Franz Ferdinand - Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action.

Franz Ferdinand - Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action (Domino)
This time I am going to be talking to and record reviewing the new record by a friend of mine called Nick and his band Franz Ferdinand. I know Nick because he has come to a few of our parties here at the Gate and has even joined in with some of the concerts we've had playing the keyboards - One time I was going to sing with him but I fell over at the theatre and had to go to the hospital so I missed it which was a shame. Even though I've known Nick for a while I had never heard his band before so I was very pleased to be doing this review and I thought it was very nice of him to send the CD of the record to me and to agree to answer my questions too.

Pete and Nick share a joke at a Gate show.

When we were doing the questions I thought it was only going to be him answering but I was very pleased that his friend Alex (who is the singer in Franz Ferdinand) sent me back some answers too. So here are the questions that I sent to Nick and the answers that he and his friend Alex sent back for everyone to read:

Dear Nick (and Alex),

Hope you are well, thank you for sending me your CD and agreeing to answer some questions.
Alex: You're welcome. I hope you don't mind me joining Nick to answer your questions too.
Nick: It is an absolute pleasure.
I just read through the questions and I'm excited and nervous at the same time. They are very good questions. What will I answer I wonder?

I am enjoying listening to your music a lot, I think it is very good indeed. What do you like about it?
Alex: Glad you're enjoying it! I like the tunes and the way it makes me feel. I reckon our music puts you in a good mood. Well, this record does, anyway.
Nick: I like that it makes me feel good when I play it. I like that you can shake your bodybits to most of the songs but that you can also listen to it just for the listening experience!

What other different kinds of music do you like? I like sixties and seventies music mostly, do you like sixties and seventies music?

Alex: I love a lot of music from the 60's and 70's too. I like Neil Young very much and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. I also like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. I like some music from other decades too, like The Minutemen, The Violent Femmes, Lady GaGa and Snoop Dogg.
Nick: I must say I like 60's and 70's music a lot as well. 
         I grew up looking up to my brother for music and he always listened to hardcore music from California from the 80's. I like that as well but when I really really started loving music myself was when I heard the Beatles, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin for the first time with my friends.
          I like classical music as well. and also film music. I suppose because in Bavaria where I grew up there was a weird sense that listening to classical music felt like fighting the system. That's what it always had to feel like when i was growing up. No one else was allowed to listen to the same thing.
I loved nirvana for about a week but then everyone at school started listening to them and I gave up on them. I hope I've got over that now, so I even listen to the radio sometimes now.

You are a well known person, what's that like?
Alex: I could never imagine what it would be like, but the great surprise is that it feels pretty much exactly the same as it did before. It's like when you have a birthday; When I was a kid, adults would say to me "what does it feel like to be seven?" and I'd think "Exactly the same as it did to be six yesterday."
         Sometimes people want to talk to you because of the music you make. For the most part, that is very nice, but sometimes you'd rather talk about anything other than yourself.
Nick: I'm not that well known. I feel quite normal but I had to practise my signature at some point. it's awkward taking photos with people sometimes. I like being on stage though, it's a great feeling of living; no more stupid thoughts, just being. I like that a lot.

If I was well known I would have lots of parties and invite all my friends, is this what you do and if you could invite anyone to a party, anyone at all, who would it be?

Alex: I do that sometimes, but probably about the same amount as I did before I was well known. The best friends are the ones who don't care if you are well known or not. They are the people I like to invite to my parties. If I could invite anyone from any time I'd invite a writer whose books I like to read. Someone like Graham Greene, Dorothy Parker or Ernest Hemingway. I reckon Hemingway would probably try to start a fight though, so I'd have to keep an eye on him.
Nick: I do love a party. I have a party for special occasions of course. I would invite Freddy Mercury. Even the dead one. 


Your record is called Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action and I thought this must be about doing things that are good and not doing wrong things - what good things do you think people should do and what wrong things do you think they shouldn't do?

Alex: I think you understand the title well. I reckon you always know inside whether something is a good or a bad thing to do. One of the worst things people can do is to deliberately hurt another person for no reason other than spite. The best thing you can do is exactly the opposite: to help someone when it brings no benefit to yourself.
Nick: I think we can all have a nice time with each other. I don't like telling people what to do but I wish no one would start the smallest of personal wars or the biggest of global wars. I also think children should be excluded from any harm that could ever fall upon them.

