'Tis The Season

Wow! Has it been two weeks already? Seems like a lot less than that since I last posted about what I'd been listening to lately. Oh, wait... that's because I keep shoehorning songs I like into posts that have nothing to do with music! It's almost like what I listen to is part of some kind of organic whole or something. Crazy, right?

Anyhoo...

Stuff's been piling up. Better release the pressure before something blows.

Oh, before I begin, I'm sure you'll all be glad to know I've been working on my musical Advent Calendar and this year I've got help. AI help. 

I asked Bard first but that didn't go well. All Bard does is make stuff up. Then I went to ask Bing but apparently you have to go through Microsoft Edge for that now (There are workarounds but they're too fiddly-diddly to be bothered with.) Edge is like fricken' ivy. If you let it get a toehold you're scraping it out of the cracks for a week so screw that. 

CHATGPT4, though. That one works. It was a lot of help, came up with some great suggestions. Give it a snappier name, it'd make a great imaginary friend. Oh... there's an idea...

I'd love to do a post about the methodology involved (Hah! Like there is one...) including all of Bard's funny little ideas, but it would be spoilerific so I'm going to save it for a postscript when Advent's over. Meanwhile, that's what I'm working on. 

Obviously, I'll be getting the AIs to help me with the pictures this year, too. That'll be loads more fun than trawling through endless pages of crappy royalty-free Christmas "art", searching for the 0.01% that doesn't make me ill just looking at it. Also, the results will be orders of magnitude better. Oh, brave new world...

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. But first, before we deck those halls, let's clear these decks!

Suburban House - Holly Macve (Feat. Lana del Rey)

Since we're in a seasonal mood, let's start with this gorgeous slice of wintery despair. I was previously unaware of the existence, let alone the work, of Holly Macve. I try not to think about how many bands and singers I've never heard or even heard of. It terrifies me.

Holly worked with Colin Dupuis, who worked with Lana on Ultraviolence. Lana said in an interview Holly would be her pick to play Lana in a biopic. Pop music is like this now. I imagine it always was. Actually, when I think about it, I know it always was. Nothing much changes, does it?

Alma Mater - Bleachers

Well, some things do. For example, Bleachers made a song I can listen to twice. I never thought it would happen. For all Jack Antonoff's close involvement with some of my favorite music of all time, I've never heard anything by his band I didn't find bland and uninteresting - until this. 

Granted, it sounds like an American Analog Set demo, except for the parts where Lana chips in, but that's what I like about it. Co-writing credit for the two of them, too.

Satellite of Love - Snail Mail and Thurston Moore

For my birthday I got Ezra Furman's extended essay on Lou Reed's Transformer, the 1972 album from which Satellite of Love comes. I haven't read it yet but the chapter on Satellite (Each track gets its own chapter.) is called "Lou and Pop".

I'm not sure it's exactly "pop" but it's certainly one of the most commercial tunes he ever wrote. Given that Transformer represents one of the peaks of his commercial success as well as housing both of his Big Pop Hits (Walk On The Wild Side and Perfect Day but you didn't need me to tell you that.) it's always puzzled me this one didn't chart too.

There have been many covers and most of them are better than this one but I love how ragged it is, especially since it exists primarily as a promo for Fender guitars. Snail Mail (I'm guessing we aren't supposed to call her Snail, like it's her first name...) is wildly off-key at times and Thurston doesn't seem to wake up until close to the end and yet the sum of the thing is so much greater than those shaky parts. 

It's sloppy genius. As Furman says right at the start of the chapter on this song, "Lou Reed is a control freak". He'd have hated it. But then he hated everything. It was part of his charm.

How Could You Let Me Go - Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart

Okay, I can see where this is going. This is what you get for opening with bleak, bleached-out, winter chill full of despair and loss, then follow it up with ennui, regret and more despair. It sets a mood and that mood sure ain't Christmas. I suppose we're going to have to get it all out of our systems before we can move on to the fun stuff.

There will be fun stuff... won't there?

070 Shake - Natural Habitat ft. Ken Carson

Yes, Virginia, there will be fun stuff. But first you have to eat your greens.

When he says "Kerosene. Kerosene. Kerosene", doesn't it make you think of this? 

Now that was a band that really knew how not to have fun.

String Machine - Gales of Worry

Ah, that's better. I think we're easing out of it now. This is what they like to call "bittersweet" isn't it? I guess all Americana is kind of like that. Filled with nostalgia and tinged with regret but still looking to tomorrow with a glimmer of hope.

It's a bit weird, the way he looks a little like Andy out of Parks and Rec and sounds a little like Craig Dermody from Scott and Charlene's Wedding but I'll take it.

Chanel Pit - Tierra Whack

Do you think she means "Charnel Pit"? I mean, the lyrics would support it. But no. She means Chanel. Oh, she's the smart one. I love Tierra Whack. Never heard one bad track by her.

Also, now I come to listen closely, this might only be fun until you listen closely.

<Listens closely>

Nah, it's still fun.

Rodeo Tragic - Partner Look

I'm tempted to put this one in the "Too clever for its own good" bin but I'm giving it a pass for the horsey.

Highways - Pony Girl

Oh god, we're just going backwards now but I typed "horsey" and thought "pony" and here we are. 

Is this the same Pony Girl that did Candy that I posted back in August? It is! Score another for Canadian Art-Rock. 

Billy - Horsegirl

Why fight the inevitable? This has one of those long noise intros that I'm not over-fond of but stick with it. Once the actual song arrives it's magnificent. Which is more than you can say about the sound quality but it's Jarrett with his iPhone again. 

Okay, I don't know he has an iPhone. 

I bet he does, though.

Tanto - Cassie Marin

Ok, time to bring it home. Always leave 'em laughing. Or at least not curled in a corner in the fetal position.

Of course, I have no idea what she's singing about. Could be pure nihilism for all I know, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. 

The title means "So much" if that helps. (Unless it's the Japanese dagger but I doubt that. I had one of those in EverQuest, I think. I always wondered what it was. It was tiny.)

Rodney - Birthmark

The Talking Heads is strong in this one, which falls into the category of making lemonade. Also the best of it. And laughing at yourself to stop from crying. All of that.

It would work just fine on daytime radio with no-one really listening to the lyrics and the video is funny enough to cover. Then again, no-one's going to be programming a song called "Rodney" on daytime radio.

