Eugene McGuinness

“There are songs on the album that just come out quite melancholy like ‘Black And White Movies’, ‘Knock Down Ginger’ and ‘God In Space’, but other times it’ll be The Pogues, or The Kinks. I’d rather be known for being inconsistent and a bit scatty than for pulling the same tricks all the time, so I’ve tried to do a few different things on the album.”

“I was born in London, and grew up in Essex but I went to university in Liverpool. I’m a bit of a three-headed monster; Liverpool, London, Ireland, all of them have influenced me in some way. I find it quite a weird thing to talk about, where someone comes from. It always seems to end up defining a person, and people would instantly associate you with a particular sound or with a particular group of people. I want to try to avoid that.”

eugene mcguinness first interested me in one of those australian distro ads in beat magazine - a fellow from liverpool (the city of love...or at least of my love, the liverpool football club...).

the kid has alot of style, a songwriting talent that belies his years. it's kind of somewhere in between jamie t (only less obnoxious), conor oberst (less mid-western USA) and perhaps a hint of the orchestration and grandeur of beirut.

check out 'moscow state circus' here - http://www.myspace.com/eugenemcguinness85

Cat Stevens (And Why Michael Jackson's New Found Religion Is A Mid Life Crisis)

in times like this where an encore is less about crowd partcipation and appreciation but more about just making life hard for the poor sound guy who was rightfully assuming a band playing their 2nd or 3rd show didn't 'require' 2 x 3 song encores, it's easy to let bygones be bygones and let the heritage of music pass in favour of greatest hits DVDs and 6-single albums.

i remember earlier this year watching a fellow called paul dillon perform in 'wild world', a cat stevens tribute outfit. much to my (non) surprise i imagine i was the youngest person in the audience. i digress, anyway, all the hits were there and the band performed in a way that certainly did a good justice to a great man. but it was the pre-encore cover of 'where do the children play?' that struck a nerve.

as the story goes (whether folklore or real events), cat came to the end of his last show in 1976 and before going on to perform the afore mentioned song, unplugged his guitar and stood in front of the audience, no microphone, just an acoustic guitar. when the song ended, he said thank you and left. and he didn't play live again until 2004. this is the closest video i can find, but it's still enough to make you wonder what's happened to our independence and sense of freedom



finally... is it not too late to talk about michael jackson's 'conversion' to islam? by all means i respect his decision, but ithe poor guy's still 7 mil in debt and looking down the barrell of a court date for child molestation.

http://living.oneindia.in/insync/2008/michael-jackson-mulim-islam-convert-221108.html

i'm not even going to begin to highlight the amount of things wrong with mentioning MJ and children playing in the same blog...

Did The Easybeats suffer from Aussie Syndrome?

i've always been a big fan of 'friday on my mind', well before i knew what the song was called or who performed it.

i've been listening to 'aussie beat that shook the world: the easybeats anthology' today and although they certainly had success internationally, something has always held them back from being spoken of in the same bright and eclectic circles of the beatles, herman's hermits, gerry and the pacemakers and so on.

all five original members were from european families - and there were european tours, recordings in england, residences in england, etc. but they still had to 'return' to australia at the end of it all.

did they suffer from australian syndrome?
or was five years of touring and hard drugs just too much?

Music?? Didn't that die in 1979?

as a mildly pretentious observer of modern music, i feel it is my privilege...no DUTY... to report scathingly and perhaps sometimes courteously on what goes on in my head.

i've always felt blogs to be reserved for teenage girls ("i know from experience, dude, if you know what i mean....") but maybe i'm just jaded.

i'm sure moz would be turning in his metaphorical grave knowing that people like me still believed people might read their blogs.

i'm also disgustingly incapable of using capital letters on the internet.

more soon.