Captain Jacks Tracks

Download 2008 15th June 2008

2008-06-16T15:29:00.002+01:00

A shitload of bands, a whole heap of fans and three days of total rocking out, well one day for me, but lets not be too greedy! Yes the worlds greatest rock festival is here again, and as like last year, Captain Jack has the very best report on the day that tops off the rock year for thousands of people.

The previous two days of the festival had proved to be a success, with the mighty Kiss and Judas Priest rocking the stage on the Friday, by the way I do have in my possession the entire Kiss set from the night if anyone wants a copy I would be more than willing to oblige, and Biffy Clyro, Alter Bridge and The Offspring rocking up the Saturday.
Sunday is usually the big send off for the festival, and in the past has been headlined by such bands as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Linkin Park and Guns And Roses, so it was a huge surprise to find Lostprophets as this years closing festival act, but more on that later.

This year saw a few changes to the venue, with the main stage being moved to try and cut out the mosh pits, and to try and keep the site a bit cleaner, with the smaller Gibson Stage being the only indoor stage, and the Tuborg, or second stage being on one of Donnington’s huge tarmac car parks. But the main stage did seem to be a lot smaller, and in a much tighter area than in previous years. In fact for the fist few hours it really didn’t have that rock festival feel at all, although hearing people talking, the previous two days had just about rocked everyone out.
So with 35 bands playing today, a huge choice was available, and our intrepid gang of rockers managed to get to view 12 of them, so without further ado, here is this years rock extravaganza.

The first band we got to see, funnily enough were the aptly named From First To Last, who were second up on the main stage. The band had early success in 2003 and 2004, but lead singer Sonny Moore left the band and it looked as they would fold, but they fought back and they are now working their way back. Guitarist Matt Good is now on lead, and developing into a solid lead singer as well. Despite the small number that watched them perform, they gave a good account of themselves, and for 30 minutes they had everyone’s attention. Not a bad start to the day.

Next up was a trip to the Gibson stage, and the first real surprise find of the day with Sons Of Albion. Led by none other than legendary Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant’s son Logan, the band gave a fiesty performance of their very Led Zep style music. He is, like his father, very charismatic on stage, but with it still being early, not many people witnessed the performance, which was a shame, because it was one of the better ones on the day. Very tasty riffs, and I’m sure this wont be the last we will hear from the band.

The long trek over to the Tuborg stage was a complete waste to see this lot from Norway. The band appear to be completely bewildered by front woman Agnete Kjolsrud, who despite looking like an extra from the corpse bride, had the stage presence of an escapee from the nuthouse! Easy to describe in one simple word……shite!

You know when an ex member of Busted is on the stage, that sometimes at festivals the odd swerve ball gets thrown at you. Despite a huge following of 10 year olds, it does seem that with each passing festival season, Charlie is losing his ex-Busted tag and starting to win over the partizan rock crowds, but only just!

The next pleasant surprise of the day way Black Stone Cherry. Despite constantly touring over the last few years, and having rave reviews by the rock press, and being the support to Def Leppard and Whitesnake on their European Tour, they do appear to have slipped under the radar of a few people, but the won me over after the first song today. Good old rock and roll riffs, with a style similar to that of early Bon Jovi lit up the main stage for the first time today, and got the now much bigger crowd bouncing. And, what made them even more special was the fact the even came over to say hello to yours truly, obviously fans of the website! Yes Captain Jack, friend of the stars you know! Despite to offers of free beer and sex drugs and rock and roll backstage, we battled on for the rest of the day.

Next up was yet another pleasant surprise on the day. The cello based Apocalypica proved to be the biggest crowd draw of the day so far. Looking like a cross between Skid Row and the London Philharmonic, this unique band had the crown eating out of their hands proving that you can headband to classical music! Topped off with a stunning performance from guest singer Laguna Coil’s Chrisina Scabbia on their current single S.O.S. (no not the ABBA song!) they added a bit of class to the day, and proved that they have a great future at festivals.

Another crowd pleasing act with my personal favourite of the day aussie rockers Airbourne. If the day had been a little of track, this performance clean blew it back on track with a fantastic performance, worthy of a much higher billing slot at next years festival. Within minutes of being on stage front man Joel hijacked an Australian flag and went on to scale 50 feet into the air to tie it to the top of the speaker stands. They went on to give the best performance of the day so far, and proved why they are becoming one of the best live acts around. The AC/DC style riffs may of all been heard before, but as a live act they do exactly what it say’s on the tin, they rock.

Go on lets have a bit more

Only seen and heard from a distance, and despite having to follow Airbourne’s crowd pleasing set, they failed miserably. Still not to worry as we sat in the sun enjoying one of the many new delights of the festival, the milkshake stand, with such amazing flavours as Dime Bar, Crunchie, Terry’s Chocolate Orange and Malteaser!

Despite coming on to the first big bottle fight of the day, Kids In Glass Houses did try their very best to rock out the Tuborg stage crowd, and despite dodging bottles of piss and the odd pot noodle, they got through to the end of their set finally winning the crowd over somewhat. Not a bad performance, but they have got a long way to go before they will win all of the Download crowd over.

Not knowing what to expect from this lot, you start off not minding the lengthy songs with the huge guitar solo’s, but after a long day in the sun, the crowd did start to fade after the 10th 8 minute long guitar solo. In truth, it all started to sound a bit same old same old, with one song blening it’s way into the next for their entire set. Despite having two very good looking and scantily clad backing singers, it all became a bit, well boring to be fair, and you can’t help thinking that singer Claudio Sanchez looks like Cousin It from The Addams Family.

Despite not really knowing any of the bands material, they proved to sound like so many bands you do like its quite shocking really. Very sing a long style, crowd pleasing to the now mellowed out fans, with influences like U2, Stereophonics, REM and such like, they managed to wake the crowd back up from the Coheed & Cambria induced slumber. I thought they would struggle to fill their 75 minute slot when they first started, but they pulled off a pretty good performance, and left the crowd relatively happy.

As lead singer Ian Watkins acknowledged from the moment he first spoke to the crowd, this was a controversial choice to end the weekend. Mainly due to the fact Watkins has extremely engaging banter throughout the set, the festivals only British Headline Act proved to be worthy headliners in a brilliant closing performance tonight.

All the well known songs went down an absolute storm with the crowd, with such crowd pleasing anthems as A Town Called Hypocrisy, Rooftops, Shinobi, 4:AM Forever, Last Train Home and the scorching climax Burn Burn sending the crowd wild, and even creating a few mosh pits despite the lack of room!

Having expected them to fail, it was a huge and pleasant surprise to find that a young British Band could pull off headlining a huge festival like Download, and leave everyone rocked out to the very last second of the festival. A brilliant performance from the Welsh rocker, who can be proud to say they rocked everyone today.

So there we have it folks, all over for another year. And already its countdown to next year, with rumours already rife that several of this years acts will be back next year much higher up the bill. The day drew to a fantastic close, and despite a shaky start, we yet again left feeling fully rocked up.

The Summer Tour 2008

2008-06-13T19:10:00.000+01:00

Hello there folks to this weeks thankfully much shorter edition of Captain Jacks Tracks. Considerably shorter and shorter for the next few weeks as well. So why hear you ask! Well like all good things, too much of it will make you go blind, and lets be fair, I have over indulged you over the last six months with a top notch blog. So why the Summer Tour. Well, over the next few weeks, Captain Jack will be setting sail all over the country on a musical extravaganza, and this is what you can look forward to over the next few weeks in a series of Captain Jack Special Reports.

We start off with the biggest Rock event of the year with the Download Festival at Castle Donnington. Headline acts this year over the three day rock out are Kiss, The Offspring and Lostprophets. A full and fun report will be heading your way very soon.

Next up is a gig featuing one of the biggest bands in the world. Jon, Richie, David and Tico are making their way to Manchester's Eastlands Stadium to play part of their Lost Highway Tour and should prove to be an entertaining day, if not just to see just how bad support act The Feeling are going to be!

Last but not least is the first ever visit to the UK for Linkin Park's Project Revolution at the Milton Keynes Bowl. This should be a huge rock out with Linkin Park performing with Jay-Z, Pendulum Enter Shikari and The Bravery amongst others. To make it even better, Shaunio has informed me we have VIP tickets! Bring on the Champers and clean bogs!

So as you can see a very busy month ahead, so no time to put together the usual top quality blog you normally get every week. But don't fear, the special reports will be here very soon, and usual service will be resumed as soon as the summer tour is over, with more Hot Chicks than you can shake a stick at, nd the other features will be back as well!!

Thursday 5th June 2008 - Episode 108

2008-06-05T21:58:00.007+01:00

Its here again and so soon. Yes your favourite helping of complete and utter nonsense is back to fill your lives full of eastern promise, no sorry that’s Turkish Delight! Well it fill’s you full of Cadbury’s Goodness, no again that’s Dairy Milk! Right that’s it, Your weekly dose of norks, music and general fun and frolics! Yes that’s more like it.
Now as it is my goal to keep you ever entertained by this little blog, then this week I am adding a couple of new features for you to enjoy. Yes even more of the best blog of the web you luck people. But what have I got for you? Well you will have to wait to see, but let’s just say it won’t be too taxing on the old brain cells. There will also be a new addition for the next few weeks. As you will all be aware, the Euro’s have started.

All over Europe fans are out supporting their countries in the top European Football Competition, except England of course, who have got the summer off thanks to ex-manager Steve McClaren, who has now got a summer job in Blackpool, taking kids for a ride up and down the beach, the silly ass!
So just so we don’t feel left out, Captain Jack will bring you my very own Euro report. It’s a bit like Sky Sports, but without the well sporty bits, but there will be some football type stuff and comments thrown into it along the way. But don’t expect too much, I am a pirate you know!

Now along with the new stuff that will be on the blog this week, the old favourites will also be here. Another very nice Hot Chick is on the way, a Joke of the Week, a Classic Track, a great Live is best, some more Karaoke Classics and first up as usual, its this weeks……… Yes don’t worry the head scratching quiz is still here to give you something to dwell upon. Far be it from me to take away your quiz section, as I know how much you love guessing what I have hidden in a picture for you to guess. Now last week was not as easy as you would of wanted it to be, so I will be a bit kinder with this weeks little piccy. As if! Here we are then, look at the picture and then read up your clues.

1. This was the band’s first single release in 1978 and became one of their signature tunes.
2. Mainly known as an instrumental the bass line featured on the track was actually played on the guitar as the band had no bass guitarist at the time.
3. The track has been featured on such T.V. shows as Family Guy, and is on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as one of the tracks that changed music history.

Bet you haven’t got a clue. I can see you there scratching your bonce. Well it won’t help you. The clues are more than enough to help you, and the picture really does desribe it perfectly. But if you are just that little bit to impatient, then go on scroll down, don’t read all the new stuff, or about this week’s Hot Chick. Go on just scroll down and miss all of these quality features! For the more patient amongst you of course there is the option to sit back and relax, take in the sights and sounds of this week’s blog, and read on at your own pace.Now how about we try something a little different!Well what do we have here then. That’s right, its new feature number one time. And guess what. Yes it’s another quiz, another picture quiz! I know how much you love them, and what with the top quiz night in the country now taking place on Thursday’s at the Hotel, then this is good practice to home in your skill’s. Well for my crew mates to home in their skills anyway!
So how will this work then. Pretty much the same as the music version. Below is the picture that very eloquently describes the title of a well known film. Three clever clues will follow, and all you have to do is guess the films title, Easy right. Well this first one is, but wait till you see some of them, they make the music quiz look a doddle! Right lets get those quizzical mind of yours ticking over again.
1. The film was released in 1981 and starred Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore and Farrah Fawcett.
2. The film had a cameo by Jackie Chan, who used the film to break into the American market.
3. It went on to have two sequels made.

There you have it then. All you movie buffs will no doubt be flicking through that VHS collection to find this classic to watch again I’m sure! Now as for the answer, well you know the drill, you can flick through to find out the answer to both of the quizzes this week at the end of the blog, or you can read on through these quality features! Right it's time to get back to normal now with this week's

Classic Track #19

Electric Light Orchestra ~ Mr Blue Sky

What an appropriate Classic This week! Just as it looks as though summer is finally upon us, what better song to bring you than this song from Birmingham’s answer to the Beatles, the Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO as they are lovingly known. The song was the third single off the bands Out Of The Blue album, and was released in 1978. It reached number 6 in the UK charts, but it is one of those songs that has the distinctive sound that ELO have become renowned for.

The song forms the final part of the Concerto For A Rainy Day, which was the entire Side Three of the album. The four part concerto tells of how the weather affects mood’s and peoples feelings. It opens with the moody Standing In The Rain, which has haunting keyboards being played over real rain recorded by Jeff Lynne whilst standing outside his rented flat. The second part Big Wheels tells a sad tale of the depression that rainy weather brings. The song's working title during recording was Bad Salad, a word play on Sad Ballad. The third section, Summer and Lightning, the raining weather theme is continued throughout the track though the mood and lyrics are more optimistic eventually leading on to the classic finale of Mr Blue Sky.

ELO were formed in the late 60’s with Ron Wood in the band and the creative writing talents of Jeff Lynne. The aim was to form a new band that would use cellos, violins, horns and woodwind to give their music a classical sound, taking rock music in a new direction. Wood left the band to form Wizard, but Lynne went on to make the band one of the biggest in the world by mid 70’s. ELO had become successful in the United States at this point and they were a star attraction on the stadium and arena circuit. Despite this they were still largely ignored in the UK until their sixth album, A New World Record, hit the top ten there in 1976. It contained the hit singles Livin Thing, Telephone Line, Rockaria and Do Ya, a rerecording of a Move song.

This was followed by another platinum selling album, Out Of The Blue. Out of the Blue featured the singles Turn To Stone, Sweet Talkin Woman, Mr Blue Sky, and Wild West Hero, each becoming a hit in the United Kingdom. The band then set out on a nine-month, 92-date world tour, with an enormous set and a hugely expensive space ship stage with fog machines and a laser display. In the United States the concerts were billed as The Big Night and were their largest to date, with 80,000 people seeing them at Cleveland Stadium. During the famous spaceship tour, the band were criticised for allegedly playing backing tapes. Despite some criticism, The Big Night went on to become the highest-grossing live concert tour in music history up to that point. The band also played at the Wembley Arena for eight straight sold-out nights during the tour as well, another record at that time.

The group's name is an intended pun based not only on electric light, as in a light bulb as seen on early album covers, but also using electric rock instruments combined with a light orchestra. The official band logo, designed in 1976 by artist Kosh, was first seen on their A New World Record album, and is based on a 1946 Wurlitzer Jukebox speaker. The new logo has appeared on most of the band's albums in various forms and on Out Of The Blue, the logo was turned in to a huge flying saucer space station, an enduring image that is now synonymous with the band.

All these Classic tracks week after week. You know I am going to have to put together a compilation album! It would sell hundreds of copies with the amount of great tracks that I would have on it. Now what do you have for breakfast in the morning? Well I always feel it should be treated as the most important meal of the day, so I always like to start off my day with a great big bowl of....

Hmm very tasty! Just the right way to start the day with a great big bowl of norks! So now you have finished laughing at that, lets have another laugh with this weeks.....

A Lady goes to Toys R Us to buy a Barbie doll for her daughter. She tells the assistant that she needs to buy a Barbie but doesn't know what's available or price. The assistant replies "We have Tennis Barbie and she's £28"
Lady asks "Well, anything else?"
"We have an equestrian Barbie, and she's £28".
Lady asks "Anything else?"
"Well, we have divorced Barbie and she's £250"
The lady replies "I don't understand why divorced Barbie is so expensive. The others were only £28. What is so special about divorced Barbie?"
The assistant replied "Simple, she comes with Ken's car, his house, and all his other stuff."

Yarr Harr harr me old rum soaked cock sparrows an welcome ye to another one of my fearful crew. Hoist the Mainbrace! This week I want to introduce you to one of the oldest seadogs in my crew. He sails on his ship, Poseidon’s Raider, and goes by the name of Leather-face Bill Morgan, or as you know him better Bill Cosby. Shiver Me Timbers!

He’s a salty old salt is this one, and if all is not ship shape on the old poop deck, then he will be sure to make’s ye walk the plank and visit Davy Jones Locker. He is often three sheets to the wind, drinking his favourite Morgans Rum, and he can be found aboard his ship with his whole family with him on the lookout for doubloons, the old hornswaggler. He’s taken many a Jolly Roger and turned them into shark bait I can tell ye, the son of a biscuit eater!

Well I’m off now to down a gallon of the finest Rum, so until we meets again next week, Yarrr harrr haarrrrgggghhh!

So what has Ronnie been up to this week. Well one of his showbiz chums had a shock for us all this week. Rock matriarch Sharon Osbourne is reportedly set to swap her role as a judge on reality show The X Factor for a place in the British version of Dancing With The Stars. Osbourne recently quit her job on the TV talent competition following a series of bitter feuds with fellow judge Dannii Minogue.
The 55-year-old had been lined up to take part in hit US show Dancing With The Stars last year, but was forced to pull out following surgery. And now that Osbourne is free of her The X Factor commitments, it looks as if she will finally be able to fulfil her dream and take part in the UK version of the show, Strictly Come Dancing.
A source said "At the moment she's filming America's Got Talent for Simon Cowell and she's concentrating on her US TV projects.
"Early last year, Sharon was meant to appear in Dancing With The Stars but she had to pull out to have an operation. She's always wanted to do it, so what better time to put on her dancing shoes and go up against the X-Factor when the shows start again in September."
Both The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are slated to air in the U.K. in September, meaning they will go up against each for ratings in the prime time Saturday night slot. As you can see, Ronnie has caught Mrs O in all her glory, watch out judges! More from Ronnie next week.

Magic Pen

It’s the moment you have all been waiting for. Yes yet another visit to my never ending list of Hot Chicks. Now I have had a complaint. A certain reader claimed that last weeks Hot Chick was not hot enough! Well let me assure you that I take all these complaints very seriously. So let me assure you that this week, there should be no complaints about her hotness! I am proud to present to this week Hot Chick.

How’s that then hot enough for you. Elisabetta was born in Soverato, Italy in 1980, and is a well known Italian TV presenter, well known in Italy that is! She is renowned for appearing on shows wearing extremely few clothes and has often been caught in lets say compromising position! So why do you think she got to be a Hot Chick? Well take a look at this and you will see why!

As a child, she had various career aspirations, including being a police woman and a detective. This was based on her mom's tough stance on good and evil, which rubbed off on Elisabetta and her sister. Justice and crime-fighting didn't prove to be in the cards for Elisabetta, but another one of her early wishes most certainly was. Using her mom's brush, she would speak into a "microphone," look in the mirror and imagine herself on television.

Before she took her first steps into showbiz, she concentrated on her education, gaining a diploma in accounting in 1998 and a degree in modern dance at a top university in Rome. She then set her sights on becoming Miss Italy. She didn’t win, but it gave her the idea to use her beauty to further her career. Thank God she did, I mean can you imagine if she had stayed as an accountant! What a waste that would have been!

She used her new found skills to appear in three Italian films in early 2000, and this led to her being offered a role in the Italian TV show Euro 2000. The success of the show made her a regular on Italian TV, and led to her starring in nine top Italian shows. However her biggest and most popular role as a dancer on the show Libero. Yes she used to get half naked and dance around with her norks out!

She then found success as a model, and believe it or not, she actually replaced Eva Herzigova as the face and body of Wonderbra! Yes yet again Captain Jack has brought you another Wonderbra model! Its amazing how many of them there are you know, and they all seem to have one thing in common, they seem to get loads of pictures of them published in underwear!

In 2006 she was involved in a high profile sex scandal with a high ranking Italian government official. It’s alleged that she only did this to gain herself a guaranteed slot on Italian TV, but that was denied by both parties. Though she denied that anything sexual took place, the exposure it gave her made her even bigger in Italy than ever before, and landed her a huge modelling contract with a mobile phone company, and such Italian clothing giants as Dolce and Gabbana and Armarni.

As a top model now, she gets to show off her curves in some of the fashion worlds sexiest creations. And of course, that means that she will get to wear some extremely sexy underwear. Now far be it from me to just use that as an excuse to show her in her undies again, but most of the info on her is Italian so all I can bring you is hot pictures of her! Shame isn’t it!

As for romance, well that’s where the problems start! You see, she currently dating Formula One boss Flavio Briatore. Not such a shock you may think, well maybe when you realise that he is 31 years older than her! And later this year she is going to marry him! Then again him being a multi millionaire, and probably will die on the job with her, she has been known to give hints at what she would spend his millions on if he should pass away cough cough suddenly.

So if you have any complaints about this week’s Hot Chick, let me just go over the facts. 1. She is Hot 2. She is a Chick 3. She is Italian 4. She will soon be loaded 5. She likes to be photographed almost naked and 5. She has a great set of puppies! All the best bits of a Hot Chick I think you will agree. More next week.

Its new feature time. Yes this time it’s not the Celebrity’s wanting to appear in Star Wars, well not for a few weeks anyway. No this is about what happens when they don’t get the Star Wars gig. Now we all know what this personality is famous for. It’s none other the bad boy Mike Tyson, former Undisputed Boxing Heavyweight World Champion. Now Mike has fallen on hard times recently, so hard up for cash he has had to start up his own plumbing business! Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy him coming round to check my taps, I mean if you argued about the price, he would probably bite your bloody ear off!

Yes always good to have your own designated driver to help you out in those unforseen moments when your three sheets to the wind! And what better way to lead into the part where I usually end up needing a taxi, yes it's.......

Sloe Comfortable Screw Against the Wall - With a Kiss

1 shot Sloe Gin
1 shot Southern Comfort
1 shot Vodka
1 dash of Galliano
1 teaspoon Amaretto
Orange Juice
Crushed Ice Cubes

Shake the sloe gin, vodka, Southern Comfort with cracked ice. Strain and pour into a highball glass. Top up with orange juice. Add the dash of Galliano. Then float the Amaretto, the kiss, on top.

Oooh I like the sound of this one. Just look at those lovely ingredients! All mine they are. Hand it over I haven’t had a comfortable screw for ages! Lets get the old gums around this one then. Jeez its like theres a party in my mouth and everyone is invited. Shhhoew then bratender letch ave annovver one of thosh then.
I told yoush veess were schtrong didlly I. Rite letsh ave a look in me top pocket ven. Wotshc this. Arrrh it’s a pistuere of er indoors. Whats do yoush meanz why do keepsh lookings at itsch? Well when shee getz to be good lookin, ven I knosh its times to go ome! Right im off ven.

Time to calm down now and offer my service to another of my needy readers. You know it bring a tear to my eye to see some of the letters I get from some of the people. In fact me and the girls in the office spent hours trying to sort out the most needy of you this week, well I say hours, most of the time was spent watching then parade around in their bikinis! But we did sort one out in the end, and we finally came up with this one from Tracy in Basingstoke. She Writes:

What can I do Captain? this is upsetting me a close friend of mine is bisexual and he recently got a new friend, but they became closer, now fancy each other and are now doing sexual things. This other person expects to come out with us EVERY day. When me and my friend went on holiday he expected a phone call off him. My friend says he is coming at 1pm and I’m going at 3pm. So they can have a couple of hours to themselves. I’m sick of being treated second best. "The gooseberry". and They tell me to go down for drinks as well so they can have their alone time. But before they got sexual I said 2 him I don’t want him taking my place and he said he wont. But he has! what can I do?? I love my friend as more than a friend but he doesn't want me as a girlfriend, my friend admitted that this other person has took my place. Please help me Captain I’m in a real state.

