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- New music: Thurston Moore – Benediction
The Sonic Youth man enlists Beck for this acoustic lament
For Thurston Moore's forthcoming third solo album, Demolished Thoughts, the Sonic Youth frontman has employed Beck as producer, continuing a working relationship that started in 2010 when Moore joined a stellar cast for Beck's Record Club project (the idea being to cover an album in a day). Benediction, the first song to emerge from the album, shows that, thankfully, the pair have avoided the sex-funk stylings of Beck's Midnite Vultures. Instead, it's a lovely acoustic lament that recalls Moore's 2007 album, Trees Outside the Academy, and the more melancholic side of Beck (think 2002's Sea Change). The video – tweeted by Moore yesterday – features colour-filtered war imagery, as simple and affecting as the song itself.• Demolished Thoughts is out 23 May on Matador
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Bob Marley playlist: From global hits to Tom Jones covers
We mark the 30th anniversary of Marley's death with a playlist of hits, obscurities and surprising cover versions
At the 30th anniversary of his death, Bob Marley has become a more iconic figure than he was during his lifetime. His music is heard less, at least on the radio, though it seems that every tourist hotspot across Europe has a resident dreadlocked busker strumming Buffalo Soldier for small change.
Yet Marley's visage, whether smiling genially, imperiously screwfaced or pulling on a snowcone-sized spliff, beams out on badges, T-shirts and posters across the globe. In the way of James Dean, the diminutive dread from Trenchtown has become an instantly recognisable signifier of cool; like the bereted Che Guevara he represents rebellion and militant nobility, like John Lennon he stands for hope.
Marley, however, carries another and often confusing set of cultural values, just as he did in life. There's his role as a black icon, the first third-world superstar who urged "Africa Unite" long before it became the mantra of modern stars like Youssou N'Dour and Femi Kuti. Marley is also the Jamaican hero – the island's most famous son and, of course, the ambassador of reggae. It's thanks principally to Bob that reggae is the music of the disenfranchised and marginalised around the planet, popular with Australian aborigines, native Americans and North African tearaways.
Alongside Bob the champion herb smoker and Bob the romantic (most of his hits were love songs) comes Bob the spiritual warrior, the "Natural Mystic". Rasta orthodoxy can be boorish and reactionary – most of us are happy to leave Old Testament strictures aside, and the proposed divinity of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie remains a puzzler to outsiders – but the transcendent spirit of Marley's songs still sparkles. Bob's fight against "Babylon" was both politically and spiritually motivated.
The "red, gold and green" (Ethiopian and Rasta colours) that Bob popularised in his lifetime remain ubiquitous, another item of cultural shorthand – though what they signify is ultimately a personal affair. As much as anything, perhaps, they fly the flag for mother Africa. British reggae pioneer Dennis Bovell recently related to me how he and Linton Kwesi Johnson had played a concert with Ivory Coast reggae artist Alpha Blondy to a stadium of 50,000 people in west Africa. I had no idea that African reggae was so popular. "What would Bob have said?" I wondered aloud.
"He would have said, 'Prophecy a fulfill,'" Bovell laughed.
So he likely would. We still have Marley's music, and though everything he wrote has been made available there are still overlooked nuggets alongside the well-known hits such as One Love and Jamming.
Four celebrated Marley songs
I Shot the Sheriff
Before most people had heard of Marley or the Wailers, they'd heard Eric Clapton's anodyne version of his cop-killer song. Marley had wanted to sing "I shot the police," but to do so would have fed the feud between Jamaican cops and the group that had already seen Bunny Wailer jailed on trumped-up charges. The song gave Clapton his only US number one, a debt he repaid with a drunken onstage rant about "fucking Jamaicans" the following year. In typical Marley fashion, the song slips from narrative into folk saying: "Every day the bucket a go a well, one day the bottom a go drop out." Think about it.No Woman, No Cry
The live version, recorded at London's Lyceum in 1975, became Bob's breakthrough hit. It's still the one song that non-fans recognise and love. The big romantic chorus alternates with verses reminiscing about Bob's days scuffling in Trenchtown and a second chorus that affirms the central promise of pop: "Everything's gonna be alright." Bob handed the songwriting credits to a friend, Vincent Ford, in gratitude for old times.Get Up, Stand Up
A famous crowd-pleaser, with its singalong, militant chorus. Co-written with fellow Wailer Peter Tosh, the song has a political refrain but the three verses are pure Rasta, rejecting pie-in-the-sky Christianity for the belief that "Almighty God is a living man" (ie Haile Selassie).Redemption Song
Endlessly covered, Bob's swansong is as tender as it is profound. At the time he wrote it, Marley already suspected his days were numbered. The final track on his final album, the song is delivered, uncharacteristically, to solo acoustic guitar, heightening its intimate tone. Some lyrics are borrowed from a Selassie speech ("Emancipate yourself from mental slavery"), others from Revelation ("the bottomless pit"), but at the centre of the song is the simple retrospective confession of a man who grew from poverty to greatness: "All I ever had, these songs of freedom."Four less-celebrated Marley songs
