You could be the proud owner of Nan Goldin's black-lacquered dildo

If you're in Paris in April and have a penchant for both photographer Nan Goldin and black-lacquered dildos, then - it must be said - you have the most amazing luck; Nan has nearly forty lots of personal belongings up for auction at Christie's in Paris on 7th April 2009, including five of her photos, a bit of period furniture, some stuffed Siamese baby lambs (gruesome), and... a black-lacquered dildo, "probably Asian" (according to the online catalogue).

I've written a little article about it all on the Paris Newsblog. Check it out!

Aliens will be destroying Paris this summer

Americans love Paris, and hopefully Paris loves them right back. Why then is Hollywood is currently planning the city's destruction... by ALIENS?

In the trailer for new movie G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra a large green fart (?) eats away at one side of the Eiffel Tower and makes it crash into the Seine. Darn that cassoulet!

Then the trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen goes one better. One shot has two fireballs speeding over the place de la Concorde and past the Eiffel Tower - now conveniently situated next to the Madeleine (er, it's actually on the Left Bank, Hollywood doofus)...

...then the following shot has the fireballs coming past the Eiffel Tower (again!) and hitting a not-very-Parisian-looking building.

I'm guessing the double shot of the Eiffel Tower - defying both geography and the laws of physics - is to ram home to 12 year-old Transformers nerds that the attack is happening in Paris. In France. Paris is in France. Oh forget it.

Amusingly, the French title for the film is simplified to "Transformers: Revenge", which I imagine is what France will have one day by making a film where the Hollywood sign is smashed to pieces by giant spinning baguettes and berets.

Visual proof of the damage done below.

Some Grace, right in my face

Saw Grace Jones in concert here in Paris on Sunday, something that I never thought I'd be able to do before she (or I) dies. A rare occasion indeed (although rumour has it that she's well into preparing her next album already, so perhaps she'll be coming back soon - as she said onstage).

Plus, we had front row seats, which has never happened to me before. Grace was on fine form, endearingly bonkers, and changed costumes (or at least, hats) between every single song! Here's my little compilation film or her on stage, or wading into the crowd, or bringing everyone up onstage... brilliant stuff. If you go to the Vimeo page you can see the other photos (scroll down) and download the film if you want.

And my Grace Jones rework is still to be found here.

People are strange. And dirty.

Coming downstairs from my flat last week, I was greeted with this.

Somebody had - seemingly deliberately - kicked the paper bin in. What annoyed me more is that numerous people from the building had managed to step over the detritus without it particularly worrying them. I decided to clean it up.

Generally only destined for paper, people use the bin for everything, and the cleaner for the building hadn't cleaned inside it for quite a while. As in 'years'. This is what I saw when I opened it up:

Rotting biscuit crumbs from the 20th Century, chocolate, Spiderman arms, a large collection of used tissues. It was pretty gross. I cleaned up what I could (much of it was securely stuck to the bottom) and sent an e-mail to the company that looks after the building to say that it was no wonder that we had cockroaches for years.

I'm constantly amazed at how disrespectful and dirty some people can be. The next day, someone had put their bin bag in there because they couldn't be bothered to go into the courtyard (5 metres away) and use the big bin. So what should you do? Get riled up? Pointless, frustrating, a waste of energy. Leave a note? Passive aggressive, generally ineffective. Hmm... not quite sure. Suppose it's just part of living in the city...

A great track with the world's worst lyrics EVER (and my rather nice re-edit)

Oh dear. Pity poor Clive Griffin. Dubiously famous for a second after singing with the pair of weepy bellows that are now Celine Dion. Backing singer for, er, Take That and Kylie. Short-lived solo career that no-one remembers, except for a few 90s house and garage crackpots. Like me.

So, poor guy. On some of his record sleeves he looked more like an Elvis impersonator than a guru of garage. This may explain why he's sporting a Phantom Of The Opera look on "I'll Be Waiting". The song has become a bit of a classic over the years, perhaps less for the vocal mix than the dub, both by Morales. A rave/Hacienda/garage classic that just won't go away, a high spot in a career of low spots. iTunes just has the one album from Clive available. Although he's still singing for cheques to this day, it seems that glory will never be his.

At least we have "I'll Be Waiting" to remember him by. You can find CD rips of it on several blogs. Finest Def Mix posted it last August. Nineties Club CD Maxi Singles followed suit a fortnight later. Neither however served up the killer dub that I found on The Love Unlimited Sound System blog. I put the vocal and dub in a blender and came up with what I think is a rather pleaant Fist fusion (here), and it's a testament to the music that I can listen to it at all, as the lyrics are poor beyond belief. Garage lyrics have never given the poet laureate cold sweats, but the priceless rhyming dictionary pap that Clive serves up here just has to be read to be believed:

Believe in forever, forever more
Keep holding on to all of our dreams
You know we can find a way and we'll find it come what may
Oh hand in hand we're strong.

Starts off badly doesn't it? It gets worse. Clive has a lady singing partner for the song. She's black. You can tell. And even if you can't tell, she and Clive and going to bludgeon you over the head with THE MESSAGE:

And maybe the moon glow will soon show
All the beauty lying beneath our skin
When you touch me in the night I know there's no black and white
Nothing's gonna keep us apart.

