Complete Tosh.com

In the spirit of tonight’s inspirational Eurovision Song Contest, which m’colleague Anna Pickard is live-blogging over at Newsblog in very entertaining fashion, I’ve decided to do the lyrics for next year’s United Kingdom entry – based entirely on lines recited tonight in Kiev, and a piece of spam I got during the show. See if you can guess which lines come from which! This was carefully written during the interval, when they were totting up the votes.

Due to the moving nature of the lyrics, those of you reading off the front page will have to now click on the "continue reading" link to experience them.

Trust me – this is going to be a hit. A hit, I said. A hit. Anyone write music?

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Doing an online tax return, so need something to calm the nerves. So… er… Smoothjazz.com is on… and it plays Chris Botti’s smooth jazz cover of Sade’s No Ordinary Love. Now that really is smooooth. To the last micron.

Time, I thought, to rescue the music category from the horrors of 80s kitsch, and post a brighter picture of groovy London life than the last post, by mentioning that Complete & Mrs Tosh made it down to the Brixton Academy (now sponsored by: Bevvy) for those polite LA rockers, Maroon 5 the other night.

The headline act were as polished live as we’d been led to expect, but the surprise of the evening was the pre-support support act, Los Angeles-based singer songwriter Sara Bareilles. Now, you have to be careful with support acts. Sometimes mere competence can have you raving, through nothing more than relief. And normally I’d agree that a description using the phrases “LA-based” and “singer songwriter” might fill you with all sorts of Avirile Levene/Shania Twain-inspired doubts, or even mild nausea.

But she was really bloody good. Vegas – performed better in Brixton than in that streamed MP3 – was good enough to send me off to the lobby straight away for her bargain-at-a-fiver album. Good enough to have me in such haste I bought the disk by support act Guster – who were also very fine, but not quite the ticket. Mrs Tosh rectified matters, as ever.

On hearing Sara’s album – Careful Confessions – it’s fair to say it doesn’t sound quite as strong as her live show, where she comes across as a bit more soulful with a strong band around her keyboard and lovely voice. But better-live-than-recorded is refreshingly different from the norm, and I’m sure she’s got a big future. She’s not on iTunes yet – “Do you mean Barnacles” it asks earnestly when you search by her surname – but I’d give it only a little time.

As a footnote, Guster also deserve mention for urging the crowd to remember that nearly 60m Americans didn’t vote for dubya. It was no surprise to hear them say that – Maroon 5 were involved in the Rock The Vote effort, and were known to be as anti-Bush as you’d expect non born-again city dwellers to be. But the comment still got Guster a great cheer.

Ah, but you’ve got to love the way iTunes music store fills those idle moments, parting you from your money in elegant little 79p packets.

So I heard Grace Jones on radio the other day – Slave to the Rhythm. Never much liked the song at the time but now… well, I was humming it to myself all day, so though I’d better download it. Get it out of my system, you know – it never goes down well when you start imitating the soaring French horns from the chorus while you’re riding home on the tube.

On to iTunes, download it. “Listeners also bought…” – Jesus Jones. Bloody hell. I remember them… – bought their album (Doubt) back in my first year at Uni and recall that it was, in some way, a disappointment. One of those ones where the singles stood out like sore thumbs, I suspect. Or that I listened to it way too much during a drip to Millport, more likely, and it got stale.

But then… the inevitable question: what happened to them? Well, damn it all – one Google later – if they’re not still on the go, official website and all. Watch out for a live webchat next month, JJ fans.

And then this musical journey continues down its decidedly edgy cul-de-sac … because all this is from an era when I was making plenty of dodgy album purchases. Possibly most noteworthy: the absurdly camp Army of Lovers (pictured above, in happier times) and their album Massive Luxury Overdose. Probably the politest thing you could say is that it was Europop very much of its time.

There’s something to be said in its defence, I’ll argue. The group was something of a influence on the early dance music scene – Crucified, their biggest hit, was remixed all over the place at the time. And you’ve gotta love the Neo Edwadian look of group Svengali Alexander Bard, pictured left. And it’s nice to see “Jewish members Dominka Peczynski and former hairdresser Jean-Pierre Bard” highlighted by Somethingjewish.co.uk’s “Where Are Jew Now” feature. That site highlights the song Israelism, a late addition to their legacy, “which added a disco beat and Jewish-themed rap to the tune of Havenu Shalom Aleichem (it went on to top the charts in Israel).”

See. See? The band may have died, but the Army’s influence will always be felt.

Now: all I need is to find something – anything – on electronic popsters Frasier Chorus (how I’d love some Mp3s of their -only? – album, “Ray”, I think, and I’ll be a happy chappy…

Apple announces:

“Music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 100 million songs from the iTunes® Music Store, marking a major milestone for the emerging online music business. The 100 millionth song, “Somersault (Dangermouse remix)” by Zero7 was purchased by Kevin Britten, age 20, of Hays, Kansas on Sunday, July 11. As the grand prize winner of Apple’s 100 million song countdown, Kevin Britten will receive a 17-inch PowerBook®, a 40GB iPod®, a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes songs to create the ultimate music library for his iPod and the opportunity to create his own Celebrity Playlist to be published on the iTunes Music Store.”

Lucky bastard, if only for the 10,000 song gift certificate, rather than the heavy 17″ Powerbook. At least he’s got a decent taste in music.

Fresh back from Ibiza, and so can report: word around the White Island’s campfires is that Shapeshifters’ gloriously uplifting Lola’s Theme is the tune of the summer. The buzz is right – obay its mighty force. The track’s out today, and destined for chart topping, summer defining stardom. Mark my words.

The big three-oh approaches in less than two hours, so it seems appropriate – having just watched School of Rock – to stick some great (old) music on. First up: Depeche Mode, who just couldn’t get enough when I was around a third of the age I’ll be in around two hours.

Appropriately, the CD itself is of an 80s vintage, which means there’s a page in the back of the sleeve notes (kids – I’ll explain later) telling buyers about the “Compact Disk Digital Audio System”. The advice it offers is useful for those of us who, at the time, were still smearing marmalade over CD surfaces as advised by Tomorrow’s World (kids – I’ll explain later: it was the single most memorable moment in 1980s TV, and it happened in 1981. It was a long decade after that, really).

“For the best results, you should apply the same care in storing and handling the Compact Disc as with conventional records [kids - I'll... oh, never mind]… If you follow these suggestions, the Compact Disk will provide a lifetime of pure listening enjoyment”.

See, even then they were talking about a lifetime, not for hundreds of years. So that’s that solved.

In other news, the Mode (as we know ‘em) helpfully put quotes from the reviews that met their now-classic records. With their trademark dour humour, they put the shit quotes first. Take this searing indictment of Everything Counts, from Gary Bushell [laughter] writing for Sounds magazine [more laughter]: “And the band played on – whether the members of Depeche Mode are actually dead or alive is a question that has baffled the medical profession for years”. Or Roy Hay [cries of "who?"] writing for Record Mirror [gasps of distant recognition], on People are People: “I really laughed the first time it came on”.

The only decent piece of dissing came from one Neil Tennant. In Smash Hits [recognition applause], he wrote of Blasphemous Rumours that it was “a routine slab of gloom in which God is given a severe ticking off”. A comment which, itself, is a routine slab of camply dismissive bitchiness by Tennant. At least he managed to go on and do something with his life – a something that sounded not unlike the Mode, ironically.