scratch it

The Great Debate

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:20:42 +0000

Let it not be said that music plays a side role in the great battle for hearts and minds. As the 9/11 anniversary coincides with a particularly shrill and vicious campaign by the American right, I bring you Burka Blue. The music sounds great, very art school frauenband, an almost industrial rock pop anti-protest. I’m [...]

Swing Report

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:13:53 +0000

How do you make a trio sound like a big band, and rock a club? Berliners Dirty Honkers played at the Old Street club I went to last Saturday, and did just that. In midday tropical heat at midnight, they bust up the joint with artful screeches and an entertaining set which veered like an [...]

I Love Electro Swing!

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:56:30 +0000

I used to run a DJ agency ten years ago, and since those crazed times, I’ve not really bothered to follow all the nuances and subgenres and sub-subgenres of dance music.. there are so bleedin’ many variations, and so tiny are the changes, except once every ten years or so, that the entire dance music [...]

Can You Stand Upon One Leg?

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:41:32 +0000

Not every comic song has the panache to carry the idea through to its musically logical conclusion, but The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannan is refreshingly un-selfconscious in this charmingly silly ditty. I recently returned from Norway and Belgium and left behind me new fans, many of whom were standing on one leg. From song to [...]

Life Without Buildings

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:26:05 +0000

This excellently odd song, The Leanover, was tipped me via Don Ratto from Unio and Petitio. You might not get it first off – as my pal Yana said, she didn’t dislike it, she didn’t like it. But I love its gently manic breathless stream of consciousness delivery. Once you grapple with them, the lyrics [...]

Spotify

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:35:58 +0000

Spotify has more or less replaced radio for me. I’ve been listening to it for the last year or so. It’s an interesting and mostly good quality service. Sound is far better than MP3 format music because it uses superior OGG encoding. Mobile, I have actually walked through a park, searching for tracks on the [...]

Bed 'O' Roses

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:53:45 +0000

Ian Dury is one of my heroes. He was a unique person, a true bohemian, a painter who went on to make hit records with unforgettable lyrics, punk attitude, and irresistable funk, who performed and sang like a demented music hall artist. But along with his raucous, explicit, confrontational demeanour, Ian Dury also wrote tender, [...]

Caribou

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:42:38 +0000

I’ve discovered this great band, Caribou, nine years late. Well, I’ve been busy so I have plenty of excuses – although the Residents once famously said, “Ignorance of your culture is not cool”, and it does make me wonder what happened to my once unbridled enthusiasm to seek all things new and excellent. It didn’t [...]

Satisfaction

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:41:59 +0000

Relentless rasping saw-wave with a robotic call to pleasure makes Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’ peerlessly effective. If you don’t get it, don’t worry. It makes a lot of sense on the dancefloor. Despite my natural writing mode being a more traditional, instrument-based practise, I have enjoyed electronic music since I first heard sounds which I knew weren’t [...]

Underworld – Jumbo

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:38:08 +0000

Some electronic music vastly exceeds its space-you-out-and-dance remit. Underworld were a rock band before they ventured into their celebrated and highly individual take on the genre and they remain (alongside Orbital) my favourite of the post-rave electronic artists. Their compositional sense elevates dance music to a sophisticated level, but their rave roots touch upon worlds [...]

Wisdom in the Face of Mortality

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:17:52 +0000

I’ve loved Warren Zevon since Werewolves of London first came out of the radio in the 1970s. Much later in his life, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and wrote this reflective, self-aware, poignant masterpiece, My Shit’s Fucked Up. Warren manages to deal with the subject of his imminent death – remarkable in itself – [...]

Stewie Griffin Writes a Song

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:45:29 +0000

A striking and consistently brilliant feature of Family Guy, a superb popular animation which breaks taboos and flies in the face of American conservatism as it pokes fun in all directions, is the music. Seth MacFarlane the writer / producer is musically very gifted and it’s no surprise this emerges. In this episode, impossibly precocious [...]

Breaking Up

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:53:51 +0000

It’s a classic theme, one of the seven songs in rock ‘n’ roll – the break up, lovers parting in glorious colour, and of course, in tragic black and white. For some reason I’ve always written these songs (!) but I wrote very my best break up song not in a space of suffering, anger, [...]

What a Waste

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:01:41 +0000

Some songs stand out for having changed your life. This once changed mine in one, classy Thursday afternoon radio moment of inspiration which I shall never forget. Dave Cash, Capital Radio, London 95.8FM. Ian Dury and the Blockheads – What a Waste. I was astonished at the music, physically entranced to the extent that I [...]

Tom Waits for No Man

deanwhitbread@gmail.com (Dean Whitbread) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:54:17 +0000

Some songs have me singing along like a drunk, eyes misting and as passionate as a fool, and these of course are generally ballads. Time by Tom Waits is one of my favourites. Tom Waits tells some of the best stories in contemporary music, tales of regret, penury, lost love and broken dreams. Lilting pace, [...]