Todays post – long awaited post I realise – sorry – is on things which aren’t usually musical instruments being made so.
On a cold autumnal/wintery day such as today who wouldn’t want a delicious cup of vegetable soup? How about a soup made of previously musical vegetables? Thats what you can expect to chow down on if you go and see the world’s only Vegetable Orchestra!
The audience are invited to eat a hearty soup made of the previous shows left over vegetables. But getting ahead of ourselves – how do they make a whole orchestra out of vegetables? Well to get an idea – here is a video to show us how.
The first instrument was a tomato created in December 1997, though I hear there were tomatoes before that, its just no-one had really found their sound. It was just tuning up before then.
Based in Vienna, the Vegetable Orchestra was founded in 1998 and plays 20- 30 concerts a year all around the world. The musicians take their work seriously and say that the various noises that can be made with vegetables are unlike those produced by traditional instruments opening up a whole new world of sound.
The group are not all vegetarians or vegans and describe their music as vegetable style. After each show the vegetables are either made into soup for the audience of the next show, given to the audience or put into an organic waste.
As far from vegetables as maybe you can get – car parts. You’ve probably seen the Ford adverts where a piece is played on car parts.
The Telegraphs article about this orchestra going on tour can be found here.
Its a fun idea, mainly based on the novelty though – I feel a little bit that the Vegetable orchestra is more inventive and more interesting in terms of the sounds they can produce, unique to the gig and local availability of different vegetables.
However the worlds love affair with the automobile can not be ignored so I think a tour of instrumental car parts will always be an interesting and popular show – particularly when we do away with cars and get Jetson style hover crafts.
Hey kids, not so much lately with the old updates, suffice to say I have just started a Journalism postgrad and as such am mired in other blogs and work…
However I will do more! I am up almost 20 hours a day so I’m sure I can fit in a few pop sundries to general course of the things.
Amusement this week from Muse, my youtube favourite of the week. Muse arrive in Italy and are to perform a pre-recorded session for Italian Chat Show, Quelli che, which as far as I can tell is pretty well respected platform, maybe even as much as Richard and Judy…
‘No live playing? but we’re musicians!’ Muse say, ‘hmm well lets watch 80’s Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd classic Trading Places on sky in our hotel room until showtime then’… (dramatisation – may not have happened)
I do apologise if the video has not inserted itself – I’m low on tech here boys! will sort it soon.
Matt on drums is quality.
Much else have I had time to listen to not, mainly due to my community college Yoda colloquialism classes at the Met, I have found time to watch the 2007 action anime movie, Vexille.
*Spoilers* Wow Japan got totalled then, Daaammmmnn.
The film itself is likable enough, plenty of action up front, an interesting idea, bit thin on the plot and character development beyond that but well made visuals, however the soundtrack is the thing of interest. A bit of an odd mix in a way as though a high action and ultimately tragic tale, the sounds of Paul Oakenfold, The Prodigy, DJ Shadow, Asian Dub Foundation, Carl Craig, Basement Jaxx, Underworld et al don’t quite gel with the movie. The tunes are good the movie is pretty good but some correlation has been lost between fitting the mood of the movie and theme of the scene. As such, while the movie is ok and good if you like superpowered agents, cyborgs and alabaster unrequited love stories, the music is actually worth your volition taking a listen based on the soundtracks own merits. Top track is without a doubt M.I.A’s ‘Birdflu’.
So with the technology failures of recent times, I have been unable to really get in and update the ole’ HG site. Which yeah I could have worked harder at doing, but enough of my shortcomings!!
Its Hellagood’s Birthday – the blog is One Year Old!! Hurrah and we’ve had over 3 and a half thousand hits. Quite exciting.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!!!
Thanks to everyone who’s been checking on here regularly and those who’ve just hit up once to look at what they thought was porn, you’ve made this blog great. I do wish I’d been a bit more attentive to the Blog lately but life gets in the way of writing sometimes. Well when you’re writing for free it does, you give me a deadline and paycheck and I am there!
So to commemorate the birthday edition, and in honour of my two fans (I definitely have two, you have identified yourselves!) some fantastic written stuff!!
Also I do have to say, I managed to lock myself out of twitter like the eponymous twit, so its not been updated in ages.
First up I found myself watching the pop chanels in the middle of the night, like I do, and Shakira came on (no pun intended) and I found myself thinking, ‘Shakira, didn’t she used to be a singer?’ Many have made that leap from music to acting but props to someone who’s not afraid to turn their back on the cynical world of hollywood and look for something alternative, it takes a lot of guts to approach the oldest form of progressive adult focused erotic art in the world, porn. Oh wait, sorry, I’ve just been informed, she is still a singer, apparently.
Covers – we all know them and love them, but I see recently the Mighty Boosh team are being covered all over the boutique. I noticed Lady GaGa has covered Old Gregg’s Love Games you can see them both here. I really feel she should have gone for more funk.
Also Little Boots, 4music favourite and newest excuse to pretend there’s been a genre shift when actually NOTHING has happened in the pop world and there has been no great forward movement, change, revelation or actual cerebral activity, seems to be just doing ‘Future Sailors’ from the crimping episode, expect without entertaining anyone.
Which brings us to Girls Can’t Catch. Now I loved Smack the Pony (pun intended) but if you’ve ever seen League of their Own (the American Baseball loving woman’s own Field Of Dreams) its blatantly a lie. I refer you to Dorothy Kamenshek.
Also its tedious umani-less time wasting no talent ass clownery. Pop music goes through phases of being life saving. It can be catchy, life-affirming, romantic, hopeful, foolish, clever and simple. And at other times its the equivalent of jangling some keys in front of a baby to keep it amused for a couple minutes. But replace keys with neon shite and replace baby with grown adult and couple of minutes with 7 hours of TMF, 4 music, Jamster adverts, all E4 idents, etc….
I despair, I digress… There is music out that I like, but as I get older and my soul gets more discerning, its just so much easier to think of things I don’t like.
Oh, here’s something I like – Akala. There’s an overachiever if ever I saw one. Some people just excel at things, at life in general, they are always working. Akala seems to be one of those people. Known also as Black Shakespeare, the younger brother of Ms Dynamite was a young football superstar and restaurateur before he even made his first record. This summer he’s been working with young artists on the BBC Blast project. His work is refreshingly real and has a fresh raw sound to it, not too overproduced or cliched, not falling back on beat machine fail-safes or stereotypical background music. Rather the tracks are a composite of sounds that reflect the feeling of the lyrics themselves. Currently busy finishing his new album, look out for it this year or take an audio tour of It’s Not A Rumour and follow up Freedom Lasso. I do love homegrown talent and wiki says he’s part Scottish so MON!!
As a royal spanner, I managed to destroy my laptop. Hence articles have been few and far between. I will try to make more of an effort though! There are still internet cafes out there…
Apologies though, if you have been looking here and going ‘tch! nae news!!! now my lunchbreak/midnight snack break is ruined without my dose of Hellagoodness!’
Have been thinking of beginning a wee flickr page also so you can all have a swatch at my photos but this will probably have to wait until the old computing problems are resolved.
I recommend some Elbow today for your listening pleasure.
I am taking a while to get on and write some more articles but an important issue has come to my attention and this has taken pole position in my writing today.
There has been some shocking behaviour recently towards non eu artists visiting and performing here. Small minded petty bureaucracy and red tape has placed a choke hold around culture.
For more details and examples the Guardians article can be found here. Henry Porters Blog exposes the abhorrent treatment of Non-EU artists and academics face when trying to gain access to the EU for artistic and educational visits. Many face lengthy issues with paperwork and visas for short stays or not being permitted entry at all despite invitations from well established arts and culture organisations, due to the tightening of excessive regulations regarding visiting non nationals.
This kind of attitude towards the wider world of writers, musicians, poets, artists and academics shines the brightest of cold starch lights on the ugliest side of our government decision makers. The situation is nothing short of embarrassing for the UK and Europe.
I urge you to take a stand by reading and signing this petition against the home Office Restrictions on Non-EU artists and academics on the Manifesto Club’s website.
Don’t allow this accidental censorship to stiffle the exchange of creativity and ideas in your world.
Hey kids, sorry I’ve not been updating you with all the latest but have been incapacitated in recent times. I will update soon and bring you all the news from Glasgow’s recent Mela Festival and Pin Ups Festival. I will also be talking about some bands and general music stuff – its time to get back to the Glasgow Band Reviews! So lots of stuff coming up. Keep checking the page
I don’t have a lot to say about Jackson, I’ll leave that to the professional pop quidnuncs.
Thursday 18th June – The Soul Skattitude Clubnight 11pm – 3am £3 or free with a flyer! – there will be flyers, so free! Playing at the Twisted Wheel Glasgow.
Friday 19th June – Sees the beginning of the Glagsow Jazz Festival. Jazz is great, go see some.
Sunday 21st June – BBC SSO Listen Here! From Hamelin to Hogwarts 3pm (free) playing at City Halls
Sunday is also Mela Festival so get along to the Kelvingrove Park to hear a whole bunch of diverse music FOR FREE! weather not guaranteed but plenty of trees to shelter under.
Any night of the week there will be music on in the city and if you’re lucky during the day too, so get out there! lots of great acts for free!
I love music. I really do. People say that of course, but what they really mean is unquantifiable. Music and you is a relationship no-one else understands.
I was listening to my Mansun albums today. When Mansun were around, I was a big fan. I was a little too young to be a part of it so my fandom didn’t come in tour tickets, disposable kodak photos, badges, t-shirts or single collections. I had some posters but they weren’t official merchandise, they were cut out of magazines I had to travel 16 miles on an irregular bus to buy. I had the cds, eventually, but for some years I had copied tapes which I listened to on my mum’s stereo in the kitchen at an almost meditatively low level late at night when everyone else had gone to bed and I sneaked back down to gorge myself on music until dawn crept over the hill and light flooded the half-painted walls by the pulley and I had to creep back upstairs to sleep for an hour or two before school.
Then one day, I acquired a walkman. And on that day a part of my own psyche broke forth from its juvenile bastille and helped change me into who I later became. I would say walkmans were essential to everyone who was part of my generation, from the 80’s and 90’s, emotional state. When we are children we learn to lie. Its one of the most important parts of our development, a way to protect ourselves by concealing our true intentions. Having a walkman is a similar right of passage, when we can engulf ourselves in our music, we are powerful, we are protected, we are inside ourselves alone with just the music. Like kids with little lies, being able to shut off from the world with your music gives you freedom from a world of rules.
Many casettes made their way into my tapedeck over the years. One was a Blur album and to this day I still site Blur as my favourite band. I’m always happy to listen to them, they remind me of being very young and actively getting interested in the music of ‘my time’.
Mansun is another story.
The way I feel when I hear Mansun is a little unusual. I don’t really like to hear it with other people. It doesn’t remind me of a happy time. It doesn’t really remind me of anything much, bar a few extremely barren moments in my teenage years stuck on motorways in the most depressing landscapes in the UK on the way to holidays with relatives I didn’t really know, where I felt so detached from the world I wasn’t sure if it was still really there beyond the shapeless grey mounds on the horizon or if the journey had melted into a reverse Divine Comedy and we were currently in purgatory.
Mansun doens’t really make me feel relaxed. Mansun is my first twisted love. The kind of dangerous love you should avoid. The obsessive, compulsive kind. The kind you hide from other people because they won’t approve. The kind you can’t stop thinking about. The kind when the other party makes a salacious comment quietly to you in public you feel the hairs rise on the back of your neck and the pangs of white heat run down your back. The kind you feel as guilty about as much as you want it. The kind you don’t want to introduce to anyone else. The kind you ignore friends for. The kind you stay up all night on the edge of your ribs with tension running through your spine to your finger tips, waiting to call.
It was never about the boys in the band, it wasn’t that I fancied any of the fluffy haired musicians. It was purely about the sound.
Listening to Masun was a private relationship. I just loved the songs so much its hurts a bit to listen to them now. Being older and having lost about 70% of all that passion and the sheer hormonal brilliance of my teen years I can listen to them and appreciate them and even recommend them to people. But, its still a bit like introducing an ex and pretending there are no lingering feelings there. Although to be fair I actually have no feelings about my exes. I have more feelings about records than the former paramours in my life, but that’s just the way I’ve always been.
So that for you, was my life with Mansun. When they broke up and the music ended, I more or less stopped listening and let other things in my life take over. I always had them in my shelves, they were with me all the way, but hidden from my day to day life. I thought I had moved on. I thought I was past this but I’m still a little hooked on them.