Nothing Lasts Forever feat. Grimes - Svedaliza

So true. Including this post. Not actually what I was planning to go out on but everything else I have is a downer so... 

 

A Note on the AI used in this post.

Not much. Just the header image, which is by RealCartoon XL v4, a model based on SDXL 1.0 It's the third iteration from the prompt "Lana del Rey and Tierra Whack sharing hot chocolate in a snowy winter scene. Cartoon." Weights are 50/20/50. Yes, there are three weights now.

When's It Gonna Be My Turn?

A couple of years ago I surprised myself by writing a post about the Grammy Awards. The opening line set the tone: "Despite having been a huge music fan almost all my life I've never paid even the smallest passing attention to the Grammys." The gist of my argument was that things had changed just a little, to the point where I could find something of interest in the coverage of the event, albeit mostly to argue about the decisions involved.

I was more surprised than anything to find I owned two of the eventual winners: Best Album of the Year (Taylor Swift's Folklore) and Best Alternative Music Album (Fiona Apple's Fetch The Bolt Cutters). I thought at the time it might indicate some cultural shift, that being my preferred explanation, although the worrying possibility also existed that it might mean my tastes were moving further towards the mainstream, with worrying implications for my carefully curated self-image and much-valued hipster cred.

Reassuringly, the next year, when I came to look into the possibility of a follow-up post, I couldn't find anything in the 2022 Nominations list worth writing about. The Best Album list did once again contain some recordings I owned - Olivia Rodrigo's first album, SOUR, Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever and, inevitably, Taylor Swift's evermore, as well as Halsey's If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, oddly relegated to the Best Alternative Music Album category - but in the event none of them won and to talk about their inclusion would really only have been to repeat what I'd said the year before.

As for the 2023 nominations and winners, the less said the better. There's nothing on there I own and precious little I've heard and although there are some performers I respect on that list, I very much doubt there are many I'll be listening to any time soon.

This week, when the nominations for the 2024 Grammys were revealed, I felt the dial had swung back some. Enough to make another post viable, at least. As Pitchfork put it in their assessment of the slate, "The Recording Academy are a predictable lot. We’re reminded of this every autumn when a similar cross-section of ultra-popular and comfortably respectable musical artists are anointed as Grammy nominees." And yet, as the article went on to suggest, we may need to redefine our concept of "ultra-popular and comfortably respectable" if this is what it looks like now.

Of the eight "takeaways" listed in the linked Pitchfork piece, the one that most interests me is the second, headed "Welcome To The Indie/Pop Prestige Zone". It's undeniably a fact today that artists and performers who would have been considered niche or genre acts in the past or, at best, what used from the mid '60s through the '90s to be known as "Album Artists", now take their seats, albeit sometimes uncomfortably, at Pop's top table.

This can sometimes be hard to parse. In my head canon, Lana del Rey is filed right next to Lou Reed.  I see them both as driven, solipsistic songwriters, gifted with an immense abilty to communicate their complex and disturbing inner lives through imagistic language and elegaic melody. Neither necessarily comes across as a natural performer and neither has a great vocal range but both phrase a lyric as subtly as Sinatra, while displaying a peerless ability to convey meaning with an inflection. Still, you wouldn't call them "Pop". Except now we do. Well, Lana anyway.

Lou Reed was rarely successful commercially and certainly no-one ever thought of him as a pop star. He had a couple of freakish hits but anyone can do that. As for recognition by the Grammys, in a career lasting half a century he was nominated twice and won once - for an episode of the American Masters TV show about him, not for anything he actually recorded or performed. 

Lana, by contrast, after not much more than a decade as a recording artist, has already been nominated eleven times, although she has yet to win anything, so I guess Lou would say he was ahead. Yeah, he'd definitely say that.

Lana is also commercially successful in a way Lou rarely, if ever, was. Her eighth album (Officially.) Do You Know There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, currently nominated for Best Album at the Grammys, is just clinging on in the official UK Top 40 Albums of the Year by Sales list, at number 37. In my opinion, it's a difficult and challenging album but apparently I'm wrong and it's pure Pop.

And that's the point, or one of them, at least. In 2023, after a lifetime of listening to popular music, what passes for pure pop these days seems to me to be at least as nuanced and demanding as at just about any time I can recall. There have always been spiky, subtle, awkward presences in an and around the charts, alongside subtle, tricky, indefinable pranksters, performance artists, slumming intellectuals and bar-room philosophers but the swell of the mainstream has rarely felt as dangerously deep and swirling as it does today.

Lana's A&W just snagged a nomination for Best Song of the Year. Wouldn't you just love to be able to go back a few decades and play it to an earlier awards panel? With its devestating tonal and musical shifts and ever-present dark subtext, it's surely about as far from a traditional pop song as you can get without moving into another subgenre entirely. 

Contextually, the song is novelistic and bleak. The title, reduced from its full version as a sop to radio programmers everywhere, is shorthand for "American Whore". Wikipedia summarises the lyrical content, drily, thus:  "Del Rey addresses the "experience of being an American whore". The singer tells a story of a woman who has been relegated to "sidepiece" meeting a man at a hotel for sex. But she also touches on themes of loss of innocence, rape culture, and drug use."

It won't win, of course, but something I like almost as much almost certainly will. The Best Song nominations this year are breathtakingly good, including what could easily be among my own list of favorites from the last twelve months. Competing with A&W are Olivia Rodrigo's Vampire, Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero, Miley Cyrus's Flowers and Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For, all of which have either featured in music posts on this blog or were at least considered by me for inclusion. 

The other nominees are all of high quality and with two of the remaining three also being by women (SZA and Dua Lipa), seven out of eight of the artists in consideration this time are female. Pop music has always had a huge female demographic in its audience but now it seems that's finally being reflected in performance and, most crucially, in creation.

It would be simplistic and quite possibly some kind of inverted patriarchal appropriation to suggest the deepening and stretching of the range and boundaries of what we currently call Pop is solely down to women speaking to women but something's going on and whatever it is, I like it. Whether it signifies a long-lasting cultural change or just something for TV presenters to look back on in twenty years time with confused, indulgent smirks, like Britpop or 1980s hairstyles, remains to be seen. Never underestimate the ability of the established order to re-assert its privelige. Or the priveliged to re-assert the established order,  Either one.

