Cannibalisme makes me think of Africa and Zaire lies about in the middle of the black continent. The song is actually a bit about Muhammed Ali, one of sources Johnny Wakelin finds his inspiration. Most of his songs and albums are about Africa or are inspired by Africa.
He's a studio songwriter for the Britisch Pye Records Studios for which he wrote many songs inluding ten albums of his own.
In Zaire is not the only song inspired by Muhammed Ali. He also wrote a song called Black Superman. It's also a wide known song on Belgian weddings. Everyone's doing some sort of linedance to it and since I have to go to one of my friends' wedding tomorrow ..... I'd better start practicing.
The Fine Young Cannibals were a reputated Brittish band back in the eighties and the name of the band related to, as did many bands in the past, a movie called All The Fine Young Cannibals.
David Steel and Andy Cox were the original founders and when Roland Gift joined in after a search on MTV for a lead singer FYC was born. On their 1985 debut album they scored with a cover of Elvis’ Suspicious Minds and Johny Come Jome. Touring asked a lot from Gift, who also invested in his acting career and in between gigs with FYC the founding members would also perform in a side project called Two Men, A Drum And A Trumpet.
In 1988 they scored more hits with their second and final album The Raw And The Cooked. On this album we find beauties as She Drives Me Crazy and Not The Man I Used To Be. Gift would spend more time acting than singing and the group put the FYC project on a permanent hold.
Some more remix albums and a greatest hits album would follow until our actor, Roland Gift, took over the complete group name and continued a solo project under the same name. He’d never score any hits solo.
When Peter Koelewijn mucks in self written songs Weird Al Yankovic is more know for his crazy twist to existing songs. He made parodies. Plenty examples since he’s world wide known for it and, apart from the song I chose, I’ll give you some more titles:
Achy Breaky Song (Achy Breaky Heart (Billy Ray Cyrus))
Amish Paradise (Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio))
Another One Rides The Bus (Another One Bites The Dust (Queen))
Canadian Idiot (American Idiot (Green Day))
Cavity Search (Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (U2))
A Complicated song (Complicated (Avril Lavigne))
Confessions Part III (Confessions Part II (Usher))
eBay (I Want It That Way (Backstreet Boys))
Fat (Bad (Michael Jackson))
Girls Just Want To Have Lunch (Girls Just Want To Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper))
Here's Johnny (Who's Johnny? (El DeBarge))
I Think I'm A Clone Now (I Think We're Alone Now (Tiffany))
Jurassic Park (MacArthur Park (Richard Harris))
Lasagna (La Bamba (Los Lobos))
Like A Surgeon (Like A Virgin (Madonna))
Livin' In The Fridge (Livin' On The Edge (Aerosmith))
Living With A Hernia (Living In America (James Brown))
Perform this Way (Bron This Way (Lady Gaga))
Pretty Fly For A Rabbi (Pretty Fly For A White Guy)(The Offspring))
You're Pitiful (You're Beautiful (James Blunt))
Weird Al performed his first parody in the local Dr. Demento’s Radio Show where he played his parody ‘Another one rides the bus’ back in 1980. This would be the start of a weird and funny career. The producers of the Tomorrow Show picked up his performance and he got the chance to perform on television for the first time.
Al was known for his songs and looks (back short curly hair, big glasses and a mustache) but in 1998 he decided to change the way he looked. He got eye surgery so he could loose the glasses. His mustache disappeared and he grew his hair long. The new Weird(er) Al Yankovic was born and more records would follow. He sold until today over 12 million copies of his 17 albums.
Weird Al has been educated to play the accordeon from which he developed a taste for polka music. He wrote numerous different polka songs, most of them also covers of world known songs like Speed of Sound by Coldplay. He even wrote a special Polkamon for the 2000 Pokémon Movie.
Although he gets offered many parodies daily by fans he refuses to use either one of them. He writes solely his own lyrics and music and this for ‘legal and personal’ reasons. He also asks permission to the original performer(s) each time he creates his parodies. Most of the artist are flattered and only few keep refusing their cooperation. Amongst the refuses are Prince, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney.
Apart from his music career he also appears multiple times in different TV shows and movies. He appeared on cameo in 3 The Naked Gun Movies, Safety Patrol, Spy Hard, Halloween II (the remake) and he also did a voice over in The Simpsons. In 1997 he also had a one time show called The Weird Al Show.
A very short post this will be since I'lm not using my own laptop. A wrecked modem puts me without the internet so I'l dependent on whatever pc I can use. For weekdays I can prepare the texts at home and take them to my work and post it during my lunchbreak but at weekends .... hope it gets fixed soon.
Anyway ... here's famous partysong from the 90's which reached the top position in the Belgian and Dutch charts. It's a cover off course but the 'Who the fuck' lyrics made it a bit funier. It's not his first number 1 hit since Peter Koelewijn, a Dutch singer also scored hits with 'Kom van dat dak af'. Translated that would be 'Get your ass of the roof'.
Peter is not only a singer. After his 'Kom van dat dak af' number 1 song he started to concentrate more on producing than on his own songs. Although he kept performing with his band The Rockets his DJ performances were more famous. In 1973 he'd score another big hit with 'Angeline, de blonde sexmachine'; translated as .... I guess it clear to you all? As you can see his songs were never to be taken serious when it came to the lyrics. The same counts for the titelsong in my blog.
Untill today he keeps producing songs from local (Dutch and Belgian) performers and from time to time he keeps contributing and/or singing on different songs as he did with Pater Moekroen in 2008 on the song 'Het zit er niet in dat ik oud word' - 'It's not meant to be that I'll become old'.
