Issue 26: 10 May 1999
ATHENRYE entertain while explaining why the Brits are scum.
Sporty Spice is the Antichrist, etc... THE GOSSIPPING HEN.
Pus and predjustice: sanitarily-challenged members of society on tv, thanks to TWITCHY THE TRAMP.
Yaroooh! - Sadist Sade makes glowing red marks in WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLDMINE
* Still on the subject of spicey things, our old mucker Nick Redfern (author of two highly regarded UFO books) telephoned a few days ago. Apparently Mel C (the sexiest of `em) joined `The Neurotic Outsiders` (an ad hoc ensemble consisting of various members of Guns `N` Roses, Duran Duran and Ex-Pistol Steve Jones (who is apparently shagging her at the moment), and sang 'Anarchy in the UK' with the lyrics:
'I am the Antichrist/I am the Sporty Spice'
The aforementioned Geri has also mentioned Senor Lydon`s former muckers this week by claiming that she wants her new album to sound like a cross between The Sex Pistols and Shirley Bassey. It doesn`t of course, but the single is OK and I`m mildly looking forward to the album...
* So Marty Pellow has left Wet WetWet! After periods in 'a clinic' recovering from 'stress' (which is usually a polite euphemism for being a recovering junkie - an assertion that no-one is bothering to deny) So bloody what? They were crap anyway. The important aspect of the matter as far as this particular capon is concerned is that whilst he was lying in bed idly switching through the Teletext news pages to find that this matter - unimportant in the extreme - is being treated seriously as a piece of news alongside accounts of bombings in Kosovo etc. Surely the world is really in a bad state now.......
* It seems that admitting to episodes of rock and roll excess in the past, is now seen as a recognised bona fide career move. None other than Gary 'Fatty' Barlow whose solo career has been eclipsed mightily by one of his ex cohorts has now admitted to having taken 'Marijuana' and other substances whilst sleeping with 'hundreds' of his fans. Of course he did. Why else does ANYONE try and become a rock star for Christ`s sake?
I am feeling so horrid that I am going back to bed and therefore the intrepid musings of the Gossipping Hen will have to be curtailed for this issue. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I feel like it.
Opponents said Massery's petitions didn't address the root cause of the violence, and was like 'putting a Band-Aid on a cancer.' They also said the proposals raised constitutional questions. The 'attire' petition was defeated 6-4, while the "commandment" proposal lost 9-1.
Slutto says: it seems the Pittsburgh authorities are what is technically known as wankers.
Adelaide Uni linguistics director Rob Amery said the 8-word song was written on a loose piece of paper, discovered within the pages of another book at Sydney's Mitchell Library.
The page is believed to belong to the missing journal of Matthew Moorhouse, an Aboriginal protector who recorded tribal languages last century. Ngurpo Williamsie's song was written in the language of the Kaurna people, who lived on the Adelaide Plains, in 1844. It reads: 'Wanti nindo ai kabba kabba. Ningkoandi kuma yerta.'
Moorhouse translated this as: "Where you I drive out, your only another
countries."
But Dr Amery said the song should be translated more freely as: "Where have you pushed me to? - You belong to another country." He said it was unclear to whom the Kaurna people were referring when they said "you". - The Australian 11.5.99
Slutto says: But I think we can make a guess. In modern parlance the 8-word song would be 'haven't you bastards got homes of your own...?' (with an MF or two inbetween)
The Marquis is now most famous for the fetish that now bears his name - sadism.
The restorers found the names "A. De Sade," and "Casanova" scratched on the fresco. "We felt as if two literary legends had emerged from the darkness of the past," one archaeologist said.
The underground ruins were closed in the early 1980s. But in March last year wall restorers caused an international stir when they uncovered an unknown fresco which may show Rome in the time of Nero. A leading Rome archaeologist, said scholars were examining the signatures to ensure they were genuine.
De Sade visited Rome in 1772 after fleeing arrest in France for
allegedly poisoning prostitutes with an over-powerful aphrodisiac.
Casanova was in Rome in 1770. Profesor Caradini said neither man's
journals and memoirs were "entirely reliable as to dates and facts".
Professor Valerio Magrelli, an expert on 18th century literature, said
de Sade and Casanova had "diametrically opposed personalities - I
doubt they had much in common." - The Times: May 11 1999
Slutto says: Well, they say opposites attract!
Slutto says: their Religious Education lessons obviously didn't prepare them for the realities of life...
The pupils, aged 10 and 11, saw the play after studying extracts from it as part of the national curriculum's literacy hour. Their teacher, Stephen McGaw, 43, said the children had been excited about the visit after performing scenes from the play in assemblies.
Slutto says: I guess they didn't perform the donkey-fuck scenes in school assembly. Hey, hold on: I thought kids were supposed to be getting fully-rounded sex education in schools these days?
McGaw added, "But what we saw was not what we were expecting ... we left quietly." The RSC has not yet replied to the school's request for a refund, but a spokesman said the company had now written to primary schools warning them that the production was "too adult" for youngsters. "It is a vibrant, energetic production, which older children and adults will love," a spokesman said.
Slutto says: and horny donkeys will love it, as well...
Which brings us nicely onto Family Values...
The Family Values mob (see CD reviews) have a good many websites...
The Unofficial Rammstein Fan Site at speechless.douglas.bc.ca/rammstein/ has plenty of band info, biogs, discography, lyrics, etc. I haven’t found out if there’s an official site yet but this one fills the gap if there isn’t.
The New Lords Of Hellfire, proclaims www.mtv.com/news/gallery/r/rammsteinfeature98_2.html with an interview with the lead vocalist, Lindemann, explaining the group’s name and what their philosophy is.
Less satisfactory is www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Island/1039/ which is definitely limp - nothing but a guestbook! Not a biskit worth wanking over.
www.limpbizkit.com does not inspire confidence, either. The opening announcement is, 'I cant run this Limp Bizkit site anymore,' and then rambles on and on about the lack of co-operation from the Bizkit management and record company.
A subpage of the site, www.limpbizkit.com/enter.htm, gives access to a mailing list, tour dates, links to other LB pages, lyrics, audio, pics, etc, but is poorly presented.
www3.sympatico.ca/mr.exe/Cube.html consists of one page, with artist info and a list of his albums.
www.addict.com/issues/4.04/html/lofi/Cover_Story/Ice_Cube/ is much more interesting, carrying an interview with Mr Cube:
'While he intermittently slides into a rap cadence as he speaks, Cube often talks out of the side of his mouth, as he does in his movies. But his eyes remain fixed straight ahead, never leaving mine, not even to glance at the papers plastering his desk or at the fax machine ringing incessantly at the far end of the room. This laserlike intensity is evident in his speech as well. He pretty much says what he wants to say.' Good.
ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/loocy/incubusp.htm is a page of b&w off-stage fan pics - the caption for one runs, 'Jose, Loocy and Brandon on a staircase just before Incubus hit the stage in Wolverhampton, England (apologies for the bad picture quality - my friend wasn't wearing her glasses when she took the photo!)' Yerzzz...
www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/4583/inclinks.html gives access to a range of oddities, eg Caves of Phentropa, The Fungus Amungus Incubus Page, Dustin's Incubus pad, etc.
Finally, ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/loocy/incubus.htm offers some brief info & some pix.
Let Family Values endure, to the betterment of society generally...
Korn headline and C-Minus does the spacey links between each act. Orgy (3 trax) is the sort of heavy metal outfit that sound like mad robots fighting in a junkyard - seriously grinding rock, and a good cover of Blue Monday. Incubus (1 grunge rap track) and Limp Bizkit (3) get hard on the dance floor - 'jump jump jump' ... 'there's not enough people on the fuckin' floor...' - You can almost smell the sweat and the spliffs.
Rock-rappers Ice Cube funkily fuck the police and generally check things out - yo MF - during their 3-track slot. Then, thunderous heavy rock riffs alternate with melodic vocal from the devastating German band Rammstein (only one track, unfortunately - Du Hast - but by Christ, it's a stonker, of the style some people call 'dance metal'. (I gather the main lyric, in translation, is "you have asked me and I've said nothing". M'mmm, yeah.) Anyway, it preludes headline-act Korn's segment which is a fussily-grungy 7-min medley followed by 4 other tracks - including smatterings of what sound like electronic bagpipes.
Unlike much of what I review, I've listened to this CD many times already, and it's going to take something pretty special to deflect this one from being my 'Top Album of 1999'. It's shit-hot. If this mob tour Britain then I'll go see 'em for sure. - Slutto
Musical highlights are `The SAM Song` (a re-write of `Ghost Riders in the Sky`) and `Ordinary Sunday` (which has always been arguably the greatest song in their repetoire).
