Month: December 2004

Lord knows Pete Best had it hard enough living up to expectations as fifth Beatle (alongside a baker’s half dozen other fifth Beatles) so inevitably, Money Mark’s mantel as fourth-Beastie Boy prepares a similar difficult path to follow. What did he do for the Beastie Boys? Well in addition to a spot of carpentry and repair for the boys on G-Son Studio and Grand Royal’s main office, Money Mark – long time friend of other fifth Beastie Boy, Mario Caldato, Continue Reading

It was a cash-in then, it’s a cash-in now. Off the back of the tsunami of critical acclaim that was lavished on Wilson’s recent ‘Smile’ album comes something of lesser stature: the Beach Boys’ singing well-known Christmas standards, backed by lifeless orchestration that Brian Wilson had precious little to do with. Released in 1964 – although admittedly bulked out and justified this time around with a couple of alternate mixes and rarities (the sound of Dennis Wilson getting poked up Continue Reading

Here we are five years later, ‘So…How’s Your Girl?’ fading like the stain on the proverbial bedsheet and superstar producers Prince Paul (De La Soul) and Dan the Automator (Gorillaz) are still laughing their socks off at the extended ‘so naff, we’re cool’ handsome boy modelling motif. Trouble is, they continue to extend, stretch and draw it out like a last dying breath over the 60 or so minutes the album lasts. And the joke is on them, because it’s just Continue Reading

The mix-tape. It’s a simple enough proposition, but one which is fraught with surprising complexities. Is the selection of tracks an honest brokering of personal tastes, a gamble on eclecticism, a randomly compiled gallery of passing fancies, or indeed a wish list? Is the person who puts the tape together revealing their innermost soul or providing something they think we want to hear? Perhaps even expect to hear. It’s almost impossible to say. If truth be known my own favourite Continue Reading

A recipe that’s labelled ‘disaster’. A starter that’s prefixed by ‘non’. A kind of birth that rhymes with ‘drill’. You can take your pick, but none illustrate the notion of an uphill struggle with greater exactitude than the following mission statement: ‘The goal was to make an album that sounds and feels like the sample based hip-hop records the band love, yet capture the un-hip hop ‘band’ element of the group.’ Doesn’t bode well now does it? New York City Continue Reading