Thursday, March 08, 2007

The RZA's Greatest Bumps

Hey!

Check out this shi-ut.

It's a mix of some 30 odd tracks that the RZA used in his studio wizardry.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/wu-originals-mix-mp3.html

here's the track list:

Allen Toussaint Orchestra - Underdog Theme
Willie Hutch - Baby, Come Home
King Floyd - Don't Leave Me Lonely
The Dramatics - Tune Up
Lamont Dozier - Shine
Syl Johnson - Could I Be Falling In Love
The Sylvers - Wish That I Could Talk To You
Willie Mitchel - Groovin'
Donny Hathaway - I Believe To My Soul
O. V. Wright - Lets Straighten It Out
Barbara & The Browns - In My Heart
Jimmy Van - I Weigh The World With Kilos
Antoine Duhamel - Belphegor Theme
Al Green - Gotta Find A New World
The Dells - Love Is BlueThe Emotions - If You Think It
Bob James - Nautilus
O.V. Wright - Motherless Child
Bernard Wystraete - Daydream
The Charmels-As Long As I Got You
Baby Huey - Hard Times
Sweet Inspirations-Why Marry
Madlads - Gone The Promises Of Yesterday
The Sylvers - Stay Away From Me
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass Band - Treasure Of San Miguel
Asha Bhonsle's Dum Maro Dum
Luther Ingram-To The Other Man
Stylistics - You're A Big Girl NowSyl Johnson - Is It Because I'm Black
New Birth - Honey Bee
Wendy Rene - After Laughter
Syl Johnson - Different Strokes
Gladys Knight & The Pips - The Way We Were

It can be downloaded too.

Thanks to this guy for it.

z

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Freeloaders: CocoRosie

I won't be showering you pricks in loads of free music all the time because there's plenty of other places that will. Instead i'll do a much nicer thing - wade through the morass of new stuff out their and cherry pick the decent sounds. Or the things i like anyway.

Here's CocoRosie's new record which, after an initial listen or two sounds a bit slight, but is actually a real grower. It's like watching a fireworks display through a blanket fog: muted but still something to behold.


CocoRosie - 'The Adventures Of Ghosthorse and Stillborn'


myspace


If you like this record, then buy it when it comes out on Touch and Go Records on the 10th of April.

Wanker Wednesday: No. 1 Louis Walsh


Welcome to a new and hotly anticipated addition to the Zeitghost, where I get to target my vitriol at one particularly loathsome prick in the music industry. With such a humongous amount of deserved targets, I'll probably run out of Wednesdays before I run out of wankers but that's a risk I'm willing to take for you guys.

First up Kiltimagh Crap Merchant Louis Walsh.

Louis Walsh is to music what predatory paedophiles are to the Internet. He sources out nubile young boys and grooms them to perform unspeakable acts for his pleasure. What's even more creepy is that you know he's permanently hiding an erection every time you see his pinched little mug. He's like those sacred heart pictures of Jesus who's eyes follow you around the room. Except it's Louis's jap's eye that has it's sights set on you laddy. Ick.

Louis is often credited as being a pop Svengali but his track record is shit. Aside from those dullard automaton's Westlife and Boyzone - who were identikit versions of each other - he has no success stories. Ronan Keating, Samantha Mumba, Bellefire are all residents of Skid Row, and the Carter Twins were such a ball of shite that even those boffins at Wikipedia are considering scrapping their entry because their legacy is so worthless. Oh the ignomy! Also as a foot note to Louis's shitness, the only band to ever eulogise him in song were the Donegal ewok-rockers The Revs with a tuneless packet of piss called 'Louis Walsh'.

And then there's the gayness. Everyone deserves their privacy, but Louis Walsh is such a misogynist little spunk-farter that it's in the public interest that he be outed. According to a news item on a bitchy gossip site i read ages ago, Louis always needed two cars when he was being transported to Shite-Factor recordings: one for his clammy-handed self, and the other for some stray rent boy he was knobbing at the time. I suppose he was taken around the back entry. Oooh-Er, Betty!

Louis's disgusting musical legacy will plague this Island for years to come. He has turned pop music into sinister and exploitative brand of accounting, where all that matters is the numbers. Okay so the whole of the music industry is about that - but at least there's some decent shit out there. If everyone did it Louis's way, all music would be one long, ear-bleeding, karaoke session.


That's pretty much my reasons for the vendetta right there. I'm glad i got it off my chest. All that need to be taken care of now are the formalities.


"Congratulations Louis Walsh: it's Wednesday and you're a wanker."


Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Some Nice News

Let's begin this new era of camaraderie and blow-jobs with some cheery good tidings from those Out On A Limb fatcats, who are splashing the cash again after their recent snapping up of Cork cunts Hooray For Humans. The Limerick label has now pounced on vulnerable indie-electronica-poppet Crayonsmith and convinced him, by employing a series of techniques they witnessed on a recent episode of 24, to join their shady cabal. They released this statement on the coup:


"Crayonsmith has this week become the latest addition to Out On A Limb Records, the independent label based in Limerick, Ireland.


Crayonsmith is the music of Dublin's CiarĂ¡n Smith, with good friends Ruadhan "Big Fists" O'Meara and Ronan Jackson aiding on guitars, keys, bass and percussion.


In 2006, Crayonsmith's debut album "Stay Loose" was self-released on the Musical Voodoo label. Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous was so impressed by it that he personally asked Smith to support his band on their UK and Irish tour. Other shows since the release of "Stay Loose" has seen Crayonsmith play dates with The Decemberists, Islands, Juana Molina, Viva Voce, and Quasi amongst others.


A solo US tour starts on March 21st, with a prestigious guest spot to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (see dates below). All at Out On A Limb were already big fans of "Stay Loose" , and a batch of new songs since have managed to even surpass that. These new songs are currently being recorded for the second Crayonsmith LP, due out around February 2008, and Out On A Limb is only too delighted to be involved in the release of this.


On another significant note, this will also be the first OOAL release to come from outside Munster!


For more info, and to order "Stay Loose", go to www.myspace.com/crayonsmith . You can also join the Crayonsmith mailing list by dropping a mail to crayonsmith@gmail.com."


Frankly, I'm livid they've signed up a Dublin jackeen bastid but there you go. Money talks, bullshit notions of loyalty and a healthy regional bias, walks. There are rumours that to compensate for his origins within the Pale, Crayonsmith will be forced to perform all his gigs in a Munster rugby jersey.Too right.


Congratulations to one and all on the arrangement. I had the pleasure of meeting Ciaran recently, and he's a thoroughly great chap. I was completely ballbagged at the time though.


Z

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Right.

No more fannying about.

This time it's serious.

I'm back on the wagon with this blogging lark, but this time there'll be less twittering on about crap and more good stuff like music.

Unfortunately, the place will still look pretty shit cos i've no idea about HTML. But all you lot are ugly pricks anyway so you're not going to get hung up on superficial stuff like looks and whatnot.

So where will this new direction be taking us all then? Well, basically i couldn't be bothered sticking up the Zeitghost stuff because it's already on the Clare People website, and having two places containing the same bum dribble could cause the Internet to explode.

Instead i'll be sticking up records and links to other shit i find on the web. It'll take shape in the next few weeks. The motivation for this singular and radical overhaul of everything i have previously stood for is this: I spend way too much time online and it would be nice to have something more constructive to show for my efforts than a sixteen page argument on a navel-gazing music forum about some cunting claptrap. Or worse still - just reading the tommyrot and not making a peep myself.

So I hear by promise to update this shithole regularly so we can all share in the boundless possibilities of the interweb.

bed.

Zeitghost

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Atchoo

I have a cold. I can see you nodding your head sagaciously, saying: "Oh, that's the one that's going around. The Zeitghost has that cold that I had a few weeks back." Yes I'm aware you think I have that cold. I have been told this innumerable times by lots of people. They all think I have their cold, and it's a fallacy. The truth is I wouldn't be caught dead with one of your colds. It's not becoming of me. I have a designer cold.

My cold is a trendoid, hipster, sexy kind of cold. I actually picked it up in London at the weekend. Shoreditch to be precise, that hotbed of wonky haircuts, skinny jeans, and punchable faces. I was sitting outside this superubercool scenster hangout – a quirky little Malaysian piebald donkey ball shavers practice (can't tell you the full address because you'll cramp the place's style) – and I was only wearing a string vest and some luminous green corduroy hot pants. I was cool. I was cold too, but being cool was the priority.

So that's how I got my cold. I think I picked it up off this member of a radically rad art collective, while we were dicussing the possibility of locating a 'space'. Everything is about space in London you see. "Do you have a space?" "What's your space like?" "Is there room in your space for two?" etc. I told him I had a space back home, and there was enough room to kick ball. He had the sniffles and looked pensively at Banksy stencil that turned out to be a Caution: Hipsterai Loafing About sign.

As you can see the from it's origins, this cold is pretty chic. I was told it's part of a nouvelle vague of colds, a high concept piece of design, exclusive, refined, urbane. Just like it's host. None of this Lemsip quaffing, Halls Soother sucking, Vicks inhaling consumerist crap. The cold can not be tamed. It's a unique and vibrant piece of biological engineering. I am privileged.

