Some distractions to last you the weekend...

:: Tina Fey lampoons Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live… And while it's brilliant, it's neither as funny nor as terrifying as the real thing


:: Here's a free download of Annie's superfantastic cover of Stacey Q's Two Hearts - Click here. Annie's album, Don't Stop, is due out this week, next week, sometime or never.

:: How popular is your name? Check out this site that tracks the popularity of first names (in the US) since 1880.



:: "When you hear a rhythm that is being played by an instrument you can’t identify but wish you owned, you are hearing Timbaland". A great profile of the super-producer, courtesy of the New Yorker

:: I was recently on a plane that was struck by lightning, and I'd have felt just a little bit safer if I'd had this guide to how land a jumbo jet handy.

:: Brad Walsh has remixified Britney's Womanizer and made it available for download. It takes a song that sounds like it was written by a computer program and makes it sound like the computer has had a psychological "episode". Full marks all round, particularly for (muso alert) "breaking it down in the middle 8" .

:: 10 People From Your Past Who Will Haunt You On Facebook.

:: The video for Alicia Keys and Jack White's Bond theme misses out on the one thing that would make it tolerable - footage from Quantum Of Solace.



:: Fans of Ferris Beuller are planning to recreate the film's iconic carnival scene at New York's Hallowe'en Parade on 31st October. If you're going along, get in touch - I'd love to get your photos on the blog at the end of the month!

:: Amazon's computers have begun phase two of their plan for global domination.

[via Photobasement]

Labels: alicia keys, annie, Britney Spears, film, links, Timbaland, tina fey, white stripes

It's (provisionally) called Out Of Control !

All the info - and a hi-res version of The Promise video - can be found on the BBC. And here's the "amazing moment" when Kimberley revealed the news.

Labels: Girls Aloud, links, Music

Adele's US career could be in tatters after radio stations banned her Chasing Pavements single, thinking the heavily-accented star was singing about "chasing gay men".

It's not clear who is supposed to have been offended here. Is it the right-wing conservatives, censoring any mention of homosexuality? Or is it the liberal elite, appalled at a woman thinking she could "turn" a gay man straight with her warbling?

Maybe it's both!
Maybe it's neither!
Maybe they just really, really hate the song!

NB: This "story" has come from the Daily Mail, that well-known supporter of homosexualism, so it's almost guaranteed to be true.

Here's the video so you can check out the hilarious misunderstanding with your own earholes.

Adele - Chasing Pavements

Labels: adele, links, Music

:: Cor blimey, it's only the farking trailer for Guy Ritchie's new film, you slags.



:: The Sugababes' new video is previewed over on Popjustice. Warning: includes strobe lights, bouncing, forty-seven-year-old song.

:: Trailer Addict has the (real, this time) trailer for Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make A Porno.

:: What on earth is going on in the new Kaiser Chiefs video?


:: Out magazine names the 100 Gayest Albums of all time. Showtunes, Madonna and The Indigo Girls - who'd have thunk it?

:: Jennifer Aniston tries out the oldest pick-up technique in the book - "You look kinda tense, why don't I give your shoulders a rub?"

:: Epic marriage proposal failure


:: The LA Times has a great preview of Sunday night's VMAs, which mark the 25th anniversary of the MTV award show. Apparently they're going to use Paramount Studios back-lot to create live music videos. It can only be better than the awful "party in Kanye West's hotel room" from last year.

:: Eleventy buckets of brilliant - Diplo vs Santogold have done a mixtape called Top Ranking. Thirty-five top tunes, including three new Santogold songs. Tracklisting over at Get Weird.

:: Janet Jackson reckons she might bring her Rock Witch U tour to Europe. I'll believe it when I see it.

:: After her interview with Billboard, Janet dressed up as a mushroom and presented her brothers with silver-plated KFC buckets [shurely some mistake - Ed]



:: Am I the only one who finds it frightening that, if John McCain gets elected, Sarah Palin - who says global warming is "not man-made" - is only one weak heartbeat away from being President? Gain some more insight into her fully-thought-through political ideas from her "personal blog".

:: We Are Pop Slags has a new discovery - US teen band Vistoso Bosses, who are the Sugababes multiplied by the Wee Papa Girl Rappers. Just signed to Interscope, apparently. One to watch.

