Hey Jude hitmakers The Beatles (they also had hits with Free As A Bird and The Beatles Movie Medley, apparently);

Hardest working man in showbiz James Brown;

Ska pioneer Prince Buster;

Erstwhile psychedelic rockers turned pricey box-set reissue meisters Pink Floyd;

Honking blue whale-fronted hairdresser popsters M People,

and, they are the resurrection, Ashton Gardner & Dyke?

If no-one gets it in a couple of hours (fat chance), I'll give you a few more that link with this.

With all the usual apologies/caveats etc if this is yesterday's chip wrappers; but it's new(s) to me.

Grappelli played on Wish You Were Here and they didn't bother using it. Hear it here!

In a moment of blinding honesty an artist will sometimes admit that one of their more ego-driven projects went off a little half-cock.

More than once I’ve heard David Gilmour confess that Atom Heart Mother “didn’t quite work” and Ry Cooder has often distanced himself from his 1978 Jazz album in the most vitriolic terms. Macca has also hinted that a few of his albums (Press springs to mind) do not represent his best work and, likewise, Gallagher the elder was later heard to mutter something about Be Here Now possibly not being all it was cracked up to be after all.

Now, I love Jazz and Atom Heart Mother and was more than a little dispirited to see the artists all-but disowning them (while not, I note, also offering a refund).

Which other artists have admitted that one or more of their albums was a terrible mistake?

There was an exhibition of Storm Thorgerson's album art a couple of years ago.

Now he's got a second one. It opens next Friday, October 21st and only runs until November 13th. Sadly for those interested, who live outside London and the South East, it is again a London exhibition.

http://gallery.ideageneration.co.uk/blogs/773/view

Greetings Word Bloggers , Id Just like to put this one out there to guage some opinion on the latest pink floyd re-issue bonanza hitting the high street ( or what's left of it's record retailers ) .
Cast your minds back to 1992 when emi released the 'shine on' box set and presented a lavish box of several studio albums + a collection of early singles postcards ect .
Fastforward one year and ' dark side of the moon ' gets a remasterd treatment(20th anniversary edition), released as a single disc + postcards & booklet .
fastforeward another 10 years and yes, you guessed it , the 30th anniversary edition in sacd , another glorious remaster to add to your expanding re-issue collection .
But what's this , another box set in 2007 ( oh by the way ) in which the floyd back catologue gets boxed as mini l.p
replica's but with no remastering and mixed reviews by fans .
but there not done yet folks , its 2011 and here comes perhaps the most excessive re- packaging re-mastering in re-issue history , yes , you can empty your pockets and immerse yourself in every concievable version of dark side of the moon + wish you were here and more to come in the new year .
Just one question , emi were well known to have money woes , according to one paper they made 1.5 billion losses in feb 2010 yet it's a strange coincidence that bbc radio and t.v appear to be hijacked with pink flyod shows , just as the re-issue bonanza is kicking off which makes me wonder are emi looking to fleece the floyd fan pockets to recoup large amounts of money by selling the same products over and over and just how big are the major lables stranglehold on bbc radio and television as this is one atom heart mother of a publicity campaign .
oh ...and the pig was back up in the sky over battersea .

neil lomax

Sorry if it has appeared elsewhere (couldn't see or remember it), but had to share....

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/man-buys-pink-...

"Man buys Pink Floyd box set, puts it on shelf, feels sad

A MIDDLE-AGED man is feeling oddly downhearted after buying an expensive limited edition box set of music by the favourite band of his youth......"

Have just read a really interesting piece in Wired about Bjork's "Biophilia" App which is also online here:

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/08/features/music-nature-sc...

and also have just finished playing the Thomas Dolby curated "Map of the Floating City":

http://www.floatingcity.com/

and notice that Pink Floyd may soon be dipping their toe into the world of social media and apps "Other initiatives will include a digital marketing plan utilising user-generated content to allow fans to make their own creative contributions to the band's music, plus iPhone Apps which will give a unique insight into Pink Floyd's recorded legacy":

http://www.pinkfloyd.com/news/news_release.php

Please can you post below if you know of any other groups or artists messing about with interactive extensions of their songs and how about The Word doing a future article on how musicians are utilising new media?

With the opening of the Olympic Games just over a year away, I thought that the readers of Word should get together and organise the opening ceremony.

We don't need acrobats, dancers, choirs of children or hordes of animals. What Britain does best is music, so let's have an opening ceremony that is a great big concert!

A couple of songs each from the biggest British artists of the last 50 years.

Obviously we need acts who are recognised the world over and it would be good to get a representative sample across the decades, so here is my suggestion for the running order for the Olympic opening ceremony 2012 (by the way, I may be a bit biased as I have got 2 tickets for it!)

Starting with the 1960's,
Paul McCartney (maybe with Ringo on drums)
The Rolling Stones

1970's
Led Zeppelin
David Bowie
Elton John
Pink Floyd (if they can stop arguing)

1980's - a bit tricky this one, but how about
George Michael
Duran Duran
Maybe U2 as well - they're nearly British

1990's
Radiohead

2000's
Coldplay

2010's
Adele

And all finished off with the full line up reconvening on stage for a rendition of One Day Like This with Elbow (not an internationally recognised act yet, but the song seems an appropriate choice).

