Moog Cookbook – Whole Lotta Love

Warning: disturbing levels of Cotton hatred imminent.


Generally, I’m all in favour of the law against twatting a person full in the face with a banjo, ramming a javelin up their left nasal cavity, taking a rusty chainsaw to their lower limbs and then running over their twitching carcass with a tank. However, I also believe morality is a mutable concept not given to black and white rulings – especially when faced with the perma-grinning mush of Fearne Cotton.

Yes, the final episode of Top of the Pops airs tonight and the blame for its demise, and that of Western culture in general, lies entirely on Cotton’s shoulders. It’s not so much the fact that she has the brain power of a squashed slug (or Patrick Kielty for that matter) or that the only adjective in her vocabulary is ‘amazing’ or that she’s sleeping her way through faux-indie band-boys like a Primark Winona Ryder; it’s that her vacuous inanity has forced me to thrust my head through 6 television screens in the last two weeks.

Fearne’s (apparently non-sarcastic) reaction to Damien Marley’s song of Jamaican violence and poverty Welcome To Jamrock (sample lyric: “Welcome to Jamrock/Poor people are dead at random/Political violence, can done”) was:

Ahh! A nice bit of Jamaican sunshine there from Damian Marley.

Cotton, shut your shit-spout you beslubbering flap-mouthed death-token.

Ahem, on to matters 1997 related. In tribute to Top of the Pops, here’s Moog Cookbook’s cover of the TOTP aka Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love.

Moog Cookbook’s first album of kitsch synthesised versions of current indie hits (most notably Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun) seemed like a one-off oddity. However, support from the rock-ocracy and probably no little cajoling from the record company saw them repeat the trick with classic rock songs on 1997’s Ye Olde Space Bande. This time they had a few guests along with them including Eels’ Mr E., MC5’s Wayne and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh.

Surprisingly, the joke hasn’t worn thin. This is probably due to the obvious glee with which these tracks are made. There’s an enormous sense of fun as they throw snippets of The Who and Beethoven into this track and the ‘bumblebee trapped in a jam-jar’ sound on the guitar solo is irresistible.

Moog Cookbook – Whole Lotta Love

Buy Ye Olde Space Bande

For Fearne

Stacey Kent – More Than You Know

Modern Romance, Martin Beck, 1997

Ahh, they don’t write ‘em like this anymore. After the ramshackle blues and raucous rock and roll, a change of pace this week with some romantic, laid-back-ness from the songbook.

They didn’t write ‘em like this in 1997 either, of course. The song comes from the 1929 musical Great Day. The coy, understated romanticism didn’t really fit with the let it all hang out climate of 1997. It was the year that the original book of Sex and the City and J.Lo was (allegedly) cheating on both first husband Ojani Noa (whom she divorced in 1997) and Puffy P Fiddly Diddly Diddy Daddy Combes with third husband to be Marc Anthony.

I love how comparatively half hearted some of the lyrics of this song are (“I’m growing fonder of you” “Wouldn't I be glad to take you” “I'll string along”). I get a bit sick of all the ‘climb the highest mountain’ love songs. If your true love’s at the top of a mountain it would be much easier if she came down.

Stacey Kent – More Than You Know

Buy Close Your Eyes

Read The FWARA Conference Report 1997 on Romance (how sexy).


BTW

1997 was the subject of the first episode of Annually Retentive the unimaginative rip-off of Have I Got News For You starring Rob Brydon within the actual show - also called Annually Retentive, also starring Rob Brydon and also an unimaginitive rip-off (of Larry Sanders).

We've just gone over 40,000 hits. That's a bit rubbish really.

Sleater-Kinney – Words and Guitar

In deference to Sleater-Kinney’s feminism, today’s post will be vigorously gender neutral with no mention use of gender biased terms

There’s only one way to go once you’ve been turned into lego. So it was a wise move for Sleater-Kinney to call it a day recently before Duplo and Weebles got involved and the whole affair became cheap and tawdry.

Sleater-Kinney were born when the Riot Grrrl movement was begin to die on its hairy rrrse. Both Sleater front-persons, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, had previously been in other Riot Grrrl bands. For their debut, self titled album they followed the feminist person-ifesto of the Riot Grrrl movement with a collection of man-hating, hectoring, didactic songs. (It was a pile of person-ure to be honest).

By the time of their third album, Dig Me Out, in 1997 they had dropped the hard-line feminist a-gender and, after a run of drummers that would make Spinal Tap spin in their spandex, had picked up Janet Weiss. Lyrics this time focussed less on male violation and more on rocking out (sample lyric: “rock you till your good and dead/rock you till there's nothing left”). A trend that they would continue until their final album The Woods which was regularly compared to Led ‘The Shark Incident’ Zeppelin.


Sleater-Kinney – Words and Guitar

Buy Dig Me Out

Download Sleater-Kinney and many others on Kill Rock Stars Records

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