Labels: film, Janet Jackson, kaiser chiefs, links, Music, santogold, sugababes, video

Friendly Fires may have taken two years to record their debut album - but it turned out to be a good thing, as otherwise they'd have been branded with the cursed "Nu Rave" tag and sent straight to the dumper.

For while these St Alban's boys do bear a passing resemblance to the Klaxons' sirens-o-clock noisefest, they also bring to mind the noodly synth superness of Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. Singer Ed Gibson describes their style as "psychedelic, funky, groovy house". Thankfully it sounds nothing like that, either.

Their excellent new single Jump In The Pool is out on 1st September, and the band endured a day semi-drowned in a 20ft deep tank of water to make the video. Check it out:

Friendly Fires - Jump In the Pool


Friendly Fire's album is also released by XL Records on 1st September. Have a look at the video for their previous single, On Board for more dance-rock excellence.

And if you like what you hear, Spinner.com has a free, legal MP3 of Jump In The Pool.

Labels: friendly fires, links, MP3, Music, video

Here five things that the new Keane single, Spiralling, remind me of:

1) I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me by Nik Kershaw
2) Emilio Estevez dancing in The Breakfast Club
3) The "work" of Tears For Fears
4) That talky bit Bono does in Bullet The Blue Sky
5) The 1980s in general

In other words, it is genuinely very good. If you're not convinced, let me remind you that it's produced by Stuart "Confessions on a Dancefloor" Price and direct you to the Keane website, where you can download it for free until 11th August.

Top marks all round.

Labels: keane, links, MP3, Music

I have scoured the internets and found these things. Have fun.

:: An amazing collection of firework photographs choreographed to MGMT's really rather good Kids' song.

Fireplays from Jon Thomas on Vimeo



:: Could Batman exist in real life?
[Scientific American]

:: Maggie Gyllenhaal, does us an interview.
[Onion AV Club]

:: How making banal decisions like choosing what clothes to wear tires your brain out for the really important questions, like cake or death.
[Scientific American]

:: A free song from Amy Winehouse's flatmate!!!!!!1eleven, etc
[Popjustice]

:: Make spaghetti out of pick-up sticks and rubick's cubes
[Youtube]

:: This appears to be for real - an inexplicably coarse sex education lecture in the style of a Ladybird book courtesy of, er, Scotland's National Health Service.


"Shona has a banana in her lunchbox.
She shows Kirstie what she'd like to do to Tam if she had the chance."
[Be Books Online]

:: Roisin Murphy talks about recording a new album. Let's hope someone buys this one.
[Arjan Writes]

:: Find out what happened when I met the Pussycat Dolls (well, spoke to one of them on the phone)
[BBC]

:: How many of us are aware that when we look into a mirror we see an image on the mirror surface that is exactly half life size?
[New York Times]

:: Finally, is this really how three-year-olds deal with monsters these days?

Monsters!

Labels: humour, links, Music, pussycat dolls, video

It's been a relatively quiet day today, and still I haven't managed to track down any new music worth writing about.

I'm quite excited about the new Bond theme - from the combined genius of Jack White and Alicia Keys - but I can't find a decent Keys / White Stripes mash-up to iluustrate what it might sound like. My own attempt at making a No-One vs My Doorbell montage was a KFC family bucket of wrong.

I had more luck writing a quiz on previous Bond themes for my real job(yes, they actually pay me for this stuff). You can test your knowledge over here.

In the meantime, I stumbled across a new blog by the name of Hard Candy Music and while drilling down through their old posts, I came across a story that made my 80s cheese antenna prick up.

It concerns Denise Lopez, a floptastic US singer with Paula Abdul aspirations signed to A&M Records in the latter half of the Thatcher decade. She had precisely no hits, but one of her tracks - Don't You Wanna Be Mine - is regarded as a classic of the vocal house scene (think Ce Ce Peniston with Finally or Clivilles and Coles with A Deeper Love).

The song is still a staple of many DJ sets (Sasha is a big fan) and it's been given a fresh workover by the likes of Bimbo Jones and Soul Avengerz for the 2008 Ibiza crowds. It came out a month ago to complete indifference, but it's worth downloading the iTunes EP simply to get hold of the original C&C Music Factory remix which, in the parlance of the time, is "dope, yo".

