The Greatest Opera Performance by a Rock Bass Player According to Meat Loaf

How the devil do you get Myleen Class, Alan Titchmarsh, Meat Loaf, Catherine Jenkins and Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen in a room together? Why would you want to? Well new ITV entertainment show Popstar To Operastar does just that. The show takes popstars such as Bernie Nolan (being ITV it must have a Nolan sister on there somehow), Marcella Detroit from Shakespeare Sister, Darius and Jimmy Osmond and makes them sing well known opera off the adverts.

What does this have to do with indie rock? Well amongst the 70's popstars, gardeners, ex girl band members and whatnot was Alex James from Blur doing a rather amazing version of a Rossini piece, watch and prepare to be dazzled, I'm sorry but words generally fail me.



Oh yes, one must appreciate but Alex is looking fine at the moment, the years seemed to have dropped off him since the Blur shows last summer. This is what a diet of cheese does for you obviously!

Hope you are well, I'm good, off to see the mighty Shrag this evening
Ta taa
Alicexx

Happy 100th birthday How I Met Your Mother!!

Ahh, How I Met Your Mother, probably the funniest sitcom on telly and one of the few telly programs where catch phrases are alright or even legen - wait for it - dary! (sorry...) This week we celebrated the program's 100th episode, that means we've spent 41 hours and 40 minutes watching the program. Whoa! That's a lot of How I Met Your Mother! and to celebrate it they decided to sing a song about Barney's favourite item of clothing...



Of course How I Met Your Mother has had it's fair few band name dropping incidents, my favourite was when Ted thinks he's going to have a threesome and invites the ladies up to his flat to listen to his Wilco cd (yes cause that's what gets the girls going, bit of Jeff Tweedy! Well actually...). Ted has also used both Kim Deal and Kim Gordon when describing his soul mate and in the first series he dates a girl who had a favourite Belle & Sebastian song (which was "We Rule The School" pop fans, not my favourite, I think mine is "Legal Man" or maybe "I Could Be Dreaming" or probably another one). Probably the most annoying thing that even though Ted is Mr. Indie he has bad hair and is also Mr. Boring, bad combination!! See for yrself...


The 100th episode is no exception with Ted getting all excited when he spots the girl (played by the lovely Rachel Bilson) he's on a date with owns The Unicorns album 'Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?'. I miss The Unicorns, I know we have Clues and Islands, but god dammit, it's not the same!

Check out this blog about the music featured on How I Met Your Mother
And this website It was the best night ever (yes that IS Nuno from Extreme, blimey!)
And of course Barney's Blog

Are we having fun yet?

Happy new year readers!
Hope you had a fun night last night, mine was spent giggling and dancing to 90s chart classics in Stoke Newington before marvelling at Myleen Class' freaky face whilst she introducing the fireworks on the telly. I'm so glad I wasn't in that crowd, they looked so bloody miserable!

OK, here's my pick of the best of 2009 telly and films, yep I probably missed loads...
Best TV program - Party Down
In brief a comedy program about a catering company staffed by out of work actors, writers and comedians who don't seem to do any work and cause chaos at every event they work at. It's total cringe comedy but I don't think I've laughed so hard in ages.
With a creative team including Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas, Paul "hottie" Rudd and TV's Fred Savage (?!) there was always high expectations. There are also loads of familiar faces including Freaks and Geeks Martin Starr, pretty much everyone from Veronica Mars (including an awesome cameo from Kristin Bell in the last episode of the series) and George Takei!

I also unashamed loved Series 3 of Californication (Kathleen Turner's character Sue Collini was probably the scariest thing I saw on TV last year!), Greek, Ugly Betty, Curb Your Enthusiasm and John Safran's Race Relations.

I am also enjoying the current series of Glee but I can't stand the singing (if I wanted to watch X Factor I'd watch it alright?!) it has reminded me of the merits of Journey though and Jane Lynch is amazing as ever.

Best Films
Of course it would be Whip It if they weren't taking ages getting around to releasing it in the UK, they still haven't scheduled it yet, god dammit! So I guess it'd have to be

Paper Heart, Where The Wild Things Are, Funny People



Best indie rock cameo
I guess this has to be Sonic Youth on Gossip Girl, which I mentioned in the first post.

What did I miss?

And finally, nothing cheers me up more than hearing one of my favourite indiepop bands played on the telly. Yep tonight's Gavin and Stacey featured a tiny snippet of Comet Gain's classic 'You Can Hide Your Love Forever', watch the episode again here on iPlayer. Don't stay watching though as you'll have to listen to Florence and The Machine whilst Gavin talks about his balls, yelp! They have no class on this program...

EDIT - I have since been informed that fellow Fortuna Pop-sters The Lucksmiths were also played later on in the episode (shows how much attention I was paying!). This episode was brought to you by the letters F and P...


Hope you are all well and your teenies (is that what we call this decade?) are awesome!
Alicexx

XOXO - Stocking fillers

See here for the Musical Supervisor at Gossip Girls' Holiday Gift Guide. I love that the only thing she says about Jane Birkin is that she has Hermes bag named after her!

Check out the other videos for Leighton Meesters' pop video and other videos about music on Gossip Girl, good stuff.

Best of 2009

As everyone else is doing it, I thought I would too, here it is in no order my list of my favourite songs of 2009. Surprisingly indierock heavy, where was all the electropop?

In no particular

Allo Darlin' - The Polaroid Song
Why? - Even The Good Wood Gone
Karen O and The Kids - Rumpus
The Postmark - No One Said This Would Be Easy
Phoenix - 1901
Camera Obscura - French Navy
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Falling Over (DJ Downfall Sprechenbann Mix)
Drums - Lets Go Surfing
Still Flyin' - Aerosmith Take me to... The Other Side
Yo La Tengo - All Your Secrets
James Husband - A Grave in the Gravel
The Wooden Birds - False Alarm
Wilco - You and I
Veronica Falls - Beachy Head
Best of 2009 Spotify playlist

Other releases, which aren't on spotify...
The Declining Winter - Haunt The Upper Halls
Shrag - Rabbit Kids
The Bright Lights album
Champagne Riot - Scandinavian Warfare

Oh yes, my band Arthur and Martha released an album this year too, why not take a listen?

Alicexx

Barry Hogan you've won the battle but not the war

It has to be said that you really don’t want to be John Safran’s ex-girlfriend, in his latest T.V series ‘Race Relations’ the aussie comic has already stolen his ex-girlfriend’s dirty knickers for a sniff test and asked to make out with his exes mums all in the name of science. Surprisingly he managed to steal ten pairs of panties and all the exes mums obliged for the make out sesh some of them looking rather excited at the prospect. What does this have to do with indierock I hear you say? Well John spends a lot of the series pining after one particular ex, Debra Kee Higgins who left John for Barry Hogan, organiser of the All Tomorrows Parties festival. This comes to a head in episode four of the series where John confronts Debra and Barry in an interview (they think they’re doing MTV talking about the festival) and he falls embarrassingly on his face in front of the obviously in love couple, this is car crash telly.

John has also done a series completely devoted to music, 'John Safran's Musical Jamboree'. In one episode of which he dressed up as Beck and goes to a Scientology convention (surpisingly this was before Beck came forward as a Scientologist), he's probably the most unconvincing Beck ever.

Q "is your voice monotonous rather than varied in pitch?"
John "I think that's unfair, mellow gold was meant to sound like that"

John Safran is a total genius, but no never ever go out with him, you don't know what will happen!

Race Relations Website

Let the wild rumpus start!

I ventured to the cinema in the rain today to see Where the wild things are, the Spike Jonze/Jim Henson adaptation of the book of the same name. An adorable film with enough cutesyness and unrequited love to keep us indie kids happy.

OK, so technically this is not a film that should be reviewed on this blog, there are no indie bands name dropped in it, and no famous cameos (though I do think Max Records is too cool a name for him not to form a band in later years)

1.Dialogue - sorry thats a 0 cardigan points

2.Music paraphernalia yeah another 0 cardigan points, that fort is clearly missing a nice Wild Beasts poster...

3. Ok no real cameos though Paul Dano, voice of Alexander (the goat monster that no one listens to) is in the NYC based band Mook no I haven't heard of them either, but some of their songs are ok in an epic sounding indierock way. Check out their merch website where you can buy Mook teddy bears, BBQ aprons, coasters, mugs, wall clocks, pillows and mousepads, now there's a band that show initiative!
Ok I guess that's 1/5 cardigan points

4.Soundtrack - The film was definitely made by Karen O and The Kids' awesome soundtrack. Part Arcade Fire, part Architecture in Helsinki it really complimented the movie and she even covers a Daniel Johnston song. Three cheers for Karen as she's been nominated for 2 Grammys for it too.
Listen to the soundtrack on Spotify
Easy 5/5 cardigan points

5. General indieness - Hella indie! Cute furry monsters that no one understands - check! Two monsters that are clearly in love with each other but don't want to deal with it - check! Kid in a cute wolf costume - check! Cutesy title drawings and cinematography - check!
5/5 cardigan points

OK so 21/50 cardigan points, not really that indie but definitely worth watching