It’s been an interesting week for news in the UK, apparently we’ve all been eating horse meat thinking that beef actually came from a cow. How wrong we were! Now I’m sure you’ve all heard a plethora of horse jokes in the aftermath, but my favourite came from my mate Jellie who quipped “I like the Tesco horse burgers but I prefer my Lidl Pony”. Haha! Well one way or another Findus have done more to promote vegetarianism than Morrissey, Linda McCartney and Quorn combined. What next? Seahorses in the fish fingers? TBH I’ve probably eaten worse after a night out in Deptford. LOCK UP YOUR BREEDABLES!!!
In other news British MPs finally decided to treat gay people fairly and make it legal for same sex marriages. Now I’m not going to get into the politics of that, but really it’s no big deal to us SL residents – gay marriages have been commonplace for many years. I wonder if SL could be used to promote other forms of equality? After all, between us we’re multicultural, multisexual, multilingual and multifaceted. Yet we haven’t had any major wars in SL, the economy is strong and crime rates are pretty low (apart from my recent exploits at Moonletters of course) so maybe politicians should base more of the real world on our virtual one. Just a thought!
When it comes to rock n roll musicians must admit I do like them to be a bit “nuts”. I think it’s the one profession in life where being a wee bit crazy is considered a valid and desirable qualification. And so it was with great sadness that I learned of crop circle enthusiast and wild thing of rock Reg Presley’s sad demise. For those of you who happen to live in a country without radios or record players, Reg was the front man with lairy Andover beat combo “The Troggs”. The Troggs were much more than just a rock n roll band, they were a force of nature, if they’d formed a decade later I’m pretty sure they’d have been touring with the Clash or the Damned, maybe even The Wurzels, such was their energy. But despite having massive transatlantic popularity with songs like “Wild Thing”, “I Can’t Control Myself” and “Love is All Around” they were possibly best known for the seminal “Troggs Tapes”. I first heard this hilarious recording as a teenager and it still makes me laugh today. Someone left the tape running when a disagreement broke out amongst Troggs members during a recording session. Now this is nothing unusual for any band in the pressure cooker environment that is the recording studio, but for me the Hampshire accents really make it comedy gold. My favourite quote being “Sprinkle some fairy dust over the baaaaarstard!”. If you haven’t heard it before do yourself a favour and have a listen, it’s on YouTube, tell em Graz sent you. May your God bless you Reg, you made everything groovy.
If any of you are regulars at my Wednesday club night at AAI (Jukebox Fury, 1-3pm SLT) you’ll know that I like to promote new artists and music. So I thought maybe I could carry that across into my regular column here at Moonletters. I started last week by featuring “The Milk”, a fantastic Essex band, and this week I’d like to tell you about two other bands I’ve been listening to in recent months. I know for a fact many of you are as obsessive about music as me so I’d welcome any tips you might have, and indeed feedback on the bands I write about.
OK the first band is Chvrches, a three piece from Glasgow in sunny Scotland. I must admit I listen to less synthesiser music than I used to, mainly because that whole scene got a bit unimaginative in my opinion, not like the halcyon days of OMD, Depeche Mode and Rolf Harris and his Stylophone. Anyway, I think Chvrches have something unique and I’m a bit in love with singer Lauren Mayberry’s voice. Kinda reminds me of Mazzy Star. Chvrches came fifth in the BBC’s Sound of 2013 new music list so you may have heard them already, if not I hope you enjoy their new single “Recover”, also worth checking out previous releases “Lies” and “The Mother We Share”.
My second tip isn’t actually that new a band although their latest single “Feels Like” is out now and I predict a great 2013 for them. The video below is a single released in March last year, but one I’m loving and should get your SKANK HORN!!!!! honking. They are called “Gentleman’s Dub Club” and I’d like to tell you more but the first rule of Gentleman’s Dub Club is that you don’t talk about Gentleman’s Dub Club.
Be lucky people!
Graz
