In which my daughter discovers Irish folk music

My four-year-old daughter has kept a steady war of attrition going to extend her bedtime ritual as much as possible, likely to ensure that no siblings muscle in on her time. One facet of the ritual is that she has me sing her a few songs at lights out, but in recent months, a twist was added: she'll request a "mystery song" - one that she's never heard before, and if she likes it, she bestows it the honour of having it go on her Google Music playlist (the playlist of non-kiddy songs so we have something bearable to listen to on long drives).

It only took a few weeks to exhaust the memory bank of pop-punk classics I'd happily sing to a Canadian 4 year old, so I resorted to looking up lyrics on my phone. Sensing that this fool's errand was proving too easy thanks to the smartphone, she began to introduce complexity by requesting songs about certain topics, or even that feature specific words.

And then it happened. "Sing me a mystery song. That's from Ireland".

Easy peasy, right? There's four decades of U2 pablum that would easily tick the boxes. I could hum out Where the Streets Have No Name, or I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for, or One. I could hit the mark while edifying my daughter on pop classics she would surely encounter down the line.

But that's not what I thought of. For some reason my brain decided that the right answer would be "Danny Dyer" by the Rubberbandits; an often filthy song that amounts to a series of contrived, bizarre claims delivered in a piss-take cockney accent.

Looks child-friendly enough!

These are some of the things Danny Dyer claims to have done in Danny Dyer by The Rubberbandits:

• Doing speed with aboriginies
• Eating the country of Greece while riding a saddled shark
• Urinating in a kettle

There's a shortened version of it online that was used in their TV Show that should bring you up to speed in less than 2.5 minutes: go have a look.

Father-of-the-year material that I am, I swapped out the lyrics on the fly with child-friendly stuff, and a few minutes later, bedtime ritual was over, and I was free to spend my evening not updating my blog for the 1,630th straight day. 

The next day, I'm happily filling up my coffee cup in the kitchen, when my wife corners me and through gritted teeth asks me "why is our child singing "Danny Dyer, Danny Dyer, get 'im in a headlock?"

Our initial hopes that she would forget about it are completely dashed after a week of repeated asks. The Google Assistant refuses to play it for her, and she's never encountered this Content Filter issue before. Why can't she hear the song? We tell her there's no recording of it that survived on the internet because "it's from almost ten years ago and it's from Ireland, so nobody has a copy."

Undeterred, she asks me to ask my Irish friends. She asks me to track down the original artists (after asking if they're still alive). And more pressingly, she asks to sing the song to her night after night.

With more time to think about the lyrics I try to clean it up more, but I'm rebuked; "no Dad, that's not the right words". My toddler is castigating me for getting the censored words wrong, so I tell her that nobody has a trace of the real words, that it's been lost to time. The mystery around the song only grows and grows, it's now a part of her Irish heritage, it's even more important now that she hears it.

So I relent, and I tell her I'll try and find a copy. And I do what any loving father would in that situation: I use software trained by machine learning to split out the song into component stems; rewrite the lyrics, and inserted my own recorded vocals.

The results are... well, a bit of an abomination, as you can hear for yourself: 

Abomination or not - she loved it, and it has been bestowed with the great honour of being #1 on her regular playlist, so I'm guaranteed to hear my awful iPad-recorded vocals multiple times a week until my kid tires of the concept of music itself. How long could that take?

The Best Bits of my last Week or so

Busy few weeks! Little time to blog, but here are a few bits and pieces that I found along the way.

Within days of endorsing some sceptical podcasts, I find a toilet that empties into a sceptic tank:

"I'm sceptical that this is natural waste, so I'm going to back up into the sinks now"

While out in Limerick City (for the first time in a long time) I found something oddly reminiscent of the religious graffiti I tracked for a few months years over the country a few years ago. Has the intrepid vandal moved onto a new uplifting message with less? Forensic analysis to follow at a later date:

Accidentally cut off a bit - it reads: "Hope - The unconscious mind works it out - Sleep on it"

Limerick Band Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters released a fantastic new album last week, and I finally got to listen to it uninterrupted. Well worth a purchase, if you're into solid rock with a menacing vibe [Amazon Link].

