Fey Rays

I've found salvation. Embraced in the arms of soft wafty pop and the soothing moonage daydreams of FC Kahuna, Jon Hopkins and Ulrich Schnauss. Waddya mean Ulrich who?

Although it's Memory Cassette who have been the real spoonful of sugar. Something like a cosmic Cocteaus glitzed with a downbeat disco shimmer. Lend an ear and melt into the magic.

Memory Cassette - Listen to the Vacuum





How can anyone feel glum after a blast of this bubblegum booty from the Grand Master of mash ups. Released yesterday (as part of a three way whammy)and grabbable here

Shake Your Booty Down To The Ground

I knew I had a few somewhere...

Jacko & The Charlatans
The Baddest One I Know - McSleazy



Jacko & The Beatles
Daytrip To Never Never Land - Go Home Productions



Jacko & Black Grape
Reverend Black Jackson - Go Home Productions

She Moves In Mashterious Ways

Marvel's Irish Superheroine, Shamrock

Now retired and "the most sought-after hairdresser in all of Europe" - apparently

I've never really been 1 for U2's arena-anthems. Bonio's boomy chest-beating and The Hedge's guitar tone is all too cloying, gloopy and reminiscent of Simple Minds and Big Country crowd-bouncers for me..

But how would they sound with a girl guest vocalist facing front - perhaps....

Alison Moyet
Go Home Productions - YazU2



Whitney Houston
GHP - I wanna Dance With Some Bono



Not U2, but to completete the St Patrick's hatrick..

Ultra Nate and Thin Lizzy team-up for
GHP - Ultrathin

Judge Dredd and Judge Joyce ( personally my preference is Beamish or Caffreys over Guinness)

Funky Friday - Pop Art and Kinky Boots

Following on from Mick's bit of bubblegum blogging I've been inspired to post a pair of sweet-tooth booties, built around two Velvet Underground numbers.

Lou and Andy's band (not those two from Little Britain) may seem like the last lot on earth to ever make a Funky Friday appearance, but when the Willy Wonka of pick 'n' mix pop Mark Vidler sets to work, pure gold is often spun from the unlikeliest of ingredients...

You may have swift shrift for Christina Ag's warblings, or perhaps minimal interest in the Velvet's catalogue - but whisk them together, add sprinkles, sparkles and a dash of The Communards to the closing coda - and it's almost impossible to resist the lip-smacking sugar rush of this pure pop cocktail - something that sounds like a long lost summer single from the seventies..

Go Home Productions - Girl Wants To Say Goodbye



And what's this - Waiting For The Man, Sugar Sugar and a splash of Basement Jaxx shaken and spun into something sweeter than candyfloss - well I never!

Go Home Productions - Velvet Sugar

Funky Friday - Santastic Grab Bag

As Bing Crosby sang "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". But, does it sound a lot like 'Christmas'? How many times can you hear - year in, year out - the same ol' creaky Christmas crooners and overplayed tinsel-tunes before you start tuning them out?

Personally I really will pull this sort of a face, if get anywhere near another whiff of Phil Spector, 'Fairytale of New York' or East 17's 'Stay' and Frankie's 'Power Of Love' (and who in the name of Chris Chringle ever decided the last two had any sniff of Christmas spirit about them anways)..

So let me introduce to you ...a grab bag of goodies, a sackful of bootleg remixes and festive flavored funky nuggets that should get your jingle boots a'bopping and your cosy toes a'tapping. All have been masterfully mixed by the super heroes and heavy hitters of cut-and-paste-pop into fun size, mini-medleys of panto' season playfulness where ....

Shaking Stevens, Jet and Jonah Lewie get bunged in the blender.
Bad Tattoo - Are You Gonna Stop The White Christmas



The Who, James Brown, Clarence Carter and Curtis Mayfield make
merry...
Mojochronic - Xmasploitation Santa



The bestest ever refit of Last Christmas - a real winter Whammer
DJ BC - Fettdog Last Christmas Twist



And GHP whisks Blondie and Macca into a Christmas confection as full and fruity as figgy pud'...
Go Home Productions - High Tides And Blocked Peace Pipes




All tracks are taken from five full albums worth of genuine geniusness available for free ....here A Very Bootie Christmas and here Santastic Four


Oh go on then, one more - as it's Christmas..

Sam Flanagan - Frosty DMC

Funky Friday - Apple Bonkers

31 Beatles tunes are buried in this illustration by Paul McDonald - how many can you spot?

Because a couple of the regular threads in my cyberspace scrapbook are The Beatles and Bootleg Remixes - it seems high time for the two to come together by digging out and polishing up a selection of the shiniest Beatle boots in my cellarful of noise for an FF post..

