death-style thrash metal. High praise indeed. Spiritualized make all the obvious competition look stunted and scared. This has got to be what The Verve think they sound like. This must be what Paul Weller imagines we hear when he bores our arses off with his tedious jams. Spiritualized have redifined, reclaimed, relegitimised, reintegrated, distilled, purified and postmodernised hairy-hippy-dippy heavy metal where Zodiac Mindwarp, Guns N'Roses, The Cult (circa 'Electric) and Kula Shaker all failed. Their only obvious peers, the only other rock reptiles out there who look likely to survive the ongoing dance apocalypse, are the Prodigy (who have similarly succeeded where Jesus Jones, EMF and Pop Will Eat Itself et al merely promised). Then the arrogant bastards bolt on gospel, soul, trance, Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound and tons of mouldy old prog rock bollocks and then the stupid fucking idiots push the resulting ugly and ungainly mutant out of a window and expect it to fly! And it does! It ain't all jam. Smack is a debilitating and talent-crushing drug taken by boring arseholes and, like depression, or your girlfriend leaving you for a drum roadie, it makes for tedious lyrical subject matter. Spiritualized are also too ready to hide behind their epileptic-unfriendly light show and would obviously benefit greatly from employing Gold Blade as both stylists and choreographers. But the largest potential fly in the medication - the ning-nang-nongy,sloppy, drooling, wanky, New-Agey, Jimmy Pagey, smelly, hippy imagery- works in their favour, not only because it is largely crushed smothered and mutated by savagely carnivorous rockist violence and Spector-esque flights of almost orchestral overreach, but, perversely,because Spiritualized have somehow stopped the clock just seconds before the late-'60s/early '70s psychedelic party was turned into a sludgy nightmare by heroin. Now there's postmodernist irony for you. If this is 'whale music' then it is killer whale music. If Spiritualized put you in mind of dolphins then it's that epic bit of shark documentary footage where a Great White is rammed broadside by an evilly-grinning Flipper lookalike and literally disintegrates under the savage impact, spewing scarlet shark guts into the surrounding ocean in sickeningly violent slo-mo. This is white boys getting black music arsebackwards brilliantly. This would make Norman Tebbit spew his chips. This is the perfect antidote to the hideous hordes of shrilly-honking upper-classes who fill this venue on the last night of The Proms. Spiritualized are the last great rock generation's second great rock band. They are that important. Babble over and out. Somebody pass me a tissue.

Thanks to whoever posted this on the NME blog as this is where I've copied it from.

[MODLAB]

For those who've never read Steven Wells, here's one of his greatest gig reviews ever. The fact that it's about Spiritualized is the icing on the cake. RIP