Captain Jack Replies: Look this is not good. I mean we read some real good ones this week……I think we did anyway, and this is the best you could give me, I mean this is a no brainer! You mean they read all of this when I think it, Bugger, now that may not be the right thing to say here with the Bi thingy going on. Hey ho I’ll give it a go. So your boyfriend is in tight with his boyfriend. Hum! It's a hole new ball game this bi thing. I hope he can work it out, slowly. Oh my god, NO! He's spending more time with a lover than with a friend! How outrageous! Luv, if my boyfriend spent way more time with his friends than with me, I'd be worried. Not like I have ever had a boyfriend to be fair. Look leave the old turd burglar alone. He obviously is batting for the other side, and if he likes to weigh anchor in poo bay then let him be, your much better off without him, unless you fancy being a lezzer that is! Anyway thanks for dropping a line and please don’t forget to read every week.

Right enough silly stuff for this week. Still time for a couple of new feature yet, but not quite yet, because it’s time for the music section now. Now your having a week off the culture this week, as Pianocian is busy recording his first album thanks to Captain Jack, so this week we have another helping of Karaoke Classics, and another Alternative History, but first is this weeks……….

Start Me Up ~ The Rolling Stones

Wembley 1982

Time for the Thursday night round up. And shock horror we lost the quiz! Yes I know its unbelievable. The week after handing over the first prize to the runners up and having to take the second prize of the ‘Spewmanti’ we ended up with yet another bottle of the stuff! But we did managed to give the horrible stuff away. Still we will be back next week to regain our title! So after the shock and disappointment of losing the quiz, I had to console myself with singing another four classics. This weeks song were 1. Rio by Duran Duran 2. Born To Be My Baby by Bon Jovi 3. Maggie May by Rod Stewart and 4. S.O.S. by Abba

Rio by Duran Duran

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 9 December 1982

First up tonight one of the biggest bands to come out of the New Romantics era of 80’s music. The boys from Birmingham fronted by Simon Le Bon had a string of hits throughout the 80’s and 90’s, and were reputed to be one of Princess Diana’s favourite bands. This track was probably one of the bands biggest hits, and is easily one of their most recognisable hits.
The song was the fourth and final single lifted from the band's album Rio, and was edited for its release. It was issued worldwide in November 1982 and became an Top 10 hit in the UK Charts. The song did not attract much notice in the US upon its initial global release, but after the band's breakthrough hit Hungry Like The Wolf stormed MTV and scaled the American charts in December ‘82, radio programmers paid closer attention to the catchy melody and insistent, intricate bass line of Rio, and they reissued the single in March in the US to great success.
The musical hook for Rio, well-known among Duran Duran fans and synthesiser enthusiasts, was produced by an arpeggiator, a software tool which can play the individual notes in a chord in a chosen pattern. Rhodes created the unusual sound at the beginning of the song by throwing several small metal rods onto the strings of a Grand Piano in the studio. The recorded sound was then reversed to create the intro. The laughter on the track was that of Rhodes' girlfriend at the time.
The song Rio was supposed to of been inspired from when Duran Duran toured Brazil and decided to write a song about their experiences there. But in fact the band insists the song is actually a metaphor for America and in fact the song expressed their desire to succeed there, which they did. The wordplay is interesting, as Rio is sung as if it's a girl's name, and the word conjures images of the popular and glamorous Brazilian city, which goes with the exotic image the band was cultivating. The lyrics clearly state, however, "from mountains in the North down to the Rio Grande," which is the span of America.
Duran Duran travelled to the island of Antigua with director Russell Mullachy in May of 1982 to film the video for Rio, where the yacht scenes were filmed on the bay at English Harbour, the beach scenes at Miller's Beach, and the bit with the raft at Shirley Heights. They also filmed a video for the album track Waiting for the Nightboat at the time, and both appeared on the Duran Duran Rio Video Album released in 1983.
Rio featured iconic images of the band in expensive designer Anthony Price suits, singing and playing around on a yacht speeding over the crystal blue Caribbean Sea. Short segments show band members trying to live out their assorted daydreams, only to be teased, tormented, and made fools of by a body-painted vixen. The London model in the video is credited as Reema, was a model for Models One agency, and was reputed to of been dating one of the band.Nick Rhodes was reportedly dreadfully seasick during the filming, and has often said "I hate boats unless they're tied up and you're having cocktails on them.”
The music video was shot in three days. At the end there was originally planned a scene where the band members got chased off the island with people wielding guns. The director didn't have enough footage left to shoot this. He had to borrow a tourist's camera to shoot the part of one of the band playing a saxophone on a raft. After the video was completed, Duran Duran went for a swim in the sea and were inches away from sharks when the yacht captain yelled for them to get out of the water.

Born To Be My Baby by Bon Jovi

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 22 December 1988

Now I know at least one person who will be glued to their screen now reading this, and I’m sure that they will already know all there is to know about this Bon Jovi track! It was written by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and Desmond Child, and was the second of five Top Ten singles from the New Jersey album, which was the most singles from an album to chart in the Top 10 for a rock band.
In the beginning and end of the song is a refrain of "na-na-na na, na-na na, na-na na, na" by the band members, that is in sync with the melody of the song. The song is highlighted by upbeat keyboard playing by David Bryan, a loud steady drum beat by Tico Torres, bombastic guitar riffs by Richie Sambora, a husky emotional delivery of lyrics by Jon Bon Jovi, and prominent background singing in the bridge and chorus, especially by Sambora.
The chorus is repeated several times throughout the song, and is well-remembered also due to well-defined rhyming and the use of alliteration, you know like Peter Piper Picked A Peck Of Pickled Peppers.
The song was originally recorded acoustically, with just two acoustic guitars and a harmonica in the outro. However under Bruce Fairbairn's influence, it was re-recorded in the form found on the album. Jon Bon Jovi once said that he believed the song would have made number 1 on the charts if released in its original form, instead he alleges that Fairbairn was trying to create another Livin' on a Prayer.
The video for the song was done in all black-and-white, like many of the band's videos from the New Jersey album. A very low budget video, it was shot all in the studio, chronicling the recording process for "Born to Be My Baby". In the full length video, there is actually dialogue between band members and the band does the chorus again, unsatisfied with the original version. The video prominently features photogenic shots of Jon Bon Jovi singing, as well as the band gathering around a microphone to sing the na-na-na-na-na part. The video also features a lady that Jon Bon Jovi hugs about halfway through when she comes to the studio, who just happens to be Jon Bon Jovi's wife for 18 years Dorothea.
Bon Jovi had perfected a formula for hard pop rock by the time of New Jersey, concentrating on singalong choruses sung over and over again, frequently by a rough, extensively overdubbed chorus, producing an effect not unlike what these songs sounded like in the arenas and stadiums where they were most often heard. The lyrics had that typical pop twist, although they nominally expressed romantic commitment, sentiments such as Lay Your Hands on Me and Born To Be My Baby worked equally well as a means for the band and its audience to reaffirm their affection for each other.
The song can be described almost as a forgotten gem, and it was notably absent from the band's 1994 compilation Cross Roads, and also as it doesn't receive nearly as much radio airplay as the Slippery When Wet singles and the two of New Jersey’s Number 1 singles receive.
However, the song has remained a favourite among fans and the band has obviously taken note, as it has been a set list staple on Bon Jovi's last four tours, and was also featured on the band's acoustic re-invention album This Left Feels Right, where the song was finally recorded in its original form.

Maggie May by Rod Stewart

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 1 October 1971

Time for a bit of class now with one of Rod’s best known and biggest hit singles. It written by singer Rod and Martin Quittenton and recorded in 1971 for his album Every Picture Tells A Story. Maggie May expresses the ambivalence and contradictory emotions of a young man involved in a relationship with an older woman, and is thought to have been written from Stewart's own experience.
It was initially released in the UK as the b-side of the single Reason To Believe, but DJs became fonder of the B-side and, after two weeks on the charts, the song was reclassified, with Maggie May becoming the A-Side. However, the single continued to be pressed with Maggie May as the B-side.
In October 1971, the song went to number one in the UK and simultaneously topped the charts in the US. The Album achieved the same status at the same time, a feat achieved by only a handful of performers, notably The Beatles, Simon And Garfunkle, and Beyonce.
The song was Stewart's first substantial hit as a solo performer and launched his solo career. It remains, arguably, his best-known song. A famous live performance of the song on Top Of The Pops saw The Faces joined onstage by DJ John Peel, who pretended to play the mandolin. The actual mandolin player on the recording was Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne. Stewart himself was amused by the song's success, saying, "I still can't see how the single is such a big hit. It has no melody. Plenty of character and nice chords, but no melody." Talk about not realising you have a hit on your hands.
When this track was being recorded in the studio, there was a problem with the bass kick drum pedal. Either it wasn't brought to the session or it was broken. To get the drum part completed, the drummer had to actually play the bass kick drum part on it's own track using a drum stick and played it like a tom-tom with his hand! You can clearly hear the hi-hat and snare drum more robust as the bass kick lacks that padded and punchy foot sound.

S.O.S. by ABBA

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 6 October 1975

I know, I know an ABBA song from the great Captain Jack, but with the Rod Stewart track got me thinking Ben Mill’s X-Factor version and there you go, in a round about way! It was first called Turn Me On, was the third single from ABBA's self-titled 1975 album. It was released with Man in the Middle as the B-side. Agnetha, the fit blonde one from the band also recorded the song in Swedish on her 1975 solo album Elva kvinnor I ett hus, which translates as Eleven Women In One House.
The song was written by Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson. The title itself was coined by Stig, though the lyrics he provided were re-written by Ulvaeus. Despite the song's catchiness, it was passed over as the lead single from the album, and the track So Long was chosen instead. So Long was chosen primarily because it had the same uptempo beat as their 1974 hit single, Waterloo.
It was ABBA's UK comeback single, reaching No.6, and also became the group's second US Top 20 hit. It topped the charts in New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Belgium and Germany, and reached the Top Five in Italy, Austria, Holland, Norway, Switzerland and Ireland.
The song has a number of musical fans in its time. John Lennon and Pete Townsend of The Who, had both declared that it was one of their favourite pop songs.
This is the only Top 20 hit in history in which the title of the song and the name of the artist are both palindromes - they spell the same thing forward and backward. ABBA was an acronym for the four names of the members of the group: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Annifrid. One of ABBA's problems is that their songs sound so very simple. When you don't listen real close, you'll only hear that, and will compare them to simple hit machine-like groups. But when you listen closer you'll find their melody's and arrangements are quite complicated and really hard to sing as the makers of the Mamma Mia musical found out.
Although all of the group's members soon embarked on new projects after the band split, with both Agnetha and Annifrid issued solo LPs, while Benny and Bjorn collaborated with Tim Rice on the musical Chess, none proved as successful as the group's earlier work, largely because throughout much of the world, especially Europe and Australia, the ABBA phenomenon never went away. Repackaged hits compilations and live collections continued hitting the charts long after the group's demise, and new artists regularly pointed to the quartet's inspiration, such as pop duo Erasure released a covers collection, Abba-esque, and Australian group called Bjorn Again found success as ABBA impersonators.
In 1993, Dancing Queen became a staple of U2's Zoo TV tour, with Benny and Bjorn joining the Irish superstars onstage in Stockholm, while the 1995 feature Muriels Wedding, which won acclaim for its depiction of a lonely Australian girl who seeks refuge in ABBA's music, helped bring the group's work to the attention of a new generation of moviegoers and music fans.

Rounding off the music section this week is this weeks bit of alternative history. Good old Ozzy. He’s not really known for his vocal talents. In fact he can hardly string a sentence together at times, let alone speak another language. But what if he had taken a different route from being the Prince Of Darkness, and had decided to learn Italian and become a world class opera singer! Now that would be shocking enough, but what would Pavarotti of made of him biting the heads off bats during a performance?

That's it for all the music this week. Now let's see, two great new features so far, and another to come, in fact its here right now. Now how spooky would you like to get? Well this is where I get to scare the living daylights out of all you lilly livered land lubbers! Now be warned, don't read this in the dark, or you might poo your pants, in my new feature......

Its yet another new feature to enjoy this week. Now all those showbiz types have their dark sides you know. And they all bring it out at night when they turn into evil killer clowns! And as your friend I aim to bring you what they look like so you can avoid them at night if you should bump into them on a dark alleyway one dark night. First up is the wannabe King Of Pop from the Potteries, Robbie Williams. Now he looks evil some of the time anyway, but if you bumped into him in this get up! Jeez you’d run a bloody mile.

Now we all know that Euro 2008 is now here, and as your number one sports reporter, its my duty to bring you my report on the biggest football tournement of the year. All the sights and sounds will be here in true Captain Jack style. So your Euro rundown starts here. For those who don't know, this yeas tournement is being held in Austria and Switzerland, and at eight of the two countries stadiums, mainly because there is only four stadiums big enough in each to hold international matches!

16 of Europe's best teams will compete for the title of European Champions this year, except for England and the other Home Nations, mainly because we are all crap! At first many thought the tournament would be poorly supported in Switzerland, but as you can see the locals have thrown their support behind it fully.

Every competition has its silly mascot, and this one is no exception with these two showing the colours of the respective host nations, it Bill & Ben the Football Men!

Lets face it, the Opening of these tournaments are usually a bit of a waste of time, I mean they are supposed to be about football, so what the hell have these giant Swiss women with milk churns got to do with football exactly?

The stadiums have all been newly fitted out with the latest equipment, and state of the art ticket machines have proved that this tournament will give the touts the most problems in forging tickets. One big complaint though has been the name of some of the grounds, I mean this Dutch fan seems bemused at the name of the stadium!

Every time a big football competition takes place it brings out the most colourful supporters, like the yellow of the Spanish fans, the Swiss in their red, the red and white check of the Croatian fans and the Orange Army of Dutch supporters, Oh yes and of course the French, who just look like a bunch of cocks!

The tournament brings the biggest stars from around Europe to battle out for the title, and sometimes they like to get together and give each other a big hug, like you can see here.

Now as I said earlier , it was feared the tournament would be badly supported by the locals, what with them having absolutely no chance of winning it, but as you can see here, the Swiss sold nearly every seat in the ground, well nearly all of them anyway!

Now lets get on with the football, well I say the football, but lets face it we are not in the tournament, so frankly who cares who wins, so after I have seen all the 16 teams play now, its only fair that we score the tournament on the fitness of their fans, the female fans of course. First match was hosts Switzerland playing the Czech's.

Looks like a draw to me, next up in Group A was Portugal and Turkey

Definately the Portguese Chicks for that one! Next up is Group B. First up is the other hosts Austria, and they took on the team that knocked out England, the mighty Croatia.

Not sure but I think Croatia just about sneaks that one. Also in Group B is the favourites for the competition Germany, who take on their bitter rivals, Poland.

Close call but I think the Germans just about snaek this one. It was claimed that the Germans were only favourites because they play each match with giant balls.
The Polish manager used all his best skills to see if they were, but the binoculars provided by the UEFA officials proved to be a little poor.
The German manager was outraged at the thought that the mighty Germans would need to resort to such methods to beat the Poles, in fact as you can see, he showed just what he thought of the comments made about his team.

But without and proper proof the Germans won the game comfortably, and their fans were quick to show their Polish counterparts what the final score of the game was, well at least how many goals they scored!

Next up is Group C, and the first game in this group was between the French and Romania.
Although it looked like the Romanian's have sneeked a shock win, it was just a draw at the end of the game. In fact the French fans showed here just what this game needed to liven it up.

But this Romanian fan let them see just what he thought of the first goaless draw of the competition!
Next up in Group C is the Netherlands, or the Dutch, or Holland, who take on the World Champions Italy.

Now some people do say that all Italians are dog's!

But I think this weeks Hot Chick and this little beauty proves that this isn't true!

Now it wasn't expected, but the Dutch absolutely trounched the World Champs, and when you see Edwin Van Der Sar's Dutch wife, you can see why this was such a comfortable victory!

Another gorund with a very small scoreboard, but the Dutch fans helped by showing the Italians just how many goals they lost by!
Finally it's believe it or not, Group D. First game was the other team that knocked us out, Russia, who take on Spain.
No real shock here to find the Spanish won quite easily. Finally was the team we were all waiting for Sweden, who take on holders Greece. So here it is one of those world famous Hot Swedish Chicks!

Now that can't be right lets try again!

No real shock here as the Swedish win easily. Now some have complained that without the English the tournament will end up with no talent, what a load of balls!

Not true at all, I mean it's footie, and that is an excuse to sit in front of the telly and enjoy a nice cold beer!

And while you sit down and enjoy your beer, you can fill in your Captain Jack score sheet! Sorry Its a bit small!

Phew thank God thats all over with! Can't wait to find out what Europe's finest have got for us next week! So thats almost it for another week. But we do have a little matter of the two picture quizes from earlier. And after all this weeks top new stuff, I'm sure you cant wait. First up is the answer to Every Picture Sings A Song, and this week's answer was of course....And the answer to the Magiacal Movie Mystery Quiz was of course.....But of course you all got those with no problems at all didn't you! Now that's just about it for another week, just long enough for me to say see you all soon, and don't worry ladies, only two more weeks left of the Euro's! See Ya

Thursday 29th May 2008 Edition 107

2008-06-03T20:53:00.021+01:00

Hello and welcome to this weeks edition of the best blog on the planet. I hope you are all feeling well and ready for another bumper issue of fun and frolics. This week has been a bit slow on the old Captain Jack front, and to be honest there is not that much to talk about this week on the whole, so I will try and keep you as entertained as possible. But then you have all come to expect that!
As you will all know the Planet Rock deadline has come and gone, well twice now, and what was the outcome? Well thanks to all the support I am pleased to announce….
Yes with all our support a buyer has been found and the station is saved, but not by who we thought. The station has been bought this week from GCap Media by Malcolm Bluemel, an entrepreneur and rock music fan, for a nominal sum. Bluemel, 55, who beat a bid from Queen guitarist Brian May, runs TLCS Global Visa Services, which manages visa and passport applications for corporate customers.Despite amassing 563,000 listeners and being named digital station of the year at the Sony Radio Awards, Planet Rock was put up for sale by GCap to conserve cash as it unsuccessfully tried to fight a takeover bid from Charles Allen’s Global Radio. But with this sale taking place the countries number one rock station has now been saved, thanks to Captain Jacks Tracks readers, oh and of course Magnum, Thunder, Marillion, Iron Maiden, Moterhead, Whitesnake, Ian Gillan, Fish and of course Brian May, but it was my readers that did most of the hard work! Anyway it’s a big thanks from me for all those that signed up, even those who never even listen to the station!

Now with the football season over, finally I hear the ladies all say, it dawned on me that in this seasons Euro 2008 finals there is no home support! So who are we all going to follow? Well as always I have had my spies out, and from inside a secret training camp, I have an exclusive video of one of the main teams in the competition. Now to be fair, I’m not entirely sure who they are, but I’ll be supporting them fully!

Now that’s why they call it the Beautiful Game, well at least until the last few moments anyway. As you can expect from this blog, always up to date on all major sporting events, I will be bringing a weekly Euro 2008 report, which will replace It’s A Funny Old Game for a few weeks, so we can all see what we could of won, if we hadn’t had such a crap manager!
So onto this week then, and all the regulars are here again for your pleasure. Ask The Captain, Ronnies Bull Plop, Classic Tracks, Karaoke Classics, a Hot Chick and all the other great features you know and love. And first up as usual is this weeks…….
What am I to do? I know that some of you got last weeks almost straight away, and some of you struggled a bit. Now I did get told they were getting too easy. So lets see if this weeks is any easier for the lets say slower amongst you! I mean how easy do you want me to make them? I could do like in the quiz at the Hotel and just give you the answer and you could send me the picture in at some point! Now where is the fun in that. Right lets get on with it then. Here is this weeks picture, followed by three cunning clues about the song.

1. This was the artists 14th consecutive Top Twenty Hit.
2. It was released as a double A-side and hit number 5 in the UK charts in 1978.
3. It has been covered by such different artist as Tom Jones and Tina Turner.

Devilish I think you will find this week! Ah well, it would be know fun if you got them to easily would it now!. So what to do now then. Do you scroll down and peek at the answer at the bottom of the blog, or do you read on until you get there. Personally I would read on as you know this is only going to get better, but then some of you are impatient little monkeys! Time for a bit of a class now, yes it's time for this week's......

Classic Track # 18

She Talks To Angels by The Black Crowes

Bit of blues style rock for you on this weeks Classic Track. This song is an acoustic masterpiece, and has all the elements of a great rock track, great lyrics, brilliant production, haunting melody and brilliant vocals. But the band have never really been taken under the wing, excuse the pun, by the British music fans, despite the band being influenced by Led Zeppelin, and of course the masters of Blues Rock The Rolling Stones.

The song is about drug addiction, and dependency, a subject the band come to know lots about. If you've ever been unfortunate enough to find yourself on this hell bound train, you know full well that this song is about addiction. The word is not mentioned in certain company because everyone is in denial. She'll tell you she's an orphan, after you've met hr family, signifies the life of lies and deceit she must live in order to support her habit and to justify her behaviour.

The lines about painting her eyes as dark as night and pulling the shades down tight describe the private world she creates for herself when she's using. She can be anyone she wants to be, and she wants no interruptions during this very private time. I see the lock of hair as someone that, at one time, meant everything to her but is no longer a part of her life. It represents the excruciating pain that brought her here, as well as the guilt and shame that keep her here. The cross is to signify spirituality. It's the only thing she has left to provide a glimmer of hope in a lifestyle that is hopeless by definition.

She gives a smile when the pain comes. The pain's gonna make everything alright is about the pain associated with IV drug use is nothing compared to the effects of the drug, which will, if only for a short while, allow her to forget the traumatic events that have changed her life forever. I think the smile is because that is her only release of the pain. Probably because no one understands her pain. Because it is a pain so great that no one else can even begin to know the true feeling.

The Crowes released their first studio album, Shake Your Money Maker, in 1990. On the strength of singles Hard to Handle, She Talks to Angels, Jealous Again, Twice as Hard, Sister Luck, and Seeing Things, their debut album received multi platinum certification and eventually sold over three million copies. The band's cover of Otis Reading’s Hard to Handle and She Talks to Angels both broke the Top 30 on the charts in 1991. The Black Crowes pumped up their sales by opening for ZZ Top on a tour, and have also toured with Aerosmith, AC/DC, Bon Jovi and their hero’s The Rolling Stones. They have just reformed after splitting in 2002, and have recently released a comeback album called Warpaint.

Two Italians, Luigi and Antonio, met on the street. "Hey, Antonio," said Luigi. "Where you been for the past two weeks? No one seen you around."
"Donna talka to me, Luigi," replied Antonio. "I been inna da jail." "Jail!" exclaimed Luigi. "What for you been in jail?"
"Wella, Luigi," Antonio said, "I was lying onna da beach, and the cops come, arresta me and throw me inna jail."
"But dey donna throw you in jail just for lying onna da beach!" Luigi countered.
"Yeah, but dissa beach was ascreamin' and akickin' and ayellin'."

Yarr harr harrr me old hearties and welcome ye all to another meeting of one of me fearsome crewmates. Oooh ahhh cantonaaaaaarrrrrhhhhhh! This fearsome crewmember looks like he couldn’t handle himself, but he has a fearsome collection of fellow crewmates with him who will scare the barnacles of your bow. Yarr Ahhrrr Jim Lad! He sails on his boat The Green Barnacle and goes by the name of Insane Argus Cutler, or as you know him Kermit The Frog. Shiver Me ever growing timbers!