Including a fab four from Mark Vidler/Go Home Productions (the George Martin of mashups) where Annie Lennox, Jacko, The Monkees, and Blur all get bolted on to The Beatles, and Soundhog's (the George Harrison of hybrid-pop) uptempo edit of Eleanor Rigby and Soulsearcher's - 'Just Can't Get Enough'

So as the Hamburg audiences were given to shouting... "Mak Shau!,Mak Shau!"

And if you fancy grabbing a couple of mellow moptop mashups which blend The Beat's with The Beach Boys, Mogwai and Kid Loco - just click your Cuban heels

GHP - All My Birds



GHP - Rich Girls And Boys




GHP - Daytrip To Never Never Land



Soundhog - Eleanor can't get enough




Go Home Productions - Paperback Believer


The download for Paperback Believer is available right here

Thumbs N' Roses

A couple of rock's heaviest hitters have both released new albums within the last few days:

McCartney (as The Fireman) with 'Electric Arguments'
Axl Rose (as Guns N' Roses) with 'The Chinese Democracy'.

But what would the results have sounded like if they'd put their collective noggins together for a team-up (Maxl's Metal Hammer?) Perhaps something like...

DJ Jimmi James - Sgt. Pepper´s Paradise (short version)


DJ Jimmi James - Sgt. Pepper´s Paradise (long version)



And on a similar theme... The Cult and The Beatles in

Go home productions - She Sells Tax, Man



So let me introduce to you - a couple of other G N' R connections to the bands appearing in these two metal based booties.....

Guns N' Roses covered McCartney's 'Live And Let Die' on their "The Spaghetti Incident?" album

Axl was married to Erin Everley, the daughter of one of Macca's musical heroes Don Everly.

Matt Sorum drummer for G N' R and Velvet Revolver is a former drummer of The Cult, who, had Guns N' Roses as their opening act on a US tour in the eighties.

If this post doesn't get me blog-whacked nothing will.

Never Mind The Boleros

I've just finished two excellent spiky top books on the bounce..

John Robb - 'Punk Rock: An Oral History'

Alan Parker - 'Sid Vicious,No One is Innocent'

Both map out the cultural earthquake shake up and chain reaction of cluster bomb bands that exploded following the big bang of punk - all documented from a ground zero perspective by bit part players and punk aristocrats.

So some contrast and compare, pre and post '77 tracks then...

An audience recording of the Sex Pistols (who were an unsigned band at the time) live in Burton on Trent from September 24th 1976 - check out Matlock's rubber ball basslines.
No Feelings - Live at the 76 Club



By 1978 the world really had turned dayglo, and a Spanish punk band calling themselves Los Punkrockers tried to rework NMTB blow for blow.
No Feelings - Los Punkrockers



To bring us up to date Mark Vidler's Cher at Seditionaries bootleg remix.
No Feelings 4 Cher



And as bonus from 'Party 'Til You Puke' here's the NMTB demo version of ...
No Feelings (demo)

Funky Friday - Spliced Krispies

For as long as DJs and remixers have been recycling rock, rap and pop scraps into home made hybrids and patchwork tracks - I've been collecting them.

The King of cut and paste pop is Mark Vidler/Go Home Productions (the legendary 'Ray Of Gob' and 'Can't Get Blue Monday Out of My Head' are both GHP creations ) whose brand new booties 'Spliced Krispies' have been rocking my noggin for the past two weeks. And as if he's not busy enough making mashups and a full set accompanying videos, Radio One appearances, magazine features, podcasts guest spots and a new album - the Grand Master of Mashups himself Mr Mark Vidler is here, right here to give us some exclusive snap, crackle and pop on a selection from his latest tasty treats 'Spliced Krispies' -

"Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A Finger Of Fudge"

OK, I was born in the original Summer Of Love (not the attempted ecstacy-fuelled 80's version), pre-Pepper by a month yet the smell of Strawberry Fields was still strong, if you get my drift. So...that means I grew up in the Seventies:

Space Dust, Planet Of The Apes, The Double Deckers, Krazy Comic, Horror Bags crisps, Top Deck, Space Invaders, Glam Rock, Punk Rock, New Wave, Mod Revival, Texan Bar, Curly Wurly, Finger of Fudge (got there in the end).

The Cadbury's Fudge jingle / TV ad appeared at the tail end of the 70's and well into the 80's, so if you're of a certain age you'll either remember it fondly or dismiss it for being a mild irritant. I guess I'm somewhere between the two camps but back in April when I started creating the "Spliced Krispies" album, I always knew I was going to 'doctor' it in some way. It's light and breezy feel (mostly a capella) and school boy charm was just crying out to be bastardised with something from another universe (in musical terms).

Fact 1: Mike D'Arbo (formerly of Manfred Mann) wrote the jingle.
Fact 2: I originally matched it up with Nirvana's "Teen Spirit".

Thank God I didn't stick with that idea though. It's one of those 'For every 5 gems, there's 50 shit ones' scenarios. So I continued trying to find Fudge a partner well into the wee small hours, fuelled by a bottle of Columbian Gallo and roast chicken (Hong Kong style), until Pet Sounds came calling from the corner of the room. It was purely accidental If I'm brutally honest. I was listening to 'Let's Go Away For A While' earlier in the week, so the CD was close to hand. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" seemed to good to be true. One of those 'goosebump' moments when I could hear that Fudge worked effortlessly with it...

I guess it's the one track that's getting the most attention since releasing "Spliced Krispies" to an unexpectant public in May. Chris Moyles (Radio 1 DJ) picked and played it 3 times on his breakfast show. Fair play, he gave 'The Vidler' and 'Go Home Productions' website a very massive plug, questioning my sanity for even contemplating the 2 songs together yet describing it as genius. The phone was hardly on it's hook that morning.
Funny what a 'finger of fudge' can actually do for you...

GHP - "Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A Finger Of Fudge"





"Grandstand Supreme"

Throughout March this year I was aquiring and listening to a hell of a lot of KPM Library Music, probably fuelled by my sudden 'trying to reclaim my youth' mood that was taking me back to the Seventies, so I was consuming a lot of Alan Hawkshaw, Keith Mansfield, Brian Bennett etc and dragging out my Blow Up compilation CD's, DeWolfe comps and TV Themes albums. I felt like I was living out an episode of every BBC / ITV production between 1973-1979. Very weird but very enjoyable at the same time, so it was hardly suprising that something would filter through and end up on the album. The full Grandstand theme is quite simply a work of art. It's probably Keith Mansfields' most well known. The addition of the Supremes is probably not too much of a surprise really. I think the surprise lies in how well the vocal fits
with the backing track at certain changes. It took a bit of editing and shuffling around but I think that my decision to leave the song length the same as the opening titles was right. In the end it was probably more a case of making the music to fit the video that I was creating at the same time. Funnily enough Moyles played this track on his Breakfast show as well...

GHP - "Grandstand Supreme"





"Finally, Did You No Wrong'"

I can't leave the Sex Pistols alone.They are my regular fix of energy and attitude, reference point and inspiration. See, I was too young to be a punk in 1976/1977. I was only nine years old and more into supporting my beloved Arsenal and playing with my Six Million Dollar Man doll than following bands or pop stars. I watched Top Of The Pops from a very early age (apparently) but never went out and bought records until I was 12. I can remember Gary Glitter, Slade, The Sweet, Suzy Quatro, The Bay City Rollers, Osmonds and T.Rex but I never indulged in the sacred plastic. Those bands seemed a bit cabaret to me at the time if I'm honest. Anyway, I witnessed the Pistols on the Grundy show and that definitely left an impression. Janet Street Porter's 'Punk' documentary for the London Weekend Show was another slice of legendary TV that I caught as well, but it wasn't until 1979 that I jumped right in and started buying the stuff.

By then the Pistols had run their course and the new wave was settling in but I bought 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and am still amazed to this day by it's awesome production and energy. It's the best album to put on when the sun is out and the windows are open. It's pretty well known that "Ray Of Gob" (Pistols vs Madonna) gave me the foot-up into the Music biz back in 2003, so I just felt like doing another one for a laugh and see what turned up. This one came about pretty quickly. In fact the video took longer to make because I spent so much time watching all my Pistols DVD's for source material...I mentioned elsewhere that I had to bolster the bottom end by playing the bass part and mixing it back in but I think the track works well enough now and it's quite strange how nicely female vox fit with a Pistols song.

GHP - 'Finally, Did You No Wrong'



All the best

Mark.

I'm sending out extra special soul salute to Mark for finding the time rustle up with a great bowlful of goodies of for my blog - so please speed on over to Go Home Productions and fill your boots with his boots..