I hope it's permanent. I certainly believe the degree to which all popular media - music, movies, television, comics, books, you name it - have been smartened up rather than, as has frequently and utterly inaccurately been claimed, dumbed down, is an irreversible process (For a given value of  reversability, of course.) Once you trade up it's hard to go back, as anyone who's moved out of a shared house into a place of their own will fervently attest.

As for Lana's chances this year, which is obviously the aspect of all of this I'm most personally concerned about because yes, I am still twelve years old, as the popular snappy comeback has it, I won't be placing any bets but they look promising. While she certainly won't walk away with the gongs for either Album or Song of the Year,  "Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd" is double-nominated in Best Alternative Album, where she has a great shot, and A&W is also in contention for the oddly-named Best Alternative Music Performance.

Add to that a nomination in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category alongside featured artist Jon Batiste for the magnificent Candy Necklace, and it could be Lana's year. I mean, it probably won't be but we can hope, right?

Let's convene back here in February after the ceremony, which takes place in the highly disturbingly-named Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, either to congratulate or commiserate. Or maybe if it goes badly I won't mention it at all and just go back to believing the Grammys don't matter. 

Which, I hope it goes without saying, they don't. 

Just keep telling yourself that...

 

A note on the AI used in this post.

The header image was generated at NightCafe using DreamShaper XL alpha2 at the default settings (Resolution: Medium, Runtime: Short, Weights 50/50.) The prompt was "Lou Reed giving Lana del Rey an Award at the Grammys. Norman Rockwell style".

(I tried DALL-E 2 only to discover likenesses of celebrities are not permited there. They did at least give me my credits back.)

The second image was generated using the same model and settings from the prompt "A young Lou Reed and Lana del Rey drinking champagne at the after-party Polaroid snapshot 1970s. Out of focus."I spent a lot of credits trying to get this one the way I wanted it, without a great deal of success. Believe me, that is a young Lou in comparison to all the ones where I didn't specify his age. It's also dangerously authentic-looking. I can see why the more powerful AIs are wary of replicating famous faces.

The images I really wanted, I wasn't able to persude any of the AIs to produce. I was hoping for a magazine cover, specifically the mid-70s Punk, which famously used cartoon versions of its cover stars, drawn by the magazine's creator, John Holmstrom, showing the two stars celebrating their award triumph, but I couldn't get any of the models to go anywhere near it. I'm seriously thinking of paying for one of the more powerful versions now.

Finally, it took me a while to notice but just about all of the images use Lou and Lana's likenesses for most of the background characters. Both the pictures in the post have a central figure that's an amalgam of the two stars. It's disturbiing, to say the least.

It's All You, You, You, Isn't It?

Straight-up Friday Grab Bag. No Messin'.

Okay, let's open the bag and and grab something. What've we got?

You Call That An Offer?

Prime free games for the month, here we go... Remember when this used to be a post of its own? Ah, the heady days of May '23. Now it's relegated to and in other news.... 

There was even a moment, about a week ago, when it looked as though Prime Gaming would get a second post all to itself for May. I got an alert telling me "Prime Gaming Adds Eight Games, Bringing May Line-Up Total to 23 Free Titles" but when I read it, the extra games turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of stuff they'd brought back from previous offers, so that was the end of that.

This month brings a baker's unlucky dozen of thirteen. The pick, from my perspective, would be Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and SteamWorld Dig 2 but even those aren't the draw you might think they'd be. 

I already have two versions of Neverwinter Nights - the original box and the "Diamond" edition on Good Old Games. Granted, it would be a lot more convenient for me to play NWN as an Amazon app but the chances of me playing it at all are vanishingly slim. As for Steamworld Dig 2... I have  Steamworld Dig on Steam and I haven't played that yet so do I really need the sequel?

Of the other eleven games, the only one that looks remotely interesting is Once Upon A Jester. I'll claim that one but the rest I wouldn't waste hard drive space on. If you want to check them out for yourself, here they are.

I hate to have to align myself with the cavilling crowd but it is getting harder and harder to pretend that anyone who matters at Amazon gives a damn about the Prime Gaming App any more. I get the strong feeling that whatever plan they had for the platform they inherited from Twitch has either failed outright or already fulfilled its purpose and been shunted into the promotional equivalent of maintenance mode. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

You Do Know They Can't Hear You?

A couple of people asked questions or raised points in the comments that I either answered there or said I'd post about. Since I doubt many people go back and read the comments to posts they've already seen, comment threads are a particularly poor place to make pertinent points so maybe I thought maybe I should highlight them here.

Angry Onions left a comment on the "Covered in Confusion" post to the effect that AIs "don't know and can't think", which is demonstrably and absolutely true. You wouldn't think it was even in dispute if it wasn't for the claims that keep being made about them, although not on this blog, I hope. Everyone does realize I'm treating them like toys, right?

I really ought to do a proper post, laying out my motivations and interests and explaining why I feel the need or desire to keep posting about the AI trend. I'm mulling one over. Maybe I'll even write it myself. Until then, the tl;dr version is that I grew up reading Philip K Dick and I've been waiting all my life for this, so I'm quite excited and when I get excited about something I want to share, whether anyone wants to hear about it or not.

I do realize that we won't get to the autonomous, cranky, personable AIs of science fiction in my lifetime or possibly ever, but for a long, long while it seemed like no-one was even trying. At least now they are and I'm very happy about that. Yes, it could all go horribly wrong but then doesn't everything? Is that a reason not to try?

On a a much less emotional, more practical level, I'm experimenting with and posting about the current generation of AI apps because I can see a lot of potential uses for them that would either solve problems I have or make my life easier. 

One thing I'd really like is an automated research assistant, something I could set parameters for and send out to find, collate and precis information that I could use in posts I'm writing without having to start from scratch. I've been trying to find out if Bard or ChatGPT could fill that role and so far it's clear they can't, mostly because of that endearing but infuriating tendency they have to make things up if they can't find the answer.

I'm sure plenty of older readers (Heh! That's all of you, isn't it?) will remember Ask Jeeves, the search engine that you could talk to in full sentences. It wasn't very good, was it? I learned something from it all the same and that was to treat all search engines as if they could understand normal English. I generally don't just type keywords into Google; I ask it questions. I also cut and paste whole sentences into the search bar and let Google sort out what I want to know. It works very well.