This green skinned devil may only be a small one, but what he lacks in size he makes up for in sheer entertainment value. He will soon get one of his so called Muppets to keel haul you over the poop deck and send ye up to the crows nest with your back stinging from his cat o’ nine tails, blow the man down!

Well it’s time for me to head back to another shore in time for me tiffin, so until next time folks I have just this to say to you, yarrhhh harrr arrrgghhhh arrrrgghh yarr harr harrrr!

Well what has Ronnie got for us this week. A good friend of Ronnie, one David Beckham has been stuck for idea’s as to what to buy her indoors Posh for her birthday, and he came up with the perfect gift, her own vineyard! Yes toe football legend has purchased his wife her very own Californian Vineyard so she can make her own fine wine. According to friend’s of Posh and Becks the pair became wine buffs whilst he was playing for Real Madrid in Spain, and David thought it was the perfect way for his wife to start up her own little sideline. The 33-year-old sports superstar has recruited a team to help them run the vinery, and from the look of Ronnie’s picture, they will have a lot of work to do! More from Ronnie next week.

That Ronnie is just nothing but a nemedropper you know! Still it's keeps me amused, and his artwork has been getting serious offers from some top galleries! Well when you say galleries, its more of a car boot sale but all the same! Anyway before we get all excited with this weeks Hot Chich, lets relax with a little game with this weeks......

Naughty Detective Game
It’s back to someone we all know this week, and someone who fits all the curves and general sexiness needed to become a firm favourite, so lets all give a big huge Captain Jack welcome to this weeks Hot Chick, who is very shagadelic as she was once described, its none other than our very own......
Born June 10, 1965, in Hampshire, England, Elizabeth Hurley is the daughter of an army officer and an elementary schoolteacher mother. While growing up in Basingstoke, England, Liz dreamed of becoming a dancer, which prompted her to attend a boarding school specializing in ballet at the age of 12. Her attendance at the boarding school was short-lived, and she then went through a different phase, the English punk stage. Although it must be hard to imagine the now so glamorous Lizzy with pink hair and a nose ring, she was a victim of punk fashion of the early '80s, since this was the thing to do at that time and place. Anyway here she is with something pink!

At age 21, she got her first film role in the 1987 film Aria, after having attended the London Studio Centre on scholarship. Her role in the film Remando al viento, or Rowing In the Wind that same year could be considered a crucial one, as it also starred her future boyfriend Hugh Grant. One year later, she received critical acclaim for her role as Christabel Bielenberg in the BBC mini series, Christabel. She also gained some recognition in the US for her role in the 1992 action film Passenger 57, starring Wesley Snipes. Although this was a Hollywood role, she was still having difficulty receiving quality roles, and consequently returned to England.

Whoever said that clothing is not important must not know about Elizabrth Hurley's claim to fame. Apparently, Versace did Hurley a favor by giving the statuesque beauty an unsold dress to wear to the 1994 London premiere of Hugh Grant's film, Four Weddings and a Funeral. The low-cut risqué dress held together by safety pins became Hurley's ticket to stardom, as she made heads turn at the premiere. So why waste an opportunity to have a look at her in ‘that dress’

More attention followed when Estée Lauder signed Hurley to be the face of the international cosmetics company. If by this time someone had still not heard of Elizabeth Hurley, 1997's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the little movie that became a smash hit, was sure to get her the recognition she deserved. With her comedic turn as agent Vanessa Kensington alongside Austin Powers, played by Mike Myers, Hurley was now seeing the movie scripts rolling in. Yes this is where she was described as being very shagadelic, and it would be a shame not to see why!

Several movie roles followed the huge success of the film, including roles in 1998's Permanent Midnight, and 1999's My Favorite Martian, EDtv and Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. That same year Hurley worked as producer of Mickey Blue Eyes, which starred her boyfriend Hugh Grant, and marked the second film for Simian Films.Hurley has continued to appear in smaller productions over the past couple of years, including 2000's The Weight of Water and Bedazzled, where she played the devil and had to appear in several revealing costumes, picture anyone!

I know it wasn’t in the film, but who cares! After a 13-year relationship, she and Hugh Grant parted ways in 2000. Rumors that the breakup stemmed from a disagreement over having children together abounded. Liz began a romance with L.A. millionaire producer Stephen Bing in 2001, and gave birth to a son, Damian Charles, on April 4, 2002. Bing initially denied being the baby's biological father, claiming he and Liz had a non-exclusive relationship. DNA testing has since proven that Bing is indeed the child's father, although he and Liz are no longer romantically involved. Despite having a child she has kept her supermodel looks, as you can see from this picture.

Her dark hair and deep-set eyes add a mysterious quality to her stunning beauty. The fact that she was chosen to represent one of the top cosmetics companies, Estée Lauder, over so many other beautiful women the world over is a testament of Liz's delectable beauty. As for her beauty secrets, Hurley claimed in an Evening Standard interview that she gets her "hot-date look" by devouring large amounts of watercress soup. If that's what works for her, more power to the soup! She also has been known to scare herself stupid by playing with huge snakes thus stretching her skin and keeping it young looking, as you can see here.

An astute businesswoman, the actress-model has also made a splash on the fashion scene with her eponymously named swimwear line, Elizabeth Hurley Beach. Now far be it from me to knock one of my Hot Chicks, but a superstar actress come model who brings out her own line of swimwear, why she is only after getting a picture on here isn’t she, yes of course she is!

In March 2007, Hurley married Indian businessman Arun Nayar in a secret service in Gloucestershire. The couple decided to keep the ceremony private so held it one day early but with only the guests being informed of this change in date. Hurley contracted an exclusive magazine deal with magazine Hello!, thought to be worth £2 to 5 million with the overall cost of the wedding being estimated at a total of £2 million. The wedding festivities continued in Mumbai, India where they joined a private celebration held at Juhu Beach before moving on to Jodhpur, India. In Jodhpur, they held a private Hindu ceremony held at Umaid Bhawan Palace, where she wore a sari made especially by Donatella Versace. Despite her being taken, she is very much still a Hot Chick, and lets hope we see much more of her at events if she turns up looking like this final picture. Ah well, only seven day’s until the next Hot Chick!

Crikey what a stunner. It's enough to send you over the edge the amount of norks on parade in that section every week, in fact it's about time ther was a pill! Wait a minute whats this..

Well they will have to do for now. Time to move on now and next up is......
Who do we find trying to make it into the Star Wars world this week? Its none other than those three aging rockers from ZZ Top. Yes here you can see them parading as their favourite characters, the Wookies. Not many times can it be said that the celebrities who are dressing up don’t need to use much make up, as the huge beards the ZZ Top boy’s are famous for, gives them far more hair than Chewbacca ever had. Stick to the music boy’s!

You see the problem too much hair can cause! But then again it's not half as much trouble as the old demon drink can cause. Speaking of which I could murder a nice cocktail right about now, so lets all venture down for one of.....

Hurricane

1 shot Gin
3 shots White Rum
3 shots Dark Rum
1 shot Ameretto
1 dash Grapefruit Juice
1 dash Grenadine
1 measure of Pineapple Juice
1 measure of Orange Juice
5 Ice Cubes
1 Maraschino Cherry

Mix all the ingredients in a bar glass and shake well, then pour over the ice into a highball glass. Top up with the fruit juices.

Good, plenty of ingredients this week. Should make it interesting! Cor blimey govner me old fruit that’s got a kick in it! I’m not sure I could manage another one of those! Sod it, its drinky time, and I do like a drink, pour us another me old fruit.
Jeez thatch got a kigger bick to it than the lascht one mate! Heniwazs lascht week avter levin the bar, I happened to fall on my harse in a big puddly of water, horribly stuff! As my crize of hanguish we unheard by the pashing cwowdz, I felt that all woz losht! Then vesse two sailor blokes came up to me han hashked, What ya lookin for mate? Sho I shouted at then, Ya best be helpingsh me ladsh, I happear to ov losched the shore! Show meez the wayst to gose ome!

Now that look's like one of my more discerning readers. I bet she wouldn't have any need of sending in to some Advice Line to help her with her problems, but if she did she could always write and send one in to........This time seems to roll around so quickly each week doesn’t it. There are just so many of you to help. I have yet again been locked in a room with my team of dedicated hot chicks, sorry team of experts, to try and read only the most needy of your letters, for those of you most in need of my high standard of help. It was a hard choice, but this week’s letter really tugged on our heart strings. It’s from Tracy in Essex.
She writes:

This may be the first time you will of heard this problem Captain, so I only hope you can help me. My boyfriend steals panties from my bedroom. He takes them from my drawer or out of the clean washing...should I be concerned? He only steals clean panties...but still? Do you think I should tell someone about this, I am running out of my best M & S undies, and I’m afraid he may go for my Ann Summers stuff next. Is there any advice you can give me you wise old sea dog.

Captain Jack Replies: Wise old sea dog, cheeky mare! You mean you spent a whole week and this is the best one out of the lot, you really are taking the micky out of me you lot are. Do you think I enjoy being sat in a room with you lot in your bikinis! What do you mean I’m writing all this down! Crikey right so lets look at this again. Ah yes the bird with the weirdo fella! It's not a problem for your boyfriend to be taking your underwear it just shows that he is expressing a deep romantic feeling for you, you only need to be concerned if you spot him doing very unusual things with your underwear, i.e wearing them, sniffing them etc. After seeing the photo you sent in of the pair of you mind, I can see there may be more of a problem. I knew that weird looking little bugger was a wrong 'un. Shifty eyes has he! Maybe he thieves other items of your clothes as well, and has secret dress-up sessions. Keep a close eye on him, because he might thieve all of your clothes from your wardrobe, and go into the entertainment business as the new Lily Allen, or worse Pat Butcher! Dump him quick luv, he’s a nutter! Anyway thanks for dropping me a line, and I hope I was a help.

Ah the thrill of the stage! Now that looks like a top production, and of course I get top billing naturally. No ugly little scrote like Andrew Lloyd Webber messing with my show I can tell you!
Its time to get serious now with this weeks little musical section. Now I know you all loved the Pianocian last week, and as he has lots of great videos to show you, here is another one to keep you culture vultures happy!

So after you have relaxed yourselves there with that little classical interlude, lets get on with the really good stuff. We have another Alternative Musical History to bring you soon, and another host of classic Karaoke treats for your enjoyment, but to get things started, here is this weeks…..

30 Seconds To Mars ~ The Kill

Pinkpop Festival 2007

This is the stuff that this blog used to be all about! Strange how it has become just another section, just without the boobs! Talking of boobs, the Captain Jacks Quiz team won yet another quiz this week. That makes it seven on the trot now, and this week, our main rivals, lovingly naming themselves ‘The Seconds’, seemed to be a little to knowledgeable on the old picture quiz. Now I’m not saying that there was any cheating going on, but for a team who in previous weeks thought that Zoe Ball was Britney Spears and that had no idea who sang It’s Raining Men, how the hell did they know who Alexander Litvinenko was. I mean not that they may not be up on modern events, but I’m not sure they are fully up on their Russian Spies! Still they may all be working for MI5 so I best keep on their good side!
But in the spirit of being sporting, I decided to offer the ‘runners up’ the £10 drink’s voucher First Prize, and took the Bottle Of ‘Aspi Spewmaniti’ second prize. In hind sight, this will be the last time this happens, due to the fact of the lack of quality of the second prize! Still you can’t say we are not sporting on our team. Lets see how they try and beat us next week.
On to the songs then. This week, I sang 5 songs. So this week I sang these classics. 1. The Boy’s Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy 2. Tempted by Squeeze 3. When You Were Young by The Killers 4. Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones and 5. Tiny Dancer by Elton John.

The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 8 July 1976

First up tonight is the classic track from Irish rockers Thin Lizzy. This was the track that became a huge hit for the band, reaching the top ten in the UK charts. It was praised by critics as full of Gaelic Soul with Phil Lynott’s vocals, and the twin guitars of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson’s making the song one of the most memorable rock tracks ever.
It was taken from their album Jailbreak. Thin Lizzy found their trademark twin-guitar sound on 1975's Fighting, but it was on its 1976 successor, Jailbreak, where the band truly took flight. Unlike the leap between Night Life and Fighting, there is not a great distance between Jailbreak and its predecessor. If anything, the album was more of a culmination of everything that came before, as Phil Lynott hit a peak as a songwriter just as guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson pioneered an intertwined, dual-lead guitar interplay that was one of the most distinctive sounds of '70s rock, and one of the most influential.
Lynott no longer let Gorham and Robertson contribute individual songs, they co-wrote, but had no individual credits which helps tighten up the album, giving it a cohesive personality, namely Lynott's rough rebel with a heart of a poet. Lynott loves turning the commonplace into legend, or bringing myth into the modern world, as he does on Cowboy Song or, to a lesser extent, Romeo and the Lonely Girl. And this myth-making is married to an exceptional eye for details, when The Boys Are Back In Town, they don't just come back to a local bar, they're down at Dino's, picking up girls and driving the old men crazy. This gives his lovingly florid songs, crammed with specifics and overflowing with life, a universality that's hammered home by the vicious, primal, and precise attack of the band.
Thin Lizzy is tough as rhino skin and as brutal as bandits, but it's leavened by Phil Lynott's light touch as a singer, which is almost seductive in its croon. This gives Jailbreak a dimension of richness that sustains, but there's such kinetic energy to the band that it still sounds immediate no matter how many times it's played. Either one would make it a classic, but both qualities in one record makes it a truly exceptional album.

Tempted by Squeeze

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 41 August 1981

Well we have all been tempted once in a while, and tonight I was tempted to sing this song, Tempted by Squeeze. That’s the pun’s out of the way then! This well known track surprisingly didn’t even hit the Top 40 in the UK, but it has gone on to be one of the bands most recognisable songs. The band consist of a who’s who of well known musicians. Glen Tillbrook, Jools Holland, Paul Carrack, Chris Difford and John Bentley.
In 1981 the band cut perhaps their best-known album, East Side Story. It was produced by Elvis Costello and Roger Bechirian, and featured Carrack's lead vocals on the radio hit Tempted. Carrack himself left after the release of East Side Story, and was replaced by Don Snow.
Initially, the album was to be produced by Dave Edmunds, but the group scrapped those sessions to work with Costello and Becherian. Upon its summer release, East Side Story was hailed with excellent reviews, but it didn't become a huge hit as expected. Nevertheless, it found an audience, peaking at number 19 in the U.K. and number 44 on the U.S. charts.
Critics in both the UK and US were calling Difford and Tillbrook the new Lennon and McCartney, and their growing reputation it was a surprise the singles were not more popular in the UK. Admitted and discernable influences include the Beatles the Kinks, the Monkees, Velvet Underground, Small Faces, Nils Lofgren, Randy Newman, as well as some of the older theatrical writers like Rogers and Hammerstein, Bernstein, etc. to name a few.
Difford who wrote the song, got his idea in the strangest of places. He said in an interview “ Tempted was written in a cab on the way to Heathrow, I just wrote down what I saw and how I felt as we wormed our way through the traffic. I also must have anticipated a good time on tour as the chorus suggests ”

When You Were Young by The Killers

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 2 September 2006

A huge hit for The Killers back in 2006. This was taken from the bands second album Sam’s Town. It has proven to be one of their most successful singles, only beaten by Mr Brightside. The song displays the band's move towards a more American musical style, as it is part of an album that was supposedly heavily influenced by the music of Bruce Springsteen.
Few bands in the mid-2000s rose so quickly to the forefront of pop music as Las Vegas quartet the Killers. With a mix of '80s-styled synth pop and fashionista charm, the band's street-smart debut, Hot Fuss, became one of 2004's biggest releases, spawning four singles and catapulting the group — particularly their dandyish, 22-year-old frontman, Brandon Flowers into the international spotlight. Hot Fuss revealed in the garish glitz of the band's native Las Vegas, spinning tales of androgynous girlfriends and illicit affairs to a public whose taste for revivalist dance-rock would prove to be virtually insatiable. Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, and The Bravery all benefited from such retro-minded interest, but the Killers unapologetically trounced them all, even when their sophomore effort, Sam‘s Town, deemphasized the group's new wave sensibilities in favour of something more akin to the heartland rock of Springsteen and U2.
The popularity generated by When You Were Young led up to the highly anticipated release of Sam’s Town in early October 2006. While the album did not match the commercial popularity of the band's debut, it nevertheless sold 700,000 copies worldwide during its first week, eventually spawning three U.S. singles and gaining the Killers two additional Grammy nominations.
There are three characters in this song, the guy telling the story, the presumed girl and the guy who doesn't look a thing like Jesus. When thinking about a song, you think about the title. The Killers don't just pick titles because they are the lyrics most sung, they do it very deliberately. When we are young, we are innocent. The Killers also talk quite a bit about God, like in All These Things I've Done. This song totally reminds me of pretty woman. Some handsome guy sweeping in to take the girl away from her awful past. After all, what she's done isn't who she is. She's looking for salvation and forgiveness and someone to take her away. He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, But he talks like a gentleman. To me this suggests she is settling for this guy, when she should be looking toward God for this kind of forgiveness. The devils water usually suggests alcohol, but here, I think is referring to temptation, like Adam and Eve, the serpent devil was tempting them. This new guy is tempting. She knows he probably isn't what she really needs, but she can dip her feet for a little while. I think this is something she does over and over again, and she wishes she could go back to when she was young.
Of course it also appears on the PS3 game Guitar Hero III, and is one of the best and easiest songs to play on the game. The music video for this song was filmed in Mexico. It portrays a young Latina girl around the age of 20 who's run away and arrives at a large white wooden cross in the desert. She mourns in front of it until her supposed husband shows up and comforts her. The video then shifts to the apparently what happened before. The band is playing in a small bar that the girl meets her husband and socializes. When she returns home later that night she discovers her husband with another woman, after which she falls into contrast and runs out crying with her husband chasing after her. The video then shifts back to the desert with the girl and her husband leaving and returning to the bar. While they are there the girl looks at Flowers as he sings the last verse, but looks away as the video ends.

Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 3 January 1967

Another Stones classic now for you to enjoy. This was actually a double A-Side to Lets Spend The Night Together, but in time has become one of the bands best loved songs.
The song has had many people try and figure out who it is about, but perhaps the best and most plausible story is that the song is about one of Keith Richards girlfriends, Linda Keith.
According to Keith Richards in a 1971 Rolling Stone Magazine interview he wrote the song in a Los Angeles hotel room in early 1966. He said in the interview “ Who was Ruby Tuesday? Can't remember her name. It certainly wasn't Ruby. That's one of those things - some chick you've broken up with. And all you've got left is the piano and the guitar and a pair of panties. And it's goodbye you know. And so it just comes out of that. And after that you just build on it. It's one of those songs that are easiest to write because you're really right there and you really sort of mean it. And for a songwriter, hey break his heart and he'll come up with a good song. ”
The song's lyrics concern an apparently free-spirited woman, with Jagger singing, Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day Still I'm gonna miss you.
"That's a wonderful song," Mick Jagger said in an inteview in 1995. "It's just a nice melody, really. And a lovely lyric. Neither of which I wrote, but I always enjoy singing it." Bill Wyman states in Rolling with the Stones that the song was completely written by Keith Richards. However, Marianne Faithful says in her biography that the song was written by Brian Jones, and that Keith Richards only added minor parts.
The song reminds me of the positive human experience of feeling the renewed hope or promise that each new day brings and perhaps at the end of the day a momentary sense of loss. She is both beginning and the end. It’s about regretting losing someone you loved but could never keep because they were constantly seeking some new thing to fill their lives, a new experience, place, feeling or love. It's basically about accepting that you were in love but it could never last.The Rolling Stones' 1967 recordings are a matter of some controversy; many critics felt that they were compromising their raw, rootsy power with trendy emulations of The Beatles, The Kinks and Bob Dylan. Between The Buttons is probably one of their strongest, most eclectic LPs, with many fine songs that remain unknown to all but Stones devotees. The lyrics were getting better, and the arrangements more creative, on brooding near-classics like All Sold Out, My Obsession, and Yesterday's Papers. She Smiled Sweetly shows their hidden romantic side at its best, while Connection is one of the record's few slabs of conventionally driving rock. But the best tracks were the two songs that gave the group a double-sided number one in early 1967, the lustful Let's Spend the Night Together and the beautiful, melancholy Ruby Tuesday, which is as melodic as anything Jagger and Richards would ever write.

Tiny Dancer by Elton John

No UK Release

Tiny Dancer was 1971 song by Elton John with lyrics by his co writer of many years, Bernie Taupin. It appears on Elton's fifth album, Madman Across The Water. The song features a piano-based melody during verses, typically inscrutable Taupin lyrics during the chorus, and an arrangement that at the start features a pedal steel guitar and light percussion instruments but, transitioning subtly halfway through one of the choruses, by the end is driven by Paul Buckmeisters's dynamic strings, along with a barely heard backing choir. Clocking at 6:13, it was one of the longer radio singles of the period, probably the songs downfall.
While Tiny Dancer was initially a non-starter as a single, reaching only number 41 on the US Chart and not charting at all in the UK. The song slowly became one of John's most popular songs, and became a regular on radio stations, as the song grew in popularity.
The song received an additional boost in popularity in 2000 after appearing in a scene in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous, where it is played over the sound system of a tour bus as everyone is sitting tensely after their lead guitarist embarrassed them in public. As the song plays, eventually no one can resist the urge to sing along to the chorus as the riders reconcile. John has attested to the film's popularization of the song, saying in 2004, “I hadn't played it much until Cameron put it in Almost Famous. Now we get more requests for it than anything else.”
The lyrics were written by Bernie Taupin, John's writing partner. They were inspired by Taupin's first trip to America. John and Taupin are from England, and this was the first album they wrote after spending time in the US. The Blue jean baby, LA Lady, is apparently Maxine Feibelmann, Bernie Taupin's girlfriend. She travelled with the band on their early tours, often sewing together the costumes and fixing their clothes. She and Taupin married in 1971.
Two of rocks biggest stars also both do covers of the song on a regular basic. Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, plays the song in his solo section when the band play live, and Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl, also plays the song acoustically, normally when he appears on shows, and also in live shows.

Now this is not exactly what you would call a normal Alternative Music history, but this week sees Muppets Mad Drummer Animal taking a different route in his career. The famed drummer from the Muppet Show is renowned for smashing away on the drums, and generally being one of the loudest of the muppets, with his “Animal” catchphrase. But here we see him with a much calmer profession, as a harp player! Who knows this may be a new leaf for the flame haired nutter.

Well its back to normal again this week for the next section, as Man United didn't win anything this week for a change, but with my Euro 08 report starting next week, this will be the last for a couple of weeks, so sit back and enjoy this weeks...

Romania’s entry in the 1930 world cup finals gave a whole new meaning to “By Royal Appointment”. King Carol the II, known as the “Playboy King”, insisted that a representative team be sent to the tournament after the original invitation had been turned down because the players could not get the necessary two months off work. The King selected the team himself and then arranged time off on full pay for each of the players. They were eliminated from the competition after playing just two matches. When King Carol was overthrown in 1940, he fled to south America, where he was warmly remembered as the “Football-mad-king”. in Romania, like our George III, he was just remembered as ‘mad’.

Well that just about wraps up another week folks. I have been researching a few little items that over the next few weeks I will bring to you. There is no need to worry though the Hot Chicks are staying, I mean where would the fun be without the boobs! No I am on about some brand spanking new classy features to keep you entertained. Its all in the pipeline on your favourite blog.