Any views, comments, suggestions?

Listening to the Pink Floyd 'Echoes' collection I happened to check and find, with a considerable shock, that I don't have 'Dark Side Of The Moon'. I've got tons of Pink Floyd material, official and bootleg, but somehow haven't managed to buy their best selling album. How did that happen?
Anyone else got a similar classic-sized hole in their collection?

Today for the first time since I can remember, I'm going to listen to an Album from beginning to end. Please kindly step forward Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'. What album would you choose?

I’ve just finished watching The Box (2009) by Richard Kelly. A much criticised movie. I had super low expectations and so was probably in a forgiving mood for any signs of competence. I enjoyed it and thought was pretty good if a little silly. 3 out of 5 type of stuff.

Anyway, I noticed something interesting about the soundtrack on my Blu-Ray copy. At the 53 minute mark James Marsden gets into his car to drive the babysitter home. A fairly long scene of about two or more minutes ensues. A song came on the car radio and it was awfully familiar to me. It took a few seconds to place it. When I finally did I was amazed.

It was “Fearless” by Pink Floyd.

This was surprising because I’ve NEVER heard a Pink Floyd song on a movie soundtrack unless they were heavily involved in it themselves. Floyd clearly has a policy of not letting filmmakers licence their songs for movies. The only time I’ve heard one of their songs was on an episode of The Sopranos (last episode of season four) when Tony wakes up in the pool house to the unmusical heart beats that close Dark Side Of the Moon (rules for licensing music is different in TV).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitecaps_%28The_Sopranos%29

In the film The Faculty they had to use a cover of “Another Brick In the Wall Part II” for an American football game sequence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_of_%2799

The Squid and the Whale even had a big subplot that involved a character plagiarising “Hey You” as his own song for a talent show. The original Floyd recording is not heard in the film.

So I was amazed that The Box got an original Pink Floyd recording onto the soundtrack. I had a look at the end credits just to make sure it wasn’t a spot on cover version. It wasn’t credited!

I then put the commentary track on and skipped to the scene to see if the director would mention it. Not only did he not mention it, the soundtrack didn’t include the song. Instead incidental score (by some of the people in Arcade Fire) was used instead.

Aha. I think someone might have made a mistake and released the wrong version onto Blu-Ray. The impression I get is that it was used as a temporary (or ideal) score during the editing stages. It was then removed and replaced with the final score. This would explain why the song is not credited at the end. Somehow a mix up has happened and an early mix of the soundtrack made it onto the Blu-Ray copy. Fascinating, in my opinion.

On the face of it these two are totally incompatible, and yet...

It's 2:25 AM. I've just driven a 306 mile round trip to see Roger Waters rebuild the Wall. I've done a "Nights out with", but there's more to be said. If you are intending to go, there may be some spoilers, so join me in the comments for more...

A bit trainspotter-ish this, but bear with me.

One of the pleasures of my music obsessed youth was Sundays at Camden Market browsing the illegal bootleg stalls looking for a superior copy of a show on a particular tour, or even better the sound desk mix of a particularly great show that I was at.
The perfect example was my first Marillion show on the Real To Reel tour on 14th December 1984 at the Hammersmith Odeon, incidentally with Dixie Peach (remember him !) sat next to me.
It was a truly magical experience for me - highlights of Script for a Jester's Tear/Fugazi plus the first live outing of what would become Misplaced Childhood.
Even the immortal Fred Dellor (NME's Fred Facts) said it invalidated every other live show he had seen.

Nowadays you have official reissues (including the Marillion show mentioned above, check Spotify "Early Stages : Official Bootleg Box Set" disc #5) of old shows, Pearl Jam style availability of every show plus peerless sites like floydpodcast.com liberating old Floyd bootleg shows.

My point is that, like all down sides of the internet, the thrill of the chase is dead, plus the artist must be aware that his/her every utterance is likely to be committed to posterity.

In the aforementioned show Fish states after two tracks (Garden Party) "This is what as known as a fucking happening night !" to much cheers, and it really was.
In the released version this is now merely a "...happening night".

My worry is that the spontaneity and exclusivity (by attendance) of live shows is being lost.
When Thom Yorke apologised for the poor performance and sound to ME at Glastonbury 97 he didn't think that it would be part of his back catalogue. The show was actually stupendous (check out Jonny Greenwood on Lucky, Bones, The Tourist and The Bends), and the fact they honestly didn't realise added to the experience.

If an act is always "on" this type of honesty will be tragically lost to us forever.

After the excitement of Very Slow Justin Bieber rocked the world last week (see here for explanation: http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/not-previously-a-fan), the next big thing may well be Moderately Faster Pink Floyd:

http://soundcloud.com/canazza/300-speed-shine-on-you-crazy-diamond-part-...

As far as I know Jean Michel Jarre never recorded an album of sea shanties, but if he had...