Lily Allen - Oh my god!

While some people might have got bored quickly, I'm still firmly in the Lily Allen Rulez camp and it seems most of you probbly are too given Smile has gone straight to #1 on iTunes.

I've just come across her cover of Kaiser Chiefs Oh My God and oh my god it's awesome. I figured it must have been done for a live lounge session but realised the recording sounded too produced for that. Now it seems that it's off a forthcoming Mark Ronson album Version - of course it is, listen to the brass!

Check it out at Shoes Are For Work and don't forget Smile is now avaliable on iTunes or for pre-ordering on Amazon.

…and jubiliations

A quick karinski congratulation to:

- Ricky and Liz on their engagement.

- Relly and Paul on the birth of Toby Oscar Ford Annett-Baker. What an cool epic name!

Muse: Supermassive Free Gig

Thanks to Mr Potts, I managed to get some tickets last night to Muse's one off special London gig in celebration of their forthcoming album Black Holes and Revelations.  I'd listened to the album via their myspace special stream once, so was preparing myself for an hour of songs I didn't really know.

WRONG! Instead they played a blistering greatest hits show, obviously with a slight bias to the new album. I saw the band once before in Wolverhampton back in 2001 for RaW, after begging the Head of Music for the tickets and him happily giving me them because the rest of the indie boys thought they were rubbish. New material stood up alongside the old, and the crowd went crazy to classic hits like Plug In Baby, Bliss, New Born and Hysteria. The stage was set in a futuristic fashion with illuminated spiral tubes hanging from the ceiling and the Muse boys were, as always, smartly dressed to fit the situation although Chris was sporting a rather wrong 70s porn star moustache. Matt looked rather hot with a blonde streak through the middle of his hair, and might be added to my worrying list of 'indie boys who look like monsters' that I seem to have the hots for. From the new songs Invicible probably stood out the most to me, but that was probably because I thought they were doing a very strange cover of You'll Never Walk Alone for the first minute of the song. Needless to say everything sounded epic, hysterical and very over the top, but in an awesomely good way.

Celebrity spots were rubbish as I only managed to see Johnny Borrell, Kele Obereke and Sarah Cawood.

This was the setlist

Take a Bow
Bliss
Map of the Problematique
Butterflies and Hurricanes
Starlight
Plug in Baby
Citizen Erased
Soldier's Poem
Feeling Good
Stockholm Syndrome
Invincible
Supermassive Black Hole
Hysteria
Assassin

New Born

Encore
-------
Time Is Running Out
Knights Of Cydonia

Ramblings

Most people know Stacy Ferguson (Fergie of Black Eyed Peas) is making a solo album this year and has been recording it in London. I just heard two tracks she'd done (as Fergie) for the Poseidon soundtrack - one Baliemos (not an Enrique cover) was ok in a Rihanna album track way, but Won't Let You Fall was so bad I thought my ears might rot.

Tonight - Muse at Shepherd's Bush Empire. Thank you Sammy!

LIVE: Robots in Disguise / Phoenix

Back at the end of May (how behind am I with blogging!), we had two consecutive nights out to see a few bands and doss about in some dirty London meanfiddler venues.

First up was Robots in Disguise, Betty Curse & Nemo at The Garage. I'd had RiD's latest single Turn it Up through on  DJ promo a few weeks earlier and really enjoyed their art-school electro sound so I figured I might as well go along to their sold out date. Despite Betty Curse sounding great on record she sounded awful live - I've said all this in much more detailed terms over here. Check out their song 'DJs got a gun' even if you don't do anything else.

The following night was spent downtown at Mean Fiddler itself. Languishing beneath the crumbling Astoria, James and I first became friends instead of acquantaince's on what was probably my first gig blag ever (ah the memories) at  The Killers back in May 2004. Here we trundled this night to see French electro-poppers Phoenix (who were disturbingly a bit too indie) and grungy daughters to the famous The Like.  My views and thoughts are here but in short, The Like need to try harder and Phoenix were meh-ingly alright. In any case get your grubby mits on 'What I Say and What I Mean' and 'Run Run Run' respectively.

REVIEW: Duncan James - Future Past

Purveyor of quality pop that I am, I feel blessed to have been given the chance to review Duncan James' debut solo album. Jeez, I inexplicably used to fancy this man. He had the hilariously same hair as he did in 2001 on Top of the Pops (sob) the other week. Bravo. It's not bad, it's just uninspiring, y'know.

If you're missing Darius and you're after a bunch of mid-tempo pop songs to ease you through the day, then this might just be it.

