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Shove your stick up your arse, Ben Taylor, I think

Ben Taylor is the offspring of James Taylor and Carly Simon. Not a bad start in life, you might think, and if talent cross-pollinates, he should be an interesting subject.

His latest album sleeve suggests, however, that the only thing he inherited was huge feet. It features a photo of Ben sitting on a doorstep in some Mediterranean village, trying to look cool and street sophisto, but with big ugly naked feet sticking out the end of his trousers and filling the whole frame. Exactly why he used that shot is beyond my comprehension.

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Man should no more beat the bongo than eat raw flesh

Commercial sounds have become stale. In fact, observers of contemporary rock and pop will note mainstream music hasn’t really changed that much in 50 years, and many would argue this is down to an over-reliance on the guitar. But before we address the problem of the axe and the adoption of the punk DIY ethic in order to sell execrable records, there’s another problem confronting us, one that is more pressing. Though it appears to pose no direct threat, it is insidious, and without vigilance its evil could seep further into society as we know it and pollute the minds and the souls of our children. The guitar may be employed inappropriately more often than Pete Doherty’s cutlery, but in the right hands it still has the ability to thrill and to astonish. The real enemy that confronts us can only irritate. And there are no “right hands” to place this instrument in. I speak of course of the infernal bongo – not the majestic herbivorous antelope that graces the western and lowland plains of Africa, but the portable two-skinned combo carried to parties and festivals by dreadlocked, petunia-oil-drenched white kids who adopt fake ethnic patois and smoke everyone else’s weed. Which is worse: the bongo or the bongo player? It’s a difficult one to call. One cannot easily disassociate the bongo from the bongocero. In this case, it’s impossible not to hate the sin and the sinner.

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I’ll flirt with y’all

The other day I was hustlin’ my way down a quiet road in east London when suddenly, as if the voice of God was booming down from above, a divine melody came wailing out of the window of a house a couple blocks up: “A dog on the prowl when I’m walkin’ through the mall / If I could, man, I probably would flirt wit all of y’all.”It was, of course, the seminal R Kelly remix of ‘I’m a Flirt’. Having just inhaled a tampon-sized spliff, I found myself singing The R’s evocative lyrics aloud, just as I noticed a couple singing them from the ledge of their third storey flat. Further up the street, two schoolgirls passed me. Our eyes locked and we belted out T-Pain’s vocoder-heavy verse together. And, as I busted round the corner, I heard the driver of an oncoming car sing along: “She be callin’ you Kelly, when your name is Tommy!” Shit, Kells brings more people together in Dalston than a Pentecostal church. It was enough to make me close my eyes and cross my chest with a K.

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Levitate Me

Charles Thompson IV says here that “there is no tour or record – it’s all one big giant tour, and it’s all one big giant record”, but the longer he goes on, the easier it is to identify patterns in his life as a musician. There’s 1986 to 1993 when, as Black Francis, he fronted the greatest American alternative rock band of the age, the Pixies; the 10-year period after when he became Frank Black and released nine solo albums, songs from which were recently collected together on a compilation, 93-03; the Pixies reunion years of 2003 to early 2007; and a new era begins with his new album, Bluefinger. For that, he’s not only left behind the gently rolling Nashville sound of his last two albums (Honeycomb and Fast Man, Raider Man), he’s unexpectedly resurrected Black Francis.

Devil May Care

It can be difficult to separate the music and artwork of Daniel Johnston. Listening to his raw, thumped piano, you picture those bright inks; in the boggle-eyed, tactile drawings, you hear that quivering voice. But a retrospective currently on display at Newcastle’s alt.gallery – the first UK outing of such a large body of Daniel’s creations – reminds us that visual art was his primary method of expression.

On The Edge

When I came to Ukraine 12 months ago, I expected to find grim ex-Soviet cities and drab ex-Soviet people living off potatoes and dancing to guys playing accordions and singing about cabbages (well, not quite, but you get the picture). Instead I found crumbling tenements, communist memorials, a gazillion casinos, friendly people and a music scene that ranges from revolutionist rock to drag queen pop. Whatever the genre, Ukrainian music is bound by one theme: politics. Music and… politics? Boring? Actually… no.

Acoustic Anarchy

I was walking around Smith College today taking photos of myself hanging out with the trees,” says an exuberant Thurston Moore. He’s driving down Route 91 from Massachusetts to New York with a mobile phone glued to his ear. “It’s an all women’s college in the neighbourhood where I live. Sylvia Plath went to school there. It’s where she used to stay up all night listening to the screams from the mental institution a mile down the road and, according to legend, she used to make love with some of the local professors in the backyard of our house.”

Pure Unevil

The music industry and press couldn’t get enough of telling us that summer 2007 belonged to the teenager. The broadsheets frothed over the supposed “phenomenon” of underage gigs and the legions of fresh-faced bands writing spasms of ADD for their MySpace profiles, then The Teenagers turned those years into songs all cheap deodorant and school disco erections.

The Stool Pigeon

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