It seems to me that it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine a version of regular Google Search that can parse sentences and paragraphs and return results that have been sorted and summarised in good English, rather than just pulling up a page of links you have to go read for yourself. That's what I've been hoping the AIs would be able to do. That they can't is frustrating but their failures are hilarious. 

That's basically what I'm up to with these posts, just in case it hasn't been obvious - pushing the AIs to do what I want and then laughing at them when they can't. Probably going to come back and bite me in the ass when AIs get full autonomy and non-human rights but I reckon I'll be long gone by then. 

You'd Look Pretty In That Dress

On yesterday's post, Redbeard asked if I'd say fashion was one of the primary parts of Noah's Heart. I gave him some sort of reply in the thread but it's not such an easy question to answer because, if I'm honest, I have no clue what the point of the game is or even what it's supposed to be. One thing I can say with some confidence is that I'm sure you're not meant to play it the way I do.

When I began playing Noah's Heart I treated it like any other mmorpg. I explored the world, levelled my character and followed the storyline, all of which were fun things to do. After a few months I found myself doing very little in the open world, beautiful though it is, because I'd opened all the teleport locations and kind of felt that was enough.

From then on I concentrated mainly on the monthly story Seasons, which were complete in themselves and had somewhat intriguing plotlines, if you could pick them out from the execrable translation. Those have a time-gating mechanic based on tokens you get from doing dailies so I got into the habit of making sure I hit my daily max of two hundred points.

As the months went on and the game lost players, as evidenced by the multiple server merges, the new content drops dried up, to be replaced with not much more than a rotating sequence of quasi-holiday events and cash-shop driven minigames. No more story seasons have arrived since the one I'm supposedly doing, which is handy in a way because I got fed up with that one half way through, when it became obvious it was padded out with stupid boss fights, and stopped. 

Despite no longer needing tokens for the season unlocks, I've carried on doing dailies because I actually like doing dailies now. Guild Wars 2 gave me Daily Stockholm Syndrome and I've never recovered. 

Apart from enjoying them, the two practical reasons I do dailies are a) to fulfill my Guild responsibilities and b) to get mats and sundries to progress my Phantoms. My guild is a lot quieter than it used to be but I still like being in it and I don't want to get kicked out for not meeting the minimum activity requirements. 

As for my Phantoms, while I don't do much fighting these days, I do still like to see how far I can get in the Fantasy Arena, where Phantoms are pitted against one another in a form of quasi-PvP. If I'm ever going to get past Diamond 3 I need my team to get stronger, so that's a motivator.

Dailies in Noah's Heart are also very quick and easy now. I won't bore everyone with the mechanics of how it works but suffice to say that a while back the devs added some automation to the daily mechanics that allows me to get things done in a matter of seconds that used to take me half an hour or more. I've also built my home up to the point where it provides me with a hefty supply of crafting materials every day just for the few seconds it takes me to set some switches.

That's meant I have a large supply of materials for crafting gifts to give my Phantoms so they'll like me more, which is how I persuade them to give me the patterns I need to copy their clothes. I also get a fair amount of a number of currencies I can spend on items needed for both upgrades and crafting. If I had to go out and harvest or fight for those myself, the way I used to, I don't think I'd have become as invested in getting the different appearances as I have done. I'd probably have given up quite a while back.

Since my playstyle is so truncated and limited, I find it impossible to say whether fashion is intended to be one of the endgames but I'd have to say it is for me, not least because I have no clear idea what the alternatives even are. There are several ladders for PvP and PvE that I guess competitive people work to rise to the top of and there are a few of those endless progression dungeon things that seem to have become mystifyingly popular in a number of games of late but other than that, your guess is as good as mine as to how people spend their time in Noah's Heart.

A lot of people do wander around all dressed up, though, so it looks like I'm not the only one working on their wardrobe. For a game with a lot of looks to collect and a payment model that relies on cash shop sales, I'd have to say there don't seem to bthat many clothes or accessories you can flat-out buy for real money. Most things seem to come either from the kind of in-game activity I've been doing or from unspecified "Events" that I never seem to be able to find.

It's a strange game in so many ways. I like it a lot but I can't see it lasting much longer.

You Can Be My Daddy

I love the way Lana del Rey's father, Rob Grant, is playing with the odious concept of "Nepo Babies". That's the concept 'm calling odious, by the way, not the babies. 

Seriously, at what point of human history has it ever been about what you know rather than who you know? And what are children supposed to do? Actively reject the experience and advice of their parents? 

Are we going to accuse someone of nepotism because they've decided to train as a doctor or a teacher, following in the footsteps of a parent or grandparent? Are we going to ban offspring from carrying on the family business? If not, why should it be different just because the family business involves singing or playing the guitar?

It's even more stupid considering the result is right there in front of us to make up our own minds about. Aren't we capable of judging value by the quality of the work any more? Is it all about the connections, now?

Pah! And pfooey! Anyway, having the dad ride in on the coat-tails of the daughter is hilarious, especially when you consider the lyrics of any number of Lana's early recordings - and when it comes out sounding like this, it's glorious too. I'm gonna buy the album, which I certainly wouldn't if Lana wasn't on it. Nepotism works! 

You've Got To Laugh

If you remember the post I wrote about whether cover versions can be considered free of the stain of their corrupt originals, you might also remember me mentioning a book called Monsters by Claire Dederer. At the time I hadn't read it. Now I'm about half-way through.

As I said then, the copy I have is an uncorrected proof so I can't quote from it. It says so, right there on the cover: "Sceptre uncorrected proof. Not for resale or quotation". I'd post a picture of the cover to show you but I imagine that's not allowed, either.

It's a shame, because there are plenty of lines I'd like to share, not so much for the political or critical or socio-politico-critical points they make but because they're damn funny. If there was one thing I wasn't expecting from a semi-academic treatise on the moral conundrum of what to do about art we admire when it's also created by men we revile, it's that it would have me laughing out loud. 

But it has and it does. I've laughed a bunch of times now and inwardly chuckled a whole lot more. A hundred pages in I'm not at all sure what case is being made or whether I agree with it but I'm certain I want to read more by this author.

At one point she describes herself, somewhat uncomfortably, as a memoirist, something that would be hard to deny, given she's published two memoirs, one with the highly unappealing title "Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses", which apparently has a recommendation by Elizabeth Gilbert on the cover, enough to warn anyone off, I'd have thought. The other's called "Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning", which isn't a whole lot more enticing.