Been away for a weeks holiday and I planned on posting a link on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to keep up the pace but apparently I was a little too tired on Tuesday. I’ll have to make it up from now on then so you listeners will get one every two days now until next week Saturday. Let’s get started.
Vincent Damien Furnier (speak it out the French way) was born in 1948 and would become one of the trendsetters in the rock scène since he started his first band back in the sixties. His 1969 band Nazz carried the same name as another already existing band and Furnier changed Nazz into Alice Cooper. Vincent became lead singer, Dennis Dunaway on bass, Neal Smith on drums and Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton on guitars. Two albums were released in their founding year later (1973) to be compiled into one album called ‘Schooldays’. Those albums were released when they were signed by the great Fank Zappa.
Alice Cooper released multiple albums the first few years: ‘Love It To Death’ and the classic ‘Killer’ album in 1971 with the very well known ‘School’s out’ album and song (see link number 18) in 1972. Recording songs would become a regular job and by the time they released a Greatest Hits in 1974 they could already choose songs out of 7 different studio recorded albums.
Furniers love for theatre and music would make him set the boarders for the later known glamrock and shockrock. There’s even a myth going round of Alice Cooper biting of a living chicken’s head during a concert. This story was never confirmed but Frank Zappa saw it as an ideal publicity stunt and the band got even more famous than ever before.
The band went through a critical year in 1974 and Vincent Furnier decided to make it solo under his alter ego Alice Cooper. He instantly scored a hit ‘When women bleed’. As a solo artist he’d specialise in conceptual albums and one of the best examples is his latest ‘Along came a spider’. This albums represents Alice to be the most dangerous serial killer on earth, trapping his victims like a spider and wrapping them in silk waiting to be eaten. Is Alice crazy? Yes he is, but in a good way. He likes evil but at the same time prevails good to win at the end of the battle.
Shock-rocker Alice Cooper influenced a huge amount of artists throughout their careers. I’ll just name a few: Kiss, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot and many more. He also put in a huge amount of musicians over the years he’s been touring the whole world. A little sum gets me to 63 different musicians over 42 years. I might have missed a few though.
Alice Cooper also holds a restaurant annex sports bar in Phoenix Arizone and it’s called Cooper’stown and he also has a regular nightly radio show called Nights With Alice Cooper.
An Israeli heavy metal band founded in 1991 and, although only the lead singer, Eli Zulta, is the only surviver of the original band they're still performing. They had some trouble during the years though. Eli wrote most of the songs and lyrics in the early years but Assi Hason was the lead singer when they started playing.
The year after being founded Almana Shchora recorded their first album though these songs and album was never to be released. Instead they started over in 1994 releasing the first newly recorded song called Look Into My Eyes. This song also never made to any further albums Eli and his crew would create. The band switched record labels and started back from scratch to finally annouce the birth of "Almana Shchora" in 1997. The album never made it into the charts but it got the band a huge amount of intrest in the Israeli heavy metal scene and thus a lot of gigs. A year later two founding members would quit but Almana Shchora would keep touring across the country hiring new band members to fill in the gaps. Another year later they would also loose their lead singer Assi Hason.
Eli found three new band members to re-founded the band and in 2003 they started to write new material in hopes of releasing a complete new album. Also this release would become problematic when they had to replace the drummer in the process. They decided to release a few songs for the fans while they had to wait for the complete new album. They released The Enemy in 2005 and another single called It's War Time in 2007. In 2008 Eli promissed his fans to finally release the album but more problems came up so only the song Blood Frogs saw the light. Then in 2010 they would finally be able to show the world the album Phantom Pain. This release was rewarded with a performance on Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest in Tel Aviv, Israël.
Oh yeah almost forgot to mention that Almana Shchora means Black Widow in Israeli language !
I had no suggestions from either one of my readers so I've chosen a song about one of the most romantic capitals in Europe: Paris. Maybe you don't like the very much because it's in Hebrew but then again you should have helped me find another one. Anyway I could have chosen a Paris Hilton song as well so I think this isn't a bad choice after all.
The song is in Hebrew because Yael Naim was born in Paris to Tunisian parents. At the age of 4 she moved to Israëln her Jewish home country where she spent the rest of her childhood and where she started to play the piano. During her teenagers years she started composing her own songs and after serving for the Israëlian Millitary for two years she started her own band called The Anti Collision. She's asked in Paris to sing at a benefit where she get's spotted by one of the biggest record labels: EMI.
EMI released her first album in 2001 'In a Mans Womb' and the following years she's being casted for musicals and soundtrack releases. A new album in 2007 calles after herself is an instant succes in France and Israël and win's the World Music Album Of The Year in 2008 in the French Victoires de la Musique award. She'd win a second award at the same contest 3 years later winning the Best Female Singer award. In between she got nominated a few times.
In January 2008 her song New Soul got released to support the MacAir Book; a utility created by Apple. The song caught world fame ending up in different billboards. It even reached number one in Belgium for 2 weeks.
Her third album was only released last year, in 2010 and was called She Was A Boy releasing the single Go To The River. It didn't make it to the Belgian Billboards but I'm sure it got picked up elsewhere.
She's inspired by the voice of Aretha Franklin and her piano interests developed after seeing the movie Beethoven (no not the movie with the dog !). She also had a little role in The Simpsons as the voice of the niece of an Israeli tour guide in the episode The Greatest Story Ever D'ohd.
The video is not the official shoot. It's a compilation of photo's taken by someone who visited Paris and combined it with Yael's lovely song and voice, Enjoy,
He's a studio songwriter for the Britisch Pye Records Studios for which he wrote many songs inluding ten albums of his own.
