Thursday September 20th 2007

Hello again maties and welcome to this weeks fun at the fair frolics. Well sort of frolics anyway. Well I say frolics, more like gentle probing into the world of Karaoke. Its always good when Thursday comes around. The expectation of the baying crowds, well Nicky, the grueling song choices you spend all week pondering, well I say all week, usually for me just the ten minutes sat on the toilet before I make my way down the pub! So this week I was all prepped and ready to give another 80's blast to the pub, and thinking I'm in a mood for a bit of The Police, I practiced another Guitar Hero inspired track with Message In A Bottle, only to get to the pub to find I only had a choice of Roxanne of De Do Do Do De Do Do Da! Not my first choice, so my Police week will have to stay in limbo for another week. Still I did manage to get five songs in again due to the fact the pub was again bereft of any singers, leaving the usual motley bunch to entertain ourselves again. On the bright side we did have a new young female singer who actually could sing and whose song choices were a little baffling for a female, even though they ended up sounding brilliant. She sang Arctic Monkeys ' When The Sun Goes Down' and Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy'. Both not the songs you would of placed her singing if you saw her but she pulled them off brilliantly. Nice to see new singers in who can actually sing.
So this week I have another witty list of the week for you all to have a giggle at. This one is all about those little differences between men and women..........enjoy!

1 Names:

If Annie, Hayley, Tina and Lisa all go out for lunch, they will call each other Annie, Hayley, Tina and Lisa. If Scott, Shaun, Andy and Darren go out they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut Head and Scrappy.

2. Dining Out:

When the bill arrives Scott, Shaun , Andy and Darren will each throw in a £20.00, even though the bill is only £32.50. None will have anything smaller and none will actually admit to wanting the change back.
When the women get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

3. Money:

A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item she doesn't need but it's on sale.

4. Bathrooms:

A man has five items in his bathroom, a toothbrush, shaving cream, a razor, a bar of soap and a towel stolen from a posh hotel.
The average number of items in a woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these!

5. Arguments:

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of the next argument!

6. Cats:

Women love cats.
Men say they love cats, but when women are not looking, men kick cats!

7. Future:

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

8. Success:

A successful man is one who makes more money than a woman can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man!

9. Marriage:

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does!

10. Dressing Up:

A woman will dress up to go shopping, to water the plants, to pay the milkman, to empty the bins, to read a book , to answer the phone and read the post.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

11. Natural:

Men wake up as good looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate through the night!

12. Offspring:

Ah, Children. Women know all about their children. They know about dentist appointments, romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears, shoe sizes, hopes and dreams for the future.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Final Thought:

Any married man should forget his mistakes.
Theres is no use in two people remembering the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope that give you all a few laughs, and guys, don't worry if your other half reads it and says ' I'm not like that am I babe ' tread carefully. It's just a ploy to nail your feet ever further into the floor. Just look at her and answer politely ' Certainly not my dear! '

So onto tonight's songs. 1. Day tripper by The Beatles 2. No Way Back by The Foo Fighters 3. Doesn't Remind Me by Audioslave 4. Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet and finally 5. Surrender by Cheap Trick.

Day tripper by The Beatles link to video

Day Tripper is a riff-driven rock song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and released by The Beatles as a "double A-side" single with "We Can Work It Out". Both songs were recorded during the sessions for the Rubber Soul album. Under the pressure of needing a new single for the Christmas market, Lennon wrote most of the lyrics and the famous guitar break, while McCartney helped with the verses. "Day-tripper" was a typical play on words by John: "Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But the song was kind of ... you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?" In the same interview he said, "That's mine. Including the lick, the guitar break and the whole bit." In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, however, he used "Day Tripper" as one example of their collaboration, where one partner had the main idea but the other took up the cause and completed it. For his part, McCartney claimed it was very much a collaboration based on Lennon's original idea. The lyric may be partly about McCartney's reluctance to experiment with LSD. Lennon and George Harrison had been using LSD since the spring of 1965, when a London dentist slipped it into their coffee after an evening meal. In August, Lennon confessed that he "just ate it all the time." On the face of it, however, the song is about a girl who leads the singer on. The line recorded as "she's a big teaser" was originally written as "she's a prick teaser."(There you go Andy I knew our version was correct!) In this sense, it may equally be about the heroine from "Norwegian Wood." In ' Many Years From Now ', McCartney admitted that "Day Tripper" was about drugs. In 1966 McCartney said in Melody Maker that "Day Tripper" and "Drive My Car", recorded three days prior, were "funny songs, songs with jokes in." Lennon may have arrived at the song's signature riff in an attempt to better The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". McCartney provides the lead vocal and Lennon the harmony, in contrast to the Beatles' usual practice of a song's principal composer singing lead. on the night rating 8/10

