Category: music

De Burgh-er off

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I’m being dragged along going to a Chris de Burgh concert tonight.
This whole thing was Mrs 6000’s idea. Pre-Christmas, she got a bee in her bonnet about this Chris de Beagle coming to town for one night only and decided that she wanted to go. I bought the tickets as a loving “I recognise that we have different tastes in music and I know that you recognise that too, so while I am buying these tickets for you as a gesture of love, and to indicate my support of your decision in wanting to go and see Mr de Burgh, I also know that you will understand that it’s really not my thing and you’ll go to said concert with one of your friends.”

Long story ever so slightly shorter; such is the drawing power of Christophe van der Berg that none of her friends wanted to go.

So. I’m being dragged along going to a Chris de Burgh concert tonight.

There is precedent here though, and it’s on my side. We had the same issue with James Blunt, and he was actually very good. We had the same issue with Elton John. He wasn’t quite so good, but he did have a mad drummer who was very good. And, at the end of the day (and ironically that’s when the concert is), live music is live music, so we make the best of our bad life choices and we go and have a good time.

If you haven’t head of Mr Van Der Bergh, please allow me to educate you, as I educated myself. He comes from an infamous family line.
Many of his colonial ancestors were intrepid explorers and mountain “discoverers”, you will have seen his family stamp all over South Africa: the Helderberg, the Drakensberg and the Magliesburg all bearing the family name. His great-great grandfather, William, was the original hipster, emigrated to the USA and gave his name to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. Achingly trendy.

Chris is the great-grandson of brandy magnate Olof Bergh.MIN_295721_CSA

His auntie, Isabella Christine Edwina Berg was implicated in the sinking of a famous ocean liner in 1912. Dead ahead.

His great-uncle started a pig farm on the banks of the Elbe River in northern Germany, a settlement which has now become Germany’s largest commercial port.

Many are divided over Chris’ biggest moment. Most point to the longevity of his 1986 hit Lady in Red , but others are convinced that the emotional interview he gave when his son, Cameron van der Burgh, won gold in the pool at the London Olympics was his high point. I’d argue that getting to perform for me tonight would have to be up there as well.

We’ll have a good evening, whatever. There’s likely to be beer on sale and I will have some wonderful company.

And some earplugs.

Trash

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The boy and the girl are currently studying at different campuses at their school. This means dropping one off first (the boy, because he starts earlier and it’s conveniently geographically more sensible too) and then the other (you should have worked out whom and the reasons why from the clues above).

The boy isn’t fond of music in the car, so while he’s around, we chat about school, plans for the day ahead, the traffic, the mountain, or whatever else takes our fancy. However, no sooner has he exited the vehicle, I get the call from the back to “Hit the music button!” and the remaining occupants of the car (there are two of us) indulge ourselves in whatever is next on the iPod.

This morning, it was this:

What a tune.

You may also remember Suede from such hits as Stay Together.

It’s not a long way between campuses. A song and a bit, generally. And because of that, the random nature of the “Hit the music button!” policy has backfired a couple of times, perhaps most notably when we’d enjoyed some very agreeable Erasure on the way down to the other site, only to become distracted as the song finished and the next one started and the loud bit of Slipknot’s Wait And Bleed kicked in right as the head of KeyStage 1 opened the car door to let my daughter out.

Now, I maintain that there’s a time and a place for Slipknot, but I’m fully willing to admit that it’s probably just not at 7:40 on a grey Thursday morning, right next to a school playground filled with 5 and 6 year olds. Awkward.

We’re more careful these days.

So, dear listener, what would happen if you were to “Hit the music button”, right now? You next two random iPod* (*other mp3 players are available) songs in the comments section below, please.
You will be judged by me on the first, and – as described above – potentially by the local teaching staff on the second.

The Dictator Decides

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Will someone please say the unsayable?
Will someone please tell me I’m wrong?

If JZ was looking for a way out of this mess of a Presidency…

It’s Impeachment Day here in South Africa, or rather (unless something very incredible happens in the next few hours) Failed Attempt At Impeachment Day.
Also I’ve been listening to the new Pet Shop Boys album.

At present, these two facts seem wholly unlinked, but please bear with me as I intertwine their currently separate existences through the medium of interpretive dance blogging.

One of the standout tunes for me is track 5: The Dictator Decides. Now, while I’m not suggesting that Jacob Zuma is a dictator, he’s edging closer to the definition of that moniker every day. And while this track is probably written about the (apparently reluctant) rise to power of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, there are a few choice lines that could have been penned specifically for our JZ:

The joke is I’m not even a demagogue
Have you heard me giving a speech?
My facts are invented
I sound quite demented
So deluded it beggars belief
It would be such a relief not to give another speech.

Here’s the song if you’d like to hear the whole thing:

I’ve kept it deliberately small so that you don’t die from the flashing album covers accompanying this audio version. You may still struggle a bit though. Sorry.

The President isn’t very good. The Pet Shop Boys album, however, is. (It’s actually really good).
If you’re a glass half full kind person, this should be enough to see you through your day. Just.

Super Simple

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This looks like I’m being lazy again (it’s not deliberate), but I just found this interview really interesting, and I wanted to share. It’s with Mark Farrow, who has been designing Pet Shop Boys record (CD, tape, album) covers for ever so many years now. He’s just done the same again for their latest one, Super, which I’m currently listening to (spoiler: it’s not misnamed).

download

I’m not into “design”, but I really like the idea behind this latest cover:

This time we went pop art, a fluorescent circle containing the word “SUPER” in a contrasting fluorescent colour. Then each format, CD, LP and digital, was given its own fluorescent colour scheme. The different music streaming services even have their own colour schemes. These colour schemes then come together in an animation of clashing colours used for online advertising and digital poster sites. Unhinged and brash, yes, but it also feels considered and complete as a campaign.

And yes, look – they’re all different – here’s Simfy and the Wikipedia entry:

  Screenshot_2016-04-04-11-55-57       Fullscreen capture 2016-04-04 115656 AM.bmp

So let’s get this straight… This guy has been a designer – a successful designer – for at least 30 years (he did the cover for West End Girls back in 1987) and he has come up with a circle with a word in it? A word that he was given. He didn’t even have to think of the word. Seriously, aside from the circle (which is hardly a complex addition), could it actually have been any more simple?

No. No, it couldn’t.

Thing is though, it’s absolutely brilliant. And even those true cynics amongst us have to take a seat and just admit that sometimes less is more. Maybe you need to be a top class designer – supremely confident in your ability and reputation and in your clients’ belief in your work, to be able to challenge them and their fans with something so audaciously basic and fundamental.

It’s so unpretentious that it might just be the most pretentious thing I’ve ever seen.

And I love it.

Another Love

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It seems to be a thing to take an indie track, add some voice production, remix it with a housey beat and (hopefully) some piano and then share it on Soundcloud. If this Zwette reinterpretation of Tom Odell’s Another Love – allegedly complete with “sanften beats” and newfound “Clubtauglichkeit” – is anything to go by, long may it continue:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/82063832″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

But don’t get me started on Soundcloud, because I’ll be downloading stuff all day.
Have you seen this, for example? Mooi…