More details here.
Sludgefest
A few years ago, a Canadian musician slowed down a few Chipmunks songs to 16 RPM, and it’s kind of awesome. The singing is pretty good, and at that speed, it’s all gothy and moody. Like you have anything better to do today.
0:00 Call Me
6:12 Walk Like An Egyptian
13:00 Heaven Is A Place On Earth
20:58 Diamond Dolls
27:17 You Keep Me Hanging On
35:28 My Sharona
43:25 Always On My Mind
50:13 Refugee
CB Savage
This was my initial choice for today’s Music League topic, but I decided to poison this blog instead. Sorry.
Shine A Light On Me
Did you bastards know there’s an official Midnight Special channel on YouTube releasing entire unedited episodes (as well as clips)? Holy shit, it’s a treasure trove!
Timestamped performances for this episode are here. I mostly just watched Sly and the Family Stone, obviously.
BONUS: Here’s another recently released episode with Mott the Hoople and The New York Dolls. Not sure who the guy is in the back playing the Thunderbird for the Dolls. Arthur Kane appears to be in a cast and is obviously miming …
News Flash
Boomers didn’t invent sex.
A Hero For Us All …
… and better than we deserve.
The Smoke
The Smoke seemed destined to be the greatest British band of the 60’s. Read on for their sad tale of record industry greed, radio station indifference, distribution mishaps, managerial exploitation, personal tragedy, substance abuse, mental instability, and an apathetic, capricious and philistine public…
Just kidding! They seem to be a classic 60’s case of one-hit wonders. I’d never heard this song until it popped up in my YouTube feed the other day. It became a big hit in Germany in ’67 (the year I moved, so I never heard it), but in England its progress up the charts was knee-capped by the BBC for drug references (the BBC did such a great job keeping young Brits off drugs). The most remarkable thing about this band is that not one of them did anything noteworthy before or after this song. Usually when you look into British bands with a hit during this period, you’ll find that at least one or two of them before or after played with someone you’ve heard of. But not these guys. Anyway, it’s a pretty good song and worth hearing.
Evolution Of A Song
I love this kind of stuff. Some mini discs of of recording sessions for OK Computer were leaked, and someone but them out there for the world to hear. It’s so cool to hear early versions of the songs on that record and compare them to the final version. Most of you bastards are used to this recording process, and are familiar with this, but it’s still pretty cool to hear alternate lyrics and ideas that never got recorded.
The lyrics for Exit Music are different in this one.
Honeybus
For whatever reason, I found myself revisiting cult faves Honeybus over the weekend. If you’re unfamiliar and craving some late 60’s psychedelic/baroque/folk/pop, they could be your fix. I recommend streaming the anthology pictured above. Some good hooks and harmonies throughout, though I found myself skipping a good amount of songs. Your mileage may vary. Perhaps due to the drug-addled times, there are some oddities, such as this otherwise good song marred by a fucking kazoo. They had a top ten UK hit with this, which almost, just-about sounds like it could be a parody of the baroque pop of the time.
Speaking of twee pop parodies, nothing will ever surpass this masterpiece (said to be a parody of Ray Davies’ “Funny Face”) from Neil Innes, the man who would one day compose the entire Rutles catalog in something like a week.
Ludwig van Someone
DNA analysis has progressed to the point where even old samples of hair can now be reliably used to obtain genetic and biological information. Over the years, at least eight different locks of hair were said to belong to Beethoven. Researchers collected and analyzed them recently, and published the results in Current Biology.
The most famous lock of his hair – the subject of a book, a documentary, and the one whose lead levels suggested lead poisoning – turned out to belong to a woman. But five of the other samples matched each other, two of which had excellent chain of custody indicating that they were likely from Beethoven.
As LBR’s Assistant (to the) Regional Genealogist, I was all over a fascinating article published yesterday, describing the sleuthing and results. Specifically:
- Beethoven was not a Beethoven. Modern day families in Belgium and Austria trace their Beethoven lineage to an ancestor named Aert van Beethoven. This was Ludwig’s great-grandfather, seven generations back. Ludwig shared no DNA with those other members of the Beethoven family!
Somewhere between Aert and Ludwig, a renegade baby daddy got involved. If this is like a lot of other family trees, someday we’ll find out the true genetic line, as more and more people get testing done. - The hair showed Hepatitis B DNA, which may have explained Beethoven’s cirrhosis, as Hepatitis B can lead to chronic hepatitis in a significant number of people.
- No obvious cause or predisposition for his deafness or gastrointestinal maladies was uncovered. The DNA testing has its limitations, of course, but at least sheds some light on popular areas of speculation regarding Beethoven’s health.