Volta

Classic 90's Bjork. Brilliant album. But horrendous cover art.

The full album was accidentally made available on the UK iTunes Store at midnight on April 23, 2007 for a total of six hours, two weeks before the album's official release date. This led to the album being leaked online the following day. - Wiki

Waiting for this one.

The Lemmy Theory

I love Lemmy. Not just because of Motorhead, but also because he is one hell of a character. I’ll dedicate this post to Lemmy the man and not Lemmy the iconic musician.

According to Wikipedia, Lemmy "has bedded" around 3000 women. I was a student of economics at Delhi University. People who know DU also know that Economics (h) is highly mathematical there. My current job too revolves around the world of economics. So let me apply some economics/mathematics to Lemmy’s sex life too. We’ll call it the Lemmy Theory.

Economics is criticized because of its excessive reliance on unreasonable assumptions to construct a theory. Never mind, that’s a different debate altogether. For the moment here are some assumptions related to the Lemmy theory

1. Lemmy lost his virginity when he was 18 (pretty reasonable).
2. Length of a musician’s fuck list is directly proportional to his or his band’s popularity.
3. On the basis of assumption # 2, Lemmy railed 75% of these 3000 women between 1977 (Motorhead’s debut) and 1991 (the last good Motorhead record was released that year. It’s called 1916).
4. Lemmy has sobered down in the last 15 years (assumption most likely to be called unreasonable).

Economic theories that deal with labour and wage rate assume man-hours or man-days as unit of labour. The kind of labour, for purpose of simplicity, is assumed to be very rudimentary, like farming or tilling. In our Lemmy theory too for simplicity we assume something very rudimentary. We assume that human beings have sex the whole day. Having sex is the work. And he/she is restricted to one partner a day. If you have more than one partner, wait for the next day. Labour productivity would depend on the number of new or unique partners.

Now it’s time for some math.

Lemmy was born in 1945. So he’s 61 years old. Lets take out 18 years from that, since he was sexually inactive till he was 18. So he’s been sexually active (or hyperactive) for 43 years. Out of these 43 years, he’s been very prolific from 1977 to 1991. In 1977 Lemmy would have been 32 years old. From 18 to 32, he would have slept with 15% of women (another assumption). So, he had sex with 90% or 2700 women during a span of 25 years or 9125 days.

Conclusion

As per our one partner, one-day assumption, Lemmy must have taken 2700 days to sleep with these 2700 women. 2700 days make up approximately 30% of his working life of 9125 days.

For a moment assume this to be a real life scenario. Then try and measure your productivity.

(Damn, did I really have time to indulge in this stupidity!?)

Dude just can't get enough.

Lemmy

LOVE IT.

The Wire

This is getting better everyday.

Pirated movies were always there. But when it came to classy American television (primarily HBO), we were thoroughly out of the loop. Things have improved in the last few years with domestic television channels (especially Zee Cafe) giving us fantastic series like Oz (superb season 3), Sopranos, Deadwood and Lost, albeit a bit late. But that is expected.

With the current DVD boom, we can now bypass the Indian channels altogether. Lead-time has shrunk dramatically. Seven DVD set of Prison Break first season was available months before Star World had started showing it. Same with Lost season 2.

Now the great 'Andheri station' pirates give us the awe-fucking-some first two seasons of The Wire (Tops the Time Mag's list). Mark my words. This shit ain’t coming to Indian TV anytime soon.

Like I said before, these motherfucking pirates know their shit. And know it pretty well.

BTW, HBO (a Time Warner subsidiary) has over the years shown that it is not always money that matters.

Pepper's

On June 1, 2007 this album will be 40 years old.

So the BBC guys have decided to assemble an all-star cast of today's musicians to recreate the legendary album. Among the chosen groups are Oasis, the Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Travis, James Morrison, the Fratellis and Razorlight. The bands will use the Beatles' original recording equipment and Beatles' engineer Geoff Emerick will oversee the project.

I am really not very sure about the choice of bands.

Kate Jackson

Kate Jackson is an extremely beautiful woman. She’s pretty glamorous too. What makes her special is that she fronts an equally awesome band called the Long Blondes. Throughout the history of rock music there have been very few good bands with a female lead. Let alone with good-looking female lead. The last great rock band with a beautiful woman at the helm? Blondie.
Her talent stretches beyond music. She designed the cover art for the band's first album Someone to Drive You Home.

The Album Sleeve

"Viva la vinyl. CD is like bad medicine."- Liner notes in Pearl Jam's Vitalogy
Replace Cd with MP3.

This post is not about the music, which is stored between the grooves. I don’t have to say it. The world knows that Country Life is one of the finest records of the 70’s.

This post is about the cover art. For me (and for many around the world) this album cover is piece of work. Pure & unadulterated GLAM. So very European. Pubic hair, lingerie, self stimulation and the bushes. Portraits like these remind you how important vinyl was to the art of designing covers (Can there be another Hipgnosis?). No one gives a shit about album covers in 2007. We have got iTunes. I recently read somewhere that iTunes overtook Borders Books & Music and Tower Records on the list of top music retailers. It is just a matter of time this trend gets popular in India too. End result: In a few years, album art will cease to exist altogether.

Country Life is a very popular album, and will remain so for decades to come. The fact is, no matter how careful I am, my CD would surely wear out by 2012 (it’s already a few years old). I’ll get the music. Sadly I’ll never get to see the girls.

I think I’ll start handling my album covers with a lot more care.

Note: Classic Hipgnosis album covers . Sample this- Scorpions' Lovedrive.

Hostel

Few months back I saw the making of Hostel on Zee Studio. Someone on the show said he saw people puking in the cinema hall. It was so fucking gory.

I wanted to see this (I used to binge on Wes Craven, Sean S. Cunningham and John Carpenter during the VHS days). So after many attempts I managed to pick up (It kept selling out. Hostel has been a bestseller along with- the seven DVD set- first season of Prison Break at these stalls) the DVD from one of the stalls outside Andheri station (BTW, these pirates have a fantastic collection and they know their shit).

Hostel is a pretty decent movie. Slashing and chopping feels tremendously real. The story is pretty ok too. I have to admit, I’m waiting for Hostel 2 and Grindhouse.

P.S: The DVD chap has told me he’s got a lot of those 70’s and 80’s slasher/exploitation movies, Japaneses horror flicks and The Criterion Collection DVD's. Time to binge.

Album List

Albums for the weekend:

1. George Harrison- All Things must Pass
2. Field Music- Tones of town
3. Television- Marquee Moon
4. The Walkmen- A Hundred Miles Off
5. Bright Eyes- I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

Keith Richards snorted his father

The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; 1:25 AM

LONDON --Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."
Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Richards, one of rock's legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.

"I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it's a way of life," he was quoted as saying.

"I've no pretensions about immortality," he added. "I'm the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky.

"I was No. 1 on the `who's likely to die' list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list," Richards said.