Top 10 Songs to Always Have Sex to

Music has the ability to affect our emotions, a certain tune or song will take us straight back to our teens and open doors to parts of our memory that we thought were forever closed.

My brother’s favourite song was Tammy by Debbie Reynolds, I can clearly remember both of us sitting on the doorstep while he sang it, I must have been 3 years old.  



An ape experiencing Kylie



The emotional response to music is not just something that humans alone experience. In the animal kingdom, the overtly promiscuous chimpanzee will become over stimulated if the appropriate music is played loudly during the morning in its cage. Extensive research by scientists at The Guitar Library - although still in an early stage – show chimps copulating at a far greater rate when exposed to Telly Savalas’ version of ‘If,’ or anything from the first Spice Girls’ first CD.

In my quest to bring music of a more esoteric nature to the general public, I have delved deeply into The Guitar Library’s archives and after months of exhaustive work, have come up with the following results:

1.      For married couples whose love life needs a bit of a boost nothing can beat the pounding bass and rhythmic tom toms of Apache Run

2.      For those of you on a first date, the smooth sound of Patrick Yandall and LC Squared works everytime

3.      For the men who are just to busy to find a partner and plan to fly solo, try Kanoodle by Tom Pile. It’s not sad, but you’ll need a lot of tissues.

4.      For the rock gods and goddesses who are about to take the plunge and get hitched, look no further than Michael Bishop’s Hendrix inspired Woodstock Wedding.

5.      For those of you who are a bit more adventurous, and like a good raunchy romp, try hopping round the bedroom to Bizzara by Page and Follet.

6.      Into a bit of dressing up or re-enactment? Why not don your doublet and hose and cuddle up to Jerry Page’s  tambour and horn in On the Green

7.      Into threesomes? Look no further than Duke-a-holics Anonymous

8.      Foursomes and above - of either sex? Paul Wood’s Camptown should do the trick
9.      Fancy your cousin and you feel the need to tell someone about it? Try Country Slut.

10. Hairy legs, smoke Capstan Full Strength and down a pint of real ale in one go? Then we have something for you and your husband, try My Own Mistakes. Enjoy!
If you have any better ideas, let me know!

Peter Green, Kim Gavin, Pythagoras, Cameron, the Queen or Olympics. Who's in tune with popular culture?

I watched the guitarist Peter Green, who once had the fastest vibrato in the East end, on TV the other day, and Carlos Santana came up in the conversation.
I’ve always been totally unimpressed by Carlos, mainly because his guitar often sounded painfully out of tune. When I say painfully, I don’t mean a lot, just enough to create the kind of finger nails on the blackboard effect, something that was also perfected by the singer, Sade, who during the 80s produced her own unique signature sound – flat.

This is not sour grapes, but it’s just that slightly out of tune music grates on the ears. That confirmed bachelor boy Cliff Richard agrees. I remember him complaining about the Beatles' guitars being out of tune and I think he’s right, though the culprit was Paul - listen to Mean Mister Mustard and all that.

So how do we appear as a nation? Are we in tune or not? Let’s look at the Olympics.

I read in The Telegraph that the Olympic ceremony is going to contain a fab 'mash up' of Adele and Elgar and Blur, but no Harry Styles ... can't wait. Kim Gavin the artistic director said, ‘We are trying to introduce something that is an absolute melting pot of British creativity.’ Scary stuff, reminiscent of white shag pile carpets, full blast central heating and steak and potatoes with thick globules of gravy.

However I thought I’d better take a bit more notice of Kim Gavin so I Googled his web page. First thing I saw was a picture of Kim, explaining something in a meaningful way to supplicating student, a student plus the obligatory Cirque de Soleil, white faced mime (Kim again?)
Then there’s a few testimonials (a couple of spelling mistakes, or maybe Gary Barlow can’t spell), a bit of crawling from Take That’s manager, a glaring typo, plus an enviable credit list as long as your arm with endorsements from those other purveyors of fine taste, the Royal Family.  

I’d like to blame disco Di for introducing her melee of pompadoured chums (Elton and the like) to the Royal Family but since before even Henry VIII’s jester Will Sommers and fashion guru Beau Brummel there have always been fools at court.
After all, when one is cooped up like battery hens in gilded cages it’s important to say, ‘hey, we’re still here, we've got our fingers on the pulse, we’re still trendy.’  Just like David Cameron,  an ordinary bloke who chillaxes while playing Angry Birds on his i-Pad. Perhaps everyone is in tune but me, although I like to think of it more in terms of an outbreak of Hans Andersen's Emperor's New Clothes.

So who’s in tune?

Pythagoras’ system of tuning was based on mathematics, whereas Carlos Santana’s appears to be based on cannabis.
The Royal Family (I see Louis Spence plays the Queen in the T-Mobile ad) attempt to be in tune but always end up looking tacky, (bouffant guitarists strutting on the top of Buckingham Palace – talking of which, here’s a chance for me to get a satirical plug, listen here.)