No Way Back by The Foo Fighters link to video

No Way Back is part of the fourth single released from the Foo Fighters fifth album In Your Honor. It is a double A-Side single with Cold Day In The Sun, which is from the second disc of the album. The song is featured in the video game Madden NFL 06. The video for this was shot on the Foo Fighters' European tour, with the band in Amsterdam. No Way Back was originally planned for the first single from 'In Your Honour' but was scrapped in favour of "Best Of You" as Grohl thought No Way Back sounded too much like a regular Foo Fighters song. The song is also played before New York Rangers games when they take the ice. As I said last week the Foo Fighter are currently my favourite band, and I am itching to sing the new single when it comes out on the new Sunfly disc, due this week. on the night rating 9/10

Doesn't Remind Me by Audioslave link to video

Although the song is by Audioslave, I find have fell for the song due to ex Audioslave front man Chris Cornell singing the track on his recent tour, of which my blog on the gig is coming soon I promise. Doesn't Remind Me is the third single from Audioslave's second album Out of Exile. It was released on May 24th 2005, in the United States, and was nominated for "Best Hard Rock Performance" at the 48th Grammy Awards. After his parents divorced in his teens, Chris Cornell spiraled into depression. He has described this period as consisting mostly of long periods of depression, lots of drinking, and extreme isolation. He says he spent an entire year without leaving his house once. This period is the muse of the song. The song talks about his failures, perceived and real, as well as the pain felt at certain places or while doing certain things. There are also aspects of attempted redemption, which may be more drawn from his current life than his teenage years. Directed by Chris Milk, the award-winning music video for Doesn't Remind Me starts off with a blurred image of an Uncle Sam poster tacked to a wall of a young boy's bedroom, as he innocently plays with a toy fighter plane. This boy is played by Vinny Intrieri, a six year old boxer from Philadelphia, known better by his fight name, Kid Vicious. Shot in a documentary-like style, this fictional story explores the world of Vinny's character.
Throughout the video, Vinny enjoys playing with military planes and dedicates most of his free time to his boxing training. His obsession with planes becomes clearer when the audience sees a portrait of his father, an Air Force pilot, who died fighting in the Iraqi war. As a result, his widowed mother has been forced to raise him and his little sister. "We were all against the war from the very beginning, but now, I think you're seeing more and more that Middle America is turning against the war for reasons that are described in this video. The real human cost, the human tally of this awful war is shown in a very subtle, very real and very humanistic way. All of Vinny's training has been for an upcoming fight. The music video culminates with a fight between Vinny and another boy in front of a packed crowd. Some of the footage seen is of an actual fight that Vinny fought in at The Blue Horizon. When the junior match gets underway, Vinny comes out punching. Between each of the punches, the video flashes back to images from Vinny's father's death. These images include: his father's fighter plane getting shot down over Iraq, his mother picking up the heart-breaking phone call, and the military funeral ceremony. The entire segment ends with Vinny winning the fight and celebrating with the crowd. The video parallels the song by showing the ways in which people find ways to forget about and move on from bad things. In this case Vinny leaves behind his toy planes which remind him of his father and boxes to forget about the painful event of his death. The video is also a take on society's often subconscious promotion of violence without considering its consequences. This video is also the first Audioslave video which doesn't feature themselves performing the song. As Cornell explained: "It wouldn't have been a plus, it would have been a minus, that story is that story, and the members of Audioslave appearing in whatever form would only take away from how amazing the story is."
on the night rating 8/10

Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet link to video

Next up is a thumping tune. Are You Gonna Be My Girl is a song by the Australian rock band Jet, featured on their 2003 album Get Born. It was the first single from the album, released in 2003 in Australia and the UK, and in 2004 in the United States. In the UK Singles Chart it first appeared on the charts at Number 23. The single was re-released in the UK in 2004, after it was featured on advertisements for the Apple iPod, and this time reached Number 16 on the charts. It also gave the band success in the U.S. Singles Chart, peaking at Number 29. Brothers Nic Cester and Chris Cester grew up in Dingley Village, Victoria listening to classic rock from the 1960s and 1970s such as The Who, AC/DC, Queen, The Faces, and particularly The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. "It's always interpreted that our father had a great record collection, but that's not true. It was actually a really shit collection that Nic managed to find the gems in", Chris said in an interview for the documentary "Take It Or Leave It" that was also recorded on the band's Right! Right! Right! live DVD. They decided to form a band with Cameron Muncey, Nic's mate from school and with whom he had been in a band, and with bassist Doug Armstrong whom Nic and Chris met whilst working together at their Dad's spice factory. During 2001 an old high school friend of Chris' joined the band on keys, and it was at this time that the band took their current name from the song Jet from Wings' 1973 album Band on the Run. Radio Song, from their album Get Born, was written about the troubles that the band had getting recognition at this time. The new band met Mark Wilson one night in 2002 at a gig and, despite already having a bass player, asked him to play with them. Wilson was then the bassist in a band called The Ca$inos, so he initially declined. However, a few days later he called the band and said he would like to join them instead. In 2002 the band, consisting of its current members, released the Dirty Sweet EP, which drew its name from the T. Rex song Get It On. While the band only pressed 1,000 copies, there was such a demand that they pressed 1,000 more. The timing of this record coincided with the breakthrough of The Vines, meaning that international interest in Australian rock bands was high. NME obtained a copy of the single from Dirty Sweet, "Take It or Leave It", and praised it. Elektra Records offered the band a contract and re-released Dirty Sweet in 2003.
Jet entered the Sunset Sound Studios in Los Angeles with Dave Sardy to produce their debut album Get Born. Sardy had previously produced records for Marilyn Manson and The Dandy Warhols. They also enlisted the services of keyboard maestro Billy Preston for two of the songs. The album derived its name from a line in the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues. Halfway through recording, the band received a call from The Rolling Stones offering them a support slot on the Australian leg of their 2003 tour. Since then the band has performed all over the world as a warm up act on every Stones tour since, as the band are a firm favourite of Ronnie Woods. The band were also on the Hyde Park Calling line up supporting Aerosmith that day. on the night rating 7/10

Surrender by Cheap Trick link to video

Cheap Trick are American rock band from Illinois, that gained popularity in the late 70s. The band consists of Robin Zander (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Rick Nielsen (lead & rhythm guitars), Tom Petersson (bass), and Bun E. Carlos (drums). Though they have had only brief flirtations with mainstream success, Cheap Trick has held a substantial following through regular touring and a hard-edged yet blissful pop sound combined with the speed and energy of punk rock. The band's biggest hits over the years include I Want You to Want Me , Surrender and The Flame. originally released in 1978 on the album Heaven Tonight. It is a late 1970s teen anthem, describing the relations between the baby boomer narrator and his G.I. generation parents. The narrator describes how his parents are weirder and hipper than many children would believe. For example, the narrator describes how he discovers his parents "rolling on the couch" and listening to his Kiss records late at night. The band still performs this song to this day, and Rick Nielsen often actually throws vinyl Kiss records to the audience in live performances at the moment Kiss is mentioned in the song. The song has also been covered by many bands notably by Green Day, Less Than Jake, Velvet Revolver, Marilyn Manson, and The Tragically Hip. The song is also featured in many movies, notably Over the Edge, Small Soldiers, Daddy Day Care, Fantastic Four and Employee of the Month. Daddy Day Care actually featured Rick Nielsen and Robin Zander. The song is featured in the PlayStation 2 video game Guitar Hero II, so no guesses to where I picked it up from then! on the night rating 5/10

So there we go folks. Another week done and another week closer to our annual dress up like a nutter night, commonly known as New Years Eve. It looks like this year should be fun as the theme is looking ever more likely to be a beach party theme. Not that I look forward to all those bikini clad ladies wandering around the pub mind you, any old chance for me to wear a dodgy Hawaiian shirt! Until next time folks see ya........

" I think Mr. Smithers picked me for my motivational skills. Everyone always says they have to work twice as hard when I'm around! "

Homer J Simpson