Fun With Facial Hair 2

In the spirit of recent French (local) events my latest attempt to craft the perfect facial cropping, for myself alone, lead to this creation. I am told it is the Musketeer look. Unfortunately due to the lack of true stand out quality of my keratine creations I ended up looking more like a bum-fluffer being pulled by his ear than a Musketeer. This was a vast improvement on the preceding goatee which, keeping in the French spirit, I am informed has the same inspiration in it's naming despite a hop across the channel. The goatee, the natural sign of gits in whatever language you care to speak. I had a short but enlightening conversation with a friend about facial hair (I would use occassionally the word 'fuzz' but it seems an ugly word for something which should be steeped with more respect) and was reminded of my former comments that I was an all or nothing man. He tried to convince me that a natural exception to this rule is the big side-burn look as favoured by many rock luminaries, none of who spring to mind right now apart from the obviously desperate example of Nodddy Holder and this is my precise problem.
Anyway, back to the French. In a different discussion with the same aforementioned conversationalist another topic arose, that of French music. My friend explained how he had been regularly challenged to name ANY good French rock bands. Where he failed, it seems, I myself have triumphantly suceeded and I am here to let you all in on where you've been going wrong all this time. We start with Georges Brassens, I don't have a clue what he's talking about most of the time but it sounds great. A guy who sings about Sodom and Gomorrah and judges being raped by gorillas mistaking them for women has to be on to something. As you can see I am not completely ignorant but it was the music which held my attention at first.

Next are Les Ogres De Barback (page on Allmusic sadly lacking) meaning I really have no idea what their songs are about . However, and this is going to sound really crap, they sound so damn French. Accordions and all, and the songs roll along at such a pace it's possible to just be pulled along by the music. This comes from someone usually so down on what is stupidly named 'World Music' as the songs are just plain boring. They could be importing some great grand social theory on top of those ethnic pluck instruments but I don't have any idea and so often the music is just not enough to hold the attention. There is another rant about 'World Cinema' here but I shall quickly skirt around that with a subtle cough.......hu hu

So, some cool music from outside the shores of the United States Of Britian, check it out.
Unfortunately in my limited research to obtain this music by the usual low cost methods, all failed to register any results. Therefore this means you will all have to go out and spend real money on this stuff and we all know your not going to take such a big step as that for something that could be tripe. Well, more fool you!

Please Never Make Another Film

I'm sure as you'll realise in good time that the people who are involved will probably not be getting together any time soon to pour out another cinematic showpiece.

I have recently been making my way through some of the great 'rock' films of all time from the brilliant 'Don't Look Back', 'Last Waltz', 'Woodstock'
to the not as great 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Festival Express' and further on to the at times poor, such as The Rolling Stones' Rock 'n' Roll Circus. Therefore it is natural that I would see some films made (and I use the word lightly) by The Beatles and such is the case. Having seen a Hard Day's Night a few
years back I was mildly optimistic that there would be some little interesting parts in each film.

So firstly I watched Yellow Submarine. Well it was...reasonable. Most of the songs being re-released non-originals. The storyline was your general we don't need a proper storyline-fodder. The only interesting songs being the originals "Hey, Bulldog" and "All Together Now" which are under-rated, especially Hey Bulldog.

Magical Mystery tour however was a travesty against film-making utterly boring from start to finish. I didn't know that this is actually the general opinion until checking out the usual sources. For me, the songs are overlistened. Apparently most of the film was directed by McCartney and is completely lacking in ideas. Two moments I hoped would resurrect some interest were the sections directed by Harrison (Blue Jay Way) and Lennon (I Am The Walrus). However I forgot that Blue Jay Way is one of the worse Beatles songs of all time and that watching Harrison play a keyboard drawn on the floor in chalk while the camera very slowly zooms in on him and then out followed by general wanderings of foot bathed in pastel psychedelic colours without the balls to be vivid is likely to be crap. It was.

