The Life and Times of Bitsy Ramone

I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you about my life or at least the soundtrack to it. Music is the largest part of my life. It's all about discovering and re-discovering music and perhaps a little bit of myself on the way. This will be done through words and videos and reminisces from the past and present. Along with the usual gig reviews and pictures, we shall be interviewing people about their influences too.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

The Bad and Not Very Good at all

I wasn't impressed at all with 'The Good, The Bad and The Queen' at all this week on Jools Holland. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to call them that, apparently. Although they are calling their project that, they actually don't want to be billed as that at all, they simply want to be called by their names.

Their first song, "Kingdom of Doom" has the the same melody as "London Calling" and has been slowed down to a whiny drawl for Damon to wax lyrical about how much he hates fame. The second track "Three Changes" was a little better as the legendary rythmn section got to show off a little bit but it still never went anywhere.

But to be honest, this really should have been called (despite the impressive supergroup style lineup) "The Damon Albarn Band", because that's all that it was, a second rate Blur effort and not even the good songs, the ones with the Albarn sap crooning over an organ/relationships about strolling down Camden Market with his wife and spending his millions of Gorrilaz pounds. I'm not feeling it all, with such an impressive line up, what's essentially a backlist of great music and talent behind them, I was expectant for something mindblowing, incendiary, instead it was like watching a bunch of dads jamming.
The talent and presence of former Clash bassist Paul Simonon shouls have at least excited me but instead I was left unfulfilled and unimpressed with his accompanying half-ska/half trying to keep up beat. I mean, even the Scissor Sisters resonated more with me and why has nobody in the media said what everyone else in the music media is thinking about the legendary Afrobeat drummer, Tony Allen which was,

"Who the fuck is Tony Allen?"

People keep talking about this guy and writing in reviews about how much of a pioneer despite never having heard of him at all. This guy just tapped along to the band and not even in any coherent beat, I could have played it better with my dick. I wasn't anything particularily special, mesmerizing or deserving the Arctic Monkeys-like hype the NME have been giving the rehearsals and initial live shows. Luckily, I'm not pandering to an editor whose been bribed by a record company to support the vast budgets I am sure that they will put into this third rate Pier bands record, when it surfaces. No, I can be honest. I just wish they will stock fucking about and decide on a name so we can start talking about how bloody awful they are. Personally regarding their name, I think they should have gone down the Prince route and just were honest about what this was,

"The Unpronouncable/Un-named Damon Albarn Masturbation Project."

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