Music Review Co-Blog with Beckeye

Hullo chaps. This review is a co-blogging effort with the very very lovely Beckeye, who you may know from such websites as ThePopEye and StarPulse. Beckeye approached me a while ago with some ideas for a review. She had made a load of albums via the Random Album Meme that was going around a while back, and asked if I wanted to review them. She named the bands and records, designed album art, came up with song titles and named the bandmembers all using random methods involving Flickr, Wikipedia and other websites. Heck, the only thing she didn't invent were the release dates and barcode numbers. With such a wealth of information, how could I refuse? Here are the results of our collaboration. Please enjoy.


New Album Round-up

The urge to creativity is a strong one, and the wave of musical inspiration that flowed through Mozart, Lennon, Peter Cetera and the Vengaboys continues to bash against the rocks of artistic endeavour. New music is being released every day, like kidnapped bank tellers from a building besieged by snipers after a failed robbery attempt. This week I was sent some brand new music to listen to and appraise with all the flair and wit for which I am famous.

First up is veteran prog-punk dance-rock quintet Magnatune, with their umpteenth album Faith in the Future. Opening track ‘Symplectization’ is eighteen minutes of heavy-assed flute/glockenspiel cockrock shebangabanging, with brassic beats and bleary-eyed bassline thumpery added to the mix for extra mmmnice. It’s a great track, but sadly almost identical to the opening songs in their last four albums. In fact, all of the music seems to have been wholly taken from previous releases, including stand-out track ‘Health Insurance’, which is just ‘Cesar Catli’ from their debut record played backwards by an angry trumpet.

Verdict: Nice songs, but about as original as supermarket own-brand cornflakes



The term ‘Gutblasting Teutonic Chickrock’ is thrown around so much these days, but it has never been more warranted than in the case of Zündels Abgang, the latest German Grrrrlcore fembunch. Their debut album, Saying what we Know, is more rocky than Rocky Balboa eating Rocky Road ice cream while sitting in a quarry. From opening track ‘Dosinia Maoriana’ to closer ‘Flying Guillotine’, this album grabbed me by the balls and wouldn’t let them go until I’d given it all my sweets. The only down-note was ‘Languages of Australia’, a song that the band’s drummer, Carissa Cantu, wrote while under general anaesthetic.

Verdict: I like it, now can I have my bike back please?


Ask the average person on the street what they understand by the term ‘math-rock’ and they’ll probably run away because I forgot to put pants on. American Front’s new album, Hindsight is Always Twenty-Twenty should be their answer, though, because it’s the most clever, dorky and embarrassing album ever released, and as a result epitomises math-rock in a way no words ever could. When listening to songs like ‘Bachelor of Business Administration’, ‘Aradle Mental Hospital’ and ‘Swimming at the 1996 Summer Olympics – Women’s 200 Metre Butterfly’, I feel like I’m being pounded on the head by a musical calculator. It’s a disconcerting experience, because I feel like if anyone sees me listening to it they’ll wedgie me out of spite.

Verdict: 2 + 2 = Poor


Individual Computers Catweasel are a Brooklyn duo made famous by the fact that their song ‘Pando’ was featured in a commercial for Gap Jeans. Their new album On You Like Wolves is highly anticipated, and music lovers will not be disappointed. Timothy Dwain Huff and Ian Hughes have worked hard to ensure that every single song on this album will be suitable for car, computer and clothing commercials, from the gentle, swaying ‘Pacific Coast Railway’ (just right for a Toyota Yaris ad) to the rocking ‘List of Career Achievements by Tiger Woods’ (soon to heard when Apple try to sell you an iPod). The television commercial usefulness of this album would make Moby blush, so you might as well not bother buying the album, because you’ll be sick of the songs by April.

Verdict: Just Do It.

Restaurant Review: Appetite for Mozzarella

Axl Rose has many reasons to be happy right now. Next week, the long-awaited Guns N Roses album, Chinese Democracy, will be released after 14 years of writing, recording, false starts and band member changes. Even more surprisingly, Rose has just recently opened a new pizza restaurant in downtown Los Angeles called ‘Appetite for Mozzarella’, and it’s garnering a lot of attention from gourmands and rock fans alike. I decided to take a look.

The décor of AfM is how one would expect a restaurant owned by the frontman of Guns N Roses to look. Guitars and photos of the past adorn the walls of the eatery, though his public spats with other members of G’n’R mean that only pictures of Axl himself are to be found. There are framed gold and platinum discs around the place, and in one corner there is a display of some of Rose’s famous kilts. As one might expect, the music being played is a constant stream of Guns N Roses’ most popular songs, including that one from Terminator 2.

