Who Killed Liddle Towers?

Yesterday, I heard this song for the first time in a really long time:

Justifiable Homocide, by Dave Goodman and Friends. Dave Goodman was closely connect to the Sex Pistols, if that name seems very familiar. If you've heard either Spunk or No Future UK, you've heard early Pistols recordings produced by Dave Goodman. Two of the "Friends," uncredited, are Paul Cook and Steve Jones of Sex Pistols.

In any case, this song mentions Liddle Towers, a man who died after abuse in police custody:



This reminded me that there is another song I like about the same man: The Murder of Liddle Towers by the Angelic Upstarts:



The Dave Goodman song seems to directly refer back to the Angelic Upstarts song. Both are really good, and both remind me of the other song. Can't hear one without hearing the other, basically.

I wasn't aware until today of the Tom Robinson Band's song "Blue Murder," though. And that's not even the end of the songs about Liddle Towers.

Joe Walsh - The Worry Song

I was worried I was gonna forget to post this.

The Whores of Babylon - Two Hearts

Whores of Babylon was a collaboration project between:

Stiv Bators (The Dead Boys, The Lords of the New Church)

Johnny Thunders (The Heartbreakers)

Dee Dee Ramone (The Ramones)

They didn't get much done before it all came apart. One track that features - at the very least - Stiv and Johnny Thunders is this one, Two Hearts.



Since I love, love, love everything Stiv Bators ever did and I love The Ramones and Johnny Thunders as well, well, this was a cinch to like.

Sadly they didn't do much else, and all three of them died too fast, too young.

Lords of the New Church - Open Your Eyes

I can't believe I haven't posted about this before.

I saw this video, embedded below, when I was an impressionable kid watching MTV. I loved the song, the band, and the video immediately.

Video games train the kids for war,
army chic in high fashion stores . . .

Enjoy.



I never stopped loving the Lords of the New Church. Lucky for me, my sister liked them, too, and bought their albums. I don't think she appreciated me listening to her LPs, but I did it over and over. I remember playing their S/T LP for a friend of mine. He wasn't as impressed, but either way. It just goes to show how much I loved it.

About six months back I finally got all of the Lords of the New Church stuff on CD and/or MP3. Surprise, surprise, I knew every single song by heart. It's all thanks to this one.

Naive - Tanks-Punks (Наив Танки Панки)

The video I posted a while back the Russian punk band Naive - Наив in Cyrillic - doing their song Tanks-Punks - seems to be down forever.

Here is a fan-made replacement, complete with:

- tanks

- punks

- Russian girls in Bikinis

- an SU-122 Assault Gun



This song never fails to make me smile.

Odd Japanese band names

I swear these are real Japanese band names. For every "Blue Hearts" or "Hi-Standard" there are others with names that . . . sound odd in English.

These aren't necessarily bad bands. I really like a lot of Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, for example. But they're still kind of odd names to a native English speaker.

Maximum the Hormone

Bump of Chicken (do they mean goosebumps? Maybe.)

Thee Michelle Gun Elephant

Babymetal

Radwimps

Urufuruzu

At least if you go maximum Japanese, like Arashi or AKB48, you're in the clear. Personal names, too, just naturally work. It just sounds foreign. Or if you go one-word English, like Exile or The Pillows, you're generally okay, too. It's the more creative choices that often sound so, so strange. They aren't names aimed at English-speakers but rather Japanese - but like oddly-chosen words on t-shirts, the English-speaking world still consumes this stuff.

What saves a lot of these bands (and others, with equally odd names) is that they are totally sincere and enthusiastic about the music. They're really into it, and they really want to entertain you. They aren't necessarily rock-and-roll like I like it, but they do try, and that counts for something. A band like Babymetal might not really be metal as much as metal-tinged J-Pop, but it's still music with good intentions behind it.

But yeah, you do get names like "Bump of Chicken." Better than Ezra and the Goo Goo Dolls must high-five each other over their name when they hear that one.