Maybe, in time we can be friends.
You can never just be friends.
I advise you now to go to your shelves and find that album of yours. Who made you feel that way 10 years ago and still can when they break into a chorus?
Beardyman gives me the fear. As a DJ I have reservations about my clubbing future now that Beardyman exists and is in our entertaining world. He’s the Usain Bolt to my clumsy sandal wearing drunk riding a tricycle . He’s essentially made my line of work entirely obsolete. Fortunately I can fall back on the inky words and writing about my horrific defeat on the steps of the Arausio and my retirement from the musical sphere due to this ‘man’, this demi-god of the microphone.
But DJs may rest safely in their sound laboratories once more, as well, he can’t physically be everywhere at once.
Yet.
Come on now. That’s enough. You’re making everyone else look bad.
Added to that check out Nathan ‘Flutebox’ Lee. Beatboxing with a flute. Because y’know, maybe it was too easy beforehand.
Another musical site I’m falling in love with all over again (it is summer after all and they’re French, I stood no chance) is La Blogotheque. La B’ is a particularly lovely site, full of things I’m jealous of. The most wonderful thing they have is The Take Away shows. Some of these off beat videos are the most magical moments caught on tape, the Take Away team convince, manipulate and beg artists for unique little shows. Some of the artists are shy and retiring and in need of this kind of arm twisting to produce one off performances of such an innocent but raw concupiscent nature as to defy belief – see Bloc Party’s Modern Love. Other artists are more keen to play the game and enjoy adding frolicsome tones with their own creative shenanigans – see Man Man The Warm Up 3.
Glasgow’s West End Festival is on now with a big variety of musical acts playing all around the city. The Festival started last weekend with highlights from skasters Bombskare’s afternoon set and the festival parade which took a turn around the park this year having moved along from its usual route along Byres Road.
Check out gigs at Brel on Ashton Lane for the kind of atmosphere suited to a chilled glass of white wine on a sunny evening, lying on a blanket with your bare toes playing in the grass while a troubadour plays under the shade of a nearby tree.
This Sunday see Kelvingrove Park play host Mela Glasgow, go down and see a mix cultures and live music from 12 til 7 for free.
I will be running a night at Glasgow’s Twisted Wheel, 73 Queen Street, on June 18th from 11 – 3am. Free with a flyer (which once I find the money to print I’ll start handing them out… just scribbling dates in the side of weetabix packets in tesco doesn’t count apparently) otherwise a mere £3 will garner you entry to the hottest new night this side of the equator. I don’t know whats happening in the clubs down there but I’ve always heard its hot.
The night is called ‘The Soul Skattitude’ and features a fusion of early 60’s studio one ska blended with detroit and chicago motown soul. As well as featuring tasty cakes.
The Soul Skattitude, happening Thursday 18th June @ the Twisted Wheel
Recently at the Twisted Wheel I visited with Ayrshire formed Zetas Empire, who are beginning to rack up the gigs once more, playing their own original material, a mix of melodic My Bloody Valentine emotion meeting with the grandiose stage-rock of Oceansize via a jazz indie park ranger station run by the Chemical Brothers (quite the camping trip one would imagine). They are undoubtedly always the most interesting thing on the bill when they play. Support came from Sempre Fi, who rocked out solidly but haven’t really ventured into any new territory with their sound. Kudos on the synchronized head banging though. Both bands will be playing soon, near you, probably.
Zetas Empire @ the Twisted Wheel
Also Paolo Nutini played the ABC. Why don’t people just buy actual Johnny Cash cds and listen to some local folk bands instead of this radio friendly watered down nonsense? (incidentally, how creepy is it when Johnny Cash’s voice welcomes you to his website, eerie!) Its the accent and the voice I think, of wee Paolo, anybody doing that well with a broad Paisley accent is a sign of the Scottish tendency to grip on with clenched fists at anything remotely successful which in some way positively represents the nation. Highlight of the gig – an encore of a country rock version of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, low point – support bands, who’s names were too bland to remember so I am calling them, ‘The Riot of Ineptitude’ and ‘Death by Corby Trouser Press’, absolutely terri-bile-inducing. Everyone loves wordplay. Everyone who’s ever won more than 67 times in a row at Scrabble loves word play.
