The Influence Of

Well I went to the Black Mountain gig at the corner. It was very good. A good all round effort, a diverse mix of songs from all 3 full length records, and an excellent treatment of Tyrants, one of the best songs of the past few years - the twenty-first century's Stairway to Heaven.

It got me thinking about their influences. Led Zeppelin is the obvious one. Even down to the hair. Get this live version of Rock n Roll, what a fucken ripper:

Black Sabbath is another. No matter what you think of Ozzy Osbourne or 70s metal, this song is just great:

And Pink Floyd. The only official videos I could find were the predictable Another Brick in the Wall and Money. Both great songs, but we've heard them enough. Fearless, on the other hand, is worth listening to more, particularly if you're a Liverpool fan like I am:

Jerk With a Bomb

Stephen chooses the grey cardy for the photo shoot

Canadian Stephen McBean, a man who lives by just his own rules, is fast becoming a legend. He heads 2 bands: the Black Sabbath/Led Zep/Velvet Underground-inspired Black Mountain and the more trippy and psychedelic Pink Mountaintops (which I suspect is a euphemism for 'tits' given the lyrical content of the first, self-titled album). Each band has released 3 fine albums since 2004. Prior to that McBean called himself Jerk With a Bomb.

McBean.

Son of Bean.

He's touring Australia soon as Black Mountain. I plan to see them at The Corner and expect several songs to run somewhere between 8 and 15 minutes. No doubt some tall bastard will stand in front of me while some drunk girl next to me waves her hands in the air from start to finish. I generally want to kill these people but that wouldn't be right.

While we're on the subject, I would also like to kill people who say 'myself' when they could just say 'me'.

And if you were to knock on someone's door with 2 people called Harry and Joan, and somebody inside yells out "Who is it?", it is correct to answer "Harry, Joan and me." It's not "Harry, Joan and I". You wouldn't answer "I" if it was just you, would you?

"Are you talking to myself?"

"No, I was talking to I."

*

This is the offical video of The Hair Song from Black Mountain's latest Album Wilderness Heart:

This is Angels from their previous album In the Future. Some clown has put clips from the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire to the song. Such an immature literal translation but, nevertheless, a hell of a film which was remade by Hollywood as fucking City of Angels with fucking Meg Ryan and fucking Nicholas Cage, leaving me aghast:

And No Satisfaction from the self-titled debut with static shot of the album cover:

Finally, here's a picture of an ant:

Golden Brown, Texture Like Sun

The fuck is that you're playing, Beethoven? Beethoven? BEETHOVEN!

How better to start off this spin-off blog than with the band that produced the best song of all time, The Stranglers. The Stranglers, responsible for such gems as Peaches (featured in the ripper British gangster flick Sexy Beast starring Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone and Ian McShane), No More Heroes (which included the lyrics "Whatever Happened to Leon Trotsky, he got an ice pick that made his ears burn") and, the best song of all time, as alluded to just moments ago, Golden Brown, were significant players in the British punk scene.

So much for clarity.

For years my friends and I struggled to make sense of the Golden Brown lyric which I now know, through the magic of the web, is "With My Mind She Runs". Simon Turchett and I used to sing "With my mansheeruns". No, it doesn't mean anything.

The guy third from the left refuses to embrace the punk ethos - in fact I think it's uncle Nev

The song is about heroin as far as I know, but at the age of 11 when I first heard it, brilliantly waltzing along to the sound of a harpsichord, I neither knew nor cared. It was just fucken ace. And still is. Harpsichord! Who'd've thought? It neatly paved the way for Beethoven to enjoy punk. The Hold Steady are probably fans too, as they made good use of the harpsichord on their album Stay Positive. Golden Brown was, incidentally, used very effectively in Guy Ritchie's Snatch.

The Fucking GREAT Golden Brown:

No More Heroes:

Golden Brown in Snatch:

The Sexy Beast Trailer without, unfortunately, Peaches: