One of the first questions (ethno)musicologists ask is, “Hey, but what does it look like?” Turntablism now has its own patch of the curriculum at Berklee (NYT), and this is what it looks like in the Turntable Transcription Methodology devised by John Carpaccio: Here (PDF) is an in-depth description, but you should be able to…
One of the proudest memories of my musical career is of a mission undertaken on behalf of the Dutch nation to a Swedish folk festival, at which a programme of James Last covers was performed to accompany the wobblings of a display team of penny-farthing riders. Some believe that the deep affinity that exists between…
Cockroach-eye view of the choir up to the usual nonsense in a garage in Sants: We’re still looking for a good tenor and more sponsorship – apparently the full video is crashing mailservers all over Korea, so Samsung, this is your chance. Contact me on my mobile or use the form. Creds to al-Ben for…
Re the Dirty Kuffar video: although the transliteration changes, radical Islam has been predicting imminent victory over us for quite a long time: And Halid returned to the west of Azahfi, and said to them: – Know that these kafres are disheartened. (Anonymous, Libro de las batallas (1600)) But we aren’t, are we, because we…
How I used to chant UB40’s Ivory Madonna when I was small, drunk and confused. Other well-known versions of this include “I’ve a green banana,” but no one gets misunderstood like Michael Jackson. This, from Misheard Lyrics, is not an excerpt from Beat It: Heated, heated. No one wants a beef fajita. Show ’em hot…
Not only (as Margaret Marks notes) has the BBC started using trucker instead of lorry-driver or patient with chronic back pain and a dietary disorder: the Americanism has been the preferred usage in Holland for years. Henk Wijngaard’s 1978 hit, Met De Vlam In De Pijp, is probably the best-known Dutch truckliedje. Try singing this…
… or so says the Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing Company, which gives employees free beer, bicycles, and trips to Belgium and runs the first wind-powered brewery in the US. Sounds good to me, said this sinkhole for Belgian beer, angling for a freebie XL Fat Tire t-shirt. There’s an unfortunate tendency to take advertising claims…
On Saturday evening a 61-year old publican shot two Portuguese gypsies dead from the balcony of his flat in Terrassa for parking their Ford Transit opposite and sitting around drinking and playing the electric organ. A policeman here once threatened to arrest me for doing roughly the same, but this is Douglas Adams in So…
The Peckham chapter of the Taliban and a horde of Yorkshire lesbians are going to be fighting it out here for the next few days so , to remind you of how good life was before Reagan, is Radio Tirana’s old call sign. When I first found its excellent signal on the short wave in…