Category: Things I’ve Written For My Chemical Toilet (Page 3 of 126)

It’s a new month! This one’s called October. And with this Octoberishly-named month comes a bunch of new Levi’s Ones To Watch residencies, where you can go and see numerous acts of an up-and-coming nature in various Londontown hostelries.

The October batch of shows includes future stars/cabbies such as Citadels, Exlovers, Kurran And The Wolfnotes, Young Rebel Set, Turboweekend and presumed GCSE French flunkers, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool.

Also on board are Mirrors, whose “Look At Me” is playing in a YouTube embedded video near you. Like, really near you. Like, here:

Mirrors play Camden Barfly on October 15th alongside Young Rebel Set and Turboweekend. The first show is this Thursday 8th at The Macbeth and has Citadels, Dansette Junior and language remedials Ou Est Le Swimming Pool.

For the rest of the dates check out the Levi’s Ones To Watch official site. Tickets are available from TicketWeb and See Tickets.

You can find anything out on the internet these days. Anything. And when one is investigating an act one is unfamilar with it’s good practice to check out Wikipedia, wait 11 minutes for the artist’s MySpace page to load, and so on.

For once, with Bertie Blackman, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to wait and see if the information comes to me. I’ll pretend this is a fun “experiment” rather than a symptom of my laziness. Do you know anything about Bertie Blackman? Leave information in the comments.

All I know, thanks to YouTube’s geographical info, is that she’s considerably more popular in one country than any other:

Her – yes HER, OMG WEIRD, RIGHT? – song “Thump” is an urgent, immediate, quiet-loud, um, thump in the synapses. I loves it, I do.

There are a couple of remixes here, too. Not as good as the original though, which seems a novel happening these days.

Bertie Blackman – Thump (Duosseudo Mix)
bertie-blackman-thump-duosseudo-mix

Bertie Blackman “Thump” (Wild Turkeys Remix)
bertie-blackman-thump-wild-turkeys-remix

I can’t be ignored like a hangOVER
Coz everybeat I sound nang OVER
Half of them I don’t mad OVER
This bass will knock your gran OVER

The lesson here is, if you’ve got Granny coming over for Christmas dinner make sure you didn’t also invite JME. Things could get awkward.

Buy JME “Over Me” MP3 at Play.com

[via Fullygrown Grime]

Amerie’s new one “Heard ‘Em All” is a frantic, tribal-beats-y kind of thing, with lots of great “uh-huh”s and “hey hey”s. I liked it after two listens, which makes it about an 8/10 on the immediacy scale. Clearly “One Thing” was an 11, but let’s give the poor girl a break because very few people ever produce a song that perfect and then have the misfortune to find themselves judged against it forever.

The video has a built-in guarantee of quality in that Amerie appears in it, but some people might deem it a bit of a “Disturbia” rip-off. Which isn’t that surprising since it’s by the same director, who clearly has Se7en, Fight Club and Mad Max on rotate on his DVD player.

Whatever, Universal Music don’t want too many people to see it – or any other visual representation of their artists’ work – because they are wrongheaded killjoy cunts who disable embedding on so many of the fucking videos they upload to YouTube.

So instead, here’s a version of the tune with a phoned-in Lil Wayne verse tacked onto the beginning so that men are allowed to listen to the song without feeling like a sissy.

Buy Amerie “Heard ‘Em All” MP3 at Amazon.com

Bobby Brown appeared on VH1’s Behind The Music last week. If you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of his and Whitney’s daily drug intake you’ll be disappointed, but it does have its highlights.

I think mine is when Bobby says that at the peak of his fame he would find himself on a tour bus, see someone driving a car he liked the look of, follow said vehicle, then purchase it from the driver on the spot with cash. And then discard the car when he had to leave town for the next leg of the tour.

Bobby Brown apparently left cars everywhere, so if you picked up a mysteriously abandoned Porsche around 1989, and there was a crack pipe in the glove compartment, that’s why it was just left outside that strip club.

Watch the full Behind The Music here – but before you go let’s remember this classic clip from Bobby’s appearance on ITV’s 24 Hours With Bobby Brown a couple of years back. Let this be a reminder, should you need one, not to pinch Bobby Brown’s bottom if you’re a bloke.

For unsigned artists keen to have their music featured on the tellybox – whether it be TV shows or adverts – and thereby gain entrance to this site’s hallowed Where Have I Heard That Song Before? category, Sentric Music have been useful people to hook up with for a while now.

Why, they’ve secured spots on Lexus TV ads, episodes of Hollyoaks and – the Sincerity Rock holy grail – One Tree Hill for all manner of bands you haven’t quite heard of yet.

They also ensure acts get the money they’re due from gigs and radio play by taking care of Performing Rights Society-related bureaucracy for all their artists.

This year Sentric Music are hosting their own showcase at the UK’s leading music “convention”, In The City. They’re looking for one more band to join the four they’ve already scheduled, with the winning act getting to play in front of all manner of industry bigwigs looking for the freshest blood to drink sign up. The other acts on the bill are The Federals, Gallops, Jamie Ley and Dirty Goods.

If you want to enter you’ll need to do the following…

– Sign up with Sentric Music. It’s a non-exclusive agreement which leaves you free to pursue other dirty money-making schemes while allowing the magical Sentric people to see what dosh they can purloin for you in the meantime.

– Then just email inthecity2009@sentricmusic.com with your artist name, MySpace link and a blurb saying why you want to play In The City in 140 characters or less. That’s so Sentric Music can show everyone how clever you are by tweeting your entry to their 2000+ followers

Entries need to be in by October 5th, with the winner due to be announced on October 7th.

Good luck – I hope to hear your dubstep opus featured on Grey’s Anatomy Skins real soon.

Buy In The City wristbands here