Thursday 3 August 2023

Recommended Twitch Musicians, 2023 edition

I seem to have forgotten to do one of these last year. Oops. But here we go, this year's edition, new people to check out:


  • Steve Forward. Really incredible guitarist, from Essex, UK. Professional session musician, has his own albums out. Really great CGI effects to watch, too.
  • KseniaGalaxy. Very talented singer, originally from Kazakhstan, has lived in Thailand for many years now. Has a very fun community and uses fun CGI effects with filters as she sings, to transform her into various things.
  • JMO piano. Known as Jon Michael Ogletree on YouTube, where he's much more famous. Pianist who plays his own arrangements, all learned and played by ear. He's on just about every night, and is very accommodating.
  • SteggyMusic. From Ohio, USA. Vocal and acoustic guitar, has some original songs too. Mainly rock music. He's got a lovely voice.
  • syjamusic. Symon James, from London, UK. Not a lot of musicians on Twitch play 100% original songs. Syjamusic does exactly that.
  • DeltaCrab. Taiwanese-American fellow based in Amherst, Mass. Crazy stuff with synths! & guitars and vocals too. Sometimes he'll make loops out of people chatting, a lot of fun, always fresh!

As always, I still recommend my long-time favourites: Joshua Woo, Lara6683, Jonathan Ong, PorkRollBobihazabeard, VenusWorld.

Wednesday 13 April 2022

Space Invaders has lyrics, at least in my head.

 

Oh hey, it's nearly Easter.

Fun fact: ever since I heard the song "Gesthemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar, the soundtrack to Space Invaders has had lyrics in my head, and they are : "why must I die? why must I die? why must I die? whymustIdie? whymustIdie? whymustIdie?whymustIdie?whymustIdie?whymustIdie?"



Wednesday 6 April 2022

Is "Cradle Of Love" by Billy Idol actually a really dodgy song?

 


YouTube autoplay brought me to this song tonight, I hadn't even thought about it in years.

This song is dead suspicious. I think it's a celebration of underage sex. Though it's from 1990, it's got an older 1950s kind of feeling to it. It's got "Cradle" in the title, as in, what babies sleep in. "Robbing the cradle" is what people say about age gap romances, so it seems like a pun on that.

"It burned like a ball on fire / When the rebel took a little child bride" - I think this is a reference to Jerry Lee Lewis, whose big hit was Great Balls Of Fire. He married his cousin when she was 13 years old.

It also contains the words "flesh for your Romeo", and one of the main things people always like to bring up about Romeo & Juliet is that Juliet was also 13 years old.

Then the rest of the song is all like wey-hey I had sex.

Conclusion: This song is dodgy as fuck.

Monday 20 December 2021

Christmas thoughts

Tonight I am thinking to myself about how I got cast as one of the three kings in a school nativity, when I was in primary school. 

I didn't volunteer, it was because they needed someone "of Orient". 

All I really learned that was sometimes all you are to people is a race.

Thursday 24 June 2021

Recommended musicians on Twitch, 2021 edition

I made a post like this last year, I think it's about time I did an update for 2021. Now that musicians have been forced to take down their VODs from Twitch because of licensing stuff (Twitch don't like paying royalties), it's harder to see which streams are going to be "your thing", so - have a read, and maybe look through their YouTube and songlists to see if they perform the kind of stuff you like. Pretty much everyone is free to listen to, but whether song requests are free differs from channel to channel, so, be polite and read streamer profile panels for info. Tipping money is a friendly and nice thing to do!

Here we go.

Monday 24 May 2021

Thoughts by a British person about American TV's ideas about British people

One thing I find really weird about American TV is that if they make a character who they think is stereotypically posh British, they give them this weird accent that doesn't sound like anywhere in Britain and make them use obscure words like "nary" which British people stopped using a few hundred years ago.

Wednesday 13 January 2021

Thing about Day Of The Tentacle

I know it's not cool to talk shit about a beloved older comedy game, but I've been playing Day of the Tentacle (remastered version) recently and.... 

Wednesday 5 August 2020

The song "Jealous Guy" is such a non apology

I'm talking about John Lennon's song Jealous Guy.

People go on about this song "oh it's so beautiful", "oh it's so sincere". But I find it ugly and insincere. Which doesn't mean that I think people are wrong to like it, just that they've missed something.

Context is huge. John Lennon stated in interview that he was a wife beater, through jealousy. Read the bit in the wikipedia page on him about his relationship with Cynthia Lennon

The Beatles song "Run For Your Life" on Rubber Soul (1965) is another song Lennon wrote (well, Paul McCartney gets co-writing credits) where a jealous guy threatens to murder his "little girl" if she does anything with another man. The line "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" originates in an Elvis Presley song, but John Lennon decided to expand that into a full song. I've read claims that George really liked the song and John hated and regretted writing it.

In his last major interview, John Lennon spoke of the opening lyrics in the Beatles song Getting Better:

"It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically – any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."

Speaking about Jealous Guy in 1980, John Lennon said:

"My song, melody written in India. The lyrics explain themselves clearly: I was a very jealous, possessive guy. Toward everything. A very insecure male. A guy who wants to put his woman in a little box, lock her up, and just bring her out when he feels like playing with her. She’s not allowed to communicate with the outside world – outside of me – because it makes me feel insecure."

And perhaps that would all be good and well, except that he sang the whole thing as "how he behaves when he's jealous" - it's framed as "something I did in the past" but there's no "and I don't do that any more".

Monday 13 July 2020

Everything there is to know about Total Eclipse Of The Heart

Total Eclipse Of The Heart might be my favourite song of all time. It was the first record I owned that I truly fell in love with, and all I had was a 7" single that my family got from collecting cereal box tokens (wanna see it?). It's probably rare now. It was the B-side! I was probably 7 years old. Is that weird? Haha. I didn't even hear the full album version for another decade or so!


Friday 24 April 2020

Love Never Dies review

There are spoilers in this review. It's of this Melbourne production of Love Never Dies which is free to watch this weekend:



This Andrew Lloyd Webber musical isn't bad bad in the same way as some of the others, it just makes me feel ill watching it.

I think maybe the show would have been better if the characters weren't supposed to be the ones from Phantom, because it makes all of my red flags go off seeing Christine so quickly welcoming of the phantom just because he says he feels great pain without her and they reminisce about their "one night" together.

I mean, I am still thinking of him as a real horror; manipulative / stalker / threatening / murdering.

And both phantom and Raoul - when confronting each other - treat her as a possession, and Raoul has become just angry and useless... there's no-one really to root for out of the two of them.

And I would not put a child in the trust of a twisted and murderous man just because he's biologically his father.

It's not that the show is bad bad, it just makes me feel like everything the show wants me to get on board with is wrong. I'm sitting there going "no, no, no, no, no" at every moment that I think is supposed to be positive.

I think if you looked at the book for this musical in isolation, this phantom would be no more of a horror than a grumpy goth with bad skin.

So... either you have a phantom who is far too horrible for you to want him to succeed, or a completely declawed phantom who is just bland.