Here's the latest single, Hatch Sixteen, which I've yet to decide is a paean or condemnation of Limerick City.

Rubberbandits - Horse Outside

From what I know of the Rubberbandits, their comedy is fairly hit and miss. Nonetheless, I watched their latest music video since a few people I know appear in it, and I found it to be a slice of pure brilliance.

Yesterday, it had ~600 views. After noticing the furore on Facebook I clicked again to see what the hit tally was at - over 90,000. Eeep. I think it's time to declare this a phenomenon.

I'm not a fan of video-dumps, but I'm curious to see if those who aren't au-fait with the Irish scumbag sub-culture can appreciate this, because it might just be the best thing I've seen online since the bedroom intruder song.



I'll be supporting this for Christmas #1 with my wallet, judging by how quickly this video is picking up hits on YouTube, it shouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine a few thousand others doing the same.

The Shrug-Shuffle

Note: This be a video-heavy post. It’s probably not worth your while continuing if you’re not able to view videos right now.

Back in the Napster days, and just before Eminem had released his second (mainstream) album, I was online looking for any additional Slim Shady material available, and I encountered a recording of the Insane Clown Posse’s piss-take of ‘My Name is’ called ‘Slim Anus’.


Fun as that was, it didn’t particularly interest me in the group, but for some reason the name stuck with me for quite some time.

Turns out that Insane Clown Posse, over ten years after their attempt to gain attention by piggybacking Eminem’s success*, are still around, and still making music. Their latest music video has made them something of an online phenomenon, and, well, it’s too mind boggling for me to really describe, so give it a whirl yourself:




I'm sorry, I should have warned you that the preceding video features middle-aged wiggers self-consciously boogieing to third-rate music with third-rate special effects whilst spitting despicably hateful lyrics. Hateful for the past few hundred years of human scientific progression, I mean.

There is no hope for these people. It's hard to reconcile their doe-eyed enthusiasm for all the wonderful things in everyday life with their sense of inquiry that extends as far as "I don't wanna talk to a scientist / Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

Domestication of animals, sound waves, heredity, the light spectrum, and large meeting places are all ascribed to some 'magical' or 'miraculous force in this video, by a pair of irony-deprived twerps who swear profusely in a pathetic attempt to elicit an emotional response in the listener. Granted, the juxtaposition between lyrics that may have been written by a six year old assigned poetry homework with the usual chest-beating of gangsta-rap is certainly hilarious, but when it's so patently unintentional, it just makes these face-paint-wearing, middle-aged white rappers look a little silly.

"MAGIC EVERYWHERE IN THIS BITCH"

What worries me is contemplating the people who pay money to listen to music like this - or the fact that these chuckleheads make enough money from talking about "shit that'll shock ya eyelids" that it has become their full time jobs. After some cursory investigation, it seems that these cretins have amassed a loyal following by incorporating lyrics that reach out to every downtrodden nitwit misfit imaginable, creating a nice community in the process. Twenty years into the process, just after their ebullient "fuck you" to scientific inquiry, the ulterior motivation behind the previous two decades of violent posturing are revealed:

According to Bruce, the group used profanity and references to violence and sex in their lyrics because "to get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you're one of them. You're a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion."^[90] Bruce also states that "The ending of the Joker Cards, the way we looked at it, was death. Heaven and hell. That's up to each and every juggalo [to decide]. We're not an ultra religious group. I don't go to church or anything. I like to believe in God."^[54] - Via Wikipedia

Truly, to be so arrogantly stupid, you most be of the religious persuasion.

"FUCKIN' rainbows, after it rains / There's enough miracles to blow ya' brains"

If you're this ignorant, you owe it to humankind to blow your brains out

If four minutes of watching these morons doing the shrug-shuffle in front of crappy backgrounds (some stolen wholesale from Google Earth) wasn't enough to get you vexed, then feel free to watch this spoof from Saturday Night Live, which succeeds in being less absurd than the source material.


