Lopez Blogs

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Maroon 5: Retrospecticus

Our second retrospecticus that will run all week is one of my favourite discoveries of the past few years, and whose sophomore album I have been highly anticipating for a while now. So in preparation for that, let's go back to a time when the Kaiser Chiefs were Parva, Posh had no Becks, Backstreet Boys ruled the world and Maroon 5 were just a twinkle in the eye of Kara's Flowers. Indeed the four members of Kara's Flowers – Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Micky Madden and Ryan Dusick – were the nucleus that would create one of the most successful pop rock acts of the new millennium. Friends since high school the boys put together a sound that was heavy on the beatles influence yet was missing the soul infusion that dictated their later success. A debut album Fourth World was preceeded by a single called Soap Disco which was slightly punk pop yet still showcased the early stages of Adam's ability to create something radio friendly and perky. His voice is completely different here to how it sounds on Maroon 5 records, but fits well with the type of music the Flowers were putting out. Oliver is extremely Beatles-esque, while My Ocean Blue may well be our first introduction to Jane with the line "me and my darling Jane". Again it gives hints of what is to come with Maroon 5 and is a well produced and beautifully crafted pop song. Still for people tuning into this disc expecting Songs About Jane the early years, you may well be disappointed. If you're looking for well crafted jerky pop, then come on in! Tomorrow we'll see how they developed with the Stagg Street recordings…
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LINK: Buy Kara's Flower's Fourth World CD

Deborah Gibson: Reverse Retrospecticus (1 of 5)

0 comments Posted by ai at 4:43 AM

The first of two week long retrospecticuses (or however you spell the plural of a made up one) begins with a reverse look at the most recent career choices made by my favourite singer Deborah Gibson. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but was spurred on when a new song (though kinda old – more on that in a minute) Rich Girl was put onto Deb's myspace site. It's been 3 years since her last studio album was released, but in that time Deborah has been as productive as ever, and produced some great pop songs that deserve to be collected up and acknowledged for the talent they show. The new music started flowing in December 2004, when Deborah released the sublime festive ballad Christmas Without You as part of a compilation cd. Quite rightly, as with all Deb's ballads it is heavy on melody and intrinsically beautiful in it's use of piano and sweet vocal. It was a perfect lead in to 2005, which was a busy year for fans. Not only were there two cds rounding up unreleased demos (Memory Lane 1&2 featuring some classic tunes such as Cinderella theme 'Some People' and a number of songs deemed not good enough by Atlantic for the Body Mind Soul album in 1993 that far outshine much of the material eventually put on it…), there was a fan club day in Florida which I attended and was rather brillo, the naked but tasteful Playboy spread and of course the accompanying single Naked. This track was a great slice of guitar spangled pop that would have easily held it's own upside songs that Daniel Powter and Kelly Clarkson were releasing at the time. It was at this time that Rich Girl (a cover of the Hall & Oates song way before Nelly Furtado got the idea) was touted as a second single and prelude to an album, but sadly that has yet to materialise. 2006 saw Deborah back on tv lasting a few episodes into Skating On Ice and touring with the O'Neill Brothers, with whom she released a single Someone You Love – another piano and strings ballad that had some elegant and uplifting lyrics and a timeless chorus. Just beautiful. Sadly, her second collaboration of the year – with Jordan Knight on Say Goodbye – wasn't her best moment, though did give her a minor AC smash, for which we should be grateful. And the start of 2007 sees rumours of an album once more as 3 new songs have been released to fans – Sounds Like Love is a mid tempo ballad a la Irreplaceable or We Belong Together and is the most contemporary thing Deb has done in a while. Famous tries hard to be cutting edge and contemporary but sadly isn't – though it's hard to dislike a song that evokes so many memories of fab songs from the early 90s. And Rich Girl leaked yesterday – I seem to remember the version played at the fan day being slightly rockier and dancier, though I am completely enjoying the pure pop interpretation of this version. Just lovely. Coming tomorrow ~ Coloured Lights…
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LINK: The official Deborah Gibson myspace site

Saturday, January 13, 2007

A Private Affair: It must be chilly in here (grrrr)

0 comments Posted by ai at 4:47 AM

Good Sunday to all you fine people choosing to read my blog today. I know you have a choice of blogs to read so thank you for taking the time out to read mine ;) Or something. I was going to cover some new Lily Allens (chick style) today but to be honest I couldn't be bothered with them, realising that yesterdays men Lily were much better, so instead I will regale you with tales of my fun night out with the gang... Sunday is going far too quickly for my liking. But isn't that always the way? I have to be up at 5am tomorrow to take my beloved DazPizza to the airport and then have a full day of work ahead of me. Sheesh kebab! Still, it will be last week with the glamorous Coventry City Council and while i'll be sad to leave some of my friends behind, i never really settled there and I can't wait to start my new job on Feb 5th. So for now I will look forward to two weeks off work, some exciting website developments and plenty of stuff for you lovely people to digest :) On with the post!

THEZAPPING NIGHT OUT

You may be wondering why there is a half naked man in pink undies at the top of this fine page... or you just may be appreciating the picture. Well, DazPants and I invested in some new aussie bum underwear and I deviated from my usual style and got the saucy pink undies you see at the top. When I wore them for the first time last night on a night out, I was shocked to discover how scandalously revealing they were and barely covered my "Man Thatch" as well as rode up my ass like a cheap two bit bloke-whore all night. And trust me, they did not look as good on me as they did on the rather more buff model above. But i think i managed to pull off a fairly casual ensemble and give it a bit of street flair with a jauntily placed cap. I am convinced I could walk through the rough streets of Birmingham like this and no one would bat an eyelid. My friend Cat said that was charmingly naive of me...

So instead I added a nice warm scarf as a fashion accessory and snuggled up to a quite drunk Darren before we headed out with the stunning Bernice and hot new lesbian couple Hironda Mitsubishi and Steph. We popped into the overcrowded village and ended up staying all evening. DazPhoto was slightly overstimulated by beer and did his old "i've got worms" bottom wiggle on the chair for all to see and took about a million photos with his sexy new camera phone. Him and Hironda disappeared for most the night to strut their funky stuff to Musical Youth on the dancefloor while i gossiped with Bernice and Steph. I was quite enjoying grooving in my chair to Fame when rather mortifyingly some old man came up behind me and started grinding his obviously over blood pumped fallis into the back of my head. I was too terrified to turn around in case i got it in my eye and had to grin and bear it until he heard my shouts of "for gods sake Fuck Off!" Jeebus!

Awww, don't we all look nice. This was seconds before some old bloke who was about 30lbs overweight and wearing a belly revealing tank top walked past and I wittily said "ooo look its Darren in ten years time" which everyone found hilarious except Darren oddly enough... And then as I was quite drunk at this point, i started sending saucy texts to everyone i knew which was hugely embarrassing in the morning! Then, just before we were about to leave, I was in the bathroom and some 19 yr old twink thing starts saying to his equally odious friend, 'oh it must be cold in here, oh it's so chilly, it is like the antartic, wearing a scarf indoors...' and went on and on about it. I "finished up" spun round and (as i was now not in a good mood) said "do you have a problem? I don't fucking judge your horrible trousers or nancy boy haircut so just shut up" and then stomped (read: minced) out. Yes readers, you've seen the moody side of the zapping and it ain't pretty!