So now I bet your all scratching your head for the answer to this weeks little picture quiz again aren't you. Well I did think it was a slightly tougher one this week, so for those who got it then well done, big pat on the backy there for you all, and for those who struggled! Tut Tut Tut! Don't think next week it will get any easier! Anyway the answer was of course...You see easy when you know the answer aren't they! well that is that for this week. Hope you are all fully entertained. I'm off now to shoot some more bad guys on Grand Theft Auto IV So until next week. Ta Ra.

Shrek: WHY... are you following me?
Donkey: I'll tell you why. 'Cause I'm all alone! [singing] There's no one here beside me / My problems have all come / There's no one to deride me / But you gotta have friends...
Shrek: STOP! SINGING! It's no wonder you don't have any friends!
Donkey: Wow. Only a true friend would be that cruelly honest.

Thursday 22nd May 2008

2008-05-22T21:03:00.021+01:00

Welcome all to this weeks edition. As always this week will be filled with all the usual features you know and love, but a couple of tweaks will make this week even more, shall we say educational! Yes I do have a little something later to let the culture vulture amongst you join in with the more low brow readers! But all that is to come much later.
Now yet another week has passed and yet again I have mysteriously received another three awards this week. I am sure it is one of my many co-horts, but if it isn’t, then all I can say is thank you for thinking that this blog is worthy of the awards! So my three this week I think are something to do with the old cocktail bar, as two of them are drink related! A cold beer and a Martini award! Very nice. And of course an award for being addictive. Well I only put the stuff up here so I guess it could be classed as addictive. Well thanks to whoever it is sending them, and here for everyone else are the awards.

Also I have recently come across a piece of literary work by some ponsey author, that appears to be using my name in some kind of romantic novel. Now unless I am mistaken and this is actually a dossier on the Hot Chicks, they I shall be seeking an injunction to stop any more of this romantic clap trap from being written, I mean just look at it, its obscene!

You see what I mean! As if I would have anything to do with that, all my women are Hot!Right on with this weeks extravaganza. We of course have all the regulars. A Classic track of the highest order, several Karaoke Classics, some top class Hot Chick to drool over, some first class celebrity bashing, Ronnie’s Bull Plop, and to start us off with, here is this weeks………Yes first up as usual is the little quiz that has you all racking your brain some weeks, and jumping for joy other weeks. Yes it’s the picture quiz with a difference, the difference being yet again this week you will either get it straight away or you will struggle. Oh, hang an a minute, that’s what you all do every week! So for the newbie’s amongst you lets go through what will happen. Below is a picture describing a well known song. All you have to do is read the clues and guess the song and the artist. Easy isn’t it! Well it is for some! Now lets get on with this weeks picture.

1. This was the bands ninth single in the UK.
2. It was released in 1988 and was the bands breakthrough into the US market.
3. The band had 24 consecutive Top 20 hits in the United Kingdom and sold 25 million albums worldwide.

There you go. Well I’m not going to make it easy for you am I. So for those who are impatient, scroll on down to find the answer at the bottom of the blog, missing out on reading all the other top quality items, or you could just read on, safe in the knowledge the answer is not far away!
Moving on now to something we can all enjoy. It's time for another edition of my.......Classic Track #17

Epic ~ Faith No More

It’s a song that really could be called the start for many bands like Linkin Park. This crossover for rap and metal is still one of the best songs ever, and worthy of getting on the Classis Track list. The song was the breakthrough track for Faith No More, and plucked the band from relative obscurity to making them a headline act. Boosted by MTV's heavy rotation of the equally bizarre video, which ended with images of a fish flopping around on dry land and a silently exploding piano, Epic hit the Top Ten on the pop singles chart nearly a year after the release of the album from which it was drawn, The Real Thing.

While bearing passing resemblances to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and speed metal band Anthrax's foray into rap, Epic was very much of its own personality, and at bottom sounded like little else in heavy metal. It didn't really aim to be a seamless hybrid of differing genres. Instead, the song derived its impact from the band's ability to leap from one sound to another virtually at will, creating a wild, intoxicating unpredictability.

Vocalist Mike Patton, on his first album with the band, projected that same quality with his assortment of growls, wails, nasal warbling, and guttural, barely comprehensible rapping. Even written out, the lyrics don't make an incredible amount of sense, frequently alluding to it, without ever explaining what it is, in fact the chorus simply consists of the band shouting, It's it!, while Patton replies, What is it? in response. But in the end, this only adds to the weird world of the song, its personality already a strange amalgamation of the band members' clashing musical personalities.

The music video for Epic, which featured surreal images combined with performance footage of the band soaked by an artificial rainstorm on a sound stage, was subject to controversy because of the perceived treatment of a fish, which appears to be out of the water and dying on camera - it was in fact slow motion footage. The fish was returned to its tank alive in a matter of seconds.
During an interview, the band joked that the fish seen flopping around in the music video belonged to Icelandic singer Bjork, which they claimed to have stolen from her at a party. There are also stories of Bjork giving the fish to the keyboardist, Roddy Bottrum after a poetry reading in San Francisco.

Guitarist Jim Martin was a schoolmate, close friend and fan of the early Metallica bassist Cliff Burton. In the video he can be seen wearing a T-shirt with a photo of Cliff with the words 'A Tribute to Cliff Burton'. In addition, Mike Patton can be seen wearing a Mr Bungle T-shirt in the video, who were the band that Patton was in when signed up to be in Faith No More. The T-shirt read "There's A Tractor In My Balls Again" and was sold at Mr. Bungle concerts. However, in order to secure MTV airplay the word Balls had to be obscured, so the bottom portion of the screen was mirrored.

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, "Please come over here and help me.....I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can't figure out how to get it started".
Her boyfriend asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?"
The blonde says, "According to the picture on the box, it's a tiger."
Her boyfriend decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, "First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger".
He held her hand and said, "Second, I'd advise you to relax. Let's have a cup of coffee, then ..........." he sighed, "let's put all these Frosties back in the box."

Harr harr me old cock sparrows, and welcome one and all to meet another couple of scallywags that are part of me crew. Shiver me timbers.
This pair have sailed the sargossa for many a year now, and the old sea dogs have many a tale to tell of their travels aboard their ship, The Wandering Barnacle. They be known as Jolly Nathanial Flintlock and Hairy Thomas Giggs, or as you know them Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Yarr Harrr.

For many a long year these two have been on a quest to find some buried treasure, and they have been at it for so long now, they sing a song about where it is supposed to be buried, somewhere On The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine. Splice The Mainbrace!

I see land ahoy, so I am off to pillage the old Jolly Rodger on the old poop deck me old hornswaggler, so until we next cross paths, be aware of me old cutlass sticking up your arris! Yarr Harrr De Harrr Harrr!
Well where do you think Ronnie popped off to this week. Of course it was the Eurovision Song Contest that caught his eye this week. X-Factor runner up and ex-binman Andy Abraham held the hopes of the nation in his hands as all 3 people who actually watch the show sat gripped on the edge of their seats to see Andy come well as usual bottom of the pile, with the eastern block countries all voting for each other in an annual back slapping contest for them all.
Good old Terry Wogan, whose quips about the songs and the voting was appalled as Andy came in last plase for the UK again, and even hinted that this may be his last contest, due to the fact that we have almost no chance of winning.
Terry said it was no longer a music contest and that prospects for Western European participants were poor.
He said: "It's a disappointment, considering that Andy Abraham gave, I think, the performance of his life with a song that certainly deserved more marks than it got."
Referring to certain other songs in the competition, he added: "You have to say that this is no longer a music contest." And he said: "I have to decide whether I want to do this again. Western European participants have to decide whether they want to take part from here on in, because their prospects are poor."
As you can see Ronnie has caught the vote in full flight on the scoreboard, with Andy and Terry looking on in disbelief. More from Ronnie next week.

Well before we all get hot and sticky with this weeks Hot Chick how about we have a little break for a few minutes with a little game. Yes folk's it's time for this weeks...Music Catch
Now it’s the moment you have all been waiting for, as I bring you the latest edition to my long list of Hot Chicks for you to drool over. This week is a real stunner, and has all the qualities that a Hot Chick should have, well she has huge norks anyway! So without further ado I bring you…..
Nikki is best known for her role in the show Las Vegas, where she played the role of Mary Connell, who was a Special Events Director at one of the casino’s. This involves her organising all the needs for the casino clientele, and of course dressing in as much cleavage showing clothing as is humanly possible!

Nikki was born in Los Angeles, as is the daughter of Meredith and Terry Cox, who is a personal manager. She has a younger brother named Matthew. Cox's career as an entertainer started at the age of four, as she appeared as a dancer in several ballet productions and TV specials. She was soon spotted as a young talented actress, and her path to stardom began.

She also took dance classes as well as going to acting school, and her first big break came when she was asked to be in the Michael Jackson Moonwalker film. She then went on to perform in numerous other videos for such stars as Paula Abdul. But her real passion was for acting and she did the rounds before her real big breaks came.

As a young actress, she made a number of brief episodic appearance’s in such hit shows as Baywatch, Boy Meets World and The Nanny. She also made it onto an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, where she played a very strange looking alien that becomes pen pals with android Data in the show. Of course she was only young then, but her assets soon helped her get bigger roles!

She got her first big role in a series when she played Regina Gates in the long running US show General Hospital, where she played a psychology student. During the show she had a string of sexy affairs, probably due to the fact that she has a fantastic huge pair of er eyes! So lets have another look at them now.

Her appearances in General Hospital would lead to her first prime-time starring role as Tiffany Malloy on the sitcom Unhappily Ever After, which ran on the Warner Brothers channel from 1995–1999. The show gained much attention due to her large breasts and the skimpy, provocative outfits she wore on-screen. Now as if this would lead into another picture of her in such pictures! As if I would! Oh go on then.

After she left Unhappily Ever After she went strait to her role as Mary on Las Vegas, and after being on the show for two seasons, she crossed over to long running NBC show Passions with her character Mary, to make way for two new characters in Las Vegas, confused, I know I am! This means that she is actually no longer in Las Vegas, but that she is in this other show, but who cares just as long as we get another picture of Nikki.

With her stunning good looks, Nikki has often been asked to model for several leading companies, including Tresome hair products, but recently she has been criticised for supposed plastic surgery to her face. She has had several cover shots on such magazines as FHM and Stuff, and was voted in the Top 100 Maxim women for three years running. She has also appeared in several big films, including Terminator 2 and Nutty Professor 2. Its that two thing again. Now what two does Nikki have that we want to look at again?

She was romantically linked to Bobcat Goldthwait, or to those of you who don’t know him, he was the one who talked like he was retarded in the Police Academy films. He provided the voice for Mr Floppy in Unhappily Ever after, and with his looks I can’t see why she would of ever touched him with a barge pole. Thankfully she is now married to slightly better looking comedian Jay Mohr! Lets hope we get to see much more of Nikki on our screens in the future. Another Hot Chick next week.

There you go lads back to normal! And there is plenty more where she came from as well. Now lets move swiftly on with the blog.This week another star tries to put themselves into the view of George Lucas should he ever decide to do anymore Star Wars films. This week sees celebrity plumper Rosie O’Donnell looking very, well fat as she takes on the role of Princess Amidala. I’m sure acting wise, she could bring a lot to the role, but as a sexy lead in a film, then she does seem to put you off your dinner. I think she would get a part if she auditioned for Jabba The Hutt though!

Right lets head on down to the bar. And after last week, I’m going to keep a steady eye on that barkeeper you know. Non alcoholic my arse!

Little Devil

1 measure gin
1 measure dark rum
1 measure cointreau
1 measure lemon juice

Shake the ingredients together with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

That’s more like it me old fruit a bit of kick in the old glass. Right lets get me gums around this one then. Goodness gracious great balls of fire it’s a blinder! Ooo that just hit’s the spot after last weeks shall we say slight oversight! Right then lets have another one!
Sho letsch get on wiv it ven. Ooo I’ve gone a bit schwibbly wibbly now wiv thish one. Schow letsch tell you all aboot whoat appened lasht week ven. After this tosher had chucked me out, I decided to nip ov to Boozin Bargins and ave a teensy weensy drinky pops on the old take out. After I ad supped a few I decshided to go fishing wiv me tackle out. Thich voice shouted at me Oi you can’t fish ere. Being a reschpectuble pilliar ovv the cominutty, I ignored him. Then I heard it again. Thish voice boomed out Theres no fish in here, go away. Well I looked around a could shee no one sho I continuededed. Then this loud voice boomed again Look mate there is no fish in here pack up your stuff and go. Sho I schtooded up an shouted you don’t schcare me, who are you?
Then the voice shouted back, I’m the manager of this Ice Rink, now get out! You schee, the tribble I got into lascht week because of this schodding barkepping pershon!

It’s that time again to sit and relax, as I take time out to help another of my weary readers with one of their problems. As you know, my dedicated team of advisors is sifting through the sack loads of letters I get to find the most needy amongst you all. This week we find someone who has a problem that we have all had from time to time. It comes from Tiffany from Epping Forest. She writes:

Captain I desperately need your help. It's my boyfriends birthday soon and I've got no idea what to get him. He is an extremely hard guy to buy for, and he's very fussy to which present he receives. Last year I bought him a lovely bottle of expensive aftershave and a big bar of galaxy which is his favourite chocolate. I can't give him the same presents every year. What can I do to keep him happy. Please Captain you’re my only hope.

Captain Jack Replies: Look I’ve told you all time after time, keep the crap one’s at the bottom of the pile and forward them on to that Deirdre bird from out of the Sun. Right lets give it a go, I’m quite good at buying presents. Two word luv ‘gift vouchers’ If he doesn’t get turned on by them, he’s no real man, I can tell you. You could possibly buy him a silver identity bracelet. Or, you could buy him a few cans of his favourite beer. You always have to remember that it's the thought that counts, so when the big day arrives, tell him you thought of getting him something, but you couldn’t be arsed, then dump the loser! Galaxy, he must be gay or something! Thanks for reading and I hope this will help you in your task.Back to the serious stuff now, with this weeks musical section. As ever we have the Karaoke Classics, the Alternative Musical History and the Live Is Best, but before we get onto that I have my little feature for the culture vultures amongst you. While trawling through the video’s on You Tube for the blog, I have constantly come across a great video poster who has come up with some unique interpretations of modern day songs. He is known as Pianocian, and here is a video of what he does….

See great isn’t it. Well it's certainly different, and I liked it anyway. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where that came from, so once in a while I will throw one in for you to enjoy. Now back on with the blog, and this weeks…………

Van Halen ~ Dreams

Toronto 1995

This weeks Thursday was again a quite night, mainly I think due to the fact that it is Bank Holiday weekend, and not many people are about, due to the holidays. So yet again there was only three teams in the Quiz, and who won again! Yes it was us. So that is six weeks in a row now. It is getting a little embarrassing. This week the quiz was all music, and apart from the fact that it was very shoddily put together, in fact there was no thought put into it at all, the intro’s quiz was probably the easiest so far, with at one point, almost the entire song being played! This aside, we still won by a huge margin, even though this was supposed to make it easier for the other entrants. Still we made good use of the £10 drinks voucher again. So onto the songs. Well another five to get through this week. They were 1. Wild Side Of Life by Status Quo 2. If This Is It by Huey Lewis & The News 3. Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits 4. Baby Fratelli by The Fratellis and 5. Private Emotion by Ricky Martin.

Wild Side Of Life by Status Quo

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 9 January 1977

At last a Quo song for me to write about, and what do I find out. That this is actually a cover by the Mighty Quo boys of an old country and western song! Originally released in 1952 by Hank Thompson, the song became one of the most popular recordings in the genre's history, spending 15 weeks at No. 1. It solidified Thompson's status as a country music superstar and inspired the reply song, It wasn’t God who made Honky Tonk Angels by Kitty Wells.
Thankfully Status Quo recorded a more up tempo rock version in their own style in 1977, and took the song into the Top Ten. The band are a cultural British phenomenon, with 32 albums to date to hit the UK album charts, beaten only by The Rolling Stones, and they have had 63 hit singles, more than any other band, with 22 of them reaching the Top Ten. Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi are the only two original members of the band, and their three chords have kept the band going since they first hit the charts in 1968 with Pictures Of Matchstick Men.
In their 39 year history, it is estimated that Quo have played over 6000 live shows to a total audience in excess of 25 million people. In doing so, the band has travelled some four million miles and spent 23 years away from home. The band has had a lot more highs than lows over the years, and a fact that many people forget is they were actually the band that opened Live Aid back in 1985, and although very nervous, proved to be one of the best bands on the day.
For years it was deemed to be a bit cheesy to like Status Quo, but their catchy riffs and stadium sing along anthems such as Rockin all Over The World and Caroline, have made the band one of the true success stories in British Music.

If This Is It by Huey Lewis & The News

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 39 November 1984

From one band that was cheesy to like to another. Yes Huey Lewis is perhaps most famous for his song featured in the Back To The Future film, The Power Of Love, but before they hit the top with that song, they had released a stack of music with a unique song and style that took a lot of getting used to for the British audiences. This track was taken from the bands album Sports, which also spawned the hit singles The Heart Of Rock And Roll and I Want A New Drug. That song caused controversy when in 1984 Ray Parker Jnr who plagiarized the song for the theme to the film Ghostbusters, a film that the band were originally asked to write a theme song for. They eventually settled in an out of court settlement, but after listening to both songs, I still fail to hear a resemblance.
Their song The Power Of Love was a number-one U.S. hit and featured in the 1985 film Back To The Future, for which they also recorded the theme song Back In Time. Huey Lewis has a cameo appearance in the film as a faculty member who rejects Marty McFly's band's audition for the school's Battle of the Bands contest. Ironically, the piece the band plays is an instrumental version of The Power of Love. Lewis's response in the film is Sorry, fellas... I'm afraid you're just too darn loud. The Power of Love was also nominated for an Academy Award. Lewis also appears later in the film, as a Fedora-wearing man giving a passing glimpse to Marty McFly as he enters 1955 Hill Valley.
Although they won world wide acclaim for the Power Of Love track, they never really enjoyed mush chart success after that track. Despite that, the band is still touring and has recorded a song for Seth Rogens upcoming film The Pineapple Express.

Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 8 April 1979

I suppose you could say that this is yet another song by a band that was a bit cheesy to like at the time, Dire Straits. But what people don’t realise is that this was their debut single. It was first recorded as a demo at Pathway Studios, North London, and quickly acquired a following after it was put in the rotation at Radio London. It did not take long for the popularity to find its way to record executives, and Dire Straits were offered a contract with Phonogram, a British record company. The song was then re-recorded and released in both the United Kingdom and the United States, though the demo version remained on the original UK Vertigo single.
It entered the US music charts in early 1979. Unusually, the success of this single release came more than six months after the relatively unheralded release of the band's debut album in October of 1978. The song reached the top 10 in both the UK and the US, and helped drive sales of the album, which also became a hit. With its Dylanesque lyrics and economic guitar riffs, the song was a marked change from the waning disco style and the punk movement.
The arrangement of Sultans of Swing was straightforward, with two guitars, a bass, and a straight 4/4 beat on the drums. Dire Straits' original lineup has Mark Knopfler on vocals and lead guitar, David Knopfler on rhythm guitar, John Illsley on bass, and Pick Withers on drums.
The song's story is that of the diverse members of a working-class jazz group who only want to play their distinctive sound in a small London club, and don't care how popular they are. One player mentioned by name, Guitar George, may have been a reference to musician George Borowski, one of Knopfler musical hero’s.
Although he was not given co-writer's credits on the song, Columbia recording artist Bill Wilson is said to have written many of the lyrics to the song while he and Knopfler were both studio musicians working a session in Nashville.
The album version of the song featured a critically acclaimed extended guitar solo, reaching number 22 on Guitar World's list of the greatest guitar solos. Knopfler has improvised and expanded that solo many times during live performances. The definitive live version of the song came as an 11-minute epic performance at the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Celebration concert in London when Eric Clapton teamed up with the band to play the song.

Baby Fratelli by The Fratellis

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 24 March 2007

Pretty much the best new band of 2007 and taken from pretty much the best album of 2007. This was the fourth single taken from the multi platinum Costello Music, which propelled the Fratellis into almost everybody’s record collection last year. They steal shtick from the Ramones — the members all go by the adopted last name Fratelli — and riffs and louche-ness from T-Rex, which explains how they produced this unapologetically glammed up, eight ball of a rock song. It's about a skanky girl, but really it's a high-energy ode to the thrill of stupidity, thus its prominent place on the Hot Fuzz soundtrack.
The success of the album led to The Fratellis winning the Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act in 2007, an award that was voted for by Radio One listeners. The Fratellis supported Kasabian in December 2006 on their UK tour before playing 10 dates by themselves in February and March 2007. The locations included Nottingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and London.
Following the release of the album, The Fratellis also embarked on a tour of the UK festival circuit, playing at Glastonbury, and headlining at festivals such as NME's Rock 'n' Riot tour, OXEGEN 2007 and T in the Park 2007. They also opened for The Police Reunion Tour in the summer of 2007 in some of the North America dates.
The Fratellis also recorded some cover songs during the year including All Along The Watchtower for Radio 1's 40th Anniversary Double Album, Radio1 Established 1967, and Solid Gold Easy Action for the soundtrack of the film Hot Fuzz, which also included this single Baby Fratelli.

Private Emotion by Ricky Martin ft Meja

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 9 April 2000

Just so I don’t die of embarrassment, this one will be short and sweet. Now Take That I can cope with. Even singing Westlife does have its plus points at times, but Ricky Martin!
Confession time now, this is one I like to use at home as a warm up song before I go out to sing properly, it does give the voice a good work out. Well it’s not Living The Vida Loca or Shake Your Bon Bon, and thankfully is a proper rock ballad of sorts.
In fact, believe it or not it was originally a track on American Rock band The Hooters album, Out Of Body. This version was a duet with Martin singing with Swedish singer Meja, who despite the success of this song, never made it back into the charts. You see that’s what singing with Ricky Martin does to your career!
The song was written by Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman from The Hooters, and they have bothe written some well known hits for other artists. Bazilian also wrote One Of Us for Joan Osbourne and Old Before I Die for Robbie Williams, while Hyman wrote Time After Time for Cyndi Lauper. Ricky Martin went on to become Chico, who almost won the X-Factor! Anyway I think I have just about got away with that one!

To end the music section this week, we of course have the Alternative History. Barry Manilow has always been thought of as a bit of a girl. I mean Her Name Is Lola! What a ponse! And Mandy! More cover material for Westlife! But imagine if he had been born Brenda Manilow, and ended up in girl band Bananarama! I mean who would of noticed the difference? More next week.

Well you may recall that I did pop a little tribute to Man United winning the Premiership a couple of weeks ago instead of It A Funny Old Game, well guess what happened last week! Well lets just say it started with this picture being taken.

Everything was going just fine when the game kicked off in Moscow, and after dominating the first 20 minutes of the game, the best player in the world at the moment popped up and did what he had done 41 previous times this season, he scored.

The first half then ended with a lucky break away goal which was put into the net by Chelsea's Frank Lampard.

Well pretty much nothing too bad happened in the second half of the match. Both sides had chances, and I have to say I had a few heart stopping moments when Drogba hit the post, but my faith in United winning didn't let that spoil the night. Extra Time came and went, with both sides having chances to win the game. Chelsea hit the crossbar again with Lampard, and John Terry headed an almost certain Ryan Giggs shot from giving United the win. But it wasn't to be, and the only black mark on the game was Didier Drogba being sent off for striking Vidic right at the end of the game. So would this have a bearing on the penalty shoot out?

Well it was all going swimmingly well and with it delicately poised at 2-2 on penalties Ronaldo stepped up to score a certain penaly until.....

