Cougar Microbes

A few months ago we ran a competition giving Cougar Microbes readers a free copy of TuneUp to fix their music collection.

We asked the question: If you could rearrange/fix/change any musical moment that has happened in history what would it be?

This was the outstanding in our books by a guy called Blue:

1. Light Aircrafts
Ban them. They took Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, country star Patsy Cline, John Denver, Otis Redding, Big Bopper, half of Lynrd Skynryd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ozzy guitarist Randy Rhoads, and Aaliyah to name but a handful. No wonder the tour bus is such a popular transportation option.

2. Finding God
Once the Big Guy gets under an artist’s skin the work tends to suffer. Al Green went from making the sexiest music known to man to making gospel albums known to nobody. P.Diddy protege Mase quit hip-hop for the ministry, and when he came back his skills didn’t. The less said about Bob Dylan‘s born-again albums the better, and just picture Jehovah’s Witness Prince proselytizing door-to-door in purple pumps. Esther (née Madonna) caused quite the mishegas by hopping onto Kabbalah’s New-Age-Judaism bandwagon. And Cat Stevens loved Islam so much he named himself after it when he converted, then quit the music business in 1979. Silly rock stars — you’re supposed to be the ones being worshipped!

3. “Colonel” Tom Parker
Before Suge Knight, Lou Pearlman or even Allen Klein came the “Colonel” – inventor of ruinously exploitative rock management. Getting his hooks into Elvis in 1955, the Dutch con man artfully steered the King away from making music and towards the likes of Clambake, Kissin’ Cousins, Kid Galahad, and about 30 other Hollywood forgettables he made instead of recording or touring for most of the next decade.

4. Electric Violins
Say no more

5. Nearly Every Hip-Hop Video
We get it. Your ride is pimped, your crib is a castle, you sip “Cristal” and have a queue of semi-naked hoes lining up to get into your jacuzzi. Congratulations to a generation of hip-hop video directors for making decadence seem so boring.

6. Braided Goatees
Just grow those chin whiskers out a foot, part in the middle, and weave pube-like braids. Tragically, the resulting blood loss to the head severely lowers IQ levels, resulting in guttural vocals and misspelled band names.

TuneUp are currently hosting a holiday sale so click here to get a 20% discount on “the perfect holiday gift for music lovers”

TRACKS:

Having previously reviewed their latest EP We caught up The Twilight Sad‘s frontman James Graham for an informal chat to discuss the band’s latest EP and tour with Errors. Here is what he had to say:

- Cougar Microbes: What Time did you wake up this morning? Was it out of choice or necessity?

- James: We had to wake up at 9am this morning because we are travelling from Brighton to Bristol. We have a couple of interviews and acoustic shows today so we had to head early.

- CM: How have you been killing time on the road?

- J: To be honest we do a lot of drinking [laughs]. We’re Scottish so drinking is a good time killer.

- CM:What have been your favourite venues on this tour? Any Venues you hated?

- J: Dundee was an awesome night as was Manchester‘s Deaf Institute. Was also cool that the other night’s show in London was sold out.

Brighton last night was weird. The show was supposedly sold out but seemed like people couldn’t get inside, I don’t know why.

- CM:Is there a song you are simply sick of playing?

- J: There are a couple of songs off of our first album that get shoutouts, especially in the States. But we’ve never played them, not even back then.

- CM:Are you able to write on the road or do you do this in your off time?

- J: We do some jamming during soundcheck. Our music is pretty experimental in nature so it’s not a bad time.

- CM: Do your songs go through many revisions via demo recordings?

- J: We tend to do a lot of demos before we go into the studio and then pick the songs we like the most. For example, the first track off of ‘Forget The Night Ahead‘ was originally planned as a B-side.

- CM:What is more important, the lyrics or the melody?

- J: I think the melody is most important in our songs. The words come in a close second but it’s about the entire song.

- CM:What are your views on auto tune?

- J: I suppose there is a place for it in some aspects of music but we would never ever use it. That would be ridiculous.

- CM: Is the sound of ‘The Wrong Car‘ EP what we can expect from your next album?

- J: Those 2 tracks didn’t make the previous album, just. We wanted to re-record them to get them to sound the way we knew they could. I think our next material will again sound completely different. We are constantly evolving

- CM:Most flattering thing you’ve read about yourselves?

- J: I try not to read our reviews anymore. For every 10 reviews all it takes is one shitty review to bring you down. As long as we are happy…

- CM:If you had to bring on artist back from the dead in exchange for sending a living artist down ,which artists would it be and why??

- J: I would want to get rid of half the music industry. Tell you what, bring back Elvis and give them Scouting For Girls

‘The Wrong Car‘ EP out now on FatCat

TRACKS:

The Twilight Sad - Throw Yourself In The Water Again

The music world lost one of the greatest performers of the modern age last night. Whilst his well documented off stage controversies dominated the latter part of Jacko‘s career, we hope he will be remembered too for his amazing (early) recordings, mesmarising live performances, innovation in the art of the music video, and of course the world famous crotch-grabbing yelp. Mr Jackson, please join Elvis, Norma Jeane, Jimbo and Kurt in the green room.

MP3′s:

Michael Jackson – Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’