The drugs work. They work like dogs. The hack has fallen in love, seen the future of rock and touched the face of God. Again. Please be prepared for babbling sycophantic hyperbole verging on the hysterical. Spiritualized dribble onstage looking like a dole queue on smack, then wank and noodle for a bit while similarly satorially inadequate audience sway gently in a stoned manner. Oh no. Your brain screams for catharsis for crescendo, for violence! You get it. In the space of ten breathtaking seconds we savagely accelerate from a mild surburban Woodstock to May 2, 1944 - the day the Americans dropped 20,000 tons of high explosive on Berlin Zoo. This - there are no other words for it - is heavy bastard metal. And that's all that Spiritualized do. All night. They whisper, they throb and then they scream. Then they f--k your brains out. And then they f--k your brains out some more. It`s as if a mosquito had been encased in amber after sucking blood from the huge hairy '70s RAWK! dinosaur just seconds before it was ripped apart by punk rock monkeys. It's as if scientists had then extracted that dinosaur's DNA and filtered out the crippling shit of pomposity and misogyny and somehow distilled and boosted the remaining atomic thunder to create a new monster - just in time to greet the millenium. Spiritualized have Genghis Khan-ed the past. Their genius is their realisation that any new rock song about love and drugs in the jaded, pasty-faced, parasitical New Labour '90s has to scale the same peaks as Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day', Jefferson Airplanes's 'White Rabbit', Ike and Tina Turner's 'River Deep, Mountain High', The Beatles' 'Helter Skelter', Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' and Patti Smith's 'Piss Factory' all at the same time! The result is an ENORMOUS sound, the like of which hasn't been heard since John Zorn had the brilliant idea of combining envelope-bursting avant-garde jazz with Napalm Death-style thrash metal. High praise indeed. Spiritualized make all the obvious competition look stunted and scared. This has got to be what The Verve think they sound like. This must be what Paul Weller imagines we hear when he bores our arses off with his tedious jams. Spiritualized have redifined, reclaimed, relegitimised, reintegrated, distilled, purified and postmodernised hairy-hippy-dippy heavy metal where Zodiac Mindwarp, Guns N'Roses, The Cult (circa 'Electric) and Kula Shaker all failed. Their only obvious peers, the only other rock reptiles out there who look likely to survive the ongoing dance apocalypse, are the Prodigy (who have similarly succeeded where Jesus Jones, EMF and Pop Will Eat Itself et al merely promised). Then the arrogant bastards bolt on gospel, soul, trance, Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound and tons of mouldy old prog rock bollocks and then the stupid fucking idiots push the resulting ugly and ungainly mutant out of a window and expect it to fly! And it does! It ain't all jam. Smack is a debilitating and talent-crushing drug taken by boring arseholes and, like depression, or your girlfriend leaving you for a drum roadie, it makes for tedious lyrical subject matter. Spiritualized are also too ready to hide behind their epileptic-unfriendly light show and would obviously benefit greatly from employing Gold Blade as both stylists and choreographers. But the largest potential fly in the medication - the ning-nang-nongy,sloppy, drooling, wanky, New-Agey, Jimmy Pagey, smelly, hippy imagery- works in their favour, not only because it is largely crushed smothered and mutated by savagely carnivorous rockist violence and Spector-esque flights of almost orchestral overreach, but, perversely,because Spiritualized have somehow stopped the clock just seconds before the late-'60s/early '70s psychedelic party was turned into a sludgy nightmare by heroin. Now there's postmodernist irony for you. If this is 'whale music' then it is killer whale music. If Spiritualized put you in mind of dolphins then it's that epic bit of shark documentary footage where a Great White is rammed broadside by an evilly-grinning Flipper lookalike and literally disintegrates under the savage impact, spewing scarlet shark guts into the surrounding ocean in sickeningly violent slo-mo. This is white boys getting black music arsebackwards brilliantly. This would make Norman Tebbit spew his chips. This is the perfect antidote to the hideous hordes of shrilly-honking upper-classes who fill this venue on the last night of The Proms. Spiritualized are the last great rock generation's second great rock band. They are that important. Babble over and out. Somebody pass me a tissue.

Thanks to whoever posted this on the NME blog as this is where I've copied it from.

Brilliant! I need a show!


M

[BzaInSpace]

Spiritualized dribble onstage looking like a dole queue on smack, then wank and noodle for a bit while similarly satorially inadequate audience sway gently in a stoned manner. Oh no. Your brain screams for catharsis for crescendo, for violence! You get it. In the space of ten breathtaking seconds we savagely accelerate from a mild surburban Woodstock to May 2, 1944 - the day the Americans dropped 20,000 tons of high explosive on Berlin Zoo. This - there are no other words for it - is heavy bastard metal. And that's all that Spiritualized do. All night. They whisper, they throb and then they scream. Then they f--k your brains out. And then they f--k your brains out some more...

Ha ha ha... perfect Lionboy thanks so much for that. When I read the above earlier about Steven Wells that was the first thing I thought of. Easily the best Spiritualized review i've ever read...outside of this forum of course!

[niamhm]

I may be wrong ,advancing years and whotnot,but I seem to remember SWells giving Spectrum How You Satisfy Me a single of the week in NME, top bloke.

[radioshack]

Seething Wells - I can't recall for sure, but I have a feeling he may have enjoyed the iconoclasm of the Manic Street Preachers... he definitely seemed to like a lot of awful rubbish (of all kinds), and quite (very) often laid into all our favourite bands. But he was always readable, and often funny and, in the end, that's all you can ask.

Meanwhile, Connor McNicolas has gone to edit Top Gear Magazine. There is a story that when he got the editorship at NME, he told his new underlings that his favourite albums were "The Best of the Beatles, and Smells Like Teen Spirit".

Is this last paragraph for real? Oh my...