Huge lump in throat time here. With that save after an awful Ronaldo penalty, Chelsea took the lead. United scored again to make it 4-4 leaving John Terry to walk up and score the penalty that would give Chelsea the European Cup until this happened.

Poor John Terry. Well poor John Terry for about 5 seconds. United levelled up the score and a couple more penalties were taken making it 5-5. Ryan Giggs, who tonight broke Bobby Charlton's club appearences record, stepped up to make it 6-5 in favour of United, leaving Nicolas Anelka to step up to take his shot. But with Edwin Van Der Sar not getting his hands on a penalty yet, he had to save one didn't he?

With a glint in his eye and a smile on his face, big Ed saved Anelka's shot, and queue the celebration's as the players rushed to celebrate with the hero of the night.

So it was United who won the double they have wanted so much since 1999, and nobody had a bigger smile on his face than Paul Scholes, who missed the last final due to being suspended, but when the trophy was handed over the celebration could truly begin.

So who do we have to thank for this, well the main man of course, who has masterminded this win, and pretty much made himself the greatest club manager ever is of course Alex Fergusson.

And despite missing his penalty in the shoot out, who could deny they greatest player on the planet from crowning this season with yet another trophy, its Cristiano Ronaldo.

Of course the big pat on the back goes to Ryan Giggs who not only broke the club appearences record, but continued to show what a credit to the club and football he is, with an almost unbeatable 10 Premier League medals in his trophy cabinet, but also his second Champion's League winners medal.

So this season has proved to be a great one for the boys from Manchester, and it means that it's the third time that United have been crowned King's Of Europe.

Well thats just about it for another week, and after the excitement of the Champions League, and the excitement of winning yet another quiz at the hotel, this week has been an eventfull one. Just time enough to bring you the answer to the Every Picture Quiz this week. The answer for all of you scratching you heads was of course...
So that just leaves me to say have a good week, and I will be back with lots more fun and frolics next week. It's only seven day's away folks, so until next time.......Ta Ra.
Denham: Let me through, officer, my name's Denham...Lieutenant, I'm Carl Denham.
Passerby: Denham? He's the one that captured the monster!
Police Lieutenant: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.
Denham: Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.

Thursday 15th May 2008

2008-05-15T21:22:00.019+01:00

Hello and welcome to you all to another edition of the award winning Captain Jacks Tracks. Yes award winning! What can I say, I’d like to thank you all for the support you have shown to this blog, and lets face it I’m worth it! I have received several E-Mails confirming these awards, and so far the three I have won are shown below.

Now lets face it these awards are all deserved, and I’m surprised that I haven’t picked them up sooner, but sarky? Me. Never in this world. And large amounts of porn, are you kidding? There is no where near enough porn on here some weeks. But I do accept the funny award, because this is a funny blog! Not sure which of my beautiful readers sent my nomination in, but thank you all, they are gratefully received!
Speaking of awards, there is more news this week on the Planet Rock campaign. The station had been nominated for three Sony awards, the radio version of the Oscars, and they ended up winning all three. The prestigious Gold award was given to the station for Digital Radio Station of the Year 2008. The award was presented by Ron and Russell Mael ("Sparks") to Trevor White, and many of the Planet Rock staff, who accepted the award most graciously. The judges said "A station with extraordinary passion, knowledge, surprise and depth."A Silver Award was won by Planet Rock presenter and musician Fish, in the category of "Music Broadcaster Award" where the judges commented: "Fish has effortlessly metamorphosed from a great musician into a very natural presenter with an immensely personal style of broadcasting which magnetically draws the listener in.".
And a Bronze Award went to Planet Rock for their Month Specials in the category of Multiplatform Radio Award. Judges commented: "Proof that programming creativity and not budgets win the day. Planet Rock ‘owned’ a good chunk of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert at the O2 without ever having to pay for access to the band. It’s a great example of how to use interactive formats to create a unique radio event. More than just a phone-in, this was a long-running project owned by the listeners and brought the station and its listeners closer together. The sheer number and creativity of the ideas involved deserves recognition."
After that, most of you who signed up for the Save Planet Rock Petition should of now received a e-mail from 10 Downing Street, which reads:
The Government understands the concerns about the future of digital audio broadcasting (DAB) in the UK. Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, is aware that several DAB stations including Planet Rock and The Jazz have ceased broadcasting recently or been replaced by others, but these are commercial decisions made by individual companies, and ones which the Government has no control over.
Petitioners may be reassured to know that, more generally, additional DAB stations are continuing to come onto air and later this year the 4 Digital Group will start broadcasting a further 10 national radio stations as well as a number of secondary services.
The Government is certain that that digital broadcasting has a significant role to play in the future of radio and is listening to the views of the industry, including the commercial sector. To this end, on 22 November 2007, the then Secretary of State James Purnell announced the launch of a new taskforce to discuss the future of digital radio. This expert and consumer working group will look at how to promote digital radio and increase the numbers of people listening to it. It will hold meetings throughout the year and is expected to present its Report late in 2008.
Not exactly a guarantee of the station staying open, but at least Digital Radio, and Planet Rock in particular, may be given the chance to thrive.
So what have I got lined up for you all this week. Well all the usual gubbins is here for you to enjoy. A classic track, a Hot Chick with a difference, Ask The Captain, Karaoke Classics, and It’s A Funny Old Game is back, but first up is of course this weeks………
Now I did predict last week that you would either get it straight away, or have no idea whatsoever, and guess what, I was right. So, with that in mind, this week, you will either get it straight away, or have no idea whatsoever! Nothing like being consistent is there. So you should all know the drill by now. Below is the picture that describes a song title, that you have to guess from by three cunningly descriptive clues about the song and the artist. You can either be a saddo, and flick through to the end and read the answer to this weeks fabulous picture, or you can read on through this award winning blog, and patiently wait to see if your guess was correct. So here is this weeks picture.

1. The song begins with a sample from Def Leppard’s Rock Of Ages.
2. It achieved significant radio play and popularity peaking at number 1 on the UK charts.
3. David And Goliath sells a T-shirt with the song's title on it.

So there you have it. Easy isn't it. Well it is when you have all the answers anyway! Time for a bit of class now, as I bring you this week's edition of.........Classic Track #16

Magnum ~ Day's Of No Trust

Your education of the best of rock is continuing this week with one of my favourite bands, Magnum. The band is made up of charismatic front man Bob Catley, genius songwriter and guitarist Tony Clarkin, keyboardist Mark Stanway, bass player Al Barrow, and drummer Jimmy Copley, or depending on work commitments Thunder’s Harry James.

This track was taken from the record that broke the band into main stream music in the UK, Wings Of Heaven, released in 1988. The album title had been changed to and fro several times. Originally it was to be called Different Worlds, but the song was not really Bob's favourite, so the title was dropped. Then Don't Wake The Lion, On The Wings Of Heaven, Magnum and Magnum '88 were discussed, but Wings Of Heaven turned out to be the most suitable compromise between band and record company. After seven weeks of work the band returned to England for Christmas. In January 1988 they completed and mixed the album in the Sarm West Studios in London, which belonged to Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, with the help of Joe Barberia, Ross Cullum and Guy Fletcher.

The album contained only eight tracks, but these were brilliant: Days Of No Trust, Wild Swan, Start Talking Love, One Step Away, It Must Have Been Love, Different Worlds
Pray For The Day, and Don't Wake The Lion (Too Old To Die Young). C’est La Vie was a bonus track on the picture disc.
Magnum came together in the Midlands in the mid-Seventies and released their debut album Kingdom Of Madness in 1978, followed by Magnum II in 1979 and their first live album Marauder in 1980. During this period they toured relentlessly with the likes of Def Leppard, Blue Oyster Cult and Judas Priest.
1982's Chase The Dragon album was the first to go Top 20, and was accompanied by a sold out UK tour. 1983's The Eleventh Hour, 1985's On A Storyteller's Night and 1986's Roger Taylor produced 'Vigilante' album all fared similarly well.During this period the band regularly graced the stages of such major UK Festivals as Reading and Castle Donington.

Days Of No Trust, a song lamenting the fact that our world is going down the drain and nobody seems to care about it. The band had recorded the song twice to really get it right. This single was released shortly before the album and became No. 32 in the British single charts. It came out in four different formats. The first edition of the 7“ was wrapped in a limited prismatic pack and contained a sew on patch that showed the Wings Of Heaven logo. Later there was a normal 7“, too. Both contained an edited version of the title track and a bonus track called Maybe Tonight. The 12“ featured an extended version of the song and two live tracks, The Spirit and Two Hearts, that were recorded during the Vigilante Tour. The CD-single rendered the short and the long version of Days Of No Trust, Maybe Tonight and the live version of How Far Jerusalem that had been on the Need A Lot Of Love promo-CD single, but without the spoken intro. This edition also contained the sew on patch and there was another edition in white vinyl. The video clip, directed by Marcello Graziani, was shot in an old factory hall and showed the band performing in their stage garment between barrels, pillars and pipes on a steel construction.

The album had very strong lyrics. Tony explained in the rock magazine Metal Hammer and in the tour programme that the line “Headlines are courted by stretch limousines“ from Days Of No Trust was aimed at themselves as they had used a Cadillac for travelling on the Vigilante tour. Wild Swan was a song about a picture Tony had seen some time before. It showed some of these birds with crossbow bolts in their bodies but very much alive, having survived this vicious attack. One Step Away was about a goddess of temptation that tries to lure a man into his doom. Tony got the idea for Different Worlds on a holiday in France. One day he left the shopping area in a city centre and, only a few blocks away, found derelict houses and utter poverty. In a way it was a follow-up to On A Storyteller's Night .Pray For The Day also continued an older song as it was about the Berlin Wall, which had already been one of the subjects in Need A Lot Of Love. The background of Don't Wake The Lion was that Tony denied the old Rock and Roll idea of living fast and dying young, once made popular by The Who. He stated that he had become too old to die young, a lyric from the song, and merged that idea with the danger that there is a dangerous animal, a lion in us all that, if set free, may eventually cause wars.

After a long, hot ride across the plains, the Lone Ranger and Tonto stopped to have a beer in a small town saloon. They tied their horses up, went in and ordered themselves a round. A short while later a cowpoke came in and asked who the white horse outside belonged to.
The Lone Ranger turned and said, "He's mine."
The man said that he should get his horse some water and shade because the horse wasn't looking too good. The Ranger said he'd take care of it.
Some time, and a few more beers had passed when another man came in, asked about the white horse and gave the same advice about water and shade.
The Lone Ranger then told Tonto to go outside and run around and around the animal to cool him down.
The Indian went outside.
After a few minutes another cowboy came in and inquired about the owner of the horse.
The Lone Ranger, a bit irritable now, replied, "He belongs to me! So what?"
"Calm down," the cowboy said, "I just wanted to tell you that you left your injun runnin'."

Yar Harr Harrr me old bilge sucking cock sparrows. Its time to introduce you all to another member of me fearsome crew. Shiver Me Timbers. Tis time to introduce ye to one of the most fearsome maidens of the Sargossa. She sails in her ship The Scurvy Shark, and goes by the name of Daxx The Magnificent, or as you know her better Sarah Michelle Gellar. Hoist The Main Brace.

She as a specialist skill, you know. An in her free time she is often found searchin out those pesky villainous vampire type thingys and well slaying em’. Blow the man down! She sails with a vicious beastie at times, and she can sometimes be heard atop of the poop deck when he wanders off shouting Scooby Doo where the devil are you. Ya lily livered bilge rat!

Well I’m off now to down a few rums at the Captains Cocktail bar, so until next time, Fifteen me on a dead mans chest, Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum.

So what has Ronnie been up to this week. Well while wandering around for some painting supplies Ronnie stumbled across one of his pop chums who had fallen on hard times. 80’’s gay pop icon Boy George was sat in an East End market on a stall, forced to work for a living selling budget clobber from a battered trestle table. Now this was something Ronnie just couldn’t resist painting!
On offer were some of Georges old t-shirts, and a few copies of his old LP’s, on vinyl of course! George told Ronnie “Its been a bit quiet today, not many people about. I’ve been here for three weeks now, and someone was really interested in one of me albums you know, honest. You couldn’t spare us enough for a cup of tea Ronnie could you?”
Well Ronnie promptly told George to bugger off, but he did find time to paint him for you this week on his stall. Not sure how much he will get for that open tub of industrial strength KY Jelly though! More from Ronnie next week.

Well I'm sure your time will come soon Jessica, but not yet. Not long to wait until this weeks classy edition of Hot Chicks, but to calm you all down a bit first, here is this weeks......

Britney Rehab Racing Game

This weeks is a Hot Chick edition with a difference. Its been said that for most of the previous weeks, it’s been nothing but filth, which of course is not a bad thing, so to compensate this week we have a bit of a classy entry into the list of beauties with.

He's gone nuts I hear you say. He's taken us back in time for some kind of kinky fantasy. But with stockings and suspenders, huge norks and a love of all things kinky, then no not at all. Dita Von Teese, has built a reputation on living up to her surname, and has made her way in the world as a Burlesque dancer and model, and also as being once married to rock nutter Marilyn Manson. Dita was not born in Europe as her name suggests. In fact she was born in the US with the name Heather Renée Sweet. She is well known for her fascination with 1940s cinema and classic retro style, as you can see in this next picture.

Her mother was a fan of old, Hollywood Films, and it was from her that Dita developed a fascination with the actresses of that day, especially Betty Grable, an actress that she frequently cites as her favourite. She was classically trained as a ballet dancer from an early age, and danced solo at age thirteen for a local ballet company. Though she originally wanted to be a ballerina, Dita said that "By 15 I was as good as I’d ever be". She was later to incorporate this element into her burlesque shows.

As a teenager, Dita’s mother took her to buy her first bra, made from plain white cotton, and gave her a plastic bag containing a pair of wrinkly, flesh-coloured tights. Dita says she was disappointed as she had been hoping to receive beautiful lacy garments and stockings, of the type she had glimpsed in her father's Playboy magazines. This fuelled her passion for lingerie. She soon found a job in a lingerie store as a salesgirl when she was fifteen, and eventually as a buyer. Some people believe that this is the store where she purchased her first corset, however Dita states in her book that she purchased her first corset in a sex shop. She has been fond of wearing elaborate lingerie such as corsets and basques with fully fashioned stockings ever since.

She has become famous for her routines as a burlesque dancer, and her performances have made her well know the world over. Her most famous routines include her Bird Of Paradise routine, her Martini Glass routine, her feather dance, her Diamonds In The Buff routine, and one of her sexiest routines, known as Liptease, shown here.

In recent years, the fashion world has come to accept Dita and her retro look, and she has appeared on a number of best-dressed lists. Dita frequents the front row of fashion shows, particularly Christian Dior and Marc Jacobs, labels she is often seen wearing. She has also done various catwalk work, modelling for such fashion giants as Moschino, Jean Paul Gualtier, Vivian Westwood and Heatherette, all well known for there retro looks. She has also recently been used as one of the faces of Wonderbra, yes I’ve found another Wonderbra model!

She was married to Marilyn Manson in 2005. They met in 2001, when long time fan Manson invited Dita to perform in one of his music videos. Due to work commitments, she was unable to, but she did meet up with Manson on his 32nd Birthday with a bottle of his favourite drink, absinthe, and they became a couple. They married in a private ceremony in Ireland. Manson had been a long time fan of Dita’s before they met, and had become obsessed with her, probably due to pictures like this.

While they were married, she seemed to be drawn into Manson's world filled with drink and drugs. Manson has long had an obsession with the shall we say slightly weird, and at times would have Dita act out his fantasies. One of these was photographed for Playboy. Manson got Dita to dress up as a kind of sexy Snow White. As you can see, it was not that bad, but thank god he didn’t find seven dwarfs as well!

In 2007 she finally had enough of poor Mr Manson, and filled for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Dita left their house empty-handed on Christmas Eve, and was not able to get in touch with Manson to inform him of her intentions of divorce. Dita says "I wasn't supportive of his partying or his relationship with another girl. As much as I loved him I wasn't going to be part of that". This just proves he is nuts, as if you were married to someone like Dita, why would you want to play away.

She is, not to put too fine a point on it, probably the most famous stripper on the planet. But not just any old stripping, mind. She takes off her clothes with old-fashioned class, she does striptease with style – and that's vintage style. You won't catch Dita dancing round a pole to the unsubtle strains of Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?, or gyrating inches away from her audience, lap-dancing style. Glamour is what it's all about for this gal. And after years of being considered too sexual for mainstream modelling, Dita, is now sizzling hot, and also a Hot Chick! What more can a girl want. More Hot Chicks next week.

Hmm! I get the feeling you all might think that she was a little shall we say not the normal Hot Chick. But when your the worlds best known stripper, well I think that justifies her place on my list. Don't worry lad's if she's was not your type, next week's will more than make up for it. Anyway on with the blog, and it's time for this week's.........

Now you know when we have had all those want to be arty farty actors and actresses wanting a part in the Star Wars franchise, well they weren’t the only ones. We had good old faithful Lassie the other week, and this week is no different. But instead of four legs we have four wheels, as everybody’s favourite car Herbie the Volkswagen Beetle. Yes if you look carefully, you can see Herbie parading here in the Ice World of Hoth as an AT-AT Walker. it’s a new look for the little car, but with his trademark 53 number boldly on his side, he will surely be the best know AT AT on the planet!

Well we will find out what they have come up with soon enough, but you know all this blogging has made me very thirsty, lets nip off for a quick one down at the bar in this weeks...

Saint Matthew

1 shot Cranberry juice
1 shot Orange Juice
1 shot Lemon Juice
1 shot Grapefruit Juice
1 shot Strawberry Juice
Ice Cubes
Ginger Beer

Mix the Cranberry, Orange, Lemon, Grapefruit and Strawberry juice together. Pour over the ice, and top the glass up with the Ginger Beer. Most Refreshing.

Right bit of a rush to get here this week so no time to read the ingredients. What’s it called? Saint Matthew eh! Ah yes I’ve heard of that one its got a bit of a kick to it. Well here goes nothing. Hmm that’s not half bad that isn’t matey. Not got quite the kick of some of the others you have been giving me the last few weeks though. Lets have another mate.
You know that really hit’s the spot as it’s quite a hot day out side. It really is most refreshing on the old taste buds. Something not quite right about it though. My speech seems to be ok, no slurring of my words, or bad language. And that fat bird at the end of the bar, well I still think she is fat, and I’, not even feeling the urge to try and chat her up. Wait a minute. Give me that mixing sheet. There no bloody alcohol in this bloody drink! What are you trying to do to me? What do you mean I’ve been drunk and stumbling around for the last few weeks after a couple of drinks. Nonsense. I’m a bloody pirate I can take my ale you know mate. Well you can stick your none alchoholic namby pamby girly fruit drinks where the sun don’t shine mate, I’m off to Bargain Booze for a take out.

Yes it’s time to sit back and put your feet up now, as I try to help the more unfortunate amongst you. The team has been hard at work again this week to find me someone who really needs a boost of confidence from me, and I think they have found on with this letter from Shelly in Rochdale. Shelly writes:

Dear Captain, One day I got a text on my mobile from a man. He told me he had text me by mistake. We’ve chatted every night for a month, we text a lot and have swapped pictures. He believes in truth and honesty, swears never to cheat and promises to treat me like a queen. He is coming to visit next weekend but I haven’t told my family because I’m scared of their reaction. How should I tell them?

Captain Jack Replies: You lot have got to be bloody joking again! Do I not pay you enough to sort out the crap one’s from the really needy one’s. Is this the best you could find me this week. Right well I suppose it will have to do. Lets give it a go. Listen luv, that's clearly no man, that's an alien! Good God, the invasion has started earlier than predicted! RUN! You're an idiot of the highest order! So lets look at the evidence. He makes mistakes, he talks endlessly with no substance, he's vain, texts a lot, believes in truth and honesty, *cough! swears never to cheat, * bigger cough!! and to treat you like a Queen, he lies. His name isn't Gordon Brown by any chance? For God’s sake tell your family, so they will lock you up and keep the rest of us safe from you, you numbskull. Now don’t forget to read me every week, and I hope I was of some help to you and your problem.

You know that just gives you a warm feeling inside doesn't it! No not the 5 A-Side team, the Advice Line! Although that team kinda makes you feel warm inside as well. So we move swiftly on to this week's little music section. Plenty to come in Karaoke Classics this week, and we have as usual the Alternative History, but first as we have this week's............

All Night Long ~ Rainbow

San Antonio USA 1982

Now some weeks we get to sing but a couple of tracks. This week, we managed a whopping five tracks, and of course, yes we won the quiz again! Yes it's a miracle, so out of the last five week's, we have won the £10 drinks voucher every week. Thursday is getting a cheaper and cheaper night out! It was an exceptionally easy quiz this week as well. Even so, we still won at a canter, even though the music bits and pieces section was one of the hardest I have ever heard! I mean both myself and Shaun do pretty much have most styles of music covered in our reportiore, these songs were unknown by pretty much everyone. In fact quiz master Gaz himself admited only being able to get 6 out of 20 points when he had a go. So our score of 12 out of 20 was very respectable!
So with five songs to bring you this week best get on with it then. This week I sang 1. Headlong by Queen 2. Rockaria by E.L.O. 3. Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones 4. Through The Barricades by Spandau Ballet and 5. Bleed It Out by Linkin Park.

Headlong by Queen

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 14 May 1991

First up tonight is one I have wanted to have a go at for a long time, but pretty sure I would not be able to do it justice, I sang it with a little trepidation to say the least. With any Queen song, the vocals that Freddie does on the tracks are notoriously difficult at times, and although you can sing along in the car and the bath to them, when you place a mike in front of you they sound very different!
The song was taken from Innuendo, the bands 14th studio album, and the last to consist of entirely new material, due to Freddie’s illness. Headlong was credited to Brian May, and is one of the heavier tracks on the album. After visiting the recording studio to record some tracks for his solo project, May decided to play some of the tracks to the rest of the band. And after hearing Freddie’s vocals on the track, he decided to put it on the Innuendo album.
The video for Headlong was one of the final Queen videos shot with Freddie appearing in it. The Headlong video clip heavily featured the group's lead singer, although it was actually shot before the I’m Going Slightly Mad video. The video showed the band in the studio performing the song, as well as shots of the band generally fooling about and working in the studio. The version of the song in the video includes an extra short section after the second chorus not released in any audio format to date.
The performance footage, with Freddie wearing a yellow sweater, was shot in January 1991, while the other footage, showing Freddie wearing two different blue shirts, were shot in late 1990 at Metropolis Studios in London. The footage of Mercury wearing a blue shirt with a tie was shot in September 1990, where you will notice his healthier appearance, whereas the footage of Mercury wearing a blue shirt with a darker vest was shot in late November and early December of 1990, where you can notice the slightly more gaunt appearance in his face and neck. The outside of Metropolis Studios is also shown at the beginning and the end of the video. This is also the last colour video of Freddie Mercury. The next one, I‘m Going Slightly Mad, was recorded in black and white.
Like all other videos for the Innuendo album, the Headlong clip was directed by Austrian director team DoRo, consisting of Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, who have been regularly working for Queen since the video to the 1986 single Friends Will Be Friends. They also directed the video to the only new output of the group as a three-piece, Only The Good Die Young, released in 1997.
In the course of the video, Brian May can be seen wearing a Bart Simpson T-shirt, a reference to The Simpsons, which was very popular at that time.
It is rumoured that Mercury's weight was only 110 lbs in the 1991 yellow sweater footage of the video. His appearance in both footages, especially in the yellow sweater, again sparked speculations regarding his health in the press.