Looking at the menu, there’s a great selection of delicious-looking pizza meals, and I opted for the ‘Sweet Chili of Mine’, a pepper-based pizza with caramelised onions and olives. My partner went for the ‘Meat-Train’, a carnivore’s dream with more different sausages than you can shake a Slash guitar solo at. Really, we were spoiled for choice; from the fromage-tastic ‘It’s so Cheesy’ (with seven different kinds of cheese) to the vegetarian ‘Welcome to the Fungal’, a mostly mushroom-based pizza, there was so much on offer here. I was quite tempted by the ‘Paradise VoraCity’, a pizza that certainly lives up to its name by being 36 inches in diameter and earning a leather jacket for anyone who can eat an entire one alone.

With all these mouthwatering choices, then, it’s a shame that the service in Appetite for Mozzarella is so poor. It was over an hour after we ordered that we saw our waiter again, and when asked what had happened to our food he apologised but said that Axl had fired all his kitchen staff shortly after we ordered. He assured us that our meal would be ready once the new recruits had got up to speed with the kitchen layout and the menu.

I took this time to read a leaflet about the restaurant. Apparently it’s possible to rent out Appetite for Mozzarella for a special ‘November Rain’ wedding reception, complete with unexpected downpours, someone diving headfirst through the cake and a general feeling of foreboding until the third act when the bride dies and the groom wakes up, sobbing, as the whole thing has been a dream.

After another hour had passed our pizzas were brought out to our table, but before the waiter could set them before us, the chef ran out and told him to bring them back because he wasn’t happy with them.

It was at this point when I realised that nobody else in the restaurant was eating.

And this, then, is my main gripe with Appetite for Mozzarella. The food looks and smells wonderful. The smells coming out of the kitchen were to die for. We couldn’t wait for our food. But we had to wait. And wait. And wait. And despite being offered free Dr. Pepper for having to wait so long, it is simply unacceptable to have people wait for as long as we were before being served. When we discovered that our food wouldn’t be ready until April 2015, my partner and I decided to leave and find a more prompt meal elsewhere.

So I’m sorry that I can’t comment on the quality of the food in question, but with service this bad, I don’t recommend that anyone else try to find out for themselves.

No chefs’ hats out of a possible five.

Welcome to the fungal/we’ve got chanterelle/we’ve got every mushroom you want/even False Morel/and you’re a very hungry man/very hard to please/if you don’t like mushrooms well/we’ve got a pizza full of cheese/in the fungal/welcome to the fungal/gonna bring you your shi-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ke/shiitake/shiitake

Music Documentary Review - VH1's F Sharp Minor: Behind the Music

Next week, VH1 will broadcast their long-awaited music documentary, F Sharp Minor: Behind the Music. It spans the more than fifty years that the chord has been in the music industry, and features interviews with musicians, colleagues and friends of the popular artist, as well as F Sharp Minor himself. I was granted a sneak peek at the program after befriending a gullible cameraman.

To convey the wealth and scope of F Sharp Minor’s career is a daunting task, but one which the documentary’s makers have succeeding in doing. Archive footage shows early appearances by the chord in songs by skiffle band Ernie and the Milkmen, though one would be hard pressed to recognise the chord we all know and love today. F Sharp Minor talks at length about the difficulty he faced in those early days, and the hardships he suffered from living in the shadow of his elder – and more commonly used - brother, F Sharp. It is here that we see a far more raw, human side of the chord, as he thanks the God of Music that he didn’t suffer the same fate as B Suspended 7, a chord who disappeared in the late 1950s and hasn’t been seen since.

Famous fans of F Sharp Minor are interviewed, including such long-time collaborators as Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Brian Wilson. And while the documentary could have descended into a sycophantic love-in, dissenting voices are also given some airtime, including that of Keith Richards. The Rolling Stones guitarist still feels resentment towards F Sharp Minor after the chord was heard on the Beatles’ Revolver album at a time when he had promised Richards his exclusive use. Lou Reed also talks disparagingly of the chord, something that F Sharp Minor puts down to “a misunderstanding over some stolen ham.”

Witnessing the development of F Sharp Minor as an artist over the years is a treat, and from his tripped-out psychedelic days of the sixties to his reverence at the hands of late-90s Britpop artists like Oasis and Blur, VH1 show us the story of a chord who has moved with the times in a way few other collections of notes have.

My one complaint with the documentary, however, is the glossing over of several more embarrassing moments in F Sharp Minor’s career. A collaboration with Kriss Kross in 1991 is mentioned, but nothing more is said. Several appearances on Tatu’s 2002 album 200 Km/h in the Wrong Lane are also alluded to, but we are told no more. The chord’s unfortunate arrest in 1973 for transporting a minor over state lines is sadly absent from the film.

Such omissions notwithstanding, VH1 have put together a thoroughly enjoyable look into the life and career of one of rock’s greatest chords, and they are to be commended. I look forward to seeing their forthcoming documentary, Eight Bar Drum Intro: Behind the Music.

F Sharp Minor: Behind the Music will be shown at 8:00 on VH1 on Wednesday week. It’s on at the same time as Lost, so you might want to record it and watch it later.