Tolerance, love beyond the colour of one's skin, and... trying to chart as highly as possible (don't think it worked). Watch out, here comes the chorus:

I'll be waiting, 'til the end of time
Waiting for the moment to live as one
Anticipating a much brighter day
Waiting for this heartache to end.

Yep, they just rhymed 'waiting' with 'anticipating'. You can't stoop much lower than that. I'm guessing that there's a thinly-veiled allusion to apartheid in there, but what a god awful way of going about it. It's it's not about to finish quite yet...

I'll be waiting, for the sun to shine
Shining on the darkness of confusion
What we're creating, this love is yours and mine
Turning on the light in our heart.

I especially like that line, "turning on the light in our heart". It's terrible isn't it? Imagine Nelson Mandela eating slop out of a wooden bowl, in the dark, turning on the light in his heart. For 27 years. Bless.

And maybe tomorrow, the sun

Will seem a little easier to endure
(Oh I believe)
There's no place for any tear when we lose our darkest fear
Heart to heart we're strong.

That last verse is just cack. Pretty much meaningless. Pollution. Moving swiftly on...

Let's say that salvation just takes its time
Coming oh so slowly on down the line
'Cos with dream that we create and I know it won't be late
Nothing's gonna keep us apart.

Yep, forget dodgy sentence structure and scan: remember that salvation is ever so ever so slow. Indeed it would be a few more years after the record's release before apartheid was finally dismantled, no doubt partly - and inevitably - through the force of those lyrics. The song ends off with:

And maybe someday, some way
We'll find a way, can't you feel it
Won't you hold on to me (yes I will)
We'll find the strength to carry on.

Holding on? Yeah, to a sick bag. And that inspirational message of hope at the end? It's like the report on the skateboarding duck after 30 minutes of depressing news. Personally, the fact that I 'find the strength to carry on' after all that shameless bollocks amazes me. Those lyrics are - I believe - the worst ever for any garage song in history, and that's saying something. And it's a testament to the great Morales remixes that I can wade through nonsense and still enjoy the music.

Anyway, if you want to turn on the light in your heart you can download my Clive Griffin "I'll Be Waiting (Fist fusion) here. Enjoy!

Shirley Murdock - my Frankie Knuckles Fist fusion

It's always great when you come across something that you didn't even know existed, and that you love instantly. Thanks to the ever-brilliant Finest Def Mix blog (although Tribute to Def Mix had posted a rip of the vinyl last year) I managed to get my hands on a CD rip of Let There Be Love by Shirley Murdock, remixed by Frankie Knuckles.

So who is Shirley Murdock? Well, after a couple of R&B hits in the 80s (such as 'As We Lay', a syrupy number about two people cheating on their partners with a night-long session of boomshakalak). As a background singer for Zapp, much of her subsequent production was produced by Rouger Troutman, and the late eighties/early nineties saw her releasing a few albums that were more remarkable for her shaggy lioness hairdo than for the music they contained.

Unfortuntely her singing career (or at least the visible part) was to take a dive after 1991's Let There Be Love, remixed by Frankie Knuckles. From the four mixes on Finest Def Mix I took the Classic 12", Banji dub and Intrumental reprise and put them together to make a mix that lasts just under 20 minutes! These early Knuckles (& Morales) mixes always had a lot going on in them, meaning that you never really lose interest. My 'Fist fusion' isn't rocket science, but I think it flows pretty nicely. You can download it here.

So what happened to Shirley ? Well, her waistline went south and she found God big time. Although she's still going and still has a great voice, I doubt she'll be singing about the joys of a one night porkfest again any time soon.

Check out the track below. Pretty damn funky, despite the fact that it's about 'The Lord'.

And don't forget to download my Shirley Murdock "Let There Be Love (Classic 12" mix / Banji dub / Instrumental reprise Fist Fusion)" here.

Berlin

Just got back from an extended weekend in Berlin, where it was grey and near freezing. I love the place, but it's certainly more agreeable when there are leaves on the trees. Nevertheless, I braved the cold and rented a bike one day to finally get an idea of how each area links up with the others. I now have a much better understanding of the city, and it immediately seemed a little less overwhelming.

On my travels, I came across this place, the Sozialpalast, a housing complex. The huge five-storey high bunker (you can just see it on the left here) didn't stop them from building: they just built over it! The bunker goes all the way through and out the other side. Very strange...

For the first time, instead of going with Easyjet, we flew with Lufthansa, and there's really no comparison.

Easyjet go to Schönefeld airport, which is much further out (takes longer and costs more to get there), whereas Lufthansa fly to Tegel, much handier.

The two companies offer flights at almost exactly the same price, but Easyjet make you pay for luggage, pay when booking with a credit card, pay for food and drink on-board, pay for choosing your seat, don't give you anything to read and often don't leave or arrive on time (in my experience). Plus their cheapest flight leaves at 6am, meaning you have to be at the airport around 4.30am. Ouch!

Lufthansa have better times, allowed me free luggage, didn't charge extra for paying with a credit card, offered me a sandwich, Twix, coffee, newspaper, allowed me to check-in via the Internet (choosing my seat at no extra cost) and arrived on-time. Excellent!

Anyway, you can check out all the photos here.