Rockaria by E.L.O.

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 9 February 1977

Next up is a track by a band who are affectionately known as the Birmingham Beatles, or E.L.O. for short! This was the third track on the band's successful 1976 album A New World Record, and as the second single from the album, released in the UK in 1977. Featuring Mary Thomas on Operatic voice on the introduction, she fluffed the first take, starting too early, but they used it anyway, complete with the Oops!. Live, the 'aria' was provided by the vocal talents of the band's bassist Kelly Groucutt.
The song itself is a unique fusion of rocking blues, glam rock, opera, and pop. The lyrics are about a sweet little lady who sings like a songbird, and she sings the opera like you ain't never heard, but she ain't ready no no no, she ain't ready and she ain't gonna rock & roll.
According to the lyrics, she is obsessed with the operatic masterworks of Wagner, Beethoven, Puccini and Verdi, and the singer's intent is to show her how to rock and roll. By the end of the song, the lady has proved that actually she can rock'n'roll with the best of them, and has a few tricks to teach the singer!
The title of the song is not said in the lyrics, thus it is often mispronounced, usually as rhyming with momma mia. It is actually a fusion of two different words, rock and aria, thus giving "rock-ahr'-ia".
An incredible 35 years since their formation, the music of the Electric Light Orchestra is still as popular as ever. All over the world, people are tuning into the sound of E.L.O. via radio, the internet, cinemas and TV. The seemingly ageless songs of E.L.O. leader Jeff Lynne are even being heard again in the singles charts, thanks to the cream of today’s young dance acts sampling the band’s original music and turning on a whole new generation of fans. E.L.O. thrived under the guidance of Lynne, recording twelve original studio albums and releasing twenty-eight hit singles in the UK alone. At their peak between 1974 and 1981, E.L.O. amassed a string of nine consecutive gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums. The band were one of the biggest arena and stadium draws during the seventies and early eighties, with spectacular shows including massive flying saucer stage sets and vibrant light and laser displays.
Originally a 1970 experimental offshoot of sixties English hit makers The Move, E.L.O.’s initial concept of a rock band augmented by a string section struggled to find success. Though early singles such as Showdown and Ma-Ma-Ma-Belle were hits, E.L.O. albums failed to make the charts in the UK and the group was virtually ignored as a live act.
It was the USA that first embraced E.L.O., thanks to lengthy coast-to-coast tours that helped propel singles Evil Woman and Strange Magic and albums On The Third Day, Eldorado and Face The Music into the American charts. UK acceptance finally came in 1976 with A New World Record and Top 10 singles Livin’ Thing, Rockaria and Telephone Line.
A double album masterpiece, 1977’s Out Of The Blue was a worldwide smash on pre-orders alone and featured global hits Turn To Stone, Wild West Hero, Sweet Talkin' Woman plus the song Lynne considers to be his greatest E.L.O. achievement, Mr. Blue Sky. Recently voted Anthem Of The Midlands by the public, the track continues to appear in film soundtracks and ads to this very day. The bands’ legendary 1978 tour set audience attendance records wherever it played and established E.L.O. as one of the most popular acts in the world.

Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones

Highest UK Chart Position: No UK Release

Sympathy for the Devil is perhaps the most notorious and controversial Rolling Stones song, as well as one of the greatest. As the most famous tune on their 1968 album, Beggars Banquet, rivalled only, perhaps, by that LP's Street Fighting Man, it came out at a time when the Stones were increasingly flirting with a satanic public image. Well, Sympathy for the Devil took that flirt to a full-on consummation. Here was Jagger, naturally, taking on the role of the devil himself, a portrait made more distressing by his gentlemanly self-introductions.
As seen in the Jean Luc Godard film One Plus One, retitled Sympathy for the Devil later, the backing track went through some radical transformations, from elementary sluggish blues-rock on acoustic guitars, before arriving at its recorded arrangement. That final arrangement was integral to the success of the song. A compelling African-like rhythm pounded out on conga drums introduces the track, the air of uneasy menace established by echoed yelps and grunts. Along with rumbling piano, those drums continue to underscore the tune, and after the first verse, Jagger is joined by soulful, wordless, high backup vocals that are both catchy and creepy. The chorus, sung with progressive vehemence as the song proceeds, is the embodiment of Jagger's persona in his song, an evil figure who charms and refuses to disclose the true nature of his identity and intentions. The guitar solo is one of Keith Richards' most economic and incisive, like flames licking at the devil's feet. During the lyrics of the song he recounts his insinuation into various historical cataclysms, the Crucifixion, the Inquisition, and the then still fresh assassinations of the Kennedy’s. The Kennedy’s reference was especially explosive. Who killed them, asked Jagger? It was you and me. As some disgruntled critics pointed out, that wasn't exactly fair as most of the people listening to the Stones didn't want to kill anyone, let alone the Kennedy’s. What Jagger, more than any other rock performer possibly, was adept at was making listeners ponder those questions of how evil manifests itself in the world, and giving listeners who likely wouldn't have hurt a fly the titillation of acknowledging the dark, submerged sides of themselves. It is interesting, by the way, that the word devil is never sung, although the song makes it fairly clear once and for all whose character it is assuming when he says that some call him Lucifer. The extended fade makes the evil ambience even more pervasive, Jagger starting to shout in distressed falsetto as the backup singers maintain their unfettered chants.
After a fatal stabbing at the group's 1969 Altamont concert, the song, probably because it provoked more dangerous associations than anything else in their repertoire, was dropped from their live set for a while. It's often assumed that Sympathy for the Devil was the song playing when the stabbing took place, but although they did play it at Altamont, the actual song being performed when the stabbing took place was Under My Thumb. Sympathy for the Devil is so ingrained as part of the Stones image that it's a difficult task for other performers to cover it and make the song their own, but that hasn't stopped ludicrous attempts from both the underground and the mainstream.
The Yugoslavian art-damaged post-punk band Laibach, for instance, did an entire EP devoted to six different interpretations of the song, including disco and acid house ones, while British pop star Sandie Shaw did a ridiculous cover in 1969 that sounded as threatening as a water pistol. Perhaps the best cover was the Fat Boy Slim remix in the late 90’s, but after all that was only a remix and not a cover!

Through The Barricades by Spandau Ballet

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 6 November 1986

Spandau Ballet were one of the biggest success stories of the New Romantics wave of music of the 80’s. In fact it was quite cool at the time to like the band, as not only did they have the coolness to get the ladies swooning, but with the Kemp brothers writing most of the music, they also had a bit of a cutting shall we say slightly rock edge to some of the lesser known tracks. Actually they were the London based answer to Birmingham’s Duran Duran, and the bands started the first boy band revolution since the Beatles and The Stones.
Spandau Ballet racked up a number of British hits — as well as one Top Ten American hit, True, during the early '80s, becoming one of the most successful groups to emerge during new wave. By 1983, the London-based quintet had shed its Roxy Music-inspired robotic art-disco and picked up on Bryan Ferry’s latter-day crooner persona, revamping themselves as a slick, stylish white soul act. It was in this incarnation that Spandau Ballet experienced its greatest success. Though they had a few more hits in Britain, none of them were particularly big, and in America they disappeared at the end of 1984. By the end of the decade, the group had split, with their core members, brothers Gary and Martin Kemp, launching acting careers.
By the time Spandau Ballet's fifth album appeared in 1986, the sun had set on the New Romantics and guitars were all the rage once again. Never ones to miss a trend, the band, who'd recently signed with a new label, Epic, and were determined to make a big splash stateside, declaring their admiration for bands like Bon Jovi, and made an album that surprised their diminishing fan base with its AOR aspirations. Rocking up Spandau Ballet's smooth white-boy soul, Through the Barricades manages to avoid utter disaster via the tuneful creations of songwriter and guitarist Gary Kemp. Some would argue Kemp had finally evolved into a first-class song writer, but while his songs never avoid a cliché if it can be helped, he does a credible job of supplying his band mates with arena-ready material like How Many Lies. Unsurprisingly, vocalist Tony Hadley digs in with real gusto. It's unsurprising that the best song by far is the title track, an acoustic ballad that became a deserved hit. The song is set in the backdrop of the troubles in Northern Ireland at the time, and how as a child you were taught to dislike the religious differences between the Protestants and the Catholics. But it also gives hope that despite the differences, love can win through in the end.

Bleed It Out by Linkin Park

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 29 September 2007

Rounding of the night with something loud, very loud! Good old compadre Shaun was alongside me for this one, featuring his rapping vocals and skills on the mike. This was the second single off Linkin Park’s third album Minutes To Midnight. Bleed It Out is the first of two tracks on the album to contain rap vocals from Mike Shinoda, with the other being Hands Held High. The song's lyrics were some of the hardest to get right on the album. In the album booklet it is stated that Mike Shinoda re-wrote the lyrics to this song about a hundred times until the band was satisfied with them. The song is the shortest track on Minutes to Midnight, therefore in live performances, including Projekt Revolution, Linkin Park has extended the song making it about three times longer, while focusing on Rob Bourdon, the band's drummer.
The song's video was directed by Joe Hahn of Mr Hahn, the DJ turntables from Linkin Park. The video is filmed in one continuous shot with the band performing on a small stage in front of a reversed bar fight scene. Some of the video was made from green screen while the band is performing on stage in the music video. The video starts as the fight is ending, and at the end of the video, it is revealed that a person vomited on another person's shoe, which started the massive fight.
As I gave an insight into Chester from the band when I sang In The End with Shaun at the end of April, it’s now the turn of Mike Shinoda, the other vocalist from the band.
As co-vocalist of the band, and owning the rapping skills to balance out Chester's tortured, emotional wail, Mike became one of the more recognizable faces of the nu metal scene in the early 2000s. He was born on February 11, 1977, as Michael Kenji Shinoda, and raised with his younger brother Jason in the Los Angeles suburb of Agoura Hills, California. He loved to paint and studied classical piano as a kid, eventually branching out into jazz and hip-hop, and picking up the guitar. He became friends with guitarist Brad Delson in junior high, and started the band Xero with him and another schoolmate, drummer Rob Bourdon, while in high school. Following graduation, and still performing with Xero, Shinoda enrolled at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design to study graphic design and illustration. While there, he met fellow aspiring artist and musician DJ Joseph Hahn and the two struck up a friendship. Hahn eventually joined Xero on the turntables, as did Delson's college roommate, bassist Dave Farrell. Shinoda graduated from art school and took a job as a graphic designer, while Xero continued to gig around the Los Angeles area. The band eventually became known as Linkin Park with the final addition of co-vocalist Chester Bennington in 1999. The group signed to Warner Bros. soon after, and released its multi-platinum-selling debut album, Hybrid Theory, the following year. Shinoda managed to integrate his artistic background into his main gig with Linkin Park by designing the band's album artwork with Hahn and actively having a hand in much of the group's mixing, production, and other technical aspects.
In addition to his work with Linkin Park, Shinoda also has production and remix credits for acts like the X-Ecutioners, , Lupe Fiasco, and even Depeche Mode. He also started up a side project in 2004 dubbed Fort Minor, which allowed Shinoda to concentrate more on the hip-hop side of things, though he still blended rap with his love of rock and electronics. Fort Minor's debut album, The Rising Tide, was released in November 2005, and featured executive production by Jay-Z, who had previously worked with Shinoda and Linkin Park on the 2004 mash-up album Collision Course. The Rising Tide being a true labor of love, Shinoda played almost every instrument on the album, in addition to doing all of its programming and sequencing.
Mike Shinoda has been married to Anna Hillinger Shinoda since May 10, 2003. She is now a children’s author.

To round off this weeks musical section is this weeks Alternative Music History. Old Justin Timberlake, or Trousersnake as he is sometimes referred to is well know for his gyrating hips and his general bringing Sexyback. He has just had a number one hit off a collaberation with pop megastar Madonna as well. But just imagine if instead of bringing Sexyback he was more like Sexy Bach! Yes in this picture we see Justin in his alter ego of a classical violinist. Doesn’t he look sweet with his geeky glasses and his bowl hair cut. I’m sure he would get a lot less of my Hot Chicks looking like that I can tell you!

Well thats it from the music front for you this week, but as usual I have found a new little something the music lovers amongst you will appreciate, but you will have to wait until next week for that. Now lets get off to Hollywood for another one of my.....

Now I bet you missed it last week, but its back. Here is this week's edition of......

After Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976, shocking Man United at Wembley, they somehow managed to put the treasured trophy in the position of Southampton hero Peter Osgood. He had plenty of partying experience from his day’s at Chelsea to call on, and was leading the celebrations when he was entrusted with getting the trophy back safely to the South Coast. It was like putting the Titanics entertainment’s officer in charge of it!
At 3 o’clock in the morning, a seriously sozzled Ossie was showing off the trophy to astonished Southampton supporters who were having coffee at a mobile snack shop on the A3. Then, as you do, Ossie took the cup home with him and slept with it! I mean it was the best way of keeping it safe, he later explained.

Well that just about wraps up another week of fun and frolics for you. As usual at this time though, it's the answer to the Every Picture quiz, and I'm sure you had no trouble figuring out that this weeks answer was of course..

I had every faith in you all! No cheating now was there! So that just about is all for another week. Thanks to all the regulars for keeping this blog read, and to all the newbies, then don't forget to come back week after week and tell your friends, you never know, one of their letters may end up on Ask The Captain! Until next time folks, instead of a film quote, I leave you with the biggest movie to hit the screen this year, the music will give it away. See you all on the blog next week. Ta Ra........

Thursday 8th May 2008

2008-05-08T20:37:00.023+01:00

Ahoy there shipmates. Do not fear anymore, I am back at Captain Jack HQ to bring you your weekly dose of fun. I’m sure you all missed me while I was out pillaging another country, and I took the Black Pearl on a little trip to Brugge in Belgium, where I managed to find that the Belgiums are almost as adept at drinking as I am, with one bar with over 400 beers to choose from! I mean imagine trying to drink your way through that menu, still I gave it a good go, although I passed out after about 199!
All that said and done it cleared my head in preparation for bringing you the best blog on the web. Last weeks Hot Chicks Gallery has given me the chance to see that there are many opportunities to give the odd weekly specials every once in a while, just you know to recharge the old batteries. So with all that free time I had, then I suppose you will be thinking that I had time to research all new items to appear on the blog, and in the coming weeks you won’t be disappointed, as yes new features will be making an appearance, and some will be taking a summer break! But don’t worry lads, the Hot Chicks will be staying put!

Now I do have some great news for the Save Planet Rock campaign. As I reported a couple of weeks ago, the deadline for the station was put back to May 30th. As of yet no news on the future has been put out, and the buyers who had been trying to put a package together were not known, until last week when this posting appeared on rock legend Brian May’s webpage:

MISSION TO SAVE PLANET ROCK

In response to many of your kind enquiries .... yes, those few words on the Soapbox about Planet Rock DID lead to me getting involved in mounting a rescue operation to save the station. I can't tell you who I am 'in league' with, but I am part of a small group of people who have great hopes that we will succeed in taking over the station, and putting it on a firm footing, for the benefit of its growing audience.I regard Planet Rock as rather more than just a radio station - it is a symbol of free radio ... radio which is not run by large corporate organisations for the purpose of making tons of money, and has a free choice of what it plays. I'm not going to run down any particular radio station - this country has some talented and dedicated people working in music radio ...
But I do feel that, for a healthy climate for music in this country, we need to allow small independent stations to exist alongside the huge FM giants. I listen to radio in my car, one of the few times I am 'in my own space' - and, for me, who grew up with Zeppelin, the Who, Hendrix, Traffic, AC/DC, Van Halen ... THE BEATLES ..... tell me, where can you hear music from these kinds of artists these days ? You'll have a hard job finding "Kashmir" flicking through the channels in the UK. DAB Radio has had a brave start, and can provide freedom from domination by commercially minded programming, but it might, at this point, slip between the cracks. I believe this cause is worth supporting ... and will be doing my best to put my money and expertise, where my mouth is ! We hope to be able to make an announcement soon. In the meantime, of you agree with me ... Demand your Planet Rock !! Demand your DAB !!!;">

Cheers

Bri

So with the mighty Brian May behind the station, it can only be a matter of time before an announcement is made on the future of the country’s best rock radio station.
Now lets move on with this weeks blog. As always there is the usual great selection of goodies for you to choose from, with Karaoke Classics back, another Classic Track, Live Is Best, and extremely Hot Chick, Celebrity Star Wars, Ask The Captain and lots, lots more, but to start off with, here is this weeks………

I bet you missed this last week didn’t you. Now I’m sure that some of you this week will get this one straight away, and others will probably of never even heard of the song. But I can assure you it is one of the best songs by one of the best known bands in the world, and if you don’t get it from the clues, then I’m sorry but I want 100 lines on my desk Monday morning “I must pay more attention to Captain Jack and not just spend my time ogling the Hot Chicks” So lets crack on the here is the picture followed by those three cunning little clues.

1. It was released in 1967 but never charted in the UK, and only reached number 25 in the US charts.
2. John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin, arranged the strings of this song during his session days.
3. It has been used in several advertising campaigns, firstly for Apple iMac, and most recently for S-no I’m not telling you it will give it away!
Got it? Sure you have. But for those slower on the uptake, probably due to excess sun hitting the old noggin, the flick through all the good stuff and get straight to the answer at the end of the blog. But for those with stamina and staying power, then read on, there's loads of good stuff still to come. Speaking of which!

It took several hours of following that particular bike to take that picture, so I hope you all appreciate the hard work I put into this every week. Time for a bit of class now, with this weeks....
Classic Track #15

Higher by Creed

This weeks classic track is from a band I have been going on about for many moons now, even though they had rumours of being a Christian Rock band, it never put me off, as they are a band that use the media to help promote themselves in any way possible, and when they do rock out then they can be very loud, like all good rock bands should be.

The track Higher is one that best brings to light that fine line between God Rock and using the media to promote yourself. When it was released it was rumoured that the song was about Christ’s ascension into heaven, and generally about the belief in the resurrection, and being taken to a better place, but in truth the song had less religious overtones and had its story in much easier to understand meanings. In fact it is about lucid, or conscious dreaming! In an interview, lead singer Scott Stapp said "You're physically asleep, but you're awake in your mind. I read a book about Hindu monks who have perfected the technique and thought it might help me squelch a recurring nightmare where I'm running down a highway, closely pursued by a man with a gun. I turn left and hides behind a pillar beneath an overpass but get shot anyway.” Stapp says that once he learned how to lucid-dream, he was able to alter the nightmare so that he turned right and escaped. After he wrote "Higher" about the experience, he never had the nightmare again.

Creed originally came together and formed a band in 1993 under the name Naked Toddler when Scott Stapp and guitarists Mark Tremonti and Brian Brasher who were college friends, got together and started collaborating and writing songs. They soon added bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips. Brian Marshall came up with the band name Creed, which was taken from the name of his former band, Mattox Creed.
Once the band was complete as a five-piece in late 1993, they band was soon dominating the Tallahassee local music scene and was one of the only local bands playing all original music in a town where club owners wanted local bands to play cover songs and music that people know. The five members had already written and collaborated three of the songs that would go on to become chart topping singles on their debut album My Own Prison.They then found work at a live music bar, where they impressed promoters Jeff Hanson and Andy Levine enough to let them play at one of their bigger venues known as Floyd's Music Store on the Tennessee Street Strip.

Creed emerged from a good-sized pack of post-grunge contenders to become one of the biggest-selling rock bands in America during the late '90s. At a time when many other Seattle disciples were lapsing into inactivity or experimenting with less commercially established sounds, Creed carried the torch of straightforward, grungy hard rock without apology, and they were amply rewarded, selling millions upon millions of albums in just a few years' time. That success didn't translate into critical acclaim. Based on their frequently spiritual lyrics, some observers lumped them in with a new breed of alternative-styled Christian bands that had begun crossing over to the mainstream; however, Creed tried to distance themselves from being pigeonholed as an exclusively religious band out to convert their listeners. Neither critical derision nor a potential secular backlash could derail the band, however, and they went into the new millennium as a seemingly unstoppable commercial juggernaut.

Their first album My Own Prison hit the top of the US album charts, and they were the first US band to have four number one song from a debut album. Still the music critics failed to like the band. So, when the group unleashed their second album, Human Clay, in 1999, the industry, critics, and record collectors alike were stunned, positively stunned, when it entered the charts at number one, then stayed in the upper reaches of the charts for months on end. Nobody could figure out why this group managed to not just survive, but thrive.
At the time, not only were post-grunge bands dying, but so were such grunge heavy weights as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Listening to Human Clay doesn't really reveal any insights, either, since it is hard rock rooted firmly in the Seattle vein, complete with really big riffs and intensely introspective lyrics. But unlike their influences, like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Nirvana and Soundgarden, who love to be known as miserable bands Creed is happy to be a rock band.

Creed is a straightforward grunge and hard rock band, embracing everything that goes along with that, and doing it pretty well. They might not have as strong an identity as their forefathers, but they're not faceless, especially in the late '90s, an era when most popular hard rock is either rap-rock, industrial-tinged, or plain out thuggish. Creed has more class than that and they write relatively solid riffs and hooks. It may not be the kind of thing that knocks out critics or grunge purists, but it does deliver for anyone looking for direct, grunge-flavored hard rock.
After months of speculation in June 2004, Creed officially announced their break-up. Over nearly a decade, the band sold over 30 million albums worldwide and became one of the biggest touring draws of the 1990s. Scott Stapp began recording his debut solo album, The Great Divide, while the other band members, including former bassist Brian Marshall formed a new band, Alter Bridge, with Myles Kennedy. Creed produced some of the best post grunge music at a time when rock was changing, and despite the links or none links to the Christian belief, the band are one of the best of the nineties.

Cinderella is now 95 years old. After a fulfilling life with the now dead prince, she happily sits upon her rocking chair, watching the world go by from her front porch, with a cat named Bob for companionship. One sunny afternoon out of nowhere, appeared the fairy godmother.
Cinderella said, "Fairy Godmother, what are you doing here after all these years"? The fairy godmother replied, "Cinderella, you have lived an exemplary life since I last saw you. Is there anything for which your heart still yearns?"
Cinderella was taken aback, overjoyed, and after some thoughtful consideration, she uttered her first wish: "The prince was wonderful but not much of an investor. I'm living hand to mouth on my disability checks, and I wish I were wealthy beyond comprehension".
Instantly her rocking chair turned into solid gold.
Cinderella said, "Ooh, thank you, Fairy Godmother".
The fairy godmother replied "it is the least that I can do. What do you want for your second wish?"
Cinderella looked down at her frail body, and said, "I wish I were young and full of the beauty and youth I once had."
At once, her wish became reality, and her beautiful young visage returned. Cinderella felt stirrings inside of her that had been dormant for years.
And then the fairy godmother spoke once more: "You have one more wish; what shall it be?"
Cinderella looks over to the frightened cat in the corner and says, "I wish for you to transform Bob, my old cat, into a kind and handsome young man."
Magically, Bob suddenly underwent so fundamental a change in his biological make-up that, when he stood before her, he was a man so beautiful the likes of him neither she nor the world had ever seen. The fairy godmother said, "Congratulations, Cinderella, enjoy your new life. With a blazing shock of bright blue electricity, the fairy godmother was gone as suddenly as she appeared.
For a few eerie moments, Bob and Cinderella looked into each other's eyes. Cinderella sat, breathless, gazing at the most beautiful, stunningly perfect man she had ever seen. Then Bob walked over to Cinderella, who sat transfixed in her rocking chair, and held her close in his young muscular arms. He leaned in close, blowing her golden hair with his warm breath as he whispered.........
BET YOU'RE SORRY YOU NEUTERED ME."

Avast me bilge sucking land lubbers and welcome to another meeting of one of me fearsome crew mates. Yarrrharr de harrr arrrrr! This week I am introducing to you all one of the finest and upstanding members of the pirate community. He sails on his boat The Angry Barnacle, and he goes by the name of Bloody John Vane or as you know him Gordon Ramsey. Shiver me Timbers!!

Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it's the open sea. For others like my matey here it's the food! Splice the mainbrace!! But get on his wrong side an ouch his bite is as bad as his bark. He does tend to blend into the background occasionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way! Thar She Blows. And this bugger will do that an then serve you up with a tasty salad and some fancy sauce Savvy?

Well I’m off now to poop another deck and Roger me Jolly’s but don’t fear for to long as I’ll be back with more of me crew next week. Yaaarr harrrrrrrgggggghhhhh

Its time to get back to my old friend Ronnie Wood, who last week enjoyed a rest as well, but he still managed to take time out of his busy schedule to send in this weeks picture for his Bull Plop story. This week it centers on one of his bestest mate’s in the whole world Mick Jagger, who has heaped his praise on one of the worlds fattest singers, and I’m not on about Pavarotti or that Renée and Renato pair! Not its sing a long a fat bird Adele, who recently had a hit with Breaking sorry Chasing Pavements.
It appears that Mick has given the roly poly songstress his seal of approval. He apparently warmed to her at a gale dinner held by his daughter Jade. Other dinners were apparently put off by Adele table manners, but Mick defended her by saying that he loved her couldn’t care less attitude. As you can see from Ronnie’s picture, it looks like the pair got on really well. More from the little scamp next week!

High Dive Hero

Have I got a treat for you this week guy’s. I’m pretty sure that you won’t know this weeks entry into the Hot Chick Hall of Fame, but that hasn’t stopped me from bringing you the hottest of chicks has it. This weeks newest entry is none other than…

Now that is a bit of a mouthful isn’t it, but for the more picky amongst you, she is actually married to French football star Christian Karembeu, which now makes her name a much more manageable Adriana Karembeu. She was born in Brezno, a small town of central Slovakia. Having originally studied medicine in Prague, Adriana gave up her studies to become a model, thank god for that, although having her check your pulse is something I’m sure you would all pay good money for.

She was born in a financially strapped country, and coming to a new world of fashion was a big change for her. As she says: "I've changed my life from black to white. There was nothing like fashion in Slovakia. I would like to keep working in this amazing world after the ending of my modeling career. I appreciate the proposal of the Italian movie director Carlo Vanzina for making a movie, but I think that was too involving for me, I'm too busy now. I also think that a model should not diversify too much her objectives."

With her incredible beauty and 6'0" frame, she was instantly snatched up by Next modeling agency in New York, and Elite Modeling in Milan. Though her big break came after being chosen as the new Wonder Bra girl which placed her on billboards all over the world. Now as you know I always try to bring you only the very best pictures of the Hot Chick in action, and I’m sure you would love to see one of her Wonderbra pictures wouldn’t you…

She has represented several leading fashion and other brand companies including Argentovivo, Byron Lars, Laura Biagiotti, Levante Hosiery, List, Love Sex Money, Onyx Jeans, Peroni Beer, Red Point, and Roberto Cavalli. It was her campaign for Peroni Beer that really launched her career, and helped pave the road for her current success, by highlighting her as the ultimate beer woman.And lets face it, if she offered you a beer you would drink it!

For Adriana height has never been an issue. Believe it or not, Adriana was documented in The Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest supermodel legs: they are an incredible 50 inches long. That's a lot of surface area to kiss, massage and enjoy in several ways, well at least if you a has been French footballer with a dodgy wig. Now you don’t think I’d let this moment pass without a peek at those record breaking legs do you.

She is very accomplished as a model, having graced the covers of numerous fashion magazines, including just about every men's magazine around. She is now a favorite among fashion designers as well, especially Vivianne Westwood. Her face is recognizable (not to mention other parts of her anatomy), but mostly to Europeans. In North America, she has yet to enter the public's imagination, but to be fair the yanks have always been slow on th uptake! Lets take another peek at what they are missing out on.

Adriana is now happily living in Madrid, with her ex soccer player husband Christian Karembeu. The marriage was a major event in Spain in December of 1998, since Adriana is one of the best known models in Europe, and her husband was the star of one of the country's leading soccer teams. She describes herself as a normal home comfort loving girl who likes nothing more than to keep the house tidy and enjoy a nice soak in the bath, such as in this next picture.

Like all models do in their time, she was offered shed loads of cash to pose nude for all manner of lads mags, but she held firm her belief of no nudity, that is until Playboy offered twice as much as anyone else to get naked for them! Now as I said before I do like to bring you the best of the available pictures of my Hot Chicks, and after several hour on the Playboy website, I think this one is about the most tastefull!

So that’s just about it for the lovely Adriana then, I think that covers just about everything. Legs, modelling career, married to another half wit footballer, the Wonderbra stuff, her in the bath, legs again, now is there anything I have missed. Ah of course yes she is also a modle for Victoria’s Secret underware, so lets end this week with a look at Adriana in some of her undies! Another Hot Chick to enjoy next week.

Yes its time now to delve into the world of celebrity want to be’s again, with another edition of Celebrity Star Wars. This week it’s the turn of Wayne’s World star Garth, who looks very striking as his hero Anakin Skywalker. As Garth famously once said, that Princess Leia is a babe. She makes me feel all funny, like when I used to climb the rope in gym class. Wait until he finds out his character turns into Garth Vader (deliberate spelling mistake there folks!) and that Leia is actually his daughter. I imagine he would probably then say something more like I'm having a good time... Not, rather than his usual catchphrase Schwing! Still if he did get the part I’m sure one thing he would do would be to get his best mate Wayne in the film, so they could both say to George Lucas We're not worthy We're not worthy We're not worthy!!!!!

Phew its been a very hot week this week, and what better way to cool off that a drink at my very own bar, so lets all nip off for a quick one at…….

Sex Kitten

2 shots of Aftershock Red
1 shot of Alize Red Passion
2 Teaspoons of Marachino Liqueur
1 cinnamon stick
1 maraschino cherry
1 dash of cinnamon

Mix the Aftershock (red)and the Maraschino liqueur together. Add the Red Passion to the drink and stir in the ground cinnamon. Add a stick of cinnamon and top with a Maraschino cherry. Guaranteed to make you a Sex Kitten overnight!

Right I missed out on this one last week. Sex Kitten eh purr purr purr! Now lets get a load of this one round the old choppers then. Jeez its got a kick like a Japanese Game Show Contestant that little bugger has. Letsch shee iff the bar type pershon can mixcsh aniver one.
Sho let me tell yosuh aboutuut me holibobs then. Whishtle I wos awaysh I vishedted several drinking estiiibloshmonts a do you know something matey me old cock schparrow peeks, could I find a dechent kebab schopp no I biddy couldn’t. Nosh a one I caon tellch yoyu. An thosh birds in de barsh were al speakin funny me old china. To be hhoneshcht, I ad to jush point a wot I wash dwoinki to getch the fick fuggers to underschtand me a timesch. Jush woot ish the world cominck to I hask you!

Now my little break was as much to recuperate after reading so many of the heart warming letters I have been getting from some of you in my mail sack. And while I was away a veritable feast of letters arrived on my doorstep, leading Royal Mail to set up my own personal postman to deliver the post by the wagonload. Some of the most needy of you have been whittled down by my dedicated team of staff, leaving the most needy for me to help here at the Captain’s Advice Desk, such as this letter here from Rodney in Clapton. He writes:

My girlfriend recently broke up with me after a years of being together. We were apart from each other for 6 months but kept in contact everyday and when we met after that were all over each other. She came over to stay but with my work commitments she had to stay with her sister and I stayed with my parents. But even though we were apart I tired to see here every weekend. Once I went over on a weekday to surprise her, it was Valentines day, and I wrote her a poem and brought her flowers, but found that she was out with someone else, and I suspect I was another man. I tried to call her but she did not pick her calls up and I ended up leaving her over 300 voicemails.
One day I decided to follow her to see what the problem was. She met with someone I suspected at the time it was another man. They went to the cinema, and as I have now lost my job I had to wait outside for them in the pouring rain for over two hours, which I found very suspicious. They went back to what I suspect was his house, the lights went on in the upstairs, and I saw what I suspect was the pair of them in a strange position, but as I was up a tree at the time I am not quite sure. As the light went off I rang the doorbell and ran off, as I’m sure that would of stopped them in their tracks.
I have tried to see her, by camping outside her house, but the council have insisted I move on as my toilet habits leave a lot to be desired, and cooking pigeons is apparently not legal, unless you own a curry house. I think she is confused and maybe scared of me, I don't know why? Can you give some sound advice Captain Jack.

Captain Jack Replies:
Are you lot taking the p#%s again. I told you no losers. Right lets have a crack then, Mate, you’re a stalker! This girl obviously thinks you’re a weirdo. I mean look at your photo. The caveman look went out years ago. She might be scared of you, because you look like a monster, so why not wear a costume, or just put a bag over your head!.
Get the message, she's NOT interested. If she broke up with you, then she’s probably banging guys in clubs and forgetting all about you. My answer - Forget and move on - or - jump of a cliff. I don’t really care either way, but the latter would be more amusing. Back off psycho and leave the nice lady alone or I’ll come round to your tent and stick you with me cutlass. By the way, have you tried my new monkey pate? goes down well at parties. I hope this helps, and don’t forget to keep reading.

Well after all that helpfulness its time to move swiftly on to this weeks music section. We have for you a feast of musical excellence this week for you to enjoy. Another three Karaoke Classics to enjoy, a bit of fun in the Alternative Musical History, but lets get started with this weeks classic live track from one of the best live bands to come out of the UK, with this weeks………

Def Leppard ~ Pour Some Sugar On Me

Denver 1988

Moving swiftly on to this weeks Karaoke Classics. Another rather good night again, and our title of resident quiz champions is coming under no threat so far, despite one of the team shouting out the answer to one of the questions for all the pub to hear, we still won by a mile! So the Captain Jack Quiz team continues to defend its title with very little resistance. I just wonder how many weeks will go by before we are either banned from taking part, or end up as the only team taking part, still the £10 drinks voucher does go down very well, and for the fourth time since the quiz night started in conjunction with the Karaoke, it took us around 10 seconds to spend the bugger!
As for the singing, well I managed another three classics this week. They were 1. Feel Like Makin’ Love by Bad Company 2. The Riddle by Nik Kershaw and 3. Where The Streets Have No Name by U2

Feel Like Makin’ Love by Bad Company

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 20 October 1975

A proper rock classic to start off with this week. The track was by British super group Bad Company, and was the second track off the bands second album Straight Shooter. The band consisted of Paul Rodgers on vocals, bass player Boz Burrell, who had been in King Crimson, lead guitarist Mick Ralphs, formally of Mott The Hoople, and drummer Simon Kirte, who had been in Free with Paul Rodgers. The band were managed by Peter Grant, who had guided Led Zeppelin to huge success.
Singer Rodgers was so enamoured of the film Bad Company, that he chose to name his band after it. The film was also reportedly the inspiration for the band's eponymous album and breakthrough single. Bad Company is one of a handful of bands that literally define Rock and Roll. For 21 years, Bad Company has epitomized a style that values song form and the band concept over the particular of individual solo careers. In the process, Bad Co built itself into one of rock’s most durable and popular touring acts, providing the standard by which such disparate groups as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi and the Black Crowes have publicly measured themselves.
Since its inception in 1974, Bad Co has carried the banner for hard rock in its most intense, forceful identity. Anchored by two of the finest players of their generation, guitarist Mick Ralphs and drummer Simon Kirke, the band built its reputation on the strength of an approach to song writing that stressed the unity of the sound ahead of visual or instrumental flashiness. This simple, straightforward approach is the distillation of Rock and Roll's most potent qualities. Such formal clarity has allowed the group to weather the disruptive forces of constantly-changing pop fads, the visual distractions of the video age and the inevitable personnel changes that occur in the lifetime of any band that has made it as far as Bad Company.
Bad Company ruled the airwaves and the concert stages as the 70s wore on, becoming one of the most sought-after live acts in the business. By their second US Tour in 1975, they were selling out all performances. The second album Straight Shooter remained in the Top Five for over a month and produced Feel Like Makin‘ Love. In 1976, the third album Run With The Pack was certified Gold only two weeks after the release and remained on the charts for nine months. Ralphs' Live For The Music from that album became a statement of purpose for the band.
Despite the huge success, the band suffered problems, and their tours became plagued with violence, fuelled by drink and drugs, in the crowd as well as on stage. But the final straw came when Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died, and when managed Peter Grant lost interest with the band, the original line up disbanded. They still tour today, with a different line up of course, and vocalist Paul Rodgers is now of course touring with the remaining members of Queen.

The Riddle by Nik Kershaw

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 3 December 1984

Ah Nik Kershaw, what a weird little song you came up with here. This song doesn't appear to make much sense when the lyrics are studied closely, so many theories have popped up regarding the meaning, many of them concerning drugs. Nik Kershaw had written the music but had no idea what the song was going to be about, so to practice the tune he added random lyrics to be used until he made the song properly, but he ran out of time and had to use the lyrics on the album. He named the song The Riddle because that's essentially what it is.
The music video to "The Riddle" depicts Kershaw walking through a house shaped like a question mark, making his way through certain obstacles and looking through drawers while singing. At the beginning of the music video Nik is seen trying to get through a door with a screwdriver, it ends with the camera moving up away from Nik to reveal that the question mark is lying in the street, at which point a man in a green costume seen earlier in the video comes and picks it up. The green man is the Riddler, a villain from the Batman comics. Kershaw claimed the video was inspired by his love for post-modern artistic expressionism.
During the mid-'80s, Nik Kershaw managed to score a handful of pop hits and, in doing so, establish himself as a profitable commercial songwriter. Kershaw began his musical career by learning to play guitar when he was a teenager. In 1974, he joined his first band, Half Pint Hogg, which played nothing but Deep Purple covers. However, his musical ideas were not limited to heavy metal; after he left school, he joined a jazz-funk band called Fusion. Fusion released one album, ‘Til I Hear From You, in the late '70s. Once the group broke up, Kershaw signed to MCA Records with the help of Nine Below Zero's manager, Micky Modern. Kershaw released his first solo single, I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, in 1983, which peaked at number 47 on the UK charts. His next single, Wouldn't It Be Good, hit number five in the UK and charted at number 46 in the US. Its success led to stardom in Britain for Kershaw. I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me was re-released in summer of 1984 and charted at number two, leading to a series of hit singles. Released in 1986, his third album, Radio Musicola, wasn't as successful as his previous albums. Kershaw subsequently retreated from performing and recording regularly. Although he released The Works in 1990, Kershaw's main musical contribution since the late '80s is as a songwriter. He's written several songs for other artists, including Chesney Hawke's hit single The One and Only. After years of writing for others, Kershaw returned with his own 15 Minutes for Pyramid Records last year.

Where The Streets Have No Name by U2

Highest UK Chart Position: Number 4 September 1987

The mighty U2 to end with tonight. This one is one of their best in my opinion, but critically it wasn’t as liked as their other hits at the time. It failed to equal the dominance of its two chart-topping predecessors, With or Without You and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, from U2's 1987 blockbuster The Joshua Tree. However, its insistent, propulsive rhythmic drive and anthemic chorus eventually earned the song its status as part of the uppermost echelon of the band's repertoire, and an enduring fan favourite. With the slow build of its arrangement toward a climactic peak, Where the Streets Have No Name was a perfect album-opener, fading in first with atmospheric synths that gave no indication of the song's tempo. The Edge then entered with an up-tempo, chiming guitar, run through a delay effect in which each note rang out twice to make it sound even busier. While bassist Adam Clayton maintained a steadily driving pulse, Larry Mullens drums kept time in 16th notes for much of the song, and the percussive guitar effects picked up the slack when he dropped into a looser, less demanding pattern. This perpetual forward momentum lent greater force to the song's lyrics, which pleaded for a utopian sort of freedom vaguely linked with natural imagery and an escape from urbanization. Bono's delivery was passionate and grandiose, his commitment to the material unshakable.
Producer Brian Eno estimated that the recording of this song absorbed over 40% of the time spent on The Joshua Tree. Eno became so frustrated trying to mix the track that he almost destroyed the tape and started over. According to the co-producer Daniel Lanois, the assistants never followed Eno's frustrated instructions to wipe the tape. This is the first track on The Joshua Tree, which became the fastest selling album in both the US and UK.
The video showed U2 putting on an impromptu concert on the roof of The Million Dollar Hotel in Los Angeles. Some onlookers were delighted, while others were upset because they were stopping traffic. It won the Grammy for Best Performance Music Video in 1989.When asked about the similarity between U2's rooftop video and The Beatles rooftop concert, Bono said, "We've ripped off The Beatles many times before."
In 1985, Bono visited Ethiopia after performing at Live Aid. Many people assumed this song was about that trip, since the streets there really don't have names, just numbers. The song is actually about Ireland. In Ireland, and Northern Ireland, the many cities were at the time divided into rich/poor, Catholic/Protestant, etc. By knowing which street a person lives on you can tell their religion, wealth and beliefs - it's where the streets have no name. Bono said in an interview in Propaganda Magazine “ Where the Streets Have No Name is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it's a sketch - I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don't hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name.”

Last up in the music section this week is the Alternative Music History. One of the most scary men in rock is Alice Cooper. I mean not only has he got a girls name, but he just looks like the kind of bloke who would frighten you just because he could. Lets face it he just looks like a nutter. But what if he had taken a different path, and maybe say taken up a bit of the old knees up Cockney style, as a Pearly King. He would have been a lot less scary singing such Cockney Classics as Me nobbies are acting up again, Someone's half-inched me pint, I 'ad one over the eight last night and got completely Olivered and the classic This cough is killing me pants and vest.Lets nip over to Hollywood now for the latest blockbuster to never be seen, although this next one may well end up being made in this weeks...

Now you would usually be getting the It's A Funny Old Game story this week, but I couldn't resist a slight change this week. So instead of a funny old game, this week is a celebration of the beautiful game itself. Sunday afternoon at around 3.20 this happened....

Then at around 4.30 this happened.....

Which led to this happening at around 5.00

Which meant that just after 5.00 this happened...

Which was followed by this......

Which led to having this happen........

And then of course it was inevitable that led to this happening.....

But what did it all mean, well for those who haven't worked it out yet, and this has been one of my more obvious articles, it meant this......

Well that is just about it for this week. For those who have snuck down to read the answer to the Every Picture quiz this week, you missed a lot of good stuf so go back and read it all, as for the rest of you here is the answer if you haven't guessed it already. It was of course.......

I'm sure you all got it straight away you intelligent lot you. Well as Bugs Bunny say's, Thats All Folks. But don't worry, next week isn't to far around the corner, and I'll be back to entertain you all again sooner than you think. Until next time. Ta Ra.

Hannibal Lecter: You're so-o ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed - pure West Virginia. What does your father do? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? You know how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out. Getting anywhere, getting all the way to the F...B...I A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chi-an-ti. You fly back to school now, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly. Fly, fly, fly

Captain Jacks Mid Season Break

2008-05-01T20:10:00.010+01:00

Hello all and welcome to a very special edition of Captain Jacks Tracks. As you will no doubt be aware, this weeks blog is going to be a little different than usual. Not that I don't love putting the hours in to keep you all entertained, but a pirate does need a break every once and a while, and mine is here now, just for one week mind you, don't want you sneaking off and reading something else.

So as I was sitting thinking what could I do to keep the regulars happy and to give any new readers the excucse to want to come back, I had to come up with a plan that would please everyone, and you will be pleased, well all the blokes will, to see that this week is a Hot Chicks Special, with the 14 babes that have graced the blog since Captain Jack went all new this year. So sit back relax and enjoy this weeks......

So there we have it lads, and I hope that fills your boots while I take my well earned rest. I mean as if Captain Jack would let you down. Ah well must dash now. But do not fear, as next week its back to normal, with all the regular goodies, like a Classic Track, another brand spanking new Hot Chick, Ronnie Wood's Bull Plop, Karaoke Classics and all the rest of the regulars, but here to end with this week is a little taster of something to come.....

Thursday 24th April 2008

2008-04-24T20:49:00.018+01:00

Its here again folks, the worlds most entertaining weekly blog. You know it’s only a matter of time before the awards come rolling in. I mean most of the other Blogs on here just spout out a load of drivel about cross stitching or card making, hardly any that I have found have the quality of Hot Chicks on that this little beauty brings you on a weekly basis. In fact I’m getting so many letters to be on the Ask The Captain section that I have had to put aside my pillaging for an extra two hours a week just to get the time to read the letters! I mean how’s a chap supposed to earn an honest living with all this going on. This amount of quality items takes time to put together you know, time that could be spent watching light hearted romantic drama on the T.V. with the wife. So now you know why the Blog is so long!

No news this week to tell you really, too much stuff to Blog about to have time to bring you news! But the struggle to save Planet Rock continues. The deadline for the station had been extended to 28th April, but it seems that yet again an announcement has been put back on the Station’s future. The following statement was placed on the website at the weekend:

STATION SALE UPDATE: We’d love to be able to announce that the deal to buy Planet Rock is all done and dusted but I’m afraid that we have to keep holding our breath for yet another month.
The deadline for the sale to be completed has been extended until May 30th while the interested parties continue their negotiations with GCap Media.
Thank you all for your continued messages of support, your passion for Planet Rock has been an inspiration.
We should have more news very soon. In the mean time we hope you’ll enjoy at least one more month of Planet Rock.
Keep rockin'

Now exactly what that means is beyond me, but it does seem that as long as negotiations are on going the station remains safe. The fact it was nominated for three Sony Awards should mean that the buyers are noticing that people do want the station to keep going, and with the support that the petition got as well, it would seem only a matter of time before the announcement comes in that the station is saved.

Now lets get on with this weeks edition then. I have all the regulars you know and love. Hot Chick’s, Classic Track’s, Ask The Captain, Cocktails at the Bar, Celebrity Star Wars, Ronnie Wood’s Bull Plop, Jokes, Karaoke Classics, a great Live Is Best and much, much more, but first as usual, here is this weeks Every Picture Sings A Song………

As Victor Meldrew would say ‘I don’t bloody beeeeeellliiieeevvvveee it’ I mean you were very quick to tell me that they were too easy, now your complaining they are too hard. Tut, Tut, Tut now children play nice! It’s supposed to tax your brain a little (Notice Huge Grin Appear On My Face~ Yippee Got em!) You just can’t have it all your own way now can you, I mean they were a little too easy if the wife was getting then right! So this week is a little bit more shall we say 50~50. You will either get it first time or you will struggle and they kick yourself. Anyway take a look and then check out the clues, and if your feeling lucky punk, then take a guess before the end of the blog to see if you got it.

1. The track written by Mike D'Abo and Tony Macaulay. D'Abo was lead singer of Manfred Mann, and Macaulay was a successful songwriter who also wrote the bands other well known hit, as well as songs for The Hollies, Andy Williams and The New Seekers.
2. David Essex, who was unknown at the time, was offered this song, but he turned it down as he didn't like the title.
3. In 1968, it reached number 2 on the UK charts and number 3 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100.