I read some of the Amazon reviews and wishlisted both books. I mean, who wouldn't, when people are saying such amazing things about them, like "The book had quite a few stains on the front which I wasn't expecting" and "It is mildly interesting, but to my mind the contents would've been best left in the author's diary". I mean, it's better than a nod from the author of Eat, Pray, Love, that's for sure.

And that, I think, is just about enough. Working the weekend so that's all until Monday.

What I've Been Listening To Lately - And Yes, That's What I'm Going With!

After a whole two (Count 'em!) lengthy posts in a row I felt like doing something snappier. And since it's been a week and a half since the last What I've Been Listening To Lately...

Of course, these things rely on my actually having listened to something new. Have I? Let's see...

Ah, yep. I think we're covered. Fifteen tracks bookmarked for possible inclusion and that's not counting all the new-to-me, unreleased Lana del Rey songs I ran into while looking for AI Lana. Is there another artist with anything even close to as many unreleased recordings out there? I was trying to keep a complete collection going for a while but it's just impossible. New ones appear all the time. Where do they even come from? Does she live in the studio?

Anyway, since we're talking about Lana, I guess we could start with this, even though it inevitably means it'll be all downhill from here on...

Candy Necklace - Lana del Rey (ft. Jon Batiste)

The new album, Did You Know There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, is wonderful. Of course it is. It's also very strange. I've seen parts of it compared to William S Burroughs and not without reason.

This track is relatively "straight". It's also half as long on the album, where it's perfect, and yet it feels perfect at a shade under eleven minutes, too. It's some kind of magic. 

As for the mini-movie, it just works. It's loosed from time and all adrift. There's a woozy, dreamy, malignant pressure that builds and won't release. It's horror, really, but horror through a Fellini filter, re-imagined by Warhol. 

Warhol would have loved Lana. She'd have made a great Superstar.

JFK - Lana del Rey

Now here's a very clever thing. What someone's done is fit this unreleased gem to an edit of the video for another, official, release - National Anthem. I'm not at all sure I agree with the commenter on the thread who says the words seem like a much better fit for the images, but then the original is another mini-movie, with its own throughline that goes well beyond a simple retelling of the historical facts, while this is a love song that uses Kennedy as a metaphor. 

Either way, the video for National Anthem is a fricken' masterpiece, so to get something this good by cutting it up is impressive as hell. Let's see an AI match that.

For my money, JFK probably isn't a better song. National Anthem is very powerful, a real crowd-pleaser, the kind of number you end a festival set on, everyone waving their arms above their heads from side to side and chanting along, which is freakishly brilliant, since it's also disturbing, bleak and lost. JFK, in contrast, is a gorgeous, lush affirmation of a relationship that works, even when it shouldn't. Lana's speciality.

The real puzzler is why only one of these songs is on an album but then you can say that about literally dozens of Lana's rejects. I have enough first-class examples set by, just from the last few days, to fill the rest of this post and then some but I suppose we'd better give someone else a chance...

Dopamine - Decisive Pink

If Lana's all about the '50s thru the '70s, these two are hard-locked into the '80s. Well, this song is. I dunno if they're like this all the time. It's the first time I've heard them. I know it's a recurring theme here but really, is there anyone out there who's not strip-mining the past?

I'm confident this one would have been a big radio hit back in the eighties. It has that nagging, relentless quality that characterized so many new wave singles acts, coupled with the cod-scientific, art-house sensibility that made short-lived stars of the likes of Thomas Dolby or Landscape. I don't think there's much danger of anything like that troubling the charts nowadays.

You Are Not My Friend - Tessa Violet

Bored of the eighties? How about the aughties? Er, noughties. Whatever. 

Tessa Violet is one of those people who obviously have a picture in the attic. She's been around for years now and I swear she looks younger than when she started. What? You can't see it? Well, no, of course you can't see it in that video. It's just a visualizer. Take a look at this...

Now you can see it, right? Also, is it me or does that sound like a much meatier mix? I saw the short first and loved it. I was a little disappointed when I heard the full song. It sounded thinner, somehow, and I missed Tessa really selling it with those expressions and gestures. Maybe the video, if there is one, will give it the impact it needs. The visualizer doesn't really do enough.

Sword - Natural Wonder Beauty Concept

Which is not to say visualizers never work. This one absolutely does. The claustrophobic repetition complements the scattered nervous energy of the track perfectly. It's like one of those dreams where you run and run but never get anywhere. So many music videos employ horror motifs these days, I see them even when they're not there.

And speaking of horror, anyone up for being torn apart by a pair of horses?

Pocket - Feeble Little Horse

Do you get the impression none of these people really care about selling out sports arenas any time soon? It's as though the kind of things we all did with our pals in someone's garage or basement back in the day have turned into a currency you can spend anywhere. Is this democratization? And if so, of what?

Singing By The Sink - Horse Jumper of Love

I guess this one's almost accessible. It's folk, right? Melted, fused, messed-up folk but you can tell the heritage. I could imagine this on a ramshackle stage in a corner field at a free festival in the 'seventies. It's also all on one chord, which I always enjoy. 

Giddy Up - Jenny Lewis

I was going to put something else in this slot but then I spotted the synergy. I'm all about the horses today. Makes a change from ponies.

I used to like Rilo Kiley and now I like Jenny Lewis. This sounds different, though. I know I hear Lana in everything but this gives me definite Venice Bitch vibes. It's the distorted bassline, I think, and the synth, when it arrives. Very drug-drenched, late summer, heat ripple feel. I could hear a lot more of this. 

Which is something I would never have expected to say of the next song.

I'm Too Sexy - BBNO$ (Right Said Fred cover)

You know when you think you never want to hear a song ever, ever again? You're always wrong. You're always just waiting for the right cover.

This would have fitted nicely in the Stain post. One or more of the guys out of Right Said Fred have said some very dodgy things although don't ask me to remember what they were. I just know they'd be on one of the lists. Is it okay to enjoy this anyway?

Yes. Yes, it is okay. I give you permission.

I have a lot more recent or recently-discovered covers earmarked. I think I'll save them for a proper covers post but I will make an exception for this next one because we haven't had any AIs so far and we really should.