What a sell! How could you refuse! Read the whole thing online at BBC Music.

Ta-dah! Popstarz presents… Scissor Sisters

The Scissor Sisters returned to the UK last night to play a special one off gig at our very own Popstarz.  The bands first ever UK gig was at Ghetto so it was great to see them remembering their UK roots and returning to the same crowd.

The Scala was absolutely rammed and we were DJing for 2 hours before the band as well as an hour immediately after.  Some rubbish photos are on my camera but I'll have a look through them later and try and put a few online.  We played things like Dead Disco - Automatic, Sarah Nixey - Strangelove, Shiny Toy Guns - DIsko, The Automatic - Raoul, Morningwood - Nth Degree, Skunk Anansie - Lately, Peaches - Tent in Your Pants as well as all the usual Kaisers / Killers / Hole stuff.

The band were awesome. When we arrived, Ana was in the DJ booth talking to the sounds guys and has seemed to lose lots of weight since the last album. Her hair was much shorter and almost Geri Halliwell esque!  Jake was the blonde we've seen recently and the rest of the band looked great. The hairy side of the audience were loving Baby Daddy, but a lot went very doe-eyed over Del Marquis who was looking uber cute and declared 'I first came to Popstarz when I was 19!' with Ana retorting 'Oh bless, and now you still look 12!' As had been rumoured, Sir Elton John and David Furnish showed up and got a mammoth round of applause and cheers when he appeared on the balcony with camera flashes going like crazy.

The band played a selection of songs old and new, and the new stood up just as well as the old. The highlight of new songs was the Ana-led incredibly funky and danceable Kiss You Off. Paul McCartney is the new Filthy Gorgeous while the Elton penned I Don't Feel Like Dancing got everyone, including Elton, dancing along. Comfortably Numb was AMAZING and I was pleased they played karinski favourite Music is the Victim where they were joined on stage by the tour manager's son (probably about 5 or 6?) doing some adorable dancing! Ana and Jake were very vocal in their appreciation of the UK audience, and said how brilliant it was to be performing to a mostly gay crowd who could do anything they wanted and were proud of it.

This was their setlist :

Take Your Mama
I Can't Decide
Tits on the radio
She's my man
Laura
Paul McCartney
Everybody wants the same thing
Kiss You Off
Mary
The Other Side
I Don't Feel like Dancing
Comfortably Numb
Music is the victim
Land of A Thousand Words

Encore
Filthy Gorgeous

links for 2006-06-16

• 
  
  Said the Gramophone: You Can Tell All Sorts of Lies With Your Clothes On
  
  
  Amazing fun song from Puffy Amiyumi. Investigate the band further!!
  
  
  (tags: music, mp3blog)
  
  


• 
  
  Nothing But Green Lights: UK music/culture blog
  
  
  (tags: blog blogs mp3 mp3blog music)
  
  

Popstarz RULEZZZZ

Oh my god. When Tommy told us a few weeks ago that there was going to be a mega huge gig at a special Monday night Popstarz, the cogs started turning trying to think as to who it could be.  Placebo, Bloc Party, Killers... Scissor Sisters would be the dream, but that would never happen.

Would it? YES IT WOULD.

Popstarz presents... Scissor Sisters - a full live gig at The Scala on Monday 19 June.

Needless to say I am wetting my pants. I'm Djing at it so I'll see you there. For convaluted ticket details check the popstarz homepage.

Morningwood: Live at Koko

It's not often I go to a gig that completely blows me away, but New York band Morningwood
playing their first UK show at Club NME left me somewhat stumbling over
my words.  First discoving them via essential US music blog Arjan Writes, their self titled album stayed on the stereo for a few weeks with Jetsetter and Nth Degree finding their way onto our playlists.  Not having looked at their myspace page
for a while, I was delighted to see them booked in at Koko for a night
in mid-May and swiftly added them into the diary on a night that was to
become 'the night of 4 clubs'.

'This is a band who aren’t afraid to talk about sex, and during the dance rock ‘NY Girls’
Chantal gets a girl up on stage to dance with her. This is evidently
staged though, as they dance with more familiarity or intimacy than any
strangers should.  In any case, this display of girl on girl groping
certainly wakes up any Camden boys sulking in the corner.'

Read the rest of my rather excited and garbled review of the gig over at Gigwise and good god, make sure you can see them live as soon as you can.

Oh, and number 4

At the risk of this turning into a music videos site, let me present Pull Shapes - the Pipettes come of age.

And the 3rd…

(great pop song of the year)