Why is it also that everytime that Lennon did something crap in The Bealtes there seems to appear from nowhere a quote getting him off the hook like his supposed dislike for the crappy lyric of Let It Be? "Are we supposed to laugh during the solo?". Wow, here comes another! "Magical Mystery Tour was one of the most expensive home movies". Phew! Saved again! Let's blame it all on McCartney! Again! Well, no matter how much avoiding he did in the film he still stood in front of the camera in a wizard's hat telling McCartney's wizard about cups of tea. How funny! How English! Ho ho!
The I Am The Walrus section is just as bad as the rest of the film if not worse. I am sure jaunty camera angles of peoples chins and left ear were already thought to be universally shit and therefore avoided unless you were trying to catch the whole 'we have no idea how to make films ethos'. Lennon is fallible! Hold the presses! Not to mention all the crap songs he recorded post-Beatles. This film sucked! It took me 4 viewings ranging from 20 minutes to 45 to get through it. Why did individuals talented enough to come up with a song as great as Happiness Is A Warm Gun find it so difficult to turn this to film? Coming out instead with a sub-Carry-On spectacular along with humourous dwarfs and stripteases in front of gurning men. Ahhhh!

This picture's crap as well!

Two Sides Of A Recording Genius

Why I am posting less frequently is a mystery. What is not is that Mr.Haggar looks a natural at the mic. During a recent meeting betwix us two a whole concept album
was perceived! A journey to the centre of the earth! Fueled by rock 'n' roll! The one time proposed double album, as is fitting for such projects, may even still be a goer. However we shall try to do our best to not bore you to death with the final product. I have great enthusiasm for this. You too could be a part of this album. Can you sing? No? Well who cares! We will be attempting to recruit as many of you as possible to play your part on the album. Whether that be percussion or part of a huge chorus.

We have written a rambling story around which to base our lyrics for each song and the first attempts to write together have been very productive. So far the majority of the music side seems to have fallen to me and the lyrical side to Ben but I expect this to flip many times during the process.

The photos included are 2. The reason for this being that the one below is my favourite of those I took and is yet another pure Haggatrait. The second is here because it was Ben's favourite from the bunch. For bottom see Neil Young, for top see Thurston Moore. 'Heart of Goo' anybody?

Home Recording Heaven

Why does that title remind me of some war slogan or other?

Anyway, the topic of today post is my increasing interest in what is crappily termed 'home recording', music recording that is of course. Also betterly termed 'small studio' recording. I have been doing a bit of this for a while. I am sure you all remember my last album which was recorded in its entirety in the room from which I write this post. Frankly, it showed it! The recording was full of noise meaning that anything above two tracks on the same song began to sound very hissey and cluttered. Well now that I have a super new microphone with extremely low noise levels my recording are starting to sound like something you might even let your family hear. Now I just have sort out that damn crackely guitar lead that I bought. You don't know how many guitars I have taken apart and checked over to find the source of an irritating crackely hum through my amplifier. If I was to tell you it was two would you be impressed? Well it was. It's rather more obvious when a guitar you don't expect to sound horrible, does.

This sudden rush in my enthusiasm has been precipitated by that most wonderful of old age traditions, a book. Yes, after having sampled various literature and even DVDs on the aforementioned subject and mostly coming across tips for those who actually know how to mic a drum kit and the difference in frequency response between condenser and dynamic microphones. Finally however I found (once again in a library) the perfect book 'Recording Techniques For Small Studios' a really great book for the basics and ways of experimenting. So expect the next album to sound a hell of a lot better!

The picture is one of the first I took with my digital camera of a guitar that I had recently bought. It still is not quite functioning properly but should be soon and looks really cool in the picture. It's amazing what a little light will do winking of shiney surfaces. My room is starting to look less like a guitar graveyard what with dismantled parts and coffin shaped cases and more like a second hand shop/recording studio. Guitar anybody?