As for David Cameron, there are no bar chords on the Strat like Tony, his musical efforts amount to propping up the bar with a glass of white wine while clutching a Karaoke mike.

So that leaves Peter Green who in 1970 tuned his Les Paul through my first amp, a Selmer Zodiac.
Great guitarist, sublime and subtle, not a bum note in site. Now this was a man very much in tune with the times.

Davy Jones - Artist or Artful Dodger?

With the death of Davy Jones some of us of a certain age are reflecting on that short time in our youth during the 60s when Monkee mania flourished.



 

Looking back at the Monkees, it’s possible to see them as an example of human synergy, with the group being greater than the sum of its parts with the Monkees pop group outperformed even its best individual members. 

And that’s surely how it was intended to be, with each manufactured Monkee being chosen to represent a different aspect of the human character. Davy was always the cute brown haired one, Micky the zany curly haired one, Mike the dark haired intellectual silent one, a la George Harrison, and Peter, the zany blond one with an occasional scientific bent.

It was a fail-safe formula that worked well and was used to great success  in Simon Fuller’s construction of the Spice Girls: Scary – dark and frizzy, Baby Spice, the Davy Jones of the group etc .



Monkees- Pleasant Valley Sunday



However after now reviewing a video of Pleasant Valley Sunday, it’s hard to believe that within the group, a synergy existed at all.

Marble chewing Mike Nesmith is undoubtedly doing a good job of miming with a 12 string Gretsch to a Beatle inspired guitar riff, though it doesn’t sound like a 12 string to me, while Peter Tork seems to be confidently hammering the piano with fingers hitting the keys at all the right moments.

Micky Dolenz sings and plays the drums reasonably well too and everything seems to be moving along fine until we see Davy. Unfortunately Davy has been lumbered with bass playing duties as Peter is busy on the keyboards.

To be fair, Davy does attack the bass with gusto, dancing around with confidence and eyeing the other group members, but without much success at eye contact. With regard to his playing, there is a shot of Davy changing chords in time with the music, which is good, but often he tends to stop, reconsider, then start again, strumming the bass as if it’s an acoustic. Interesting stuff, bass presumably wasn’t his forte.  

So what did Davy Jones contributed musically to the Monkees? For a long time I thought Davy was the singer, he had all the right qualifications- floppy sleek hair, boyish grin and a fistful of big maracas. But then I realised that of course the majority of Monkee hits, Last Train to Clarkesville, I’m a Believer and Pleasant Valley Sunday were all sung by Micky Dolenz.

Davy’s contribution to the Monkees was not really a musical one, he started life as an actor, playing the role of Artful Dodger in the West End and Broadway for which he was nominated a Tony award. But besides his acting skills, what he added to the Monkees was firstly a raw cuteness and lovable innocence mixed with an endearing hybrid English accent, part Lancashire, part London, part posh.

Monkees - Daydream Believer

Secondly he sang Daydream Believer, which I still hum to myself every time I shave in the mornings. Thirdly we mustn’t forget he played a fine pair, well actually two pairs of maracas, clutching them in just one hand, a mean feat and not one to be frowned at.

We all realise that it is sad that Davy has died, but for those of us who never knew him it’s sad because he is another symbol of our finishing youth and a reminder that time moves on relentlessly.

So with that thought in mind, if you are a writer and have still not returned your contract to The Guitar library, don’t be a Davy Jones, do so now, or it might just be too late!

Rebekkah Brookes Plus Ten More Clever Horses

As a result of the enquiry into the News of the World phone hacking scandal it has emerged that in 2008, the Metropolitan Police gave News of the World editor, Rebekkah Brookes, a horse on loan. Here are ten other lucky or not so lucky horses:

1.  Incitatus - Caligula's horse, treated like a Prince during his lifetime and venerated as a God after his death
2.  Comet - Supergirl's pet horse who as boyfriend Bill Starr, dated both Supergirl and Lois Lane
3.  Trigger - a horse who could walk 50 paces on his hind legs
4.  Shergar - kidnapped in 1983 by masked gunmen, but never found
5.  Lucius - an ass turned into human form then initiated into the cult of Isis
6.  Clever Hans - a horse who could count and tell the time
7.  Kerry - a horse that saved it's owner from an enraged cow
8.  Tonk - a horse praised for saving a boy from a grizzly bear
9.  A solid gold rocking horse - purchased for £400,000 by Beyonce and Jay-Z for their baby, Blue Ivy Carter.
10.  Quick Draw McGraw (aka El Kabong) - a guitar playing horse famous for hitting his opponents on the head with a Spanish guitar, while shouting Kabonga.

El Kabong enjoyed hard hitting guitar music  His guitar was a Cuatro, a 4 stringed instrument tuned like a ukelele. It was an instrument used in a versatile fashion unique to him, so it's horses for courses, I guess!  

