Rather Good Track No. 546 Gotye: Heart’s A Mess

Who? What? Why? Where? How?

Last.fm wiki say:

Gotye is 25-year-old Wally De Backer. He plays drums, percussion and piano, and he writes, sings and produces tracks at his home, currently in Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia. Gotye’s sound is a melting pot of samples from sources far and wide, mixed with Wally’s vocals and home recorded sounds to form original songs that are as likely to channel ’80s New Romantic pop or ’60s Motown soul as they are to be experiments in kooky turntablism or progressive trip-hop landscapes. The results are songs that both reference and incorporate styles and sounds of the past, but bear a distinctly contemporary outlook.

Which is all distinctly wanky, but the track is completely ace. Imagine if Coldplay were hip and surrounded themselves in lush samples. And then immediatly scrub that from your mind and just download the track, goddammit.

Download Gotye: Heart’s A Mess (5.9MB mp3)

Like this? Buy Like Drawing Blood from his website or at Amazon or wherever the hell you like. 

www.gotye.com 

Poland vs. Teletubbies (FFS)

From the BBC:

A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.

The spokesperson for children’s rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.

“I noticed he was carrying a woman’s handbag,” she told a magazine. “At first, I didn’t realise he was a boy.”

Idiots. Everyone knows that the real homosexual is Spongebob.

(We’ve been here before of course.)

RIP GUBU

IMG_5518.JPG, originally uploaded by 1541.

This post will probbaly mean little to one’s international readers, but tonight, one of Dublin’s nicer bars is closing.

I’m not sure when GUBU opened, but it’s been around several years. Little brother to the Front Lounge*, GUBU was more out-and-proud from the outset. While the FL doggedly maintains that it’s bisexual but ‘gay-friendly’, GUBU’s slogan was ‘Straight-friendly’.

It was the first of the bars & venues to begin the regeneration of dingy old Capel Street as the northern wing of Dublin’s pink triangle, and for years it managed to be just stylish enough to keep the fickle moneyed Dublin moxes happy, but unpretentious enough to allow the cuddlier gays and friends to feel at home.

I always preferred it to the Front Lounge, particularly when the FL became a bloody loud and crowded mass with {sigh} horrid plasma TVs (as in televisions, our TV friends were in GUBU or can now be found in The Dragon).

Even the dodgy beds that they had installed had their wonky, if quite divisive, charms.

Occasions such as Pride were always much more fun in GUBU with it’s lovely long mirrored bar reflecting the large windows. On those occasions, the DJ was filling the floor, balloons abounded and the girl behind the bar who used to be a bit grumpy when she worked in the FL was all smiles in GUBU. Ah, happy days!

Incidentally, I’ll let wikipedia explain what the acronym ‘GUBU’ means:

GUBU is an acronym standing for Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented.

The phrase was paraphrased from a comment by former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Charles Haughey while describing a strange series of incidents in the summer of 1982 that led to a double-murderer being apprehended in the house of the Republic’s Attorney General. The corresponding acronym was then coined by Conor Cruise O’Brien.
“ It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance. ”

—Charles Haughey, press conference, 1982[1]

The acronym and phrase are still occasionally used in Irish political discourse to describe notorious scandals.

So there you have it. The bar will now be converted into a branch of Café Bar Deli, a fairly uninteresting if moderately priced place to eat, and the world will continue to turn.

I shall be there tonight to pay my respects, get a bit messy and lament the passing of a Groovy Unpretentious Blissed out Undervalued spot.

RIP

* Shockingly horrid website alert.

New Scritti Politti tracks

Gosh, Green seems to be losing the perfectionism a little (this is A Good Thing). Two new tracks emerged this week, one of which he just popped out a couple of weeks ago!

This is all a bit astonishing seeing as Scritti are not exactly reknowned for being prolific. In fact, they are almost a bad as my other faves, The Blue Nile and The Avalanches, in their tardiness. Thank goodness for Stephin Merritt and his steady stream of stuff (even if quality control could be a leetle tighter of late {coughs}).

The evidence for Scritti’s reticence?

Songs to Remember released in 1982. A wait of three years for Cupid & Psyche ‘85. Another three years for Provision and zilch for ELEVEN years until Anomie & Bonhomie in 1999. And then a slightly less delayed White Bread, Black Beer some SEVEN years later in 2006.
Anyway, read this from the rather wonderful source of all things Scritti, Bibbly-o-Tek:

Last night Green performed two brand new songs at The Charles Hazlewood Show (BBC2) and chats a bit about how he wrote them. No official titles for those two new songs yet. First track has the working title ‘Unfrozen’ and the second ‘Forgiven’.

Full story and interview available to download at Bibbly-o-Tek.

I decided to extract the tracks (using Fission, fabulous software) and make them available here. They are both magnificent and bode well for the next Scritti album. In 2024.

Thanks to John Hyde for making the recording available.

Download Forgiven by Scritti Politti (3.2MB Mp3)

Download Unfrozen by Scritti Politti (3.4MB Mp3) 

Foofus Triumphant!

Congratulations to our Rufus, whose Release The Stars entered the UK album charts at no. 2 today. The single also climbed up the singles charts a bit. It looks like he’s finally getting the commercial success he wanted.

Download Going To A Town (mp3) Like this? Buy Release The Stars (and every other Foofus album) then why don’tcha?

I Heart The Onion

Combined with a couple of glasses of wine and some nervous exhaustion, The Onion has almost brought me to tears with laughter. Now they’ve got a 24 hour rolling news service.

Who says Americans don’t do satire?

Gap Unveils ‘For Kids, By Kids’ Clothing Range. 

Petition Poland (again….)

While I don’t usually blog about current affairs, I’m particularly interested in Poland and the attitudes of some of its ministers and people towards homosexuality. Human Rights Watch are organising a petition, and while I will sign it, I’m so embarrassed that a member of the European Union is behaving so illiberally that it is being petitioned by a human rights organisation. Shameful! (And your Eurovision song was rubbish.)

More info on the petition is available.