I'm Still Waiting
A gem from the Wailers' earliest days, when the teenage trio modelled themselves on Chicago's Impressions. The title is a lift from a Curtis Mayfield original, but the sultry mood is all Kingston, JA. Bob sings a heartbroken lead over immaculate vocal harmonies from his two spars, pleading to his girl amid falling rain – a recurring theme in his later work. It became a monster Jamaican hit when interpreted by Delroy "Cool Operator" Wilson in 1975.Guava Jelly
Living in Sweden in 1972, there to write songs for US crooner Johnny Nash, Marley came up with this sweet, sticky piece of seduction, much in the mood of the more famous Stir It Up, which delivered Nash a hit and would open the Wailers' Catch a Fire album. Nash put Guava Jelly on a B-side, and Bob never did release his own version, but you can find the original, scrubbed out on acoustic in a Stockholm basement, on YouTube.Hypocrite
A snapshot from the same "government yard" of No Woman, No Cry. Bob casts a cynical eye on his fellow citizens using a glossary of JA slang: "hypocratic" for hypocritical, "dryland tourist" for small-minded, "topanaris" for stuck-up, and "gravalicious" for greedy. The rocksteady rhythm stumbles along in the dusty heat and the smiling contempt in Marley's vocals is audible.Small Axe
Take your pick from the treasure trove of songs the Wailers cut with Lee Perry in the year or so before their international break-out. A terse, soul-styled broadside, Small Axe became a hit at home but unlike other Perry productions was not revived in Marley's later career. The threat in its James Brown-esque vocals – "If you are the big tree we are the small axe" – is both general and specific. The "big tree" of Babylon was also the "big three" record producers whom the Wailers aimed to depose. Bob's son Ziggy still plays it onstage.And two unlikely cover versions
What's New Pussycat?
Written by Bacharach and David, originally sung by Tom Jones, the Wailers' version of the romcom theme song owes most to the vocal style of Smokey Robinson's Miracles, with languid horns from the Studio One house band.Like A Rolling Stone
Bob sings Bob. Almost. The Wailers lift Dylan's famous chorus intact, albeit in gentler mood, but junk the frenzied, sneering verses in favour of some Kingston street lore: "You have no nights and you have no mornings/Time like scorpion stings without warning." Dylan would approve. Almost.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Snoop Dogg and Charlie Sheen – Winning
A new low for pop? A showcase for Sheen's drum programming skillz? Or an SEO masterclass? We'll let you be the judge ...
Warning: contains offensive language. And we don't just mean references to 'violent torpedoes'
Here's what Charlie Sheen had to say about his collaboration with Snoop Dogg: "Well, the genesis of the song is about, you know, winning. It's just everything in life. I think Snoop did a really good job at encapsulating the whole vibe of, you know, the movement."Sensible stuff, you'll agree. Now, unless Sheen has a hitherto unknown skill for drum programming, it's not clear exactly what he had to do on this, other than sit in the corner with a doob, holding up cue cards bearing his many catchphrases. Snoop tiresomely throws them all down – violent torpedoes of truth, tiger blood etc – as a robot voice croons "winning" over seductive, sleek sounds straight out of a 90s big beat remix. This being Snoop, the rapping is pretty fabulous, but it would be hard to argue this isn't a new low for popular culture. Still, at least Winning is Snoop's most SEO-friendly song since the one he did with Katy Perry.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Open thread: the best rock putdowns
Which rock stars have the sharpest tongues? Share your examples of great flaming and dissing by musicians below
Pop star Bruno Mars has responded to being dissed on rapper Tyler, the Creator's breakthrough track Yonkers, which threatened to "stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn oesophagus". Mars responded: "He has to wait in line if he wants to stab me. He's definitely not the first guy that's said something like that to me and he's not going to be the last."
Meanwhile, old hand at the rock feud Noel Gallagher has threatened to pull Gary Neville's moustache out with his teeth, after Neville mockingly tweeted the lyrics to Oasis' Fade Away.
Which rappers, rock stars and other musicians have the sharpest tongues? Share your favourite putdowns and disses below.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Ghost Eyes – Phantom Mountain
Mystery, moodiness and eastern-influenced hip-hop prove to be a winning combination for this London-based trio
As any band with a MySpace will tell you, mystery is key. If it's a choice between a cheesy photo, an enigmatic shot of a skyline or a stock image from the 70s then it's always the latter – and if you can avoid being in your own videos then all the better. This is the route London-based trio Ghost Eyes seem to be taking, as their MySpace features arty shots of ladies' legs, while the video for Phantom Mountain is a moodily shot, brilliantly choreographed three minutes featuring hooded dancers. The track combines eastern influences with hip-hop, and samples a children's choir while beats ping and burst around a chorus that lodges itself in your brain. The band have previously toured with Gold Panda and Matthew Dear, as well as remixing tracks for Cymbals and Fujiya & Miyagi.
Phantom Mountain is released on 16 May.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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