Now I can see a bit of head scratching going on there, but not to worry. If you really want to miss out on loads of quality entertainment just scroll on down and miss all the good stuff to get the answer, but if you have the odd spare hour, sit back and relax and read on.

Classic Track # 14

High Enough by Damn Yankees

Now I wonder how many of you will of heard of this little gem I am bringing to you for this week’s Classic Track. The song was the first single by American Super Group Damn Yankees in 1990. The band was put together in 1989 consisting of Tommy Shaw of Styx, Jack Blades of Night Ranger, Ted Nugent of Amboy Dukes and his own solo career, and Michael Cartellone.
Presumably inspired by the musical of the same name, Nugent once also explained that he coined the name because whenever someone asked him how he and Tommy Shaw would sound playing together, he would always reply by saying they would sound like a bunch of damn Yankees. With Shaw from Alabama, Blades from California, Cartellone from Nebraska, and Nugent from Michigan, it did seem as if the band represented all four corners of the nation, and the band were huge all over the States, selling out to packed audiences whenever they played. The bands never reached the same heights in Europe or the UK, with the song only getting to number 81 in the UK charts, but this track, which featured a passionate duet between Shaw and Blades, backed by a string section in the studio. Backed by a popular video, it rose to number 3 on the U.S. Top 40, and number 1 on the AOR charts. Ironically, High Enough happened to be the first number 1 pop single in Ted Nugent’s career.
Damn Yankees seemed to be following a similar course pursued by Jack Blades prior band, Night Ranger, developing an overall hard rock sound in the studio, but relying heavily on power ballads to sell their albums. Furthermore, their songs appeared on several Hollywood film soundtracks, such as Gremlins 2, John Candy’s comedic vehicle, Nothing But Trouble, and more recently There’s Something About Mary.
After the release of their debut, the Damn Yankees went on a year-and-a-half world tour with the likes of a revamped Bad Company, Poison and Jackyl. Their U.S. tour coincided with the Gulf War, in which the band unfurled American flags and made patriotic statements. However, Nugent’s onstage archery stunts became a matter of controversy when he was arrested and fined after firing a burning arrow into an effigy of Saddam Hussein.

High Enough is one of the mellower moments on the album. This ballad gave the Yankees a good amount of radio airplay and pushed this album to sell double platinum. The video, which as I said earlier, also made the song a bit hit, was a typical rock ballad video. It shows the story of a couple who appear to be a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. They appear to spend their time running around robbing stores. During the video they are shown robbing and eventually getting caught, but the guy gets away, leaving the girl to face the punishment alone, which for some unknown reason appears to be the death penalty!

The video is intermingled with loads of shots of Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw doing the usual rock poses, swaggering around the screen looking suitable rocked up, with the big hair and huge guitar riffs, with some of the best vocals on a track.In 2007 Jack Blades reformed with Night Ranger and started a US tour, with Tommy Shaw on the line up with the reformed Styx. Later the same year Night Ranger released a new studio album, which breifly topped the US Rock chart.

Well I do try to bring you the best in Hot Chicks, but all that is to come later, as we move swiftly on with this weeks....

A newlywed couple arrives in their sumptuous honeymoon suite, and it turns out that they are both virgins. Brought up the old traditional way, neither of them really knows how to have sex. So after about half a painful hour of abortive attempts to get it on, an idea occurs to the husband.
"OK, honey," he says, "this is what we'll do. I'll go into the closet and you go into the bathroom. We'll both get undressed and turn off the lights in the bedroom. And then on the count of three we'll both rush out at each other and then it will just happen in the middle of the bedroom."
The wife is a bit unsure about this, but since she doesn't have any better ideas she agrees. So, the husband goes into the closet and the wife goes into the bathroom and they both get undressed. The anticipation is driving the husband mad and as he takes off his clothes he begins to get an enormous erection. The wife turns off the lights and on the count of three they both rush out into the bedroom towards each other.
However since the room is dark the husband gets disoriented and runs by his wife...right into the dresser. He hits his willy against the dresser so hard that he passes out from the pain. The next thing he remembers is coming to in a hospital bed, with a doctor looking down at him.
His throbbing willy is still so painful that he moans to the doctor, "Doc, doc, how bad is it
To which the doctor replied, "That's nothing son. Wait till you see your wife! We still haven't gotten her off the doorknob yet."

Yaahhhh harrrr de harrr harrr me old maties an welcome to another of me fearfull crew, Avast an blow me down. Now this week I introduce you to a fearful dark maiden of the seven seas, who sails her ship Neptune’s Raider, an goes by the name of Commander Sadie Wall, or as you may of come to of known her as Whoopie Goldberg. Shiver Me Timbers!
The old salt is well know for her mastery of disguise, and she sometimes is found dressed in the cloth of a nun to hide from the law. Thar she blows.
When the scallywag is not in hiding, she is up on the poop deck with her dead mans chest an talkin to the spirits or as she calls em Ghost’s! Splice The Mainbrace!

Right I’m off now to set sail for new shores, and if I gets chance I may well sink a bit of the finest rum you know to clear up the old scurvy. Until next time you old seadogs. Sail Ho ye poxy old Jack Tars.

I do think that these pirate animals that seem to be popping in are a lot cuter than the crew members! So now it's time to find out what the resident little scamp Ronnie Wood has been up to this week, in his latest edition of.....So what has Ronnie been up to this week. Well it’s all been a bit quiet again on the celebrity front again this week, and to be fair Ronnie only wants to paint the very best stories. So this week he decided to have a did at those pop artists who give stuff away for free as a publicity stunt because their new material is probably crap!
Yes Coldplay will give away the first single from their new album for free over the Internet the band said on its Web site. A note posted on their website says that fans can download "Violet Hill", from the album "Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends", free for one week from 11:15 a.m. on Tuesday. The album will be launched on June 12. Coldplay also announced two free shows -- one at the Brixton Academy on June 16 and another at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 23.
The giveaway is the latest attempt by musicians to win fans and media exposure through new marketing initiatives.
Last year Prince gave away his album "Planet Earth" for free with copies of a weekly newspaper, angering retailers and the record label which had a deal to distribute it.
Radiohead topped the album charts in Britain and the United States after initially offering listeners the chance to pay what they wanted to download the album "In Rainbows". As bands seek new ways to sell their music and connect with fans, particularly over the Internet, record labels are struggling to keep pace and have lost a number of top acts from their rosters a result of the industry shakeup.
Looks like Ronnie thinks that this is just a way to hide the fact that they are rubbish. More from the little scamp next week.

What ever will he come up with next! Right before we get all hot and sweaty with this weeks Hot Chick, lets have a little break and spend a few minutes playing a fun little game in this weeks edition of.........

Blood Pressure Office

Yet again boys here I bring you a real treat this week, with the gorgeous Holly Valance. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1983 to a Serbian father and a British mother, and is related to the late British comedian Benny Hill. Now as we all know, Benny Hill was famous for running around chasing scantily clad ladies and spanking them on the bottom. What do you think he would of made of Holly, I mean does this look like a bottom you would like to spank?

Holly first came into the public eye when in 1999, she played the role of Felicity ’Flick’ Scully on Australian soap Neighbours. She first appeared when she and her family moved into 26 Ramsay Street after the Martin family moved out up until 2002, when she left for America. Now I must admit that I stopped watching the show after Craig McLachlan released that awful Mona record, but if I had known there was crumpet like this on the show, I may of still watched it!

But Holly was to move onwards and upwards and after leaving Neighbours, she did what everyone else who leaves the show does, yes she released a record! Valance's first single as a recording artist was a cover of Turkish singer Tarkan's Kiss Kiss. The song debuted at Number 1 in both the Australia and the UK charts in 2002. The director's cut version of the music video was notable in that Valance appeared to be dancing naked, but in fact she was wearing flesh colored panties but no top. The footage was then digitally retouched adding strategically placed lighting effects.

Her next single, Down Boy peaked at Number 2 in the UK and at Number 3 in Australia. Her début album Footprints was released on October 14, 2002. It debuted and peaked at Number 9 in the UK and Number 15 in Australia. The album's third and final single Naughty Girl peaked at Number 3 in Australia and at Number16 in the UK. Now as you can probably guess the videos were equally raunchy, and involved her strutting around showing off her curves, just like in this picture!

A second album was to follow, but it never lived up to the success of the first. Though her official website originally reported Valance would release new material via another label, this never materialized, with Valance recently confirming she is no longer interested in recording music, mainly because most of her stuff was crap, and apart from the video in which she looked like she was naked, and lets face it that what we liked about the song, most of the time the pause button on most of our DVD’s and Videos broke after they came out, anyway back to the pictures.

The sexy star then went on to use her looks to further her career. She signed a £3 million deal with the hair products company Schwarzkopf Live to front the new line aimed at an early teen to early 20s market. Holly was seen modelling Cosmic Blue, Sahara True Blonde, Hypnotic Red. Now I’m not that up on hair colours, but I’m pretty sure that in this next picture, there is definitely a touch of Hypnotic Red about it.

Holly moved to America to pursue her acting career, and over the last few years, she has featured in several top US shows. She appeared in one of the 700 CSI shows, I think it was CSI: Ex Neighbours Stars, or something like that, anyway who cares which one it was, I mean it’s not like you have time to watch them all is it. Anyway it gave her the chance to slip back into a bikini and show her body off.

She has also appeared in US hit show Prison Break, where she played the character Niki Volek, a character who reappeared in the second series, although with it being about a men’s prison break, then unfortunately there was no chance of any girl on girl action in the showers, not that I would think any of you would be interested in Holly hosing herself down. As if I would put that kind of filth on here!

She has also been in a few movies, most prominently in the video game spin off DOA: Dead or Alive, in which she played Christie alongside another of my Hot Chicks Jaime Presley. As you can tell from the pictures shown here today, Holly deserves her spot on the Hot Chick hall of fame, and even though her norks are not as big as Kelly’s were last week, lets face it she more than makes up for it in other ways! Another fabulous Hot Chick next week.

Stunning, simply stunning as I am sure you will all agree! What can I say. is it my fault that there are so many fantastic Hot Chicks about who just happen to have their pictures all over the interweb tingy ma jig! Now lets crack on with this weeks.....

Time now to step into what can only be described as the envy part of the blog. The envy shown by celebrities who wished they had been in the most successful film series of all time and who secretly dress up as their favourite characters. This week its more of a character than a star, but equally as funny. Yes it’s the shagadellic superstar Austin Powers, who is seen here as his hero Anakin Skywalker. Do I make you horny? Do I make you randy, baby, yeah, do I? Well put your hands on my light sabre baby and lets shag! Yeah, baby, yeah!

You know I think after the Hot Chick section I can last about one feature before my throat is in need of a thirst quencher, how about a little trip to the bar then, come on lets nip down for another........

Screaming Multiple Orgasm On The Beach

1 1/2 Shots Amaretto
1/2 Shot Triple sec
1 Shot Midori melon liqueur
1 Shot Malibu rum
1 Shot Peachtree schnapps
2 Measures Club soda

Fill glass 1/2 full with ice. Add all liquers and speed shake. Top with club soda.

Oooerr Missus. From the sound of this one it sounds like I had better stick to just a couple. Right lets have a little drinky of this weeks tipple. Mmmmm very nice, not quite got to the screaming part yet, but the night is young. OK Mr bartender type bloke, come on over here and fix me another.
Schtone me thatch a right touch. Oi don’t jussh walk ovf. Ittsh been a bad wekk for mesch today. Dyou gnow I jusch found out that me bog briver ish a bender poop tuber, an only lacsht wekk I fund oot that me younger briver, well heesh alsho botting fur the over schidsde. What wash that yous sched. Yesh there ish schomeone in my family that likesh women….. Me wife!

And now its that time to put away the silliness, and to concentrate on solving another one of my readers problems. You know as I said last week, my sack has been positively bursting with letters from people after advice from my years of knowledge in all matters. You do friends, you can write and tell me about anything, I am not here to judge, just to help you in your hour of need, just as with this letter from Jacob in Hemel Hempsted. He writes:

I need help, I need help BAD!!I thought I would have some baked beans with my dinner. For a change I thought I would put some curry powder and some chilly sauce in them. They tasted really good, but now I can’t stop farting and I feel as if I am going to explode if I stop letting farts out. The problem is people in the bible class that has just finished have called in the structural surveyors to fined out where the creaking sound was coming from and the pest controllers to see if a rat has died as it smelt so bad. Should I confess and save money or keep sh-tum and save face? Help me Captain Jack, you’re my only hope!

Captain Jack Replies:
Dear God I thought you said all the crap ones had been weeded out, what? You thought I said I wanted ones about crap! For God’s sake what am I paying you idiots for. Oh well lets have a crack at sorting out old skiddy pants here. Right then fatty lets see what we can do to help you. So you thought having baked beans with curry powder and chilli sauce was a good idea then ? Are you a bit dim ? That mix is rocket fuel mate, I once fed that mix to me dog, and you should of seen the mess he left on the poop deck, I can tell you! That's right mate you stay sh-tum and save face while all those around you get their face blown away with your gas. Ha! If you think that's the worst of it, wait until you need two-sies. You best make sure you have a good supply of Andrex in mate I can tell you, it will be like passing through the eye of a needle, talk about a Ring Of Fire! I'm sorry to tell you but, from now on you are going to be farting for the rest of your life (non stop). You best get used to it, because that's all you're going to be doing now. Thanks for reading and I hope I reached out to you.

I know what you mean love, quality Hot Chicks are always a crowd pleaser. Right now its time to sit back and chill for a while now, as we move onto this weeks musical interlude. So sit back and relax as I bring you this weeks Karaoke Classics, another alternative Musical History, but first up its this weeks Live Is Best…..

Thin Lizzy ~ Black Rose

Dublin ~ 1981

Its on with this weeks Karaoke Classics then. This week saw the return of our favourite resident singer Nicki, who added to the singers this week, of which there were again very few, meaning I got another four songs in, well three and a duet with Guitar Hero God Shaunio! As for this weeks quiz, well it was yet another victory for team Captain Jack, and yes the drinks voucher star prize lasted as long this week as it did last week, around seven seconds in total.
So this weeks songs were as follows. 1. Ruby by The Kaiser Chiefs 2. Handbags & Gladrags by Stereophonics 3. As Tears Go By by The Rolling Stones and 4. In The End by Linkin Park.

Ruby by The Kaiser Chiefs

Highest UK Chart Position: No 1 March 2007

God knows why but I really wanted to sing this one tonight. I mean I do like the band and the song, and it is on Guitar Hero III, but I just don’t know where it came from to sing it this week! Ruby is a song by rock band The Kaiser Chiefs, and for those of you who don’t class them as a rock band, read their interviews in Kerrang and they are in Guitar Hero for gods sake, I mean it’s not like there is any Westlife on Guitar Hero is there!
The song was the lead track on their second album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob, following the success of their first album, Employment. It became the band's first ever number 1 single in March 2007, and ended as the year's 10th biggest selling single in the UK with total sales of 313,765.
The video for Ruby was directed by Swedish production company Stylewar, who also produced the 2005 video for I Predict A Riot, and features the band performing in a desert landscape whilst a CGI metropolis-like city builds around them.
Dismissed by Liam Gallagher as a bad Blur, the Kaiser Chiefs are more accurately a brainier Oasis, producing songs that double as terrace chants and articulate pop tunes. There's a baker's dozen of them on the follow-up to their 2.8m-selling debut Employment, nearly all jostling to be singles in fact you could easily call this album their application for recognition as one of the decade's major UK bands.
So, with the spectre of eternal irrelevance hanging over him, Ricky Wilson looks around at society, eager to dissect and encapsulate the very marrow and gristle of Great Britain today. And what does he see? All working class people get pissed every Saturday night and fight each other. All middle class people read The Daily Mail and want to lynch immigrants and paedophiles. Worse still, he tries to relate to the council estate teenagers who buy his records with tales of his own barely-legal glory days like some creepy uncle.
‘Yours Truly…’ is a much more honest and affecting affair when Ricky ventures inwards… although here, in a crippling case of archetypal Second Album Syndrome, we find a man bewildered and browbeaten by fame. Ironic, since musically Kaiser Chiefs are anything but reaching for the slippers. ‘Yours Truly…’ is a rip-roaring pop record, sprightly, lean and adventurous, a bold leap skyward from ‘Employment’.
Any song that can be heard on the terraces of a football ground must have been written by a football fan, and although Ricky is a Dirty Leeds fan, the chant of Rooney, Rooney, Rooney, Rooney is one that will be heard for a good few more years yet, keeping it fresh in all our ears for a lot longer.

Handbags & Gladrags by Stereophonics

Highest UK Chart Position: No 4 December 2001

Next up is a song that I haven’t sang for what must be nearly two years now, and to be fair I was a bit ring rusty at it. Handbags And Gladrags is a cover of a track on Rod Stewart's first solo album and is also the 4th single from the Just Enough Education To Perform album. The track originally featured on Kelly Jones' solo acoustic tour at the end of 2000 and was so well received it ended up as a single. CD1 features B-sides of First Time Ever I Saw You Face and How.It was originally intended that there was to be a DVD single of this track. This was pulled very close to release as V2 realised this would mean that there were too many formats to be eligible for a chart placing. It is therefore likely that a number of test DVDs were pressed although full production seems unlikely.
The album Just Enough Education To Perform was an instant hit, going to number one immediately. Extensive promotional work was undertaken, and the snappy Have A Nice Day single crashed into the top 10 with an instantly hummable melody.
The band planned two huge special concerts for July 2002 for Donington Park Racetrack and Chepstow Racecourse. The latter of these was moved to the Cardiff Millenium Stadium following the Foot And Mouth Disease outbreak. On the day of the gig it was raining so the roof of the stadium was closed leading to one of the largest indoor gigs ever!
Step On My Old Size Nines was the third single, but failed to make the top ten. However, a cover of Rod Stewart's Handbags And Gladrags sent the band storming back up the charts, and having completed another huge UK arena tour in December 2001, Vegas Two Times was released as a single in April 2002.
Towards the end of the year they did another sold-out tour of the UK, ending with a Christmas show at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, supported by Feeder and Ocean Colour Scene. The meeting of the three most critically reviled British bands of the period was well received by fans, who danced the night away and with one young lad stripping off his tracksuit and streaking across the stage.

As Tears Go By by The Rolling Stones

Highest UK Chart Position: No 2 February 1966

A real classic now with this little know track by The Rolling Stones. Little known because they in fact gave the song away as they were kind of embarrassed about the song, as it went against their bad boy image. It was written by Jagger and Richards and their manager at the time Andrew Oldham, but was most famously recorded by Marianne Faithfull in 1964.
The song is considered to be the first original composition by Jagger and Richards. Up until that point they had been performing covers of blues standards. The myth surrounding the song's genesis has it that Rolling Stones manager Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen forcing them to write a song together, even suggesting what type of song he wanted, describing it “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.” The result was initially named As Time Goes By the title of the song Dooley Wilson sings in the film Casablanca. It was Oldham who changed time for tears. Oldham subsequently gave the ballad, a format that the Stones were not yet known for, to Marianne Faithfull, then 17, for her to record as a B-side. The success of the recording caused the record company, Decca, to switch the song to an A-side, where it became a very popular single. It reached number 4 in the English charts and launched Faithfull's career as a major singer.
The Stones recorded their own version in 1965. It appeared as the B-side to 19th Nervous Breakdown in the U.K., and the band performed it live during their third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, along with 19th Nervous Breakdown and Satisfaction. It was released as a single by their American record label, London Records, due to popular demand after radio DJ's across the country started playing the song from their recently released compilation album December's Children (And Everybody's). The song peaked at number 6 on the Billboard charts in America for the Stones.
It was performed live on tour for the first time in 2005 on the Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour. A performance from the 2006 leg of the tour was captured for the 2008 live release Shine A Light.

In The End by Linkin Park

Highest UK Chart Position: No 8 October 2001

Well I’m pretty sure that I have written everything possible about this song in the past few months, and as a duet, it is probably as good as you will hear anywhere on karaoke, and I’m not just saying that because its mine and Shaunio’s! So instead of rambling on about the song, the album or the fact that they are on the summer festival Captain Jack must see list at Milton Keynes later this year, I thought I would tell you a little about Chester Bennington, as it is his vocals I sing in the song.
Bennington was born in Pheonix, Arizona. He took interest in music at a young age, with Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots as early inspirations. Bennington's parents separated in the late 1980s, while he was still a child. He was abused during his youth, and later struggled with cocaine and methamphetamine addictions. He eventually overcame his addiction, and would go on to denounce drug use in future interviews. He worked at a Burger King restaurant before starting his career as a professional musician.
Before joining Linkin Park, Bennington was singer in Grey Daze, a now-defunct grunge band from his home town. He left Grey Daze in 1998, but struggled to find another band to play in. After nearly quitting his musical career altogether, Jeff Blue, then the vice president of A&R at Zomba Music in LA, offered him an audition with the future members of Linkin Park. Chester quit his day job, and took his family to California, where he had a successful audition with Linkin Park, who were then called Hybrid Theory. Chester and Mike Shinoda, the band’s other vocalist, made significant progress together, but failed to find a record deal. After facing numerous rejections, Jeff Blue, now a vice president of A&R at Warner Bros, intervened again to help the band sign with the label.
Despite having prodigious success in the early 2000s, Bennington has had medical issues outside of the limelight. He suffered a severe bite from a spider while touring with the Ozz Fest in 2001, which caused his arm to swell. He was also plagued with poor health during the making of Meteora, and struggled to attend some of the album’s record sessions.
Bennington married his first wife, Samantha, in 1996. They had one child, named Draven Sebastian, who was born in 2002. His relationship with Samantha declined during his years with Linkin Park, leading to their divorce in 2005. After divorcing his first wife, Bennington married Talinda Bentley, a former Playboy model, with whom he has since had a child, Tyler Lee. He and his family live in a 6,000-square-foot house in Newport Beach Orange County when he is not on tour.

Yes its time to wrap up this weeks musical interlude with a bit of class. The Rat Pack, or as they were better known to us as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr were well known for being shall we say a bit crazy, in fact the Rat Pack had a reputation with the ladies and for the booze, but imagine if those clean cut 60’s legends had ended up as we see them here “The Rat Punks” I mean can you imagine it. We would of ended up with them singing all kinds of stuff, like I Only Have F##@ing Eyes for You, There Is Nothin' Like A Dame, Thank f@#k and of course the show stopper The Lady Is A F@#%ing Dirty Little Tramp!

Now all that thumping and clanging is over with lets now go and see what Hollywood Blockbuster we won't be seeing this Summer, in this week's edition of......

Another week of music and Celebrity bashing over with, lets see now whats next, music, beer, women ah yes thats right its time for a bit of footie in this weeks....

Ronnie Whelan scored some lovely goals for Liverpool in his time. Sadly, one of the best was an own goal against bitter rivals Manchester United at Old Trafford in 1990. He chipped it perfectly from 25 yards out and it dipped over the startled Bruce Grobbelaar and under the crossbar. We just can’t blame Grobb the Grabber for that one!

Well that is nearly that for another week folks, but I know if you are struggling to work out the answer, this week's Every Picture Sings A Song was of course the classic....

So as this week draws to a close, the only thing that I have to say is that next week's blog may be a little different that usual, due to the fact I am setting sail and pillaging one of our European neighbours next week, but fear not, as I do have a little something special lined up from both Ronnie Wood, and the Hot Chick departments! You'll just have to wait and see what that is! So I bid you farewell, and I will see you again soon. Ta Ra.....

John Rambo: I could've killed them all. I could've killed you. In town, you're the law. Out here, it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it, I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go. Let it go...