If you think about it, think cold is like a bit of haute couture fashion. It's a once-off, it fits me perfectly and I would be seen dead outside in it. Did I mention I got it in London, one of the planet's real fashion capitals? And this cold picked me out. I wasn't looking for a cold. It decided that I was the sophisticated enough to be the carrier. Pretty neat for me. Needless to say, people I travelled with didn't get this cold.

They, like you, probably got there cold's off some germ covered toilet chain in Tescos, or by being sneezed on by an incontinent old woman in the queue for Holy Communion. As good a place as any, but not really my scene any more. Next season I plan to make a trip to New York maybe see what sort of cold I can pick up there. Maybe I'll even get the flu in Paris. Imagine hypothermia in Milan this spring! The expense is extravagant and vulgar I know but it's worth it.

If I have one reservation about this haute-coldture it has to be the snot. I have a constant tsunami of snot streaming down my face, and chic as this London town snot is, it can be awkward to manage. Maybe next season I'll get a pret-a-porter version of this cold, one that I can fling on, have for any occasion, and is less high maintenance.

This cold is already becoming a classic, must have accessory, especially now that it's Kate Moss endorsed. Apparently she is appearing on the front of next months Vogue with a runny nose, pink eye and fist of soggy, mangled Kleenex. My cold will probably be gone by then, and all the johnny-come-latelys will be running about balls naked desperate to catch a chill. Pathetic really but that's what it's like being a slave to fashion.

The Zeitghost

Friday, September 22, 2006

Cup of Woe

This is for, all intents and proposes, a momentous week for Ireland. The Ryder Cup is here. The biannual golfing slugfest between the US and Europe rolls into town, 24 of the world's finest strokemakers doing battle in the plush surroundings of the K Club. What an occasion. Memo to all the people involved in the Ryder Cup: No one cares.

Oh, all right, some people care, some rich people who like golf, but for the hoi polloi, it's a case of 'Will this mean an end to those woefully OTT AIB ads? If so, then yes I am looking for ward to it. Otherwise I do not give a rats ass." I'm not trying to belittle golf; it's a fantastic sport and it saves a lot of marriages, but the fact that two sprawling continents are squabbling over a bit of tin, demeans everyone involved. Even I feel cheapened by having to write about it in my column.

And all this palaver over ripping off those coming. Rip Off Ireland back in action read the headlines. Who cares? It's a load of rich people coming over for a weekend of golf. If you can't rip off rich people, well who can you rip off? They won't even care or notice. Now if it was the Homeless World Cup of Golf I would be up in arms, but seeing as these people have enough money to flit away on flying over here for the Ryder Cup, then they should be charged 14 euros for a pint.

I really can't get too excited cheering for Europe. It's Europe, loads of different people and places I have no affection or association with at all. These people are our arch nemeses from the Eurovision. How can I be expected to join in the camaraderie with my Luxembourger brethren when I know that their voting panel gave us nul points earlier this year. They are landlocked scum. Period.

And how about across the rest of Europe. Will there be dancing on the streets in Bratislava if Europe win? Bonfires in Bergen? Celebratory Ak47 gunfire in Ankara? No, because all these golfers will just piss off back to their houses felling smug about themselves. If the team was forced on a infinite tour of every village in Europe, give a speech in every town centre on the back of an articulated truck then perform a hearty rendition of 'Rock and Roll Kids' by Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington, maybe, maybe I'd have a little more respect.

It could be worse I guess: they could be playing pitch and putt. I find it hard to fathom the logic behind becoming a pitch and putt whizz. It's not a proper sport, it's a third of a sport. Like being good at penalties in soccer, but not being able to run. Surely if you get good at it you should grow up, stop shouting at the eleven year olds up ahead to play quicker, invest in more than two clubs. It's depressing watching fully grown adults preening about the truncated course acting like Tiger Woods competing in the Community games. No parent or guardian should be allowed on the pitch and putt course without the accompaniment of a minor. Simple.

The Ryder Cup leaves us all with a dilemma about what to do to successfully avoid it for the coming weekend. There will be bleatings in the press and on telly about it all the time because it's a rich people's sport and rich people run the show and us regular plebs have to put it with rich people's crap like we always do. I say we should use this opportunity to make golf a bit more egalitarian; play some street golf over the weekend, ie. whacking a ball of wound elastics with an umbrella around the town, occupy the local golf courses and plant love heart shaped flower beds on the greens, and distribute Pringle sweaters and plus-four trousers kids to from the wrong side of the tracks. Fingers crossed, if these schemes have the desired effect, and we make lots of money from them, by the time the Ryder Cup comes again we might be rich enough to care.

The Zeitghost

Monday, September 11, 2006

News: 40th Anniversary Re-Issue of Pet Sounds In Celebratory Liquid LSD Form


Capitol Records announced today that the commemorative 40th Anniversary re-issue of the Beach Boys seminal record Pet Sounds would come in special liquid LSD form. Spokesman for the company, Rod Shileinburg, made the announcement as millions of music fans around the world waited to sample this re-release.

"We are delighted to present the Beach Boys masterwork Pet Sounds in this revolutionary liquid LSD form", he gleefully shared with a room of eager music journalists. "This never-before-seen experiment will give the listener an altogether different listening experience to previous versions of Pet Sounds. We are all incredibly excited about this release", he added.

The decision was agreed on after months of speculation. Shileinburg stresses that it was the truest way to celebrate this stone cold classic. "We already had the stereo, mono, lazerdisc, picture disc, remasters, original edits, digipak, box set, and Dolby Digital 5.1 versions of Pet Sounds released, so we wanted to try something new. Hopefully this new liquid LSD version will be every bit as ground-breaking as the record was on it's release."

And he promises something special for the Beach Boy fans. "This version will give the best ever insight into the creative genius of Brian Wilson, and how out of his gourd he was at the time."

Beach Boy fanatics have greeted the decision with unanimous approval. Franky Gillup, a long standing fan, was ecstatic at the news. "I've got all the Beach Boys records but this release is going to be a bit special. This LSD version might prompt me have a breakdown just like Brian Wilson. It's all very exciting."

Capitol also announced that the box set release of R.Kelly's award-winning musical 'Trapped in the Closet" would come with a limited edition sachet of Kelly's own sperm.

"School's Blown To Pieces" - Alice Cooper circa 1972

I had that dream again this week. You know that dream. The one where you're back at school, repeating the leaving and you've no study done. Then Big Bird arrives in asking you for a game of Charlie Brown Top Trumps, but you're too busy making out with Twink to even care, while all the time you're sitting on an armchair made of Liga, debating the merits and de-merits of American foreign policy with a Polish member of staff from O'Brien's Sandwich shop. That dream. We've all had it.

What is it about remembering school that fills us with a sense of impending dread? Is it the memories of those incessant beatings? Is it being frozen out of all the cosy cliques because you were too much of a nerd? Is it having your lunch money stolen every day and then making a vow to yourself that some day all those who made your life misery will reap a terrible and painful vengeance involving boiled tar and pubic hair removal? For me, I suppose it's a random combination of all three.

This week, being September and all, I'm going to address my younger school going audience. I've being informed by the ABC figures that I have a significant number of younger readers who were attracted to my earlier, more puerile writings and have stuck around in the hope of a return to that grand era of knob gags. While these younger members (ooo-er!) are present I shall impart on them some handy advice: school is rubbish, get out now while you can; start working as a chimney sweep or matchstick seller now and who knows where you'll be in ten years.

And don't ever believe anyone who says school days are the best days of your life. This is a fallacy, routinely perpetuated by people who are clearly not in school and not showing any outwards signs of wanting to return to school in the near future. I never once heard a fellow student turn to me and say, 'You know while I was doing this unpaid, tedious and ditchwater dull history assignment on the former Minister for Agriculture James Dillon and his threat to drown Britain in a "sea of eggs", I realised this is one of the best days of my life." He would never have said it because a) he knew it was hogwash and b) he would have received a swift slice on the arse with a steel ruler when the next opportunity should present itself.

It's not just the act of being in school that's a drag, it's the lasting legacy it leaves. I hope you students realise that for all the fist-shaking machismo, and unsuitable nickname antics that go on behind your teachers' backs, you will always, always, always act all deferential to them when you meet them in the street, for the rest of your days. It's the truth. I still live in constant fear of being given a write out or lines by any of my former tutors, should they spot me involved in high-jinks that would almost take someone's eye out. Neither can I enjoy a cigarette without having someone to be wide, keep sketch or a derivation of both. These are the mental scars of school-going.

So what have we learned from today's lesson? School is a terrible waste of time. Lads you're better off going of down to nearest mine looking for work, while the girls should be putting those nimble little digits to use in the local linen factory. Reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic are all rubbish.

I suppose I should really put a disclaimer with this piece lest the impressionable young ones think school is all bad. There are some positives. It's a fantastic place to experiment with small amounts of alcohol, recreational drugs, and casual sex, but please kids, for God's sake, try to remember this important adage: everything in moderation. Even homework.


The Zeitghost