If I have any criticisms it is that the songs on the CD and video are exactly the same - a pity because I would have liked to have seen more material available. This is rapidly becoming one of my favourite bands. The drumming, which fuses the 4/4 beat of contemporary folk rock with the complex contrapuntal thythms of marching bands on both sides of the Atlantic is a high spot of the instrumentation, and when I realised that this extraordinary drummer is also the tin whistle player then one can only be in awe of the man`s talent. Good One Guys. - Atilla the Hen.
There's nothing like a good generalisation, especially where the Irish are concerned. For instance, it's often said that the Irish enjoy a good fight, and this CD is certainly fighting music. Or rather, the lyrics are.
Musically, it's live folk rock at its best: the mellow and enchanting guitars and Ginger Baker-style 'busy' drumming underpin the 'have a good time' style merry vocals, and it all contrasts dramatically to the malevolent lyrics. Malevolent to the Brits, that is. The songs are mainly about the centuries-old (700-year-old?) Irish-British battle, from the viewpoint of a die-hard non-Saxon republican. Almost every track relentlessly emphasises the nationalistic patriotism themes: that the Irish never forget being trampled on; they'll never surrender; this is war and the Irish young are eager to join up; and that the Brits are evil scum.
However, I think I can safely say that Ian Paisley would probably think this lot are the spawn of Satan. - Slutto
TWITCHY'S DITCH Thoughts on life, love and music from Twitchy the Tramp in his tawdry little ditch..
I attempted to remedy this in a novel way. I distributed cardbord boxes of differing sizes to all the tramps in Nuneaton. All the boxes had a large square hole cut in the side. When a tramp wanted to watch 'television' another tramp would poke their head through the hole and act. We had quite a wardrobe pilfered from the council dump and Slit-eye ran the special effects department. This 'magic kingdom' could make the wildest visual effects seem real. His tricks included old November 5th bangers, shaken cans of larger, mud, and those funny looking balloons you always seem to find lying around in parks (kids must be very careless).
We soon discovered our transmission range was limited to Riversley Park and that most of our viewers had used the 't.v. sets' as new homes. It looked like the end for T.B.C. but then somthing amazing happened. Tony Blair, in a shameless attempt to court public favour, introduced public access tv into Britain. This meant that all minority groups, no matter how scummy, could have their own channel. Soon T.B.C. was broadcasting to the whole tramp nation.
We solved the lack of electricity problem by way of a new law that all shops selling televisions had to have them switched to T.B.C. This way all tramps could watch TV.
Our programmes included exellent wild life documentories like 'The lice about us' and 'Life on tramps'. Historical epics such as 'Pus and Predudice' and 'I Clawedatscabs'. Comedy was catered for by such notable productions as 'Dad`s Barmy' (a side-splitting look at senile dementure), and 'Last of the summer winos' (three old men get drunk and have incontinence-related fun). My own personal favourites were the science fiction epics like 'Dosser Who' (a renegade filth lord who travels time and space in the Retardis, an old fridge larger on the inside than the out, battling the forces of cleanliness and sobriety) and 'The Loiterer' (about one tramp's attempts to escape from a public lavatory in the sinister 'Village'. 'I am not a number two!')
Unfortunatly the TV shops complained to the government that their sales had plummeted due to having their shops chock-a-block with piss-reeking tramps. Blair, like the spinless, u-turning, cowardly, lying shitbag he is, caved in and pulled the plug on T.B.C. Still, our news programme 'John Craven`s Scatround' won a Bafta award!
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ETHNIC CLEANSING?
AN Australian linguist has translated an Aboriginal song, written more than 100 years ago, with a powerful protest against the arrival of foreigners on their land.
SADE MAKES HIS MARK (stinging red ones?)
Italian researchers say they have found the scrawled signatures of Casanova and the Marquis de Sade on a wall of the subterranean ruins of Nero's Golden Palace, next to the Colosseum, which is to be reopened in June after nearly 20 years of restoration and excavation. The graffiti are a few inches apart, suggesting that the 18th century's two arch libertines - who were not known to have met - may even have visited the palace together.
'VIBRANT' BESTIALITY SHOCKS KIDDIES
The Royal Shakespeare Company has warned that its production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is unsuitable for children.