Denise Jones - Don't You Wanna Be Mine (Bimbo Jones mix)


Denise Lopez - Don't You Wanna Be Mine (original single)


If anyone has some up-to-date tips, for the love of god let me know in the comments box.

Labels: alicia keys, denise lopez, links, Music, video, white stripes

I forgot to mention that the previously-plugged new series by Buffy creator Joss Whedon is now live on the internets.

A quick reminder: Superhero theme, Doogie Howser, musical, amazing

Whedon created the low-budget project during the Hollywood writers' strike at the beginning of the year. Following the (mis)adventures of a love-struck, low-rent comic book bad-guy-wannabe, it was filmed in less than a week for a tiny budget... and its utterly brilliant.

Episode one was published last week - and went straight to number one on the iTunes video chart. I suggest you watch it (for free) on the Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

And make sure you wait for the fantastically OTT appearance from Desperate Housewives' Nathan Fillion.

Labels: humour, links, video

Last week, I interviewed Steve Lillywhite - the British producer behind such era-defining records as U2's Achtung Baby, Morrissey's Vauxhall and I and The La's eponymous debut album.

He was talking about the three years he spent behind the mixing desk (and playing bicycles with knives) on U2's first three albums, Boy, October and War - which are all being re-released next week.

The finished piece, complete with archive footage of Adam Clayton's afro and The Edge without a hat on, is over at the BBC website and it is really rather good if I do say so myself.

While you're with the Beeb, have a squizz at this piece about Delia Derbyshire. She's the visionary composer who made all the whooshes and swizzles for the original series of Doctor Who. An unbelievably brilliant woman.

Labels: links, Music, U2

Funny, it's not how I remember it from school:



Read the whole book here

Labels: humour, links

Crivvens! This is officially the 1,000th post on Discopop Directory. The majority of the content has, if I'm honest, mostly been flim, flam and piffle. But that's what the internet was invented for, surely?

To celebrate our first millennium, here is a Muxtape with the top 12 tracks from the first three-and-a-half years of the blog's lifespan (click on the picture or go to discopop.muxtape.com to load it up).



And for those of you who don't "do" the whole Muxtape thing, here's the whole lot in MP3 format. Don't tell the record labels, though. They'll cut me up and spread me on their toast.

TRACKLISTING
1) Nelly Furtado - Maneater
2) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
3) Girls Aloud - Biology
4) Dragonette - Competition
5) CSS - Let's Make Love and Listen To Death From Above
6) Amerie - Gotta Work
7) Goldfrapp - Number 1
8) Annie - Heartbeat
9) Robyn - With Every Heartbeat (acoustic)
10) The Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer
11) Regina Spektor - Samson
12) Radiohead - Nude


And, with that, I'm off on holiday for a week. See you again on 23rd June!

Labels: cats, discopop, links, MP3, Music

Here's a cool little toy to waste your last hour at work on a Friday evening. It's called Tag Galaxy, and it creates "solar systems" of similar pictures using photo-sharing website Flickr.

Simply type in a keyword and it'll make a planet of pictures, with moons and comets created from related photos orbiting around it.

For example, here is Planet Radiohead (or Planet Telex if you're a Radioheadcase).


(what's the one with the crayons about?)

Have a play on Tag Galaxy.

Labels: links

Woolworths to stop selling CD singles

Labels: links, Music

Someone at the NME must be really pleased with themselves, as they have managed to pass off a years-old internet meme as their own original piece of work.

Yes, at least half a decade after someone emailed you the same content in an Excel file, you can gawp at "the worst album covers ever" courtesy of the NME website. And, to give it a fresh twist, you can rate the covers yourself - just like you did on Am I Hot Or Not in 2001.

The NME (which, let's not forget, bills itself as an "agenda-setting music bible") has even stooped so low as to steal the jpegs off the original worst album covers of all time website. The creators of this site also released a spin-off book in 2006, which you can buy here.

To avoid too many suggestions of copyright infringement, the lads at NME have cleverly picked out a few new additions to the list by scanning through the big pile of CDs in their office. Among their suggestions are Prince's Dirty Mind (iconic), Madonna's American Life (a pastiche of Che Guevara), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium (just some text on a CD cover).