Video Games - Frank Sinatra AI (Lana del Rey cover)

Come on! That's creepy! It's not just the sheer wrongness of Sinatra leaning into Lana's broken little girl narrative, it's those weird, lurching audio artifacts that break the surface once in a while, like shark fins. There's something of HAL in 2001 about it all. 

I've been playing around with the tools myself but so far I can't even work out how to use them so I'm impressed that anyone's getting anything recognizeable at all. Just wait until an app with a genuinely user-friendly front end surfaces. All hell is going to break loose.

After that, I think we're going to need a palate cleanser to finish. This should do the job.

Versechorus - Two-Man Giant Squid

I know. Don't ask. You'll only encourage them. 

And with that, I think we're done. Until next time, when it'll most likely be same channel, same acts, same tunes. It's getting to be that way and I can't say I'm sorry about it.

Lana Del Rey And Princess Chelsea Drinking Cocktails On The Porch Of A Whitewood Mansion In The American South With Grimes Nearby Silently Watching

Insincere apologies for another music post so soon after the last one but it's Sunday, I'm technically on holiday, and although I have some other ideas, they'd all be too much trouble. I'm feeling lazy. Also, I fancy some sounds.

Enough excuses. Let's do this.

So, of the three music posts I have semi-planned, two are about New York and require both research and actual writing. The third is just more covers so that's the one we're having. I have no regrets about that. Cover versions were almost where music started on this blog and if there are features here then they're one. 

I ought to codify all this stuff. I'll get right on that, when I next have nothing better to do.

Baby's On Fire - Groupie (Original by Eno)

This one could have gone in one of those New York posts but I have more by the same band that can do for those, if I need them. There are a surprising number of covers of this particular Eno tune. You wouldn't imagine it would be that well-known. Maybe it's easy to play. The best by far is this one by Nightmare and the Cat, which I've featured before. I bought an album by them, purely on the strength of it, although I rather wish I hadn't.

I did consider a post of nothing but babies on fire but I know no-one's really going to sit through eight or nine versions of the same song, which is why I'm going to make a playlist for my YouTube channel instead. They'll watch anything over there.

Eno's been in the news a lot of late. My news, that is. He has a new album out, a collab with Fred Again. I've listened to some of it. It's ambient Eno with vocals but unfortunately not his. I wish he'd sing more. In the unfathomable way of the modern world, you can listen to it all for free if you want. It's on Fred Again's YT channel. I don't pretend to understand how the economics of all that play out. Maybe it's because they're genuine artists. Maybe they're just too rich to care. 

Private Idaho - Groupie (Original by the B52s)

Oh, look! It's Groupie again! Different line-up but then it was five years ago. Is it me or do all B52's songs sound almost exactly the same? I'm not complaining. It's a great sound and no-one else can really do it right so I can't blame them for knocking them out one after another.

As B52's covers go, this is sprightly. They're too often leaden. The drummer really needs to be in a Talking Heads tribute band with a voice like that, though. He's a dead ringer for David Byrne, even if he looks more like a slimmed-down Eugene out of the Rezillos.

Black Hole Sun - King Princess (Original by Soundgarden)

For one whole half second I thought of putting some kind of post together to nod at the Recent Royal Event. I typed "King" into the search field in my music archive but the results were problematic. Not sure I want to re-visit my King Khan years.

Grunge was a musical trend I didn't much appreciate when it was around. Mrs Bhagpuss had more time for it than I did although I think it was the anti-fashion fashion she liked more than the music. Some of the tunes have aged better than I'd have expected all the same, especially when they're cleaned up and de-grungified, like this.

This Is How It Feels - The New Pornographers (Original by Inspiral Carpets)

Madchester. The Second Summer of Love. Baggy. Acid House. Another trend - or set of trends - I wasn't a hundred per cent sold on at the time. I think you'd have needed to be taking more drugs and different drugs than I was to have felt the full impact. 

It's not a musical moment particularly remembered for its wistfulness but there was some, as this plaintive unpicking of the Inspiral Carpets' more forceful performance makes clear. Looking back, there was a good deal more gloom and introspection in there than all those smiley badges would have had you believe, I think.

Cardigan - Lana del Rey AI (Original by Taylor Swift)

Oh, now you did it! You just had to go there, didn't you? 

Well, yes I did. I find this whole leakthrough from an alternate reality absolutely fascinating. If certain cosmologists are correct in their theories, every one of these imaginary recording sessions has happened/is happening/will happen, so it's not just possible, it's inevitable. We're seeing reality here. Or hearing it.

I've listened to a bunch of AI versions of "Lana" doing other peoples' songs and they vary in inauthenticity quite a bit. This one is perhaps the most convincing I've heard. It has her intonation down pretty much perfectly. If it hadn't been tagged AI, I wouldn't have questioned it for a moment. 

It's not just the tone and the timbre of her voice, though; it's the way it gets her phrasing that's really shocking. Lana has always had a playful, unpredictable way with line breaks and enjambement and here's the AI, breaking up Taylor Swift's steadier pacing to give the whole thing a riskier, more fragile edge. Of course, it helps that Cardigan is one of Taylor's most Lanaesque compositions, from her most Lanaesque album, but still. It's remarkable.

The one real signal that something's not quite right is that odd, interstellar buzzing at the end of some of the held notes. It sounds like interference on the line. I like it, though. If it's unintended, then it's felicitous. 

God Only Knows - The Beatles AI (Original by The Beach Boys)

This, though...

It's been getting a lot of attention. I first saw it reported by NME, who made the point that God Only Knows was "previously hailed by Paul McCartney as being his favourite song of all time." What Paul thinks of this conglomeration hasn't yet been reported. Maybe he likes it. Liam Gallagher apparently loves the entire "lost Oasis album" which was created by a real band writing the songs and laying down the backing tracks, then having an AI dub "Liam's" vocals over the result.

When the Beat Boys' God Only Knows started up, I thought it did sound eerily like The Beatles doing The Beach Boys (In a manner of speaking...). It seemed as though I could pick out Paul's voice on lead and the arrangement felt solidly Sgt. Pepper era George Martin. 

As the track went on, though, I found it was becoming more and more Beach Boys and less and less Beatles. By the time most of the instrumentation drops out towards the end and all that's left are the harmonies, I wouldn't have had a clue who was supposed to be singing. It could be a bunch of session singers working on a track for one of those Top Twenty albums they used to sell in newsagents back in the seventies.