*Ironically, the ICP/Eminem ‘beef’ allegedly started because of the then-unknown Eminem trying to piggyback off of ICP’s success. (Just want to cover myself in case any juggalos come in here)

Jace Hall - Super Playa

After hearing a 20 second snippet of goofy paean to videogames, I decided it was worth my $0.99.

Please, enjoy (in as non-judgmental a fashion as you can):

Just look at my raaange!

It may shock you to read this, dear reader, but I'm not just a lazy blogger who struggles to upload 5 poorly-articulated, ill-conceived nonsensical rants a month. I'm a lazy blogger guilty of the aforementioned who once had to cobble together a song for his Introduction to Radio Production class!


SullydidthisforcollegeinAmereeka by ubersully

Yes, the song is utter dreck, and it consists entirely of loops from Garageband, but this still counts as one of my 5 for the month.

What's the deal with iTunes pricing?

Since I'm still tooling around with my iPod Touch, I've been delving deeper into iTunes. Despite subscribing to dozens of podcasts through iTunes, I've only spent money on it once, but I poked around in their video section to see if I could find anything cool.

I was pleased to see that they've a healthy supply of TV shows available, even if I thought that $1.99 for one episode of a (fantastic) TV show was more than I was willing to pay. Taking that into consideration, I couldn't believe what record labels were getting away with when it came to music videos:


3 minutes and 39 seconds of music video costs the very same as 30 minutes of quality TV entertainment! I can only assume that these prices are so high so as not to cannibalise the music prices (which are between $0.99 and $1.99), and not because the market sustains the selling of promotional music videos that are readily available for free streaming online.

The bands are making music videos anyhow - it only makes sense that they should be able to sell it for $2 a pop to the impressionable young fans whose shallow gamut of opinion consists of "that's naff" or "DIS IS THE BEST THING EVA!!!!!!"

Fools and their money are often accompanied with obnoxious punctuation.

Lazy narcissist in self-indulgent blog shocker

I'll be honest, I sat down in front of the computer, and decided to blog, which isn't exactly how I normally do things, and since I'm too lazy to gestate anything from the ol' 'Blog Ideas' file that teases me with good ideas that require effort, I've decided to subject you to a great big heaping of narcissistically-fuelled drivel, the kind of banal author-triva that abounds on blogs I generally deride.

Today, friends, I shall bore you with my musical milestones:

First song I ever fell in love with:

Back in Time - Huey Lewis and the News (1985)



I have no idea what age I was when I discovered how to use the home stereo, but I recall going through dozens of my parents' CDs, skimming through tracks until I found this song. My propensity to sing along to this one song for hours led to my mother telling me that using the repeat feature ruined the disks.

First CD purchase:

Boom Boom Boom - Outhere Brothers (1995)



Thanks to the impressive string of clever euphemisms in the lyrics, I never did quite know the specific machinations of what the song was talking about...

Bend you over
Grab your shoulder
Slip my peter inside your folder
Make you sweat-a
Get you wet-a
Pump it faster to make it better
Dim the the lights then lock the room
Cos now it's time for me to hit that boom

... but I thoroughly enjoyed singing along all the same, making sure to skip the remix of 'Fuk U in the Ass', lest my protective mother feel the need to deprive her 8 year old son of a great source of pleasure.

First Tape purchase:

How Bizarre - OMC (1996)



You'll surely forgive the anachronistic order in which I made my purchases, as 9 year olds generally aren't too pushed about the fidelity or convenience of their music mediums. After spending so long in the dining room on the CD player, I appreciated being able to use my brother's walkman and listen without disturbing the peace or being called a stupid fatass retard for singling along and never getting the lyrics right, despite a solid Saturday morning of practice. (Sigh)

First Album:

Spice - Spice Girls (1996)



For Christmas of 1996 I got a CD player and a copy of Spice, like a million other sheep-children in the country. Took about four years before I learnt that "zig-a-zig-ahhh" was pure gibberish, and not, in fact, the grotesque sexual act I assumed it meant.