Next week on the NME website: The changing faces of Michael Jackson, a picture gallery.

Labels: links, Music

Hey there!

I'm not going to be checking into the blog much over the next 10 days or so, as I'm off at the Cannes Film Festival (oooh, get me).

You can follow my progress over at the BBC news website: The main page is here and my "diary" is here.

I'll be back in the UK next week - and off to see Girls Aloud in concert. You can be sure there'll be a slavering review not long after.

Cheers,
Mrdiscopop

Labels: discopop, film, links

History Lesson:

Mash-ups were essentially the musical genre that finally fulfilled the promise of punk - anyone could make one if they had a computer, regardless of musical skill. All you needed was two songs in the same key (or not, who cares?) which you played at the same time. Hey presto, new song!

The good ones - Richard X's Freak Like Me, Freelance Hellraiser's Stroke of Genie-us, Danger Mouse's Grey Album, and the whole 2 Many DJs project - were proper artistic statements. The bad ones just ended up being a random Eminem a capella over a random instrumental. The scene's nadir came when someone put Lose Yourself over the theme to Grange Hill, marking the moment when innovation was replaced by cheap novelty.

But every now and then a mix pops up that makes you re-evaluate the ennui that set in. Here is one such mix:

Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A Finger of Fudge?


It's from an album by Mark Vidler, aka Go Home Productions, whose day job is remixing hits for the likes of David Bowie and Alicia Keys. He's done a whole album of the stuff, called Spliced Krispies, which you can download free on his website.

Here's my other favourite, which splices the Rolling Stones with the Temptations to make a thoroughly modern-sounding protest song.

Rolling Confusion

Labels: links, MP3, Music

There aren't many annual posts on Discopop Directory, but this is one of them... The ever-fabulous music swap extravaganza known as "Summer Burn" is back for 2008, and I encourage you to get involved.

In one sentence, this is what happens: You make two CDs, two strangers make two CDs, you and the strangers exchange each others CDs and discover great new music*

Sign up over at the Fun Junkie website, and they do all the hard work of collecting addresses and things. I've done it before, and you can rest assured that they don't use your personal details to buy nuclear processing plants in Turkmenistan.

That is all.

* or Belgian death metal

Labels: discopop, links, Music

Bloggers all over the planet are wetting their knickers over a website called Muxtape, which lets you share music with the entire world and kill off the record industry as a handy byproduct.

It is, needless to say, excellent.

Anyone can sign on and upload a personal mix of 12 hand-picked gems from their dusty box of 7"s (mp3 folder). The mix can be played by any passing visitor direct from their web browser - just like real magic.

Obviously, the thing is replete with people showing off how cool they are by posting a bunch of Husker Du B-sides and epic krautrock wig-outs. I, on the other hand, have uploaded a bunch of pop bollocks from 1991 - the year I did my GCSEs and slept on a hospital floor to prove I was in love.

To have a listen, click on that tape at the top of the post (or this link right here).

And, obviously, put links to your muxtape page in the comments box.

Labels: discopop, links, Music

Here's a great little article, which makes full use of the internet's potential, from the New York Times website.

It's a retrospective of art created by US artist Al Jafee for MAD Magazine. Every issue, Mr Jafee produced a full-page drawing which, when folded in a specific way, reveals a hidden message. Very clever, and completely worth five minutes of your time on a Friday afternoon.

:: Fold Ins Past and Present - NY Times

Labels: links

This film from the BBC is obviously an April Fool's prank, but it's very well done...

Amazing Penguins

Labels: links, TV, video

I'm really going to stop posting things today, but only after this collection of links...

:: George Clooney on plastic surgery
"I did get my balls done, though. I got them unwrinkled. It's the new thing in Hollywood -- ball ironing."
[Esquire]

:: Tina Fey on Paris Hilton
She has "the hair of a fraggle", and left "nasty wads of Barbie hair on the floor" from her "cheap weave". Ouch!
[Cityrag]

:: Wombat rape
"A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time."
[Daily Telegraph]

:: Go Fug Yourself on Girls Aloud
"Cheryl Cole: By law, one of us has to look hootchie and also wear a misguided hat."
[Go Fug Yourself]

:: Peter Robinson on Nickelback's Rock Star
"Its most terrifying feature is in its first millisecond, in that Chad's vocals appear completely without warning."
[The Guardian]

:: Estelle's bitter hatred of Ribena in cartons
"Why does the pre-mixed stuff always taste watery? It's irritating! They should let you do it yourself - sell it with the water and let you do it yourself." (conflict of interests disclaimer: I wrote this in my "real job")
[BBC News Website]

:: A man tries to lose weight for his wedding using Wii Fit
"As I get to a certain point with things like push-ups or “plank” exercises, my arms will begin to involuntarily twitch."
[4 Colour Rebellion]

:: Newsreader corpses on air
Charlotte Green goes bonkers on Radio 4's high-falutin Today programme, recreating the incident eight years ago when she fell about laughing after reading out the name "Jack Twat".
[BBC News Website]

:: Actress forced to dye her hair by idiots
Judy Greer, who was in Charlie Kaufmann weirdfest Adaptation, was ordered to go ginger by film producers in case people confused her hairdo with co-star Jennifer Aniston's hairdo.

Please note that, depending on your level of testosterone, you will either find Greer endearinlgly cute or irritatingly ditzy in the following clip.

Judy Greer on David Letterman


Have a great weekend!
Mrdiscopop

Labels: 30 rock, estelle, film, george clooney, links, TV

A collection of internetular diversions for a Friday afternoon...

:: The Photoshop Disasters blog wonders why Batman is staring so intently at that window frame.
[Photoshop Disasters]

:: A Walrus dances like Michael Jackson
[Boreme.com]

:: Roisin Murphy says fuck and twat (plus some stuff about music).
[The Times]

:: A rather scary new piece of music software allows you to isolate a single note in the middle of a song and change it, raising the tantalising prospect of being able to turn an Aphex Twin album into something listenable.
[Celemony]

:: Pulp's Common People turned into an Archie comic strip.
[Chris's Invincible Super-Blog]

Labels: film, links, Michael Jackson, pulp, roisin murphy

Have you ever wanted to be on the cover of an album, but found yourself to be musically hopeless and lens-shatteringly unphotogenic? Well, help is at hand...

Sleeveface is a website where music fans merge themselves into album covers, photograph the results and upload them to t'internet. The best ones put new spins on classic photos by showing what's happening just out of shot (Jazzie B with a bottle of vodka, David Bowie watching Scooby Doo).

Some of my favourites are below (click to enlarge). You can see almost 1,000 more at Sleeveface.com and the Sleeveface Flickr photostream.
















[via The Guardian]

Labels: links, Music

There's a very interesting article up on the Rolling Stone website about how bands have been using compression to make their CDs sound louder at the expense of quality.

Compression is a technique that, at a very basic level, evens out the overall volume of a track so it is constantly as loud as it can be. Your ear, which is trained to pay particular attention to loud noises, immediately thinks "this is important, I should listen to this". Yes, even if it's Enrique Inglesias.

The problem is that, when the quiet sections of a song are played at the same volume as the chorus, you lose the dynamics that make a song interesting. Intricate details like plucked strings or finger cymbals get smothered in noise as the instruments compete against one another. And, most importantly, it introduces ear fatigue.

Radio One traditionally uses a lot of compression so that it can be heard over traffic or factory noises. If you have one of those stereos with a peak level meter on it, tune in to Radio One and watch it. It barely moves. That's why, after thirty minutes or so, it often becomes difficult to listen to (unless Sara Cox is on, in which case the time limit is 30 seconds).

In the past decade, CDs have started to apply the same technology, often to the detriment of the music they contain. Two examples that spring to mind are Daft Punk's Discovery and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' By The Way. They both have that tell-tale "pumping" sound, where other instruments are subjugated by transient sounds like kick drums and power chords.

Now, it seems like people in the music industry are starting to rebel against the technique… Read Rolling Stone's investigation to see why producers think listening to music on CD is now "like going to the Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there's a 10-megapixel image of it".

Labels: links, Music

1) Click on this link
2) Play the game by clicking on the little confetti dots and trying to string together a chain-reaction of colourful explosions
3) Play it again
4) Oh go on, just one more time
5) Say goodbye to the rest of your day
6) Don't say I didn't warn you

Labels: Games, links