Even after years of searching the internet for the weird and wonderful I can still be surprised.
Like the song I found last night. I can honestly say it opened my eyes to a whole new musical world.
Can I share it with you please?
And can we take a minute to think about that title. "I glued my balls to my butthole again"
AGAIN?
Enjoy that mental image and see you all soon.
"1803. The Napoleonic War. A Royal Navy warship is ordered to pursue an enemy frigate to the frozen waters of the Southern Seas.
There it must capture the enemy ship and retrieve a mysterious sea-chest, contents unknown.
Failure is not permitted.
For the determined young captain, this already dangerous mission turns into a battle with a mysterious vessel that appears not in the sea, but, unbelievably, impossibly, in the sky above.
And the mysterious vessel is not friendly."
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I saw this one mentioned online and it seemed just my cup of tea so come payday, I was straight on to Amazon to order a copy. The idea of a Hornblower-style hero running into alien invaders is definitely a fascinating one. Without giving away spoilers, hero Captain Alex Burns is an interesting character dealing with something way, way beyond his experience. The mysterious alien ship is not the only problem, either. The writing is solid without getting cliched and MM Holt gives Burns some memorable characters to play with.
For the most part, 50 Degrees South jogs along at a decent pace but I did find the payoff at the end a bit disappointing. Burns and his ship finally catch up with the French ship they've been doggedly pursuing, the aliens interfere and....
It suddenly resolves itself, mostly offscreen. It seemed a bit rushed, to be honest, almost like the author realised he was running out of pages or too close to a deadline. Usually I don't like books that overstay their welcome but in this case, another two or three chapters would have been nice.
There then follows an author's note explaining that there were "Deleted" scenes from the book which could be found at the website. I thought that was a bit naughty, especially since there was space in the book for a preview of the next in the series. I'm not sure how I feel about books having DLC.
To sum up: Worth reading but the ending left me frustrated.
MinamiCon is now a regular part of the UK Anime calendar but there's a first time for everything and as it so happens, I was there for the very first event.
I think it's fair to say that the scene was very different back then. Put it this way, the number of women at Minamicon was safely in single figures. it was also a bit of a weird period for anime fans. Anime was booming, but a big hunk of the output was the super-violent stuff put out by Manga Video. MinamiCon was set up for people who wanted something else and at the time they were a minority. The idea that something like "Your Name" would be a critical and commercial success in the UK would blow people's minds.
Anyway, here's some flyers I found in an old photo album. I think the artist was one of the regulars at the much-missed Mondo Comics. (Name withheld for his privacy) I also edited out the contact details for the organiser.
As you may have gathered by now, music is super important to me. I spend a lot of time looking for new music and frequently uncover some real gems. Sometimes it's a new band, sometimes I discover a song from years ago that I never heard before.
While it's always great to unearth something the world passed by, this is not about that.
Nope. This is about a record that needs to be remembered because the world needs to know how bad things can get and not make the same mistakes again.
Let me give some background first.
The year is 1997. The Spice Girls have become the biggest band on the planet despite being crap and the hype machine is in overdrive.
The Spice Girls
are
fucking
everywhere.
One of many reasons why I am not keen on 90s music.
Anyway, the music industry does it's usual; "The kids are listening to this right now and there's money to be made. Let's flood the market with something similar."
So it came to pass that record labels unleashed a flood of girl-bands on the nation: All Saints, Atomic Kitten, Cleopatra, Hepburn, Thunderbug, B*witched, Sugababes and so on. Out of the whole movement there were maybe one or two decent songs released.
This is not about any of those songs or indeed any of those bands. Nope we're talking about these girls.
Now over the years I've been doing the "Metal project" I've heard some "bad" songs. However this wasn't done by 3 Mexican teenagers in a garage and recorded with a potato. This was an actual song, put together by a proper record label, with proper equipment.
My favourite theory is the one that states that two bods at the label had a bet where one claimed he could get 4 random girls out of a nightclub and get them a hit record. Nothing else makes sense.
Screw it, here's the song. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember...