Oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got grey eyes
While messing around on YouTube I stumbled upon this fabulous video for one of my favourite New Order songs, “Temptation”—indeed one of my favourite songs full stop.
Directed by Michael Shamberg who made several videos for New Order it was made recently for a retrospective. It was filmed in Paris and stars Victoria Bergsman, lead singer of the Swedish band The Concretes, and was based on an idea of hers. Apparently the director and the singer met in Paris after a The Concretes gig. She’s not conventionally beautiful, but there’s just something about her. I think I’m a little bit in love with her.
Victoria Bergsman can also be heard singing on this Peter Bjorn and John song, “Young Folks”:
January 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Speaking of messing around, have you had a go with last.fm? No doubt it’s old hat by now, but I find it an almost perfect way to list to pop music.
I
January 19th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Yeah, I don’t use it as much as I should, but I do use last.fm. The flash plugin can be flakey for me, but generally flash isn’t terribly stable on linux. What did you think of the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex? More importantly what did you think of Victoria Bergsman?
January 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
last.fm: glad to hear it’s not just me has problems with it on linux.
Jimmy Chamberlin Complex: it’s clearly his band. I thought the section from about 2:30 to about 3:00 was brilliant; they should have kept hat up the whole time. The rest was fairly tedious - I mean I thought the accompaniment on guitar etc actually diluted the potentially exciting drums. Maybe JC needs more percussive or edgy accompanists. I tend to find Rock ‘n’ Roll instrumentals a bit timid. Probably their rehearsals are better.
Victoria Bergsman: I had to watch it with the sound off. I can see that VB would be right down your street - one of these boys who look like girls who look like boys who … except VB is a girl of course, heh.
I
January 19th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
You cheeky bastard! Just what exactly are you insinuating about me?
January 19th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Listening to that Jimmy Chamberlin has got me thinking. The perfect jazz/funk/rock band has always seemed just out of reach. The guitarist is the hardest one to get right: jazz guitarists just don’t wig out in the right way (maybe they care about the notes too much), and rock guitarists often sound a bit pedestrian when you’ve listened to too much crazy jazz or other modern music. These days it should be easier to find something.
January 19th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
I don’t agree about jazz-funk. There’s tons of great jazz-funk out there, and tons of great jazz-funk guitarists. But you’re right about the so-called jazz-rock stuff (which, come to think of it, is pretty much an oxymoron). The rhythm section is normally fine, it’s the guitarists and keyboard players that let the whole thing down. Either they’re too jazzy, in which case they can’t really rock out enough, or they’re too rock and everything starts sounding distinctly prog and you start expecting Rick Wakeman to turn up in a silver cloak. Jazz-rock was big in the 70s with bands like Colosseum—I really liked Colosseum when I was a kid learning to play the drums because I liked Jon Hiseman’s drumming, but I heard them for the first time in years the other day and they were absolutely bloody awful.
I don’t agree with you about the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, though. I really like that song, and one of the reasons is that the guitar part is actually very simple. It just layers a melody over the bass and drums which is where all the action is. I could do without the keyboard solo though.
January 20th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Whoa! Colosseum was one of Moira’s favourite bands!
Maybe I’ll hear some decent jazz-funk now that I’m starting to listen to last.fm. Jazzers get too jazzy with funk: they start noodling when they should be leaving jagged bits of silence (e.g., to go “Huhn!” in). Also, they can play their instruments too well - there’s no sense of danger. Give me Ornette Coleman on violin anyday, …
More to the point, any pointers to feed into last.fm would be appreciated. I haven’t listened to new pop music at all for years.
I
January 21st, 2007 at 1:29 pm
As far as pop goes, I dunno really. I suppose you could just try following things I’ve mentioned here: The Go! Team, The Polyphonic Spree, Gotan Project, Peter Bjorn and John, The Concretes.
January 21st, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Not a bad band, all said and done …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYx8yW3POcg
January 21st, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Heh. Jesus, look how young they look! Here’s them doing Procession from 1981:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA4gL9lJkbk
January 21st, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Pah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRY_PZIKeqM
January 21st, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Okay, fair enough. The Lounge Lizards are genius. But, Ivan, you’re not really getting into the whole “pop” spirit, are you?
January 21st, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Um, OK. This is what I would listen to when I thought no-one was looking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN_oWSEizec
January 21st, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Oh Ivan. Hang your head in shame. BTW, have you seen my most recent post? I’m suing Google!