I'm not sure if that's a criticism of the "cover" itself or the AI. More that those sixties stylings have become so generic in and of themselves they all may just as well be AIs now. I'd have to say that most 1960s pop songs don't sound very real to me any more, which offers an insight both into my state of mind and the metaphysical nature of reality rather than making any point about quality of the songs themselves.

Paris Texas - Grimes AI (Original by Lana del Rey)

Now it's getting interesting. So, this was made with the new Grimes-authorized, anyone can use it, AI toolset Elf.Tech. The YouTube creator who made it, BumbleBeePixie, calls it " the "AI" cover that no one asked for" and apologizes because "It's not that well polished and some bits could be sang better." A commenter agrees, saying "Also it’s sung out of tune".

I don't know. I thought it was pretty good, albeit maybe not for the right reasons. I don't know Grimes' voice or style nearly well enough to judge how much or how little it sounds like her. I do, however, know exactly what Princess Chelsea sounds like, having listened to her magnificent album "The Loneliest Girl" dozens of times and what she sounds like is this. 

Sound familiar?  Is it a complete co-incidence or does Grimes always sound like Princess Chelsea? I guess I'm going to have to listen to some Grimes to find out... Okay, well, maybe she does a little, around the edges, but not really so you'd notice if you weren't looking for it. 

It must be in the combo. I guess Grimes + Lana = Princess Chelsea? There's an equation I wouldn't have solved without AI. So it does have a use!

And that's enough for now. This post sure went in a direction I wasn't intending. Also, I now have the URL of a website where you can make your own AI covers for free so I have better things to do with my Sunday evening than sit here typing. 

I'd best get on with it before The Man wakes up and stops all our fun.

The Album Format Is Dead

I think this is going to be a genuinely brief flick through tracks that've caught my attention since last time I did this but I guess we'll find out soon enough. I do know I haven't tucked much away and I also know that much of what I have got to offer is just more by people I've already posted but what the hey. If that's what I'm into, that's what I'm into.

The big, big, BIG news, of course, is that today's the day Lana del Rey's ninth official studio album. "Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.", drops - drop being the operative word, since my copy of the CD landed on my doormat about half an hour ago. 

I don't actually have a doormat. For some reason I thought that needed clarifying.

I haven't listened to the whole album yet. I can't even say for certain how many tracks there are because the font on the back of the CD is so tiny I literally can't read it. It looks like there might be nineteen. That would be a lot.

By delightful synchronicity, I was in the middle of reading the Pitchfork review when the postman pushed Lana though the letterbox. I learned a couple of interesting facts about the record, one of which is that there's a four-and-a-half minute long track called Judah Smith Interlude that's"a sermon on lust from Judah Smith, the Beverly Hills pastor...accompanied by melancholy piano". Want to hear it? Of course you do.

To no-one's surprise, I'm sure, someone's already seen fit to post the entire album, track by track, on YouTube. Makes me wonder why anyone buys anything except of course it doesn't. I pre-ordered mine on 14th February, the first day I knew you could. 

I read this week that the whole vinyl/CD revival is heavily underpinned by Japanese and Korean fans purchasing physical "souvenirs" of their idols as part of Idol Culture. Pretty sure that's what I'm doing...

The other item of note in that Pitchfork review was this: "“Taco Truck x VB,” the chimeric closer ... is partially a trap remix of Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s “Venice Bitch”". Since Venice Bitch is my all-time favorite Lana song, I'm going to make an exception and include Taco Truck x VB right here, right now, even though as I type this I haven't even heard it. It's going to be awesome, I promise.

Taco Truck x VB - Lana del Rey

Oh! My! God!! Screw Judah Smith! That's a religious experience!

Ahem. Moving on...

So, what else have I been listening to? Well, there's this.

From The Morning - Let's Eat Grandma

Wow! We really are playing in the big leagues this week, aren't we? I pity whoever has to follow this opening salvo. And this one's not just Let's Eat Grandma, it's Let's Eat Grandma covering Nick Drake ffs. 

From The Morning is the closing track from Drake's final album, Pink Moon, which came out originally in 1972, to a wave of indifference, after which it largely vanished from popular consciousness altogether, until the growth of his posthumous cult a decade and a half later. Now, half a century on, Pink Moon is a fixture in Greatest Albums of All Time lists although personally I prefer Nick with a band. Hazey Jane I and II are among my favorite songs by anyone, ever.

Let's Eat Grandma's cover is for "The Endless Coloured Ways – The Songs Of Nick Drake", due out in July. It's one of those "get a bunch of bands to cover tracks by the same songwriter" affairs that once seemed like an exciting novelty but now feel more like a desperate marketing ploy. Still, every time one appears, someone does a stellar job and this time it's Rosa and Jenny's turn. Also, did you notice how they've made it sound like the Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning? That bass line... 

Jokerman - Bob Dylan

Okay, let's make this fair. Bob can handle the pressure. I came across this by chance last week and it made me smile. With a certain amount of irony, yes, but not only that. 

I think "punk" would be pushing it but it's a very solid New Wave performance, of its time (1984) in a way I just don't recall Dylan being in the eighties, when I was living through them. Two-thirds of the backing band come from the Plugz, "a Latino punk band from Los Angeles that formed in 1977 and disbanded in 1984". Their Wikipedia entry mentions the Letterman performance backing Dylan but gives absolutely no explanation for how it came about. I'd love to know.

TV in the Gas Pump - Wednesday

Much though I love Bob Dylan, I doubt I could listen to his new wave stylings more than a handful of times before the novelty wore thin. I could listen to this on a loop for hours. These days, I like my songs short, so at 2.21 this ought to be perfect but I want more. I might have to get the album, Rat Saw God. It's out next month.

HI 5 - Frost Children

As is Frost Children's Speed Run. With 100 Gecs moving towards metal-inflected pop-punk on their new album, 10,000 Gecs, maybe Frost Children are poised to pick up the hyperpop baton. Although...

Dumbest Girl Alive - 100 Gecs

I just played that as I was writing the last entry and I enjoyed it much more than the first time I heard it. Maybe I shouldn't jump so fast to judgment.

Desert Flower - The Saxophones

And finally, for everyone who feels, like me, that we never got enough of Lee Hazelwood while he was alive, here's The Saxophones. For some reason, I thought they were French. You can see why. They aren't, though. 

This is from their third album, To Be A Cloud, which comes out in June. It's all about new albums this week, for some reason, isn't it? Well, except for Bob. Does he have anything in the pipeline, I wonder?

I guess we can just ask him. Don't you love the modern world?

Once More, With Filling

A genuine Friday Grab-Bag this week, I think. Not some music or TV post trying to pass. The plan is to keep them all short but I reserve the right to extend and also repeat, as in come back another time with a full post. I might be glad of a few of these topics if next week's slow for news.

Renewal of Interest

First up, a return to EverQuest II. Yes, well, I never actually left, of course. I just haven't been playing all that much for a few weeks. Yesterday's EQ-oriented post reminded me of a couple of things. Firstly, that I still really enjoy both the EverQuest games and secondly that I'm still paying for them. 

Not only do I have an annual All Access subscription, the only one I've kept for any publisher, but I also bought the latest EQII expansion, Renewal of Ro, back in December. By this point, I'd normally have completed both the Adventure and Tradeskill storylines on several characters and be pretty much done until the next big update. Not so this year. I need to get back to it if I'm going to get my money's-worth.

As of yesterday, I was only about halfway through the Adventure timeline on my first character and I hadn't even started the Tradeskill signature on any of my half-dozen max-level crafters. The Tradeskill questline is usually much faster to complete as well as more relaxing and less demanding so on my return I decided to begin there instead of picking up where I left off with my Berserker. He was just about to go into a solo dungeon last time I played him. That was also why I stopped. 

Crafting my way to success feels a lot more like fun just now. I finished the Tradeskill line this morning. I guess it took me a couple of hours. Technically, I haven't quite finished it yet because I need to do fifteen of the repeatable public research missions to unlock flying on my Sage, the character I chose to go first, but as far as storyline goes, I'm done. And it was great.

As a player of multiple characters in EQII, I'd happily swap the long Adventure questline, which will probably take me fifteen hours or so at least, for the much shorter Tradeskill version.  I could take all my characters through the craft quest it in around about the same time as one adventurer and it would be more fun, too. 

Back to Collage

Remember Disco Elysium? It was pretty good to begin with and it gets better all the time because Za/Um can't seem to leave it alone. They keep tinkering with it, adding new bits and pieces, to the point where a second run is starting to tempt even me, someone who generally can't be bothered to play through games twice to see what would happen if I made different choices.

That said, the latest update doesn't ask that I play the game at all. It's a typically left-field idea from the developers called Collage Mode, which "grants you full access to characters, environments and props from the game, along with filters and frames". 

What it does is allow you to select character models, backgrounds and filters from a menu, then slap them all together however you like. You can also give the characters dialog of your own and frame the whole lot to look like a set-piece suitable for illustrating a blog post or a magazine article. I imagine you could make comic strips or even a graphic novel if you had the patience.

I spotted it last night, just before I logged out of Steam and couldn't resist fiddling around with it for half an hour. The new mode is free to to anyone who owns the game, which itself is on sale for a massive 75% off right now. If you don't have it in your Steam library, you should probably go do something about that. 

Is it Spring already?

Ah, well now. That's the question, isn't it? As the Met Office explains "How you define the first day of spring depends on whether you are referring to the astronomical or meteorological spring". Astronomical Spring begins on March 20th but Metereological Spring started over two weeks ago, back on March 1st.

Valve clearly can't make its mind up because Steam's first ever Spring Sale opened yesterday, which is neither one thing nor the other. As the video, which acknowledges the confusion, explains, the sale runs until March 23rd, which is indisputably Spring, however you count it.

I had a quick skim through the offers this morning. There seem to be a lot of bargains. I might even buy something. Spring is possibly the worst time to start selling games, though, wouldn't you think? Just when the weather's clearing up and the nights are getting lighter. That's probably why Steam has never done a Spring Sale before. 

Game Over!

Speaking of buying games on Steam, I actually finished one of the ones I bought last month. Nine Noir Lives took me just over seventeen hours by Steam's count, although you can knock a couple off for the times I left the game idling while I had tea or took the dog out. It also crashed on me twice, something I can hardly remember any point and click adventure ever doing, and since it only seems to autosave when you quit to the menu, I had to redo a substantial amount of dialog both times, adding to the running time.

I'll probably do a whole post about this one and all the other noirish adventure games featuring anthropomorphic animals I've played. It's getting to be a lot and I'm starting to wonder why it's such a popular sub-genre, at least with indie developers. 

 

For now, I'll just say that I enjoyed the game, for the most part. The humor can be hit or miss but I found it generally more amusing than not. The voice acting can be overly arch on occasion but that's hardly inappropriate given the setting. Mostly the lines are well-written and land solidly.

Visually it's pleasing in the main but the cut scenes have a weirdly unfinished feel to them, almost as though they're placeholders waiting for the real artist to come along and finish things up.

Mechanically, I found the puzzles fair enough. There were a few occasions where I knew what to do but couldn't figure out how to do it, which I much prefer to having no clue at all. I used a walkthrough on several occasions but not for much more than a nudge in the right direction.  

The real strength of the game is the characters, all of whom are strongly individuated. If most of them are one trick ponies, which they are, then at least it's generally a good trick. I particularly liked the existential Russian bouncer and the effete Henchtigers but every character had something going for them.

All in all, I'd firmly recommend Nine Lives Noir to afficionados of the furry detective point&click and mildly to anyone else.

Finish With A Song

It's just as well I wasn't relying on a roundup of what I've been listening to this week to fill my Friday posting quota. I've earmarked precisely two songs for consideration since the last time I posted. It's not that I haven't been listening to a bunch of new tunes; it's just that none of them have been anything special.

This is, though. It's the third single from Lana del Rey's upcoming album, Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. Added to the first two, the title track and the sublime A&W, it makes the strongest imaginable case for Lana's ninth album being yet another classic, her fourth such in a sequence beginning with the monumental Norman Fucking Rockwell. She's already my favorite songwriter and performer of the 21st century and if she carries on like this she's going to end up being my favorite of all time. 

The new song's called The Grants and it's about family, Elizabeth Grant being Lana's birth name. I'm guessing that's her dad, Rob Grant, on piano, although the surprisingly lengthy Wikipedia entry that's already up for the track doesn't mention it. It'd be a shame if it wasn't, though, wouldn't it?

That's Friday. I'm out of here.