Category: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Posted on // 3 Comments

One Of These Days I’m Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces

I’m in! Incidentally, regarding “One of These Days” …

The vocals were recorded through a ring modulator, with [Nick] Mason singing in a falsetto voice and then slowed down to create an eerie effect (some compare it to the Daleks from Doctor Who, which makes the song’s usage of the show’s theme adequate). It was aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 DJ whom the band supposedly disliked because of his tendency to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young’s radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical, thus figuratively “cutting him into little pieces.”

Apologies for my recent blargh absence. Work is kicking my ass on the daily.

Posted on // 1 Comment

Holidays in the Sun

PiL will represent Ireland in Eurovision with Hawaii, an ode by Lydon’s to his wife. It apparently IS a love song.

Posted on // 3 Comments

Don’t Ask Me What I Want It For

I know it’s probably verging on blasphemy for some when I say I’m really digging Giles Martin’s new stereo mix of Revolver. Thinking very seriously of grabbing it on vinyl.

Posted on // 4 Comments

Pistols Ephemera Up For Auction At Sotheby’s

Check out all this cool stuff! By the way, that’s an Animation City single-cel composite for The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, c. 1978 (Estimate: 1,500 – 2,000 GBP).

From The Guardian …

If Pistol, Danny Boyle’s recent TV series, was the story of a rock band, then this collection is the story of an idea: a collaborative multimedia art project in which Reid and McLaren, who met at Croydon art school, were at least as significant as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. “They all brought their own unique visions and the Sex Pistols was the pot that everyone threw everything into,” Stolper says. Many of the images, ostensibly created to promote gigs and records, hold up as artworks in their own right. You could see them without having heard a note of the Sex Pistols’ music and know that they represented a radically significant moment in British youth culture. “This is all at the service of something else,” Wilson says, “and working out what that something else is is the intriguing part of it.”

Bidding opens October 10.

Posted on // 4 Comments

“Boogie” Said with A Mancunian Accent is My New Drug

I’m addicted to Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. I started at #1 after finishing Cocaine & Rhinestones, and have grown progressively more impressed with it. It’s impeccably researched,and so full of good stories and facts you never had any idea of. The episode on “Brand New Cadillac” is masterclass. Highly recommended. I will avoid spoilers.

Episode 77: “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys