I Am Not The Beatles

 

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

” And this song is considered a perfect gem,
And as to the meaning, it’s what you please. “
 

C.S. Calverley - Ballad

If - like me - the prospect of a good Boing is the kind of thing likely to get you more than just a little excited, then you’re going to love this record. For here is a song with you for the long haul, one which realises that although an accomplished Boingking may be enough to gain your initial attention - only by following such a thing up with some seriously intelligent pillowtalk can any hope of a long term relationship be established.

Thus for every hardworking Boing which is expertly tossed off in your general direction, a roughly equal number of similarly industrious Pings, Booms and Tschaks quickly make themselves known to alchemise any embarrassingly premature overexcitement into the gold of an intellectualised discourse.

This is a brave tactic certainly but also very successful as although, just like any marriage, the Boings do eventually stop, this slowly turns a song which may appear to be an empty soulless void into something rather more interesting - a process not unlike when a new colleague starts work in the office who you find a bit vacant and bland… only to discover two years later that you now inexplicably fancy the pants off them.

For Kraftwerk’s Booms, unlike Will Smith’s much more blokey Boom!s, are not here to do anything as mundane as shake the room but instead exist to help you deconstruct the medium of pop music itself and thus create a veritable Love Tschak : a little old place where we can get together and make sweet Musique… Non Stop.

Brilliant.

Aren’t Kraftwerk More Than Just A Little Bit Famous ?

They certainly are and the story of this track is utterly fascinating - as a song called Technopop, which allegedly contained bits of this one, was originally recorded in 1981 for an album of the same name.

That album was never released however as one member of Kraftwerk had become rather oddly obsessed with the mechanics of bicycles at the time and, whilst riding one and presumably ruminating upon the exciting sound the gear change made rather than actually looking where he was bloody well going, he then rather sadly nearly killed himself upon it - putting the entire Technopop project on hold whilst he recovered from his injuries.

And it was during his recovery time that some exciting new digital technologies coincidentally came to the commercial fore and - not wanting their futuristic band to suddenly be consigned to a part of the past - Kraftwerk thus ditched the entire album they had just recorded and recreated it all again in the digital environment instead :

http://www.kraftwerkfaq.com/recordings.html#technopop

As such Musique Non Stop is a place where the band changed, and was therefore mildly controversial in Kraftwerk circles at the time, as it is a song that stands at the crossroads between two worlds - originally created in the analogue world like all their previous music had been, but now recreated and existing in the digital world like all of their (and just about everybody else’s) music from now on surely would.

In an irony some oh so futuristic Kraftwerk fans didn’t seem to spot however, alot of them were a bit scared of change - with them being downright suspicious of digitalness generally and therefore this record specifically - with the upshot being that not many people bought this pariah of a record even if it is now considered, for very good reason, to be a bit of a classic.

Want to hear the album which was renamed Electric Cafe ? The first three tracks are minimilistic magnificence personified… and terrifyingly prescient of the music that was about to occur :

http://tinyurl.com/cfjvgg

A Digital Universe In An Analogue World

” If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces
The age to come would say, This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.’ “
 

William Shakespeare - Sonnet 17

And the importance of the crossroads where this song stands cannot be underestimated.

After all, man’s ability to manipulate his own environment is what makes him inherently human and is one thing which separates us from being purely animal. In the past however our manipulation had always been within the analogue environment - ie on The Earth, constructing things like stone circles and cathedrals to make our mark upon the land and mould it to our cultural expectations.

The digital domain though is of course entirely different - as here Man has seemingly done the impossible and created what is essentially a totally new universe within the world itself which We are the God of.  This new digital universe, unlike our analogue one, can have no actual meaning as part of it’s make up however as it is constructed purely out of binary numbers (or, to put it another way, any human beauty of any human eyes when placed into it is digitally turned into fresh numbers) :

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=187488

“…a piece of music has meaning for us… but when we take these things across the boundary, they are stripped of their meaning. They just become numbers, their human associations lost. If their meaning is to be regained, they must be transported back from the digital to the human world.”

As such meaning must thus be plastered onto whatever objects we put in the digital domain and are now transporting back. But the problem with plastering meaning onto objects rather than just having feelings about them is that you end up objectifying them ie your feelings about them become exaggerated - something that Lara Croft can more than attest to.

In Kraftwerk’s case the transporting back process is just a question of performing the songs they put there, and they thus gain whatever exaggerated meaning we perceive about them at the time. In other words, although “such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces” they do touch objectified unearthly ones.

And this is presumably why Kraftwerk inspire such huge devotion, and also why a total of seven spoken words put over a sparse electronic beat with no discernible bassline can feel curiously and oddly emotional - as the meaning of Musique Non Stop is quite literally… what you please :

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1306

http://www.kraftwerk.com/

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence
Current Value : 3 pounds and 37 pence. Gosh, this wasn’t just not a hit in the UK but anywhere. Every single country it was released in… it totally stopped.
Current Profit : 332 pounds and 55 pence. You, like me, probably ignore this bit these days. But hey, it’s musique to my ears.

Want to hear some cover versions of this song? Make the most of them, this has never happened before. Click here.

Want to hear Karl Bartos’ (a Kraftwerk founder member but now ex-Kraftwerk) fantabulous version of Baby Come Back ? It is almost precisely like Musique Non Stop - but on much stronger drugs :

Supporting Cast Update : Smith, Will

 

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

Barrington Levy is having a bit of a struggle.

With what ?

His complaints are many and various, but he appears to be mostly struggling with being able to find enough relevant words to pad out 4 minutes and 42 seconds of music. Indeed, so much of a struggle is it that - despite his numerous claims that he’ll never give up - he soon does exactly this when he resorts to enunciating a series of Wop Diddle Dee Doo Bops within just 45 seconds of the song starting, and then repeating them with increasingly alarming regularity throughout.

This is an overcompensation from which Barrington sadly never quite recovers, as around the 3 minute mark he even starts struggling with his ability to be able to that successfully and starts to trip over his own Diddles - which is a messy experience at the best of times.

Maybe he is just a bit stressed ?

He is certainly that alright and for very good reason - as he woke up this morning to make the frankly disturbing discovery that he had run out of tea.

Bloody Hell.

And terrifying though this thought is for just about anybody to contemplate, Barrington has an added complication…

I get the feeling I am going to struggle to believe this…

… and this is that Barrington is capable of perceiving both the past and the future simultaneously - thus making his present moment a rather uncertain one.

Unbelevyable!

This is evidenced in the first verse where he claims that he is currently able to recall both waking up this morning and waking up tomorrow - and this confusion makes any presumptions about any perceived tea or lack thereof laughably difficult to pinpoint. After all he may not have any tea right now, but what if he has already bought some in the future thus making any quick trip to the shops wholly redundant?

Faced with such a chronological conundrum Barrington thus chooses the only sensible solution available to him… and very wisely struggles back to bed to moan about some other things instead.

What Else Does Barrington Moan About ?

Shitloads.

Everything from the fact that he is currently the owner of only one half of a pair of shoes, to the rather strange complaint that he considers himself morally incapable of being a thief. Odd though this latter moan is, the one I must take issue with is where he states that he finds it impossible to make love on a hungry belly.

This must surely be very much in doubt - as I can promise you that if there is one thing men are most definitely capable of if they are given even the merest hint of any action, it is attempting to have sex with just about anybody… hungry belly or not.

Any Major Levylations As A Result Of This Record ?

Yes.

This song is an example of the dancehall genre which originated in the 1970’s in Jamaica.

Now, dancehall is, by its very nature, in existence to make you dance - very possibly in a hall if you’re lucky enough to be in one at the time - but some people take it very seriously indeed and blame it for both social deterioration and increased violence in the place of its birth.

Despite the fact that just about every musical genre has been accused of this at some point in its life so the answer is already blindingly obvious - ie it’s probably a bit more complicated than that - why not read this essay called “So wha, mi nuh fi live to?”: Interpreting Violence in Jamaica through the Dancehall Culture. It essentially argues that, if you are Jamaican, then both you and dancehall are products of the same culture and therefore both you and it are going to exhibit many of the same characteristics of each other.

With this in mind if you dislike dancehall for the reasons stated above, it suggests this is only because you recognise secreted parts of yourself within it and it is thus probably a good idea if you swallow your pride, initiate some sort of group hug, chuck some on the stereo anyway and have a bloody good dance to forget about it all.

A bit like the plot to Footloose then, but with longer words :

http://www.ragashanti.com/articles/Ideaz.pdf

Anyway Barrington himself, like Jean Beauvoir before him, was an early musical developer - releasing his first single under the pseudonym Mighty Multitide when he was just 13 years old. It would then take him just another 7 years or so to become the biggest star in the country at a stupidly young age, is still huge today and is seen as a massive influence to many :

http://www.barringtonlevy.com/

http://springlinejamaica.blogspot.com/2008/09/barrington-levy.html

Interestingly, the second link above tells us a tale about the way record companies view their relevant markets and how this naivety can directly impact upon what becomes popular - as at one point Barrington recorded an album where he collaborated with other people. In the UK this was released with the slightly edgy title of ‘Barrington Levy’s DJ Counteraction’ and it did reasonably well. In the US however they took one at at, didn’t really understand the title, then panicked a bit before finally deciding to tamely downgrade it to … ‘Duets’.

And how did it do there ?

Yep : It struggled.

Can Barrington Levy Really See Into The Future ?

Yes.

But only because, if Professor Mark Changizi is to be believed, then we all do this all the time - as we are all forever seeing about one tenth of a second into the future and predicting what will happen. This is, he claims, where hallucinations (such as ghosts) come from where our predicted future doesn’t match up with the reality of it :

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/05/18/humans-can-see-into-the-future/

Fascinating though that is, others believe they will soon be able to prove beyond all doubt that we all most definitely have a fully developed sixth sense that can do so so much more.

Important I Am Not The Beatles Warning

The following article contains the potentially deadly cocktail of words ‘paranormal researchers’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-452833/Is-REALLY-proof-man-future.html

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence
Current Value : Barrington may well be struggling with lots of stuff, but his second hand market is certainly buoyant - 5 pounds and 35 pence - which puts him in 9th place and sandwiches him between Sudden Sway and Luba value-wise.
Current Profit : 232 pounds and 26 pence. Want to hear a bit more Barrington ? Here is the very lovely You Have Caught Me :

And if you like that, why not pop off to Amazon to buy his Greatest Hits ?

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Experienced-Best-Barrington-Levy/dp/B00000E9KP

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

Obviously bored with the modern style of government - based rather tediously as it is on a theory of ever evolving democracy being consistently informed by thousands of years of learnings - J M Silk would like to make a suggestion.

Why don’t we, he posits, Let The Music Take Control ?

What A Bold Idea!

Alarm bells should immediately start ringing when you consider the medium he has chosen to convey his manifesto with ie via the wondrous possibilities of song. This is not a new idea of course as in the 1500’s when - if you can imagine such a terrifying thought - not just the internet but mass printing itself didn’t exist, political theories and news were highly illegally sold in pamphlets called broadsides (a word which would, eventually, morph itself into the much more acceptable broadsheet).

These broadside papers, made by manually stamping them with ink laden woodcuts, would be sung aloud by the pedlars who sold them on the street. No musical notation was included upon them as the people purchasing them couldn’t read music so, if you bought one – as you could have done in 1513 after the battle of Flodden – you would have not just been expected to return home with the information that James IV the king of Scotland had recently died, but you would also have been given marks out ten by your family on the choice of tune you used to convey the news.

Interestingly, it is here where historians suspect that children’s embarrassment with their culturally out of touch parents first came into being - as the parent would undoubtedly have chosen a classic form of folk tune to sing… whilst the kids were all busily broadsiding each other in their respective playgrounds with a nu-folk-rap-crunk hybrid.

Things have obviously moved on alot since then but also, in many ways, they have regressed as music has become more self referential. When Sister Sledge, for example, inform us that they are Lost In Music the fact that cannot be ignored is that they are currently lost in their own music and – in that moment on the dancefloor when we realise that really isn’t such a bad place to be – so are we.

The same goes for J M Silk, as he doesn’t just want any old music to take control of the world of course… he wants his own to do so.

What Would His Radical Melody Based Society Look Like ?

It would certainly be progressive, with accountability for people’s lives rigorously decentralised away from the corridors of power and placed firmly upon the shoulders of the individuals concerned. Indeed, so decentralised would this form of governance be, it can be hard to find J M Silk suggesting his music take responsibility for pretty much any part of your life whatsoever.

The welfare state would need to be substantially reduced for a start, putting it very much in line with the American model, with your own mental and physical health being left very much up to you. Sure, the music would forever be rumbling away like traffic noise in the background being in control of The Big Stuff, but you would need to put your own problems aside, you would need to find your own solutions to any problems you may face and you would need to find a way to get your own body moving across any floor which required navigating - no matter what your personal physical circumstances may actually be.

Although this may seem harsh for people previously reliant upon state provided wheelchairs for their propulsion, there would however be a plus side - as if you could walk then doing so would suddenly be alot more fun with you letting the music take control of moving your feet, presumably meaning we would all be suddenly strutting around our city centres in the style of John Travolta dancing in Saturday Night Fever.

This one definite improvement to our lifestyle though is actually just an illusion of extra freedom, as the important word here is ‘let’. So in reality you would be nothing more than a hollow and passive conduit who lets the music do this kind of thing to you – as well as loads of other of stuff… some of which you may not necessarily be that keen on.

Such As ?

You, as a member of the new society, would be expected to make the DJ give you more.

Remembering that when he says ‘music’ J M Silk is actually referring to himself (and he is, from memory, also of course a DJ), we can only thus presume that is his rhythm he wants to have seducing your body and who expects this to lead onto him giving you a really bloody good grooving – before he then finally jacks himself all over your body.

That Doesn’t Sound Very Pleasant.

J M Silk claims that such an experience will actually leave your body crying out for more but I, like you, have some serious doubts.

More worryingly, he also says that in order for you to be best placed to mentally accept being grooved and jacked upon in a such a manner, his music would - at some point - have to move your very soul.

Errr… Where ?

He doesn’t say - but let’s face it, if creating an entire new society which turns you into an unthinking soulless automaton is the only way J M Silk can ever see himself getting laid, then he can’t really be very much of a looker.

Is J M Silk Very Much Of A Looker ?

You can make up your own mind by looking at pictures of him attending DiscoNautica 2008, here :

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3v6c9BfMRtokb3xSCowxnA

No matter what your opinion of him is however, let us all be clear on one point - he is certainly more of a catch than poor old DJ Shark who attended the same event :

http://tinyurl.com/5jofh5

 

Tell Me More About J M Silk…

Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley - as he also calls himself - is very famous and one of the founding members of the Chicago House Scene.

Want to remind yourself of how brilliant his classic Jack Your Body is ? It is, I warn you now, not just fabulous in an oh so retro way - but totally fucking brilliant full stop :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQcg-dRg5h4

Want to hear a 1992 ambient remix ? It is rather like luxuriating in a bath full of bubbles made purely out of Steve’s jack :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY5SL-Lrk-Y

Want to hear the kind of music our Steve was influentially playing on his radio show on Chicago’s WBMX in 1985 ? It’s all rather fun :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26K89VK2KAw&feature=related

Anyway, he is still grooving along quite merrily - winning a Grammy here and performing a set there -  so why not find out loads more stuff about the lovely Steve both at Wikipedia and his own website :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_%22Silk%22_Hurley

http://www.silkmix.com/

So If The Music Isn’t In Control ? What Actually Is ?

Michel Foucault’s analysis of modern society concludes that we live in a Society Of Control, via a series of what he terms ‘enclosures’. He argues that to ensure we are never given true freedom - and to prevent anarchy - these enclosures always fence us in to an obligation within a closed environment.

“The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws: first the family; then the school (”you are no longer in your family”); then the barracks (”you are no longer at school”); then the factory; from time to time the hospital; possibly the prison, the pre-eminent instance of the enclosed environment. It’s the prison that serves as the analogical model: at the sight of some laborers, the heroine of Rossellini’s Europa ‘51 could exclaim, “I thought I was seeing convicts.”

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/societyofcontrol.html

So no one person is in charge - but corporations are and, in an instance of mass collusion which is in it’s own way a remix of JM Silk’s suggestion (ie Let The Corporations Take Control), we consciously allow this to continue despite the fact that they endlessly treat us like convicts (or soulless automatons).

After all, putting corporations in place to manage and police the fabric of our society is a very sensible thing to do - as a corporation sees no reason to emote, always follows the rules and outlives actual people, thus ensuring a longer term security for our species as a whole.

Well, unless some sort of credit crunch occurred due to a lack of regulation which then destabilised the banking system leading to the destruction of corporations to such an incredibly large degree that the very foundations of our fragile society - which likes to give the illusion of being immovable and eternal - started to shake, before falling down around our ears.

But then, that doesn’t seem very likely does it ?

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence. Want to hear the 12” ?  It goes on a bit :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vlNE3exwtQ 
Current Value : 93 pence.
Current Profit : 218 pounds and 70 pence. I let the music take total control… and the music let me down.

Supporting Cast Update : James IV; Sister Sledge; Foucault, Michel; Travolta, John

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

In 1985, the song ‘19′ seemed like just another Paul Hardcastle record, but it wasn’t, it was different in many ways - particularly the difference between the prices. A previously recorded song called ‘Rain Forest’ for example cost me 8 pence and was entirely instrumental… but ‘19′ was a hit which you bought for £1.50 and also had nonsensical words.

N-N-N-N-Nonsensical words.

This Previous Song Any Good ?

‘All those who remember the war-orrr, they won’t forget what they’ve seen…’ the middle eight of ‘19′ begins oxymoronically - and what exact situation is it that these poor petrified soldiers will both always remember and never forget, as if these acts of memory recall are two completely separate feats ?

‘Destruction!’ of course, ‘of men in their pry-ime whose average age was 19.”

This famous statistical conclusion is obviously extremely thought provoking, but the song itself is really rather weighed down by the mention of a detailed mathematical calculation and the clunky usage of the word ‘average’ - which presumably worked sparklingly well when spoken dolefully by a heavy smoker in a documentary on the television, but unfortunately doesn’t scan very well when shrieked out loud by a female vocalist.

Indeed, in my more wistful moments I dream that a following line in the lyric - ‘The cube root of which incidentally is 2.668401648721945′ - was hastily axed by nervous record company executives fearing nerdy Paul’s war-orr based calculations were starting to get just a little bit too complex for the casual listener to fully digest.

Can You Tell Me About Rain Forest Please ?

If that weren’t enough, the sentence’s badly thought out phraseology when taken in it’s entirety reads

‘All those who remember the war-orrr, they won’t forget what they’ve seen : Destruction of men in their pry-ime whose average age was 19.’

and suggests that the aforementioned ex-soldiers aren’t just endlessly reliving the dreadful time they watched all their best friends getting their fucking heads ripped off by submachine gun fire in the terrifying battleground of Vietnam.

Instead it seems they are actually endlessly reliving the dreadful time they watched all their best friends getting their fucking heads ripped off by submachine gun fire in the terrifying battleground of Vietnam - with the very important caveat that at that moment they were all more than fully aware that their average age was 19. If Paul’s sensational claim is true, we must only conclude that whilst all the absolute total hell of death and near death and brain/face juxtapositional clashes were horrifically taking place both on and around them all, the US soldiers were independently consistently calculating the arithmetic mean average age of all their counterparts - and if this really was happening then, frankly, it’s no wonder they lost the bloody war.

Rain Forest ?

‘Di-Di Di-Di Di-Di Di-Destruction!
Di-Di Di-Di Di-Di Di-Destruction!’

the singer then repeats, apparently with the strange belief that saying this word twice with a rhythmic stammer will hammer this frankly unbelievable point home to an already sceptical audience. This is complete nonsense of course - after all, if repeatedly stammering in this way was an even remotely useful device to get people to listen to what you were saying to them, then I am sure interrogator de rigeur Mr Jeremy Paxman would have used it at least a couple of times in his famous interview with Michael Howard out of sheer fucking desperation.

‘Di-Di Di-Di Di-Di Di-Did you threaten to overule him ?
Di-Di Di-Di Di-Di Di-Did you threaten to overule him ?’

Mind you, if Jeremy had used this device, I suppose it would at least have allowed Michael Howard - when interviewed a couple of years later for one of those tedious talking heads programs about the recent past - to turn confusedly to the camera and also repeatedly state

‘I wasn’t really sure what was going on
I wasn’t really sure what was going on.’

Oi! Why Are You Going On About That Massive Hit Song ‘19′ ? I Know All About That Record, I Want To Know About This One - This Instrumental : Rain Forest.

Because ‘19′ was a worldwide hit for Paul Hardcastle on the major label Chrysalis in the same year that Rain Forest wasn’t a hit on the label Bluebird. It must thus follow that our Paul was either signed as a direct result of a general perceived wonderfulness of this record… or that this record was re-released after all that ‘19′ stuff in an attempt to cash in on the success of the other. Either way, what it does mean most categorically is that their histories are intrinsically and fascinatingly intertwined.

You’re Just Saying That Because You Can’t Think Of Anything To Say About Rain Forest Aren’t You ?

Absolutely not.

I Don’t Believe You.

OK, then I will talk about it for a bit.

Errr… as records go… Rain Forest is quite… squelchy.

Squelchy ?

Yes, squelchy.

It squelches along like your ever damp feet in a leaky pair of wellies after a particularly strong rainstorm.

In A Rain Forest Perhaps ?

Not really - more like around your local supermarket after you’ve dashed from the car park in an attempt to avoid the downpour. In fact, so much does it sound like the kind of thing Sainsbury’s might well play quietly yet sinisterly in the background whilst I buy some delicious processed food, by the end of the song I was absentmindedly pulling cans of baked beans off the shelf in my kitchen and handing them to my bemused cat to scan them in over the hob.

I Think I Vaguely Recognise This Song. Is That Possible ?

Yes, it is… as it turns out that it is both of the assumptions as stated above ie It is the song that inspired Chrysalis to sign him and a re-release after ‘19′ to cash in on his new number one status. Rain Forest was originally released in 1984 reaching the intensely magical heights of number 41 - and lets face it, you can’t get much more tantalisingly close to number 40 than that. It was originally recorded as a television theme tune for a programme about the British hip hop scene, only to then apparently get released itself and become a massive hit internationally selling over half a million copies worldwide. When re-released in the UK a year later however, it appears to have sold bugger all.

Interestingly, after all that ‘19′ stuttery stuff (the album of which Melody Maker’s Colin Irwin reviewed with words pretty much emulated everywhere else : ‘Paul Hardcastle is a clever bastard, but he seems to have no grasp of transferring true warmth and human emotion to record.’) Paul has now gone all Smooth Jazz on us - and very successful he is too :

http://www.paulhardcastle.com

http://tinyurl.com/6gxzlp

He seems very well respected in his very glittery field and has even recently revisited this very song in an ohsojazzy way - it’s sounds a bit like the theme tune to Cagney and Lacey played at a tenth of the speed by a man you can only presume is

a) Endlessly winking at you. And,

b) Wearing gold lamé :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qCnkSMholc

Don’t care about his latest Smooth Jazz stuff and want to immerse yourself in Paul’s earlier work ? Then why not try the follow up single to ‘19′, ‘Just For Money’ featuring the voices of Sir Lawrence Olivier and Bob Hoskins - with the former enunciating painfully correctly and the latter grunting like a creepy cockernee :

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=jqj3c8-aTjE&feature=related

Or relive Paul’s theme tune to Top Of The Pops :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxzsUWBwz8

Or, completely off the subject, just watch all the Top Of The Pops theme tunes in one go :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuSI2q_TVt0

Was The Average Of The Combat Soldier In Vietnam Really 19 ?

It depends upon who you want to believe.

This website, for example, claims the real average age to actually be a rather precise 22.8 years old :

http://www.vietnam-war.info/myths

But then, seeing as it also claims “The American military was not defeated in Vietnam” because “The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence “ - and describes it militarily as “almost an unprecedented performance” you may not want to 100% hang upon it’s every pronouncement.

This argument, along with a few others, is looked at in a bit more depth here if you’re interested :

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_US_lose_the_Vietnam_War

“Technically, we were not at war, we were advisors [as] the Congressional approval to fight in Vietnam was not given. “

Incidentally, the main documentary samples in ‘19′ are from a narration about the Vietnam war by an American chap called Peter Thomas. In a bizarre change of career, he then went on to become the digitised voice for the Philips Heartstart range of defibrillators which prompts emergency medical personnel on when to press that scary button which delivers an electric shock to the patient in an attempt to revive them.

http://tinyurl.com/66krfc

And let’s face, if you were in a similar my heart’s just stopped beating situation, I should imagine suddenly hearing that voice yell CLEAR! would be shock enough to start your heart again all by itself.

You Haven’t Told Us Anything About This Record At All !

Well, I haven’t done that badly. After all, I regret to inform you that you have just spent a part of your life you will never get back again reading precisely 1495 words on the subject of Paul Hardcastle… with 251 of them dedicated soley to Rain Forest.

Now, if you take these 251 words as a percentage of the entire word count of the article, it works out as an entirely reasonably 16.78%.

Which is, ermmm… about average.

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence. There is another record here all about being 19 years old in Vietnam. Why not take a look, I got called a fuckwit because of it and everything : http://www.iamnotthebeatles.com/?p=387
Current Value : I got all excited for a few seconds there - as some people are charging 20 quid for this song. But it turns out that is only for the US release. My 8 pence version ? 2 pounds and 74 pennies. Pffffft. Don’t Waste My Time.
Current Profit : 212 pounds and 74 pence. Want to read the lyrics to ‘19′ ? The ones transcribed at the next link do a bit of a role reversal and make Vietnam sound like a war for geriatric oldies compared to the sprightly youngsters fighting in World War II. Just clicky here : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.hart/lyricsh/hardcastle.html

Want to download some naughty free ‘19′ mixes whilst you’re at it ?

http://tinyurl.com/6dzsmv

Supporting Cast Update : Thomas, Peter; Paxman, Jeremy; Oliver, Sir Lawrence; Hoskins, Bob; Irwin, Colin

Click above for big pictures, click below to play me…

Phobias are strange things.

I, for example, am quite scared of flying and - even when friends of mine patiently explain to me that if I took my own health and safety even remotely seriously I’d be far better off being terrified of my own car - the phobia I have still continues based upon what I am convinced are two unassailable facts :

a) It has been known for me to find myself as a passenger in a plane. And,

b) It has been known for planes to find themselves dropping out of the sky and pulverising all the passengers, who have just spent the previous five minutes screaming in sheer fucking terror with the sure knowledge that they are - without a doubt - about to die, into a rather unpleasant passenger pulp.

It is important to note here that no matter how seemingly remote this personal plane pulverising process may theoretically be, the fact remains that it is still some sort of a possibility… and thus my phobia continues. After all, if the aforementioned events get all Venned Up together then all that needs to occur is for circlefact A to intersect with circlefact B in any shape or form whatsoever… and I would be utterly buggered.

No matter how much I try otherwise however, I am finding it curiously hard to get all worked up about the painful possibility of somebody setting fire to my testicles. It is a possibility it could occur I suppose, but a situation within which I would find myself with my testicles dangling out, ready and available for such a treatment and with a willing testicle torcher loitering around in the near vicinity seems like such a laughably remote convergence of conditions to surely render any worry worthless.

Roger Waters has no such qualms.

He frightens himself with the thought of his little ones burning with alarming regularity - usually when looking at his own children.

Why Would Anybody Want To Set Fire To Roger Waters’ Testicles ?

They don’t - but then nobody particularly wants to murder me by turning the plane I happen to be on into a huge flaming odious fireball of death either, and that doesn’t stop my phobia.

Interestingly in Roger’s case his phobia has been informed by past events, as what seems to have occurred at some unspecified point during his fatherhood is that he once looked in on his sleeping children in the middle of the night having presumably just gone for a pee – but crucially forgot that he was currently naked.

Thus, when leaning over into their cots to check if they were OK, he accidentally briefly dangled his two precious little ones directly onto his children’s Donald Duck nightlight.

Which must have hurt.

Errr… What Has All This Got To Do With The Tide Turning ?

Well, the likelihood of such a terrifying testicular event ever occurring again is virtually zero, so the tide turning is quite obviously a metaphor for Roger slowly overcoming his resulting ball burning phobia – it wasn’t easy though, as it got so bad at one point that he couldn’t even put his head around the door without the glow of Donald Duck giving him the jitters.

Mind you, I don’t really blame him for becoming a bit fearful about it all - as he apparently burnt himself so badly at the time that he had to dial 999 for an ambulance to attend in order for him to become the recipient of some urgently needed personal emergency medical attention.

You Mean, He Needed Some Live Aid ?

Yes.

The Tide Is Turning ? After Live Aid ?

Amazing isn’t it ?

What A Dreadfully Moody And Serious Song.

It is a dreadfully moody and serious song.

However, unlike the action of getting your bollocks burnt into near extinction, it doesn’t really bring a tear to the eye.

What Are Roger’s Best Bits ?

If Roger over-enunciating the word ‘crap’ as if he’s bizarrely regressed to be a 16 year old boy who has just sworn at a teacher raises a slight titter within you, then the male voice choir which join him for absolutely no apparent reason around the 4 minute mark may well floor you entirely.

Incidentally, if you do get as far as the choir please beware : you still have another 1 and half minutes to go.

Where’s Roger Now ?

He’s here, and his real name… is George :

http://www.roger-waters.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Waters

http://www.myspace.com/georgerogerwaters

Why Does George Say ‘The Tide Is Turning, Sylvester’ At The End ?

This song is from a not remotely ridiculous sounding concept album called Radio KAOS. You can read all about it below - if nothing else it explains that bloody choir :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_K.A.O.S.

Anyway, the album version of this song apparently has a ‘hidden verse’ at the end of it performed entirely in morse code - which, of course, isn’t a remotely pretentious thing to do in the slightest. When transcribed, it reads thus :

“Now the past is over but you are not alone
Together we’ll fight Sylvester Stallone
We will not be dragged down in his South China Sea
of macho bullshit and mediocrity”

Yes, George is talking to Sylvester Stallone essentially requesting him to stop making such shit movies - and this really quite incredible fact means this record is strangely connected to Jean Beauvoir‘ s study in talcum powder and Bill Medley’s ever vibrating shit removal machine… which is something I am sure George would be thrilled by.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=7881

Did The Tide Really Turn After Live Aid ?

It is a slightly contentious issue :

“Much of the money raised by Live Aid went to NGOs in Ethiopia, some of which were under the influence or control of the Derg military junta. Some journalists have suggested that the Derg was able to use Live Aid and Oxfam money to fund its enforced resettlement and “villagification” programmes, under which at least 3 million people are said to have been displaced and between 50,000 and 100,000 killed.”

Still - at least Queen did well out of it, eh ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Aid

http://liveaid.free.fr/

Money Update

Cost : 8 pence
Current value : Straight in at number 11 valuewise… 4 pounds and 95 pence. I am not really convinced it deserves it though… Gosh : this record actually reached the dizzy heights of number 54 - which would of course be tremendously exciting if it wasn’t a mere six places above where Gay Gordon and The Mince Pies got to as well.
Current Profit : 203 pounds and 57 pence. TWO HUNDRED POUNDS ! Who’d have thought it, eh ? On the same day that a very nice person from Boys Wonder popped in to say hello as well (see comment from Jones on the right if you’re interested). Fabulous. Oh, by the way, somebody has actually managed to make this record sound even more overblown. Impossible ? Not if you put Barack Obama speaking over the beginning of it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s9ubMQX7WE

Supporting Cast Update : Duck, Donald.