Birmingham man who had sex with sheep jailed – Sunday Mercury.

“You need to identify this man before someone kills me”
David Calvert

No, they need to restore order and reason before someone kills you.
I hope the tabloids are pleased with themselves when someone does get hurt.

Update: YouTube got rid of the video on me so here’s the song again. Not quite the same without seeing Snoop line dancing and singing the chorus with Willie Nelson, but I still like it.
________

Two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s what my mother used to say to me.
There are many things that I have found over the years to prove my mother wrong. Unfortunately, as child I didn’t know what I know now so she got away with it all.
I didn’t know, for instance, that if you take the sickly-sweet wrongness of Malibu, mix it in equal measure with the equally, barfmakingly wrong Bailey’s Irish Cream and pour it over ice, the double wrongness become very, very right.
Similarly, take two other very, very wrong things:

• Country & Western music and
• Snoop Doggy Dog(g?)

I know what you’re thinking – “there’s no need to worry about those two getting together beacuse… well… you know…”
Either one of these alone is enough to make me gnaw my own foot off to escape it and yet… Mom, you lied to me again…

Donna Allen – Serious
I bought the 12-inch of this when it came out because I loved the mad harmonies in the chorus (although they’re a bit lost in this mix. I still have it, I still love them, but I really wish I could turn the drums down.
Oh, and there’s no excuse for yellow spandex, Donna. None at all.

Five Star – Stay Out of My Life
I’d forgotten I owned this. Sound-wise, it’s a catchy one but I’m amazed at how much of an aural rip-off of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears. Not in the music itself per se but in the production and subtleties like the guitar sound and solo style and the arpeggio accent to much of the song.
Also, what the christ is going on with the lead singer’s eyebrows?

Rush – Countdown
Spread my entire album, single and CD collection around a football field, don a blindfold and fire an arrow into the air. Chances are it will hit something by Rush.
Here’s a song from the Signals album, written after they visited the launch of the Columbia Space Shuttle. It was a weird period for Rush, not one of their best but with brief glimpses of old glory and genius.

Judas Priest – Turbo Lover
Don’t tell anyone, but I love the album Turbo. People who love Judas Priest generally slag it off, but I’m not that big a Priest fan and I love it. Puerile lyrics and one long metal cliché, but by god, it rocks.
What a bizarrely shit video though.

Go West – Don’t Look Down Girl
Yes, I own Go West’s debut album. Again it’s the loud-drum-big-snare production that dates it, otherwise it’s a great album. Peter Cox may not win any prizes for his dancing (or his miming) but he’s got a voice I’d kill for.
I love this song although, as with all their videos, they’ve changed it somewhat for this and added some weird noises and such. Still as cheesy pop-rock goes, it’s excellent and I can’t help buzzing a little bit when I hear it.

Night Ranger – Don’t Tell me You Love Me
Yes, 80′s Hair Rock. Ok so they video (which they won’t allow me to embed so you have to click here) contains much guitar wanking and slo-mo hair but say what you like about NightRanger, they weren’t afraid of furious, chugging dual-guitar riffs, and they knew how to end a song.

The Sugarcubes – Hit
Not strictly 80s, more early 90s but this track from the album Stick Around For Joy is a classic and a reminder of just how fucking good the Sugarcubes were. Also the video is a reminder of just how beautiful mental warble-pixie Björk was before madness ate her face.

I think that ought to do you for now…

Scratch’d by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage.
And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;

Well, I found it today after all these years of searching. It is actually from an epic poem by Matthew Arnold called Empedocles on Etna. The bit that I read all those years ago is just a small part of the whole thing but it is a small piece of genius and sums up my feelings on religion and the reasoning behind man’s apparent need for it…

Born into life—who lists
May what is false hold dear,
And for himself make mists
Through which to see less clear;
The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.

[...]

Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away;
Allows the proudly-riding and the founder’d bark.

And, lastly, though of ours
No weakness spoil our lot,
Though the non-human powers
Of Nature harm us not.
The ill-deeds of other men make often our life dark.

What were the wise man’s plan?
Through this sharp, toil-set life,
To fight as best he can.
And win what’s won by strife.
But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found.

Scratch’d by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage.
And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;

So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear;
With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.

Yet grant as sense long miss’d
Things that are now perceive’d,
And much may still exist
Which is not yet believ’d
Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot see;

All things the world which fill
Of but one stuff are spun,
That we who rail are still,
With what we rail at, one;

Genius.