Funky Friday - Triple Trouble

Shortly after their 1980s chart ram-raid and debut album, the Beastie Boys dropped off my musical radar (me being into long hair, leather jackets and all things R.O.C.K at the time). Until - via the digitally doomed channel UK Play's heavy rotation but limited library of approx' twelve music vids (Kylie, Beastie Boys and Fatboy Slim etc...), I eventually picked up on the Beasties brilliant promos for 'Body Movin''(Fatboy remix), 'Three MC's and One DJ' and ''Intergalatic''.

The Beastie Boys are one of a handful of bands almost fully formed for their own Hanna-Barbera style musical cartoon series ( see also - The Damned, the Spice Girls and Motorhead) with their fizzingly inventive vids, triple wallop wordplay and stealthy scrapbooking of obscure samples (dropping The Sweet's "She thinks she's the passionate one" into 'Hey Ladies' being a double rap whammy). And if that grab bag of goodies wasn't enough the Beastie Boys sneakily leak acappela tracks into the public domain almost endorsing the idea of mashups and bootleg remixes - you'll find three of my personal faves below.

Alan Hawkshaw's 'Beat Me'til I'm Blue' bolted on to 'Alive'..

Alive - (Alan Hawkshaw version)



'Word To The Mic' from DJ BC's The Beastles project

The Beastles - Word To The Mic



And a Blockheads/Beastie Boys Booty from Mark vidler

Go Home Productions - Triple Rhythm Stick



Beastie Boys - Triple Trouble


For more unlikely Rap reworks check out...

Eminem Vs Del Boy

Beastie Boys Vs The Ramones

"Meet the gang 'cos the boys are here, the boys to entertain you..."

Pogo At The Disco

More evidence that a Punk and Disco combo can work as well as sweet and sour.

Go Home Productions - You Make Me Feel Like XTC.



Yes - that really is Steve (Sex Pistol) Jones and Olivia (sex symbol) Newton John.

No - It hasn't been Photoshopped.

Pop Fact - XTC's name for this generic Disco cymbal sound was 'Pea Soup'

Funky Friday - New Wave Nuggets

This week on Funky Friday it's a couple of cheeky New Wave dance routines and two punky based booty remixes.First up ..

Hot Gossip - The Hardest Part

Hot Gossip were always cheeky, funky and futuristic but their romps and routines never quite captured the swish, sparkle or understated 'oomph' of Pan's People.'The Hardest Part' was a low level hit in the U.S for Blondie - the original vid' with Debbie Harry strutting like a dark haired dominatrix
is here


Hot Gossip - 'All stood still'

'All Stood Still' is probably the only Ultravox track that's not too jarring to these ears. The 'Goss's video is painfully 80's( but loaded with some spectacular leg actions) and seems to filmed in the sort of club that would fire up the 'dry ice' and 'laser display' at 10:30 of an evening.


Go Home Productions/Mark Vidler is the Big Boss of bootleg remixes', these two Punk/New Wave 'bastard pop' pieces are a couple of his obscure but outstanding tasty treats that really should have been huge international hits.

XTC - 'Making Plans For Nigel' and Tweet - 'Oops (Oh My)' get bunged in the blender for..
Making Plans For Vinyl.mp3


And the Sex Pistols 'No Feelings' and Cher's 'Believe' get refitted and recycled as ...
No Fun 4 Cher.mp3

Countdown to Christmas Pt 4 - Snowy Beatle Boots and a Brassy Bonus

As mentioned before I'm a terror for a bootleg remix and was lucky enough to grab these Go Home goodies a couple of years ago.

The Beatles bootlegging with Boston

GHP - Christmas in Boston. MP3




Macca mashes it up with Jennifer Lopez

GHP - Christmas on the Block.mp3



The Carpenters get the last sleigh to Skaville

GHP - Carpenters Christmas.mp3

Beatle Boots - Jet Lady Joe

Go Home Productions - Jet Lady Joe(2004).mp3




This track is one of those mashup moments where the Professor of Pop, Mark Vidler (Go Home Productions) is at the Golden Section of his intergeneric genius.

On paper, attempting to build a Frankenstein of funk from this role call of rockers;

The Beatles, Jet, Joe Walsh, The Jamms and Mud.

Should end up as a musical disaster movie, but the Mozart of mashups creates an action stacked masterpiece that packs more wallop than a bare knuckle ruck.

I've been tempted several times to drop this in to various mixes, comps and occasional DJ spots, but being such an explosive 'banger' it’s almost impossible to find anything to follow up with.

If you enjoyed this get on over to GHP and fill your boots.