2014
2014 News Items
2014 News Items
10.10.14. Yellowjack Ah, yes, sorry for the absence. We were off cultivating our mystique. Hope we’re a tad more enigmatic for you now.
Actually, an apology is in order. The plan was to unleash an animated video for the bawdy ode ‘Next’ from ‘Godot Woz Ere’ but the drawing board became a bed for a snoring, bored Paul Hamilton. After three months of heads-down no-nonsense doodling, he realised he had only illustrated four of the song’s nine verses and that another five months were required to complete all the drawings before the equally time-consuming feat of animating all this rubbish could commence. Declaring that ‘Life is too short and so am I!’ he has thrown in the ink-stained towel, and the project will join similarly-abandoned films such as the Bisonics film ‘Drink Up The Days, Smoke Out The Nights’ in the vaults of Smoking Ant Towers.
10.10.14 Bisonics Prior to returning to good ol’ Blighty and joining up with ancient schoolchums Murphy & Hamilton to make the album ‘Play For Today’ (remember this classic? No, neither do they), Simon Beacon – or is it Si Beex? Or Si Cottick? – was an essential part of Brisbane’s electro music scene through the late ’90s and early ’00s. Under the soubriquet of Glitch, he would take the stage, screaming into loudhailers as pulverising drum machines and samples jackhammered audience’s brains to twitching, pus-weeping jellies.
In a move reminiscent of ‘Nuggets’, the Gary Stewart/Lenny Kaye-curated compilations of 1960s US garage bands, Dennis Remmer of the Brisbane record label Trans:Com has collected 261 tracks by 140 bands onto one USB stick holding 24 hours of music and housed it in a coffee table-crushing A4 hardback book. Entitled ‘BNE’, this artifact is obviously for the hardcore electronica obsessive (read: deranged compulsive loonpot) rather than the casual listener, but if you must complete your Beex discography (and you must, you MUST!) or you’re at all curious about non-British or American rawk’n’parp, then this is an essential purchase. Find out more here
10.10.14 Yellowjack Dancin’ Dave Pope continues his one-song-per-century gig in New Zealand with a rippin’ rendition of ‘We’re Back’ [ YouTube ]. You can hear an audience member mutter “Bloody good” at the end of the song and we here at the Smoking Ant 24-Hour Newsdesk won’t dispute that observation.
3.7.14 Yellowjack Can you guess the missing words of these song titles? ‘All You Need Is —‘; ‘Goodbye To —‘; ‘Crazy Little Thing Called —‘: ‘— Is A Many-Splendoured Thing’; ‘Wake Up And Make — With Me’. Yes, you pop quizzicals, the answer is, of course, ‘A Non-Revolving Asymmetric Figure-Eight Sprag Clutch’. Award yourself to a new Yellowjack video, why the deuce don’t you? Their film for ‘Godot Woz Ere’ is ‘ere – or is it ‘ere?
19.6.14. Yellowjack. Envisage three multi-bearded post-senile wrinklebags in nightshirts, waving their ear trumpets and dancing the jig of the sacred gout bandage in the wee willy winkie hours, their peeping hoots o’ jollity echoing around the Duntokin Home For The Terminally Boogied. Why, it’s those gay blades Yellowjack and the reason for their post-Horlicks-and-heroin capering is their ‘Godot Woz Ere’ waxing receiving an enormous upping of thumb from a critical quarter. Can it be true? Well, have a butcher’s for yourself over here.
24.5.14 G.T. Thomas It was Nancy Sinatra, of course, who opined that boots were made for walking, whilst Bernard “Oh Sid!” Bresslaw crooned that you need feet to prevent your legs fraying at the ends. Whereas The Smiths made their mark on the pop landscape with ‘Hand In Glove’, our pal Gwen Thomas has decided to go ‘Foot In Boot’. Skip over to here and discover how an official Pedestrian Day held in San Francisco on May 27th 1937 ties in with fighting poverty right here and now with the gift of (ahem! Crap pun alert!!!!) sole music.
23.5.14 Yellowjack A filmette of their short-but-short ‘You Can’t Have It’ (“The best unreleased single of 1966!” whoops pop maven Julian Wakeling) is now available to peer-ooze on vimeo and YouTube.
5.5.14 Yellowjack Dancin’ Dave Pope’s solo rendition of ‘Next’ is performed in a strumsome chumsome manner right the very here [YouTube].
1.5.14 Yellowjack Media whore and jammy tart Hamilton waffles about ‘Godot Woz Ere’ on The Rebel Magazine bloggie ‘ere.
28.4.14. Yellowjack. With a band line-up reading like a veritable Who’s That of British Pop, Yellowjack’s album ‘Godot Woz Ere‘ is finally unleashed. The 11-song download is available on all the usual outlets though we recommend the version on Bandcamp [bandcamp] where you can obtain it in full for a mere measly puny £4 and in a choice of audio quality, including the immensely superior FLAC lossless format. Plus – if you’re into that kind of singalong thingathong – Bandcamp also has lyrics to all the tunes.
As mentioned in previous dispatches, there is a 12-song extremely-limited-edition CD available from our very own shop. Encased in a full-colour gatefold digipak sleeve with accompanying two-sided poster (with first-draft handwritten songwords) and a bonus gift of Horrible Head‘s ‘Gloom Of Youth’ album, we’re practically giving it away at £10 (inc. postage and packing). So why are you still reading this? Snap this little beauty up right this very now!
20.4.14. Yellowjack. Dave Pope left this obscene, unpleasant land for New Zealand at the end of December 2013 but not before crowbarring in one last knees-up. Quaffings at The Montagu Puke on London’s Charing Cross Road with his Yellowjack rhythm section and professional drinking master Albie Gibbs were caught on a mobile phone camera by Andy Thomson’s squeeze (as we believe the term is) Becky Chamberlin. Footage of this emotional and heavily refreshed occasion has been turned into a video for their song ‘Half-Life‘ which can be seen here [vimeo].
15.4.14. Yellowjack. In February, Georgina Micklethwaite of Sidcot art galleries (somewhere in Somerset) ventured up to London for a few tinctures and a confabulation with Yellowjack’s drummist about ‘Godot Woz Ere‘ and related topics. That afternoon’s booze-crazed babblethon has been cut down to two half-hour films and slung on vimeo for you and you alone. Entitled ‘Well, Basically’ you can view Part One (talking about the background to the band and record) here [vimeo]. Part Two (concerning itself with the songs and including Hamilton’s terrible impression of John Cooper Clarke) is all the way over here [vimeo]. Apologies for poor sound quality: Despite all the hiss, you can still hear them.
30.3.14 Yellowjack. To the merry sound of accountants shooting themselves, Smoking Ant Records have decreed that a free copy of Horrible Head’s CD The Gloom Of Youth will be given away with each CD sale of Yellowjack’s Godot Woz Ere blasterpiece, the reason being that Gloom captured Pope & Hamilton in their songwriting infancy whereas Godot has them in their full-blown senility.
Godot also comes with a double-sided poster, one side being a series of snaps of the chaps getting hazily ablaze in a hop shop, the other – tying in neatly with the graffiti cover – showing the first drafts of the song lyrics, rather than the finished, tidied-up versions yelled on the actual album.
28.03.14 Yellowjack. The consignment of digipak CDs and posters are just in from Disc Wizards, and this is the perfect opportunity to let you in on a secret regarding the Godot Woz Ere album. Unlisted on the credits is a bonus track, a ‘live’ version of ‘We’re Back’ (introduced by a well-known comedian). Just to make things confusing for you, this bonus track is the very first song on the CD (because we believe in getting those kinds of things out of the way quickly). Right, so let’s get this straight: The mystery bonus track is actually listed, and it’s the ‘studio’ version of ‘We’re Back’ (which will be available on the download album) that is hidden away, right? Blimus.
26.03.14 Yellowjack. A taster for the froth-combing album, Hamilton & Pope’s song about their absent friend, Whatever Happened To Philip Ford?, is there to see in HD on vimeo and, outrageously unpredictably, YouTube of all places.
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