Newsbleat

1) Yayyyy! Shouty pinhead Alesha Dixon, what was in Mis-Teeq, has put some groovy solo material on Myspace. Assuming this is the throwaway, non-single, material we have plenty to look forward to when she launches her comeback later this year.
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2) Arrrrgh! The man behind the cancelled / reinstated / cancelled sitcom Arrested Development says he's walking away from the show. But 20th Century Fox hint (again) that the show might come back. Stop the madness!!
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3) Ewwwww! Ryan Seacrest is smooching Teri Hatcher. Gross.
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4) Ooooooh! Get tickets for sell-out concerts at face value from other fans! Altruistic website Scarlet Mist beats the touts (and Ebay).
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5) Gotcha! Actor Joseph Gordon Levitt papparazzes the papparazzi, and puts a film about it on the web. You like? We like.
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6) Finally! You know how we were going on about how great old videogame soundtracks were yesterday? (yes, of course you do) Well, the super mario theme seems to have some rather odd devotees. Watch below as a teenager plays the song on two guitars at once. For no apparent reason.

Or, indeed, these people doing it a capella. For no apparent reason.


That is all.

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Jacko's secret sonic soundtrack

Game music has become very lazy over the last couple of years. If you're not shooting prostitutes to the sounds of Since You've Been Gone, you have endure 'exclusive new material' (ie: hopeless songs not fit for a b-side) by never-heard-of-em hip-hop acts. With a few notable exceptions (Katamari, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil), everything reeks of marketing 'synergy' and awful jock-rock.

Back in the days of the Sega Megadrive and the Nintendo Entertainment System, however, games had composers - and they had to be creative. Despite a sonic pallette that consisted of bleeps, pings and sandpapery-synthesized drums, you will still be able to find people who can hum the theme tune to Tetris, Mario or Zelda.

So good were these 16-bit compositions, that they caught the imagination of Michael Jackson. And, it has been revealed, he was comissioned by Sega to write the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3! Unfortunately, due to Jackson's "issues" with the law in 1994, those contributions were scrapped before the game was published.

However, an amateur documentary on Youtube claims that some of his original work has survived. Take a look:

Okay, so it's more of a news feature than a documentary. And it's full of speculation. And the voice-over has been done by a bored lab assistant.

But it's definitely worth watching, especially for the examples of Sonic 3 music turning up in Jackson's singles. Although I'm sure that most of these songs came out three years before the game - shurely some mistake?!

Insert your own joke about Jackson and fiddling with joysticks here.

Watch the video at Youtube.

Interview with Roger Hector who wrote the replacement soundtrack.

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Video of the week: Imitation Of Life

Not only is this REM's last truly great single, it's also my favourite REM video (and there are plenty to choose from).

The film, set at a rather posh poolside barbeque, only lasts 20 seconds - looped backwards and forwards over and over for the duration of the song. It sounds like one of those awful Polish cartoons Channel 4 used to show late at night after Hill Street Blues - but it's actually an incredibly intricate and memorable piece of film. You'd see it in art galleries if art galleries actually had galleries of art instead of piles of bricks or plastercasts of syphilitic dogs, or whatever.

That's not to say the clip can withstand the following 'decontruction' of its 'motives' I came across in the New York Press: It identifies the decrepitude of modern vision, infiltrates the tv habits that are sanctioned by swindles like Dogma 95 and the acceptance of rank video imagery and then pushes forward.

No it doesn't, it's just a music video.

A music video that must have been a bitch to pull off, mind you. How did they make sure all the cast were lip-syncing the right line, when they were all filmed at the same time? Thinking about it makes my brain hurt.

And although this sort of visual trickery is usually the domain of Michel Gondry (think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) the clip was actually directed by Garth Jennings, who was also responsible for the Supergrass video I featured a couple of weeks ago.

The greatest thing since bread came sliced.

Buy REM's Greatest Hits on DVD

More on the video at Wikipedia

Unbelievably pretentious review in the NY Press

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I can't dance to that music you're playing

A friend of mine used to work in a petrol station where, as some sort of inhumane experiment, the managers insisted that the local radio station (the inappropriately-named Cool FM) be played at all times. This poor sod would frequently come home from an eight-hour shift of Whitney Houston, hopeless puns and petrol fumes with the most unbelievable migraine. As well as a bizarre appreciation for the early works of Billy Joel.

When this sort of environmental terrorism is perpetrated by management, you can't really argue. But USAToday reports that more and more people are using their ipod at work. And not just with headphones. The bastards are using speakers to 'treat' their co-workers to the shuffled contents of their music library.

Obviously, this wouldn't be a problem in my office, where my superlative taste in music is a well-established fact. But what if you worked with Sam Glazer? He told the paper: "I love music, and it's motivating to me, especially if it's a power song like Eye of the Tiger."

Holy mother of fuck! How have his colleagues not yet murdered him with spiky poles? Nobody should be subjected to Eye of the Tiger. Not in the workplace. Not in Guantanamo. Not ever.

Later in the article, a health and safety officer warns that using an ipod could stop workers "hearing warnings shouted by co-workers."

Exactly. Such warnings may include "Sam, you cretin, if you don't turn off your ipod I will set fire to you right now", or "I am running towards you with a pair of scissors, you lame-music-liking son of a whore."

To be fair, there have been studies suggesting that certain types of music stimulate creativity and motivation in the workplace. But, as anyone who's worked in hospital radio will tell you, it's an extremelly bad idea to let the people around you choose that music. So please, people, stick to headphones from now on.

And what became of my friend in the garage? Well, after a particularly harrowing Beautiful South 'marathon' on the local radio station, he finally lost his nerve. Loading up one of his own CDs into the company soundsystem, he treated the forecourt to an all-evening loop of Snoop Doggy Dogg's For All My Niggaz & Bitches. Needless to say, he never darkened the automatic doors again.

USA Today

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A short break in service

Hello!

I'm still here. But last week I wasn't.
Life's like that sometimes.
Deal with it.

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Birthday present

Jack White is an odd egg (which, I suppose, makes him an egg white) but he does make great music.

His latest side project is a mini-supergroup made up of bands from around Detroit - featuring Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence of the Green Hornes, Brendon Benson, and Jack White himself.

As you can see none of the constituent groups could previously have been considered super unless they were called the White Stripes. But that's by the by, as their first single Steady As She Goes is a fantastic slab of poppy punk.

White has always had a talent for melody but a seeming inability to finish writing a song. Luckily, the rest of the Raconteurs seem not to suffer from attention deficit order, and they've beautifully fleshed out this track without detracting from the raw power that makes the White Stripes so unique.

Various blogs have (rightly) commented on the intro's similarity to Joe Jackson's Is She Really Going Out With Him but in a world where every other guitar band is content to plagiarise Coldplay, and nobody but Coldplay, you have to admire White's sass. But don't say that phrase out loud. People might get the wrong idea.

By the way, it was my little sister who brought this song to my attention (noting that she'd 'already heard it twice' and was therefore 'much cooler' than me). Since I'll be missing her birthday next week, here's a cheeky download of the song especially for her. But don't expect it to be here for long - that White fellow is quite litigious, you know.

Steady As She Goes - get it here

Watch the video - on the Apple Quicktime website

The Raconteurs - fabulous retro website

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