Christopher Plummer Oscar Winner Played with Two Large Breasts on the Piano

 

82 year old Christopher Plummer, who on Sunday night won his first Oscar ever for his supporting role in ‘Beginners,’ did not start out with the intention of being an actor.

Before achieving worldwide fame as Captain Georg Von Trapp, in the Sound of Music, Plummer spent his time dreaming of being a concert pianist while at school in Montreal. During those early formative years, Plummer once found himself accompanying the actress Diana Barrymore to an up market restaurant in Montreal. He recalled what happened next in his memoires, ‘In Spite of Myself’:

‘I boldly sat down at the piano, hoping to accompany Diana in a French song or two. She winked at me and took up the cue. As was her custom, she had decked herself out in a daringly revealing low-cut dress. In the middle of a song in order to emphasize a phrase, she made a sweeping theatrical gesture, miles over the top, when suddenly, not just one but two glorious breasts popped out in full view and stayed out for the rest of the number’.

Plummer’s musical career may well have continued if he hadn’t been pushed off the music stool by, ‘a big black guy with pants that were a bit too short for him.’ The black guy later turned into the legendary Canadian jazz pianist and composer, Oscar Peterson.

One other famous personality, whose record company had a penchant for a bare breasted women tumbling over themselves in disarray, as displayed on the cover of Electric Lady Land, and who was not unfamiliar with tinkling the ivories, was Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix allegedly developed the track, ‘Spanish Castle Magic,’ around the jazz piano chord which follows the guitar riff played over the title.  With the help of producer Eddie Kramer pounding on the piano, the song eventually took shape.

Hendrix’s link with the piano and pianists in particular, does not end there. A large part of Jimi’s trademark rhythm style is undeniably influenced by another pianist with a similar name to his producer, Floyd Cramer.

A quick listen to the 1961 hit, ‘On the Rebound,’ and you can’t help notice a strong similarity to the hammer-ons as demonstrated by Hendrix, in tracks such as Bold as Love, Little Wing and Wait ‘til Tomorrow and Have you ever Been (to Electric Lady Land).

The attachment of Hendrix to the grand piano continued well after his death. In 2006 the Baldwin Hendrix Custom Grand Piano made its appearance on the scene.  

Bedecked on the outside with swirling psychedelic regalia and a huge squashed image of Hendrix’s head on the inside of the lid, this desirable limited edition was said by Gibson to, ‘fit beautifully into almost any home".  

Lucky for us piano playing was not Hendrix’s forte, when he died in 1970 he left us with a unique catalogue of work which has ever since profoundly influenced the playing of the modern day guitarist. Guitar playing comes in many styles, from gypsy jazz to 70’s rock, with each guitarist expressing their own unique view of life through the potency of the guitar strings. As Jimi said:

‘Nobody know what I'm talking about
I've got my own life to live
I'm the one that's gonna have to die
When it's time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to.


CUUPP6HGVAP7

2012 Me and the MPA Publishers Briefing, London

Would Sir Paul be there and would he recognise me, a Beatle fan for over 40 years? That was my first thought, quickly followed by, when is he going to sort out the variegated lead flashing at mpl, Soho Square?

There were five of us crowded into the lift with MPA executives rehearsing their scripts and witty introductions as we arrived on the sixth floor.

As for the presentation, it seems that we fishes are all working in a big sea and had better keep abreast of changes to stay afloat – sort of, what with Turkey defaulting and Spain and David Cameron up to no good.
Fellow music publishers exchanging hurdles, aspirations and successes was the highlight of the evening.

Be prepared to morph or risk turning to stone as the internet has well and truly come and free downloads are here to stay.  As my new friend Tom said, all our children are thieves so adapt and find a way round it or prepare to be archived.

Do we care about Whitney?

Do we care about Whitney? As the world slides into recession, somewhere in a hotel in America another star fizzles out in the great pop firmament, while from the comfort of our TV rooms, we idly observe another example of the rich and famous getting their just deserts.

The TV tells us the number one death for a rock star is still a heart attack closely followed in second place by drug overdose, while holding in there for the third week running, is suicide.

Like all of us, rock stars create and cling on desperately to their own version of reality, if it’s not McCartney believing that singing into Nat King Cole’s microphone well give him more of the same, then it’s Elvis, Hendrix, Joplin and Jackson, driving their desire for love and adoration with a mouthful of booze and pills. As one star crashes and burns, we watch with amusement smugly sipping our gin and tonics, anaesthetised by our unreal reality TV, as another X-factor wannabe squeaks, ‘Please, Simon, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, let it be me, it’s what I live for ...’

The choice is still ours; well that’s what they tell us, it’s the people’s vote. Do we care? It’s showbiz, theirs is an unreal world, what’s it got to do with us?

So press the red button and we get Mark Bolan, the 20th Century Boy singing:

‘Friends say it's fine, friends say it's good
Ev'rybody says it's just like rock'n'roll’.

But press the green button and we get a blast from that 17th Century Donne of rock:

‘Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

A ah huh!