That's it for my questions, is there anything else you'd like to say?
Alex: I just wanted to say thank you for your questions. They were original and I enjoyed answering them. I hope you continue to enjoy the music.
Nick: I'd like to say I'm very sorry it took so long to answer the questions.  There's been a lot going on but now I've got a few days off eating sausages and drinking beer in Bavaria. All the very best to everyone at the gate and thanks a lot for doing the review Peter, Nick.

I thought the answers were all very interesting, especially where Alex says being well known feels just the same as not being. I would still like to be well known though especially for doing my record reviews because I like doing them very much. I also thought the answers to the question about the party were very interesting - If I had a party I would invite everybody from the Gate and I would invite loads of other people too, mostly though I would invite my mother and my father and my brother and my sister but unfortunately though my mother and father and brother have passed away and I don't know where my sister is any more.
             That was my interview, I hope everybody likes it and here now is my review of the Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action record, I hope everyone will like this too:

             The record when it starts off starts off with the song Right Action and this starts off with quiet music that sounds like a train going along the tracks but then the music starts off properly with a bit of a bang into a funky song that I think would be a good song to play at a disco for dancing to. I think that if I had to give this music a name I would call it Disco-Rock because it's a bit like a mix of disco and rock music. The singing on top of the music is quite good too and at one point I heard something about Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which is interesting because one of my favourite films is the Saturday Night and Sunday Morning film with Albert Finney in it. I don't think this song is about that film though because that would be too much of a coincidence. Here is the advert for the film for you to see what it's about:

  

           I think this song is about a relationship and the good things you should do in a relationship and here are some of the things I think would be good to do when you are in a relationship with somebody:

1. Make sure you have enough money to look after them properly.

2. Don't cheat on them because that's not nice.

3. Buy them presents at their birthday and at Christmas and on Valentines day.

4. Have children.

            I think if you were in a relationship and you did these things you would have a good relationship and be happy but I could be wrong cos I've never had a relationship really so I don't know much about them.

            The next song is called Evil Eye and it starts of with a scream and then the music is quite spooky so I think it is a song about horror things like. I liked this one because it has shouty voices in it and swearing so I thought it was a fun song that would be good for a Halloween party - we always have a Halloween party here at The Gate where we dress up and play horror music (I like to sing The Monster Mash) so maybe this year we can play this song. I liked this one a lot because I like horror stuff.

             The next one is a funky guitar tune called Love Illumination which reminded me a bit of a rock song mixed with fairground music because it has a keyboard bit in it that sounded to me a bit like fairground music. I liked this one a lot and thought it was a very good pop music song.

              The next one starts of kind of slower than the others but then it speeds up and sounds more like the others did and reminded me a bit of the pop music with guitars that they used to play at the parties we used to have at Leavesden Hospital when I lived there. Here is one of the songs that I really liked from them days by Slade because my mother bought it for me for Christmas one year - I used to like Slade a lot because they were a very good, fun group:

         After that one is one called Fresh Strawberries which reminded me a bit of The Beatles and I think this is because the singer, whose name is Alex, sounds a bit like Paul McCartney, but the song sounds a bit like a Beatles song too. I thought it was nice to be reminded of The Beatles because they

The EP Kelvin had.

are a band that I like very much. I first remember The Beatles from 1963 when I was 19 from when my brother Kelvin bought an EP with Please Please Me and Love Me Do on it - I have liked the Beatles ever since because they are a very good group.
          After Fresh Strawberries is a very fast song called Bullet, this one is very good and quite rocky and then after that is another fast one and I thought these were both good party songs because they are fast so good for dancing to and then after that one is a song called The Universe Expanded.
          The Universe Expanded is not as fast as those last two and starts off start quite calmly with soft singing like ballad singing so I think this must be another song about a relationship. When it carries on for a bit it turns out that it is about a relationship and I was right. I liked this one very much especially the chorus because when it's the chorus everything gets a bit louder and I thought this sounded very good.
               Brief Encounters is the next song but it's nothing to do with the film Brief Encounter I don't think. This one starts off with some space sounds on a keyboard and then turns into a nice song that reminded me a bit of reggae music but with normal singing instead of reggae singing. This one is a nice one that I enjoyed very much because I like reggae.
               The last song on this record is called Goodbye Lovers and Friends and it is another quite fast  song but it slows down on the chorus and is very interesting because of this and I thought it was a nice one to finish the record on because it is all about saying goodbye. And I would like to say goodbye to everyone who is reading this and to Nick and Alex and the rest of Franz Ferdinand who me and some of the people from The Gate have done this song for to say a big thank you:

                  So that is the end of my review, overall I thought this was a very nice pop rock album that I think would be very good for a party or for listening to at home and I think that Alex was right when he said it makes people feel good because it definitely made me feel happy listening to it and I am going to listen to this one a lot when I'm at home. I would give this record 10 out of 10.

Tradesman & Parly B - Dubplate Fashion.

Tradesman & Parly B - Dubplate Fashion (Reggae Roast).

An advert for one of Reggae Roast's shows.

This time we are doing some funky reggae music which was sent to me by Reggae Roast so that I could listen to it. Reggae Roast are from London and they are a group who do reggae shows like the one in the picture but they also do reggae records too like this one that I am going to review. I am very happy to to be reviewing this record because I like reggae music very much because it is very happy sounding music that is very good to listen to.

          The record is a very interesting one because it is a version of the music that Gregory Isaacs sang on for his song Rumours from 1988. I listened to some more Gregory Isaacs like Night Nurse and a song I really liked called Tribal War to do this review. I listened to the Rumours song too and I thought it was very relaxing and I think that this is because he has quite a calm lovely voice. Gregory Isaacs didn't write the music for this song though because he is just the singer singing over music made by a man called Augustus Clarke, I know this because to do this review we looked up about the Rumours music so we could learn all about it. It wasn't just Gregory Isaacs who sang on this music because lots of people sang their songs on this music because that is what they do in reggae. Here is lots of different versions of the original music with Gregory Isaacs and lots of other different people singing on it, I enjoyed listening to all these different songs:

            The record I am reviewing here is another, moderner, version of this tune and it is done by someone called Tradesman who is a reggae musician from Leeds and I thought this was interesting because he is not in Jamaica and this shows how reggae is not just a Jamaican thing now and is all over the world and I think this is because it is very good music that anyone can like if they want to.
            The first song on the record is this music then with somebody called Parly B singing over the top of it. I like reggae singing because it doesn't sound like English singing because it is a Jamaican type of singing where sometimes you can't understand what they are saying but I don't think this matters because it sounds good on the music. On this song I can't make out what he is saying at all but like I say this doesn't matter to me because I like how it sounds because it is a very funky way of singing and maybe I could ask one of the Jamaican guys who comes to the Gate to explain it to me - we have a few Jamaican people who come to the Gate because it is in Shepherds Bush and there are a lot of Jamaicans here. I enjoyed listening to this song very much and think it would be a good song both to relax to at home and to put on at a party for dancing because it is quite relaxing but I think you could dance to it too.

Thumbs up to Reggae Roast.

               After this one with the singing on it is another version called a dub version. We learnt all about dub in our music appreciation sessions here at The Gate and what it is is when you get a tune and put echoes and things in and put noises on top; in this one there was a sound like water bumbling and a noise like the noise electricity makes when there is a lot of it and I think it is very interesting how they do this because it changes how it sounds and it is very nice to listen to indeed. In this one there isn't much voice on it and what there is is changed too so it sounds a bit like they are underwater and I liked this because I thought it was a bit funny.
               After this one is Riddem version which is just what reggae people call their songs when they have no singing on, having instrumental versions on records is a good idea because they are interesting things to listen to and you can sing on them yourself if you want.
               The next song on this record is a remix version by somebody called Adam Prescott which starts off with whistling like you would hear in a Clint Eastwood western film like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It is a nice remix which sounds like the other version but a bit different and I liked it especially because of the whistling in it because I was reminded of western films and I like western films; my favourite is Chisum because John Wayne plays a very good part in it.
               The last song is a dub version of the remix and this is a very nice calm version with nice keyboard bits in it that I liked a lot and it also has the whistling in it too but it doesn't have the singing on it.
               Overall I thought this was a very interesting record and I liked hearing all the different versions of the same song because it is interesting to me that you can do so many things with just one tune. I would give this record 10 out of 10.