Another Brick in the Wall Part Two

Originally published 19 November 2010

The question I set the readers when this first came out was ‘how many other well known LP covers can you see in this strip’? There are a few red herrings, but there are definitely four recognisable ones, and two obscured ones. Answers below. Wipe over the following space to reveal them

Frame 1: Beatles, Sgt Pepper (under Smith’s rear paws)
Paul Simon: Graceland (under Sgt Pepper)
Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (under Smith’s front paws)
Frame 2: Beatles: With the Beatles (UK edition) (in front of Smith)
Pet Shop Boys: Introspective (under With the Beatles)
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells (under Smith’s tail)

Incidentally, I think The Wall is the most overrated album ever recorded. I think I can only take one side of Roger Walter’s whinefest at a time, and there are four ruddy sides of his passive aggressive self pity to wade through. If you’ve never heard it, don’t bother. Like most of the works of Frank Zappa, the idea of it is much better than the reality.

Modern Classical

Originally published 22 April 2010

Speak for yourself, Jones, I like a nice bit of atonal madness now and again. And besides, there a lot of good nicely behaved modern classical out there as well.

Here's a particular favourite of mine, Alan Hovhaness' Mount St Helen's Symphony, the first movement of which takes us on a gentle walk up the slope of the mountain as it was before the cataclysmic eruption of 1980...

This strip was published on a Thursday, so I could crowbar in the following day's time sensitive strip...

Claws on a blackboard

Jones is probably alone in this one.

I once had a cat, Sunday, that was very particular about the music she would let me listen to. She was normally a very placid cat, but there were two records she detested. One was a re-release of Kraftwerk's first two albums - (there's a link here to the second one for those with a strong stomach) and the other was a budget CD of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos played by a very cheap-to-employ Eastern European orchestra. Maybe there was something about the scratchy, scrapey tone of the playing on the Bach CD or the cacophony of the Kraftwerk LP, but she hated them. I'd know she was annoyed because she'd snort at me, like an angry bull. If I didn't take heed of the warning she'd then gently but very deliberately bite me on the cheek. I'd get the message then - the record would be replaced and peace would be restored.

If you have a more catholic musical taste than Sunday did, might I recommend Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone? It's a podcast that compiles weird and left-field music from his BBC Radio 6 Music show? One moment you could be listening to a Jazz-Punk fusion piece played on stylophones, the next it might be Icelandic folk-funk or library music from public information films. This is what I listen to when I'm writing these blog entries. Which probably explains a lot.

Overdoing the colour

The second frame of today's cartoon took me three hours to colour to my satisfaction - normally I can get away with one colour for the sky, another for the ground, and then filling in the cats' eyes, ears and any body tint required. For this one I was concentrating on getting that dingy gig atmosphere, while also making sure Jones and the keyboard stood out. I think I succeeded, but it's a very different palette to the one I normally use.

Glitter rock

Here's the song Jones is playing on the Piano: Roy Wood and Wizzard's incomparable 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day'. Fantastic music, terrifying Glam Rock costumes, appalling miming, some bored children and a video that has 'contractural obligation' written all over it.

The nocturnal diddleys

This usually happens to me when I'm doing a show. Occasionally I'm obliged to do a show I hate, like The Sound of Music. Rodgers and Hammerstein lovingly crafted a raft of songs which are syrupy, trite, and complete and utter earworms - once they enter your head they will not leave. There is nothing worse than going to bed with that ghastly 'Goodnight, farewell, auf wiedershen, goodbye' tune stuck in your head, and waking up in the morning with it still there, having taken over your dreams for the past eight hours!

I think Cabaret was the worst. That's a brilliant show with wonderful music, but there's a non-stop Germanic jazz-oompah rhythm to a lot of the songs that takes over the mind completely. Bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom (repeat for a month or until severely medicated).

I'm actually in a show at the moment. Oliver is playing at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings right now - it started on Wednesday and the last night is tomorrow. I'm mainly in the chorus for this one, though I do have a short character part in act two as Doctor Grimwig, the pompous doctor who gives Oliver a checkover while he staying at the Brownlow's house. Yes, once again the tunes are all earworms, but they're good ones.You can't beat a bit of Lionel Bart.

I've got a luvverley bunch of coconuts

There is a long tradition of cockney music. I won't try to explain, Bill Bailey has done a far better job of it already. You can see it here. And here.

Millie Week 14

(Click on the strip to enlarge)

Oh dear - we're into early 90's musical reference overload here.

Millie's choices are extremely mainstream.

Bros was just coming to the end of its reign as the teeny boppers fave rave of choice. They were two brothers (and a spare bloke) who had been picked up by the Pet Shop Boys former manager and who were propelled to instant stardom with their rather good song 'When will I be famous?'. They followed that up with a few more singles that were alternately catchy and then tuneless. Maybe if they'd been given better songs they would have lasted longer. Not even their rabid fan base, the fearsome Brosettes, could save them from the slow inexorable decline into the dumper. One of them ended up in the West End, playing Danny in Grease. I have no idea what happened to the others.

Wet Wet Wet. They do exactly what it says on the tin. Responsible for 'Love is all around' being at number one for what felt like eight years. No, I won't link to them.

The Humphrey Shovel does not exist. But it should do.

Most of the bands mentioned in frame four are invented as well apart from Crispy Ambulance and Gnomefumbler. Crispy Ambulance were a Manchester act from the late 70s that I just liked the name of - I have no idea what they sound like. Gnomefumbler were the band I was in when I was at school. I say band, what I actually mean is four teenagers with more ideas than musical ability improvising in front of a cassette recorder, a strange mix of prog rock, silliness and musique concrete.

And then it all goes horribly uncool for Gemma. Bucks Fizz were the Eurovision winning song troupe constructed according to the Abba template of two girls and two boys. Desperately uncool, but also peerless early 80's pop of the kind that came smothered in very loud compressed drums. For example...

Dollar were very similar, produced by Trevor Horn (Frankie, Seal etc). They sang sugary sweet songs that turned out to be adaptations of J G Ballard short stories, like Videotheque.

Barry Manilow needs no introduction. Despite not writing "I write the songs" I have a lot of time for him.

James Last is one of those baffling phenomena that I can't explain. He's a German big band leader who produced an endless series of easy listening albums with names like Non Stop Dancing, Beachparty 3, Polka Party II, Non Stop Dancing 1973 and Super Non-Stop Dancing (all from 1972). He produced what he liked to call 'happy music', and it sounds exactly like you'd imagine.