***

For the sake of brevity, I'm about to jump forward thirteen years or so, but there are two milestones that I feel I should mention - Blink 182 was the first band I was ever truly a 'fan' of, and Broken Social Scene deserve a mention as my current favourite act, despite my initial dislike for the CD I had been given for Christmas. As of 26/03/09, I consider this to be the most beautiful song I've ever heard:



First iTunes Purchase:

Don't Worry About the World - Monster-0

Amazingly enough, my first iTunes purchase was last Monday - and whilst I begrudge the slight hassle I'll eventually have to go through to remove the DRM, I was impressed with the ease and speed of getting hold of an indie album. You heard it here first - this iTunes doohickey is the future!

[Mind the gap - I can't find a more intelligent way to embed the MySpace player]

Hump-day Video-dump

Not sure if I ought to make a regular habit of dumping videos on here like this, so be sure to comment and let me know if this was worth your while in any way.

First on the list is a video from my friends' band that I've been intending on giving a shout out to in some form or another for some time now, so now that they've put together a music video from the footage they took of their recent LA tour, I figured I'd share! Please to enjoy:'Little Black Marble' by Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters. The split screen format means that you have a perfectly good reason for listening to the song four times in a row!




Next on the list, we have a video shamelessly nicked from that other blog that I'm writing for (even if I haven't had time to post anything remotely intelligent in about a month now). One of the authors went to the trouble of recording a version of the Monty Python's LumberJack song that somebody (a chap called FXE, seemingly) on an atheist forum went to the trouble of rewriting. This song is pretty clever, but it's especially noteworthy for me as it somehow came up on the radar of popular blogger PZ Myers, who I've made gushing reference to in the past, providing me with yet another opportunity to reflect on how freakin' awesome the internet is.



And finally, more as a bonus than anything else, I'm attaching another video from the multi-talented Mr Shane Serrano, (the geezer responsible for the first video posted above, as well as [crude] magazine, which I warbled about last week). When he was short on integrity-impaired students willing to sell their souls for a UL promotional video a summer or two ago, I decided to help him out by spouting confused mumblings from my fat head that he captured on tape to somehow convince people that UL is great - other than those eight seconds or so, it's pretty decent! As far as promo videos go, anyhow.

He'll be Ready - Forever and always - He's Always Here!

Anyone who used to follow my Bebo blog should remember that I pledged my support to http://www.gethasselhofftonumber1.com/; a website dedicated to getting a David Hasselhoff to the #1 slot in the UK charts. The way it worked was a user pledges their support and leaves their e-mail address, and when enough users have signed up to guarantee Mr Hoff getting the coveted top spot, a 'Hoff Alert' e-mail would be sent out, prompting thousands to log onto iTunes to download an agreed Hasselhoff 'classic'.

I pledged my support to this because I saw it as a chance to participate in music-history; supporting someone undeserving of the top-spot, hopefully illustrating that a song may not be of any merit yet still be top of the pops. (That, and I thought the ensuing flood of Hasselhoff media-coverage would be hilarious - that guy has a great sense of humour about himself!)

It didn't work 100%- seems they jumped the gun a little to coincide with the UK release of 'Jump In My Car', and my 'Hoff Alert' mail was shot down by Yahoo's overzealous (but mightily effective) spam filter.

Shame! I just checked out the website to see how it went:

"On Sunday 8th October 2006, David Hasselhoff broke all his own records and reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart with over 26000 copies of "Jump In My Car" sold."

Number three still isn't bad, right? I consider that a successful e-xperiment - and I'd be very curious to see in the coming days how many of those sales were from supporters of this website.

It's a shame that I'm away from home at the mo and unable to appreciate the effects of this valuable social experiment - so maybe you guys can tell me if you've noticed any spike in Hoff references or exposure in the media? (C'mon lads! The comments section is there for more than decoration!)

Anyway - as much as I hate to be seen as one of those lazy bloggers who just posts random videos he finds on YouTube - (2 in 2 days - urk!), I think I'll be forgiven for this one, which is here as it is entirely in context!

Ladies and Gents: if you haven't seen it already, I'd like to invite you to enjoy David Hasselhoff's 'Historic Track'; "Jump In My Car"