Directed by Michael Boyd, it depicts Titania, the fairy queen, being shafted by a randy stage donkey. Pupils from a Catholic school in Coventry, England, were reportedly horrified.
Each issue we look at what's online and try to distinguish between the dross and the decent stuff....
KORN
www.korn.com is not the official Korn homepage, apparently, and throws up an 'ActiveX control with data that is not known to be safe' warning upon entry. Very welcoming. The front page can be bypassed by entering http://www.korn.com/menu.html which gives access to albums info, pics, and tour news (none at present)
RAMMSTEIN
Quite a few of Rammstein’s are in German, unsurprisingly, but www.maceandcrown.com/features_02_040798.htm tells us that Rammstein "Yearns" to revitalize industrial rock - it’s a review of their 1998 album "Sehnsucht" ('Yearning').
LIMP BIZKIT
www.flip-records.com/Limp%20Bizkit/limp.htm gives a nice range of tour dates, biogs, pictures, video clips & sound samples, and links to a few fan pages.
ICE CUBE
www.icecube.com takes ages to load up and doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
INCUBUS
incubus.musicpage.com/ was particularly unwelcoming when I went there: it threw up the 'ActiveX control with data that is not known to be safe' warning, and then ran into some java errors. If you get past these, you’ll find music biogs and tour info.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UNLISTENABLE
(CD REVIEWS)
***** Brilliant!
**** Pretty damn' good
*** Average but no cigar, Mr President
** Could do better
* Shite
FAMILY VALUES TOUR 1998
Various
Epic 494 020 2. Released: 5 Apr 1999 *****
Loads of 'live' atmosphere and raw immediacy energises this amusingly-titled in-yer-face album to a remarkable degree. A modern-day 'Greasy Truckers' - a live album with a package of bands and DJ links. Only this lot are grunge or rap (or both), instead of hippy spaceos like the 'Truckers' mob were. This lot toured the US last year. And the 'fuck' count probably exceeds 50 throughout the album, hence my amusement with the title. Bizkit's track 'Faith' has the repeated refrain 'shut the fuck up!', for instance.
ATHENRYE
Live at the Barrowlands
ATR CDO50 (CD and Video) *****The fifth album and the third to come out on CD, this (together with its accompanying video) capture what one can suppose is a typical gig by Glasgow`s finest. It sounds reminiscent of their first CD (`My Last farewell`) rather than the warmer and alightly more dense sound on the more recent studio album, but proves without doubt that this band can cut it live as well as they can in the studio.
The Brits are getting worried, and they're going to worry more...
ALIEN MUTATION
DNA
Kinetix KINXCD9 *** (reviewed 3/5/99)Rhythmic trance music: drum machine with bass and gentle swirly bits. This is towards the meditative end of ambient space music - it's so laid-back it reminds me of those relaxation tapes some people buy: on the title track there's someone murmuring on about 'watching the fishes' for instance, but the tracks are basically instrumentals, mostly 120 beats-per-minute stuff ideal for chilling out to after a session of more rapid space dance. The Kinetix catalogue classifies this as 'pulsing medative eletronix'. Yep. - Slutto
SHAMANIC TRIBES ON ACID
Acid Apocalypse
Kinetix KINXCD11 **** (reviewed 30/4/99)Drum machine-based space acid, at the relentless 150 beats-per-minute tempo so popular in clubs and raves when the punters are spaced out on ecstasy. The identical tempos and the varying repetitive keyboard patterns and swirly spacey effects make it hard to actually recall any particular tracks afterwards, so the Tribes have enlivened things by giving the tracks groovy names like 'The mad hatters acid tea party' and 'Omnifarious splifferous' - and the amusing 'Bass ritual'. On one track the entire vocal is a sampled Leonard Rossiter, from the tv sitcom Rising Damp, saying 'I was drugged to the eyeballs: I slept so long I missed Magic Roundabout...' that, and the name of the 'band' and of the CD says it all, really. - Slutto
COMING SOON....
Iron Maiden compilation combined with a video game - review held over until we've fully explored it - We don't wanna go off at half-cock, do we? Especially if there's a chance of Postal-style mayhem to enjoy...
...AND WHY THE HELL NOT?
Since we began in Cyberspace we have been reprinting a potted history of this project since its roots as a badly photocopied fanzine thingy a decade ago. If you still want to read this stuff you can access it thru our web-site. If you are heartily sick of it (as we are) you don`t have to.