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".

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!

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.

A word I don't like

I don't mind the word "moist" at all. I am not sure why people don't like it. But I really don't like when people are doing a cooking show or cooking instructional video and use the word "slurry" to describe mixing something into a paste - because it just makes me thinks of farms and how they smell.

Currently playing : Nier

I'm currently playing Nier (not Automata) on Xbox 360.

I really like it. It is a beautiful, sad game, with beautiful music and good artwork.

I finished the game with one ending last night, and decided - rather than play and get the next ending to the game, I would start over again from nothing.

There's an achievement for completing the whole game under 15 hours which I'm aiming for. I'm skipping all the sidequests, which means sadly I miss out on Devola & Popola singing together.

It is unrelentingly sad, just chock full of sad stories, sometimes unnecessarily sad. 

For example - when you go to turn in your final fishing sub-quest, there's another man standing in the quest-giver's place. He tells you that the old man who gave you the quest died then says no-one in town really liked him anyway. I mean, come on, writers, you didn't need to do that! This has no impact on the overall story of the game, they just decide to throw in things like that all the time.

But the sadness is a good outlet for me in this world we're living in. It's easier to put your heart into a bunch of fictional grief and feel that than look at the world today pretending along with everyone else that the daily massive amounts of death aren't that bad.

What's The Buzz - Jesus Christ Superstar - sounds like invincibility to me

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been releasing musicals for the public to enjoy for free for a short window of time during this lockdown period. This week, it is appropriately Jesus Christ Superstar.

I say "appropriately", but really... he's made Jesus Christ available for 48 hours from Good Friday until Easter Sunday, which is the exact opposite of how Easter is supposed to work.

Anyway. I started watching, and this song "What's The Buzz" starts up.

And I think to myself... hang on, this tune... what is it? It is the song of my people. Yes! It is:

Sorry, that's all I can think now. (Yes I know Jesus Christ Superstar came first)

Persona - Poem for Everyone's Souls & Elvis Presley - My Boy

I noticed a thing.

The melody for "Poem For Everyone's Souls" - which is the music for the Velvet Room in all the Persona games - and the chorus to the song "My Boy" by Elvis Presley really sound a lot like each other.

(listen at @1:35)


(listen at @0:31)

Recommended Twitch musicians

If you're on lockdown and are hankering for some live music, well, you can get that on the internet nowadays. Here are some of my favourite musicians on Twitch:

• Plastic Josh
  https://www.twitch.tv/plasticjosh
  Songlist: https://www.streamersonglist.com/s/plasticjosh/songs
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FfAxaRvMrikzkied5Kduv
  UK musician - guitar (both acoustic and electric) and piano, has a voice of gold. Wide range of music - if I said it was "the kind of music Q Magazine likes" would you know what I mean? Does a fantastic Gethsemane. Made me actually enjoy Radiohead songs outside of Creep. Especially look out for streams where his brother comes along to join him singing on duets. He has his own band "Plastic Sun" and their original songs are great (but a right bugger if you want to sing one in the shower)
• lara6683
  https://www.twitch.tv/lara6683
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lara6683
  Songlist: https://goo.gl/6AVr4n
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2v5wjWQZ9ViJUXAetTQcZ6
  Many years ago, maybe a decade by now, I enjoyed listening to some piano covers of video game songs by someone called Lara de Wit. Then about 2 years ago, YouTube decided I ought to listen to a "mega medley that was supposed to be 5 minutes" that goes on for about an hour and a half. By someone called lara6683. And she was just taking suggestions from chat and playing a seemingly endless medley out of it all. Just out of memory. Then after a while, I found out that Lara de Wit and lara6683 were the same person. Her thing is that she's really, really good at learning new songs by ear. If you pay her a bucket of money at the start of a stream, she is likely to live learn a song of your choosing. She's also very good at taking songs and mashing them together on the fly, her improvisational / arrangement skills are fantastic. She is very popular and often gets over 1000 concurrent viewers. Song requests are generally sub-only and at her discretion - so 100 people might request and she'll pick an hour and a half's worth of songs out of the list. 
• ortopilot
  https://www.twitch.tv/ortopilot
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3CckGnXzzJ9GARII95dDek
  Another UK musician, this one's a Northern English singer / songwriter who plays keyboard and guitar and is an absolute wizard with a looper, and makes some solid, funky music. His sound setup is studio quality. His streams are generally a good time.
• supershigi
  https://www.twitch.tv/supershigi
  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/supershigi
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2RnGA202UcoKq6KjzQCbNR
  Laura Shigihara is one of my favourite video game composers. When Plants vs Zombies came out, I loved the soundtrack so much I went and bought it separately and listened to it over and over. In the game To The Moon, her song Everything's Alright is the most perfectly fitting song within a game I think I've ever heard. So when she started streaming, it was like a goddess coming down to earth. She plays keyboard, has the sweetest, gentlest voice, and is generally a super nice person.
• Spence Elliot
  https://www.twitch.tv/spenceelliott
  This guy is seriously as though one of the Beach Boys was born 50 years too late, or something. Has a great voice, plays acoustic guitar and piano. He specialises in 1960s - 1970s music, mainly folk but also rock and stuff. All his song requests are paid. He's really, really good. And really welcoming and friendly too.
• Contracrostics
  https://www.twitch.tv/contracrostics
  Exceptional classical pianist named Matt, from the USA, who has an amazing antique grand piano right there in his house. When he plays, it's like a story. It's beautiful. He'll only play what he wants to, but he's got a ton of classical sheet music, and I've never disliked anything he's played. He doesn't always stream music though - sometimes he plays games. He's a really chill guy and it's nice to watch his gaming streams too.
• knumb the geek
  https://www.twitch.tv/knumbthegeek
  Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/knumbthegeek
  "Folk-punk" American musician named Kevin - amazing on fiddle, also plays guitar and mandolin. Often uses a looper. Sings enthusiastically, though he kinda sounds like Goofy (but, a smarter version). Has a really great, contemplative, wild, brutal, and sometimes funny set of songs on his playlist, some of which he's written himself. Oh and a bunch of American and Irish traditional tunes too.
• Mermaid Unicorn
  https://www.twitch.tv/mermaidunicorn
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6gfQSJ07CJAEvOwKz4sX2f
  Canadian musician Alanna Sterling is one of the greatest talents around at the moment, I'd say. I'm not going to list all the instruments they play, let's just say "all of them", because it basically is. Their song "Monsters Under My Bed" was probably the best original song I heard in the whole of 2019.
• Jonathan Ong
  https://www.twitch.tv/jonathanong
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwbNxgXSHBjGBUjKHVZS7ZA
  Dr Ong is like a mad scientist of music, from Australia. He's an amazing, outstanding pianist. He also plays flute and saxophone and otamatone. His stream has "The Most Keyboards On Twitch" (TMKOT) - he has dozens of them, all doing different things - and he seems to have an unending desire to acquire more of them. He also has a baby grand in his room which he usually plays. He'll play intricate classical pieces just to warm up, before playing whatever pop / rock / video game music / memes people hurl at him to play for the next 5 hours or so. I especially love when he covers either Muse or Nier on piano. People often pay him to make loops of songs, he'll listen and create his own version, layering and layering and layering. He has really funny animations and overlays too.  I've seen him play a piano with 102 keys (and he broke it just through playing it, I don't think he's allowed back there anymore). I've seen him play for so many hours he literally stopped to go and superglue his fingers back together, and he came back giggling like a maniac. He's just started on some serious compositions too, which are really fine.
• Texasraw
  https://www.twitch.tv/texasraw
  Nice to see an older musician on Twitch. He's from Texas as the name suggests, and he plays hit rock songs from the previous century on electric guitar & kick drum. He's really good but I also feel like he's a bit underappreciated.
• Lemonagogo
  https://www.twitch.tv/lemonagogo
  Singer / guitarist from the US, has a really nice, soothing voice. Her knowledge of 80s pop music is pretty legendary. 
• Venusworld
  https://www.twitch.tv/venusworld
  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4BQv8prfL0d4D0qR0q474d
  also Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4nuyPqafby01SAz10TFNU5
  Venus is a singer / songwriter from English, so posh she could play Mary Poppins without having to affect an accent. She writes some surprisingly dark songs, my favourite of hers is "Before You Go". Her community are really supportive and sing along in chat when she sings original songs. She previously recorded under the name Sophie Janes before settling on the name Venus, that's why she has two Spotify channels.

I'm listing nationalities mostly so you get an idea for the timezones they'll stream for. Though some just seem to be on at whatever time they feel like (e.g. Jonathan Ong, Contracrostics, Johnny Kuik). All the Germans speak perfect English because of course they do.

Also worth a mention: SavingMusicLive - this is where a lot of charity music streams are held, Gluecks (German, pianist), Johnny Kuik (UK keyboardist, plays along to a lot of anime music and East-Asian pop), pealeaf (Canadian, pianist), meriamber (Australian, songwriter - writes some hilarious songs), Dan Chapman (amazing vocalist, songwriter, guitar & keyboard), Andrew Telles (piano, keyboard), Tammy Blackmedia (singer-songwriter, guitar & keyboard), CallsignScarecrow (UK, vocals, guitar, large beard), Egglyberts (UK, pianist), Liz Singer (vocalist, covers musicals and pop music, heck of a belt), ka_klick (US, guitarist, sings nerdy songs he's written), Megan Lenius (US singer songwriter, her song Allison is brilliant), Umilele (Ukraine, ukelele), KristyKates (US, guitar, vocals, generally very nice person), theluckmusic (wow these voices! Guitar, keyboard), JadothMusic (German, singer / guitarist), pianoimproman (piano, keyboards), matthewkheafy (US metal musician Matt Heafy from the band Trivium), Luck Reunion (Willie Nelson, Paul Simon & co are going to do a live concert soonish)

And, I don't know if they're gone for good, because they haven't streamed in ages, but these folks are great: Kyle Landry (pianist), ihazabeard (vocals, guitar), BagelRabbit (violin improv)