I like mashups… and I like a wide range of music – from all forms of dance including trance and house to metal, hip-hop and cheesy pop… and I like trying to mix genres together in mashups to create something new… but for some reason, metal and pop mashups have never really come together properly in my eyes. It either comes across as sacreligious towards the metal track or just something created just for the point of adapting something that rocks so that it can be played in a nite club.

One example is this god awful “80’s rock megamix” track doing the rounds (- and it features on our jukebox in work) which melds classic 80’s rock tracks from Guns ‘N Roses, Metallica, Nirvana, Europe, Bon Jovi, AC/DC and a few others – all sped up or slowed down so their BPM’s match – together with a horrible dance style drum-machine beat, and yes, I must admit to having used it in gigs before…

And a quick youtube search, and here it is… (*cringe!!!*)

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way… you’ll understand how pleasantly surprised I was to stumble across a band like Rock Sugar. They’re making pop rock… mashing up pop tracks with metal songs live and making it work.

Check out their version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the style of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”:

Love it!

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• Metallica + Journey = Rock Sugar (metalsucks.net)

Happy New Year, y’all… I’ve loads to blog about but too little time right now, so for now.. how about a musical look back at 2009?

And who better to provide it than DJ Earworm – with his United States of Pop 2009 mashup – the top 25 songs of 2009 mashed together… this is NOT easy to do but he makes it seem like it is. Great work.

Well you may know by now that they did it in the UK… In a testament to the power of the Internet, a facebook campaign has succeeded in usurping the X Factor from the Christmas No. 1 slot and installing the most unlikely replacement in the shape of definite song of the moment “Killing in the Name” by Rap metal supremos Rage Against The Machine at the top of the UK “Singles” Chart. Scott Mills announced it just before 7pm on BBC Radio 1’s Chart Show.

The (digital only) sales of the song outstripped second place Joe McElderry’s “The Climb” (which was also available on CD for the last few days) by over 50,000 making it the first download-only Christmas No. 1 and the biggest electronic sale of a song ever in the UK. (David has the figures here).

This isn’t being seen as just a victory for Rage Against the Machine or their song – or even for rock music itself. Moreover, it’s a clear message being sent to Simon Cowell and the whole manufactured TV “talent” competition establishment that has dominated the charts and removed the unpredictability and fun of the pop music charts and the institution that is the Christmas No. 1.

That message seems to have been along the lines of “no thanks, we’d rather have real bands playing real music that they wrote and performed themselves” – and the choice of song to represent that message was a well made one. In other words… “Fuck you, Cowell.. we won’t do what you tell us!”

Here’s the guys in their recent BBC Radio 5 appearance (before the chart was announced) – where they talk about the battle for the No. 1 spot, Simon Cowell & The X Factor, – and play the song itself (featuring various inclusions of the famous “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” line at the end).

UPDATE: The band are now promising that they WILL come to the UK to play a free gig there to celebrate this No. 1 – and they are giving a huge chunk of the proceeds from the downloads of the song directly to the charity “Shelter”.

Meanwhile, the race is still on for the Christmas Number One spot here in Ireland – the chart here being announced on Thursdays – so that’ll be Christmas Eve, this year.

You can do your bit by downloading it on iTunes (as I have done) or eircom music store. The X Factor single’s chances are possibly stronger over here than they were in the UK, unfortunately, as it will have been available on CD for longer than it was there – but you never know!

Can’t. Get. This. Song. Out of my head.

Can’t imagine why…

I now officially LOVE this song. So there!

Enjoy the legend at work! (By the way, I’ve changed this video to the one from Moonwalker as the original one wouldn’t embed).

(More “Songs of the Moment” here)

I know the song is over a decade old, but since that fateful second that the first (who was far from the last) person in the crowd at the Irish Blog Awards in Cork shouted out “You’re GORGEOUS!” at someone on stage, it’s been playing over and over in my brain. It’s one of those songs that, when a DJ plays it, you think “Oh…man! …What a TUNE! I haven’t heard it in ages! (etc. etc.)” and you bop along… and it brings soppy memories flooding back…

Anyway, “You’re GORGEOUS!” became quite the catchphrase for Saturday night’s proceedings… as this picture of Grandad (taken by Donncha, doctored by Twenty) fondly recalls:

So!… A simple blog post for today, as it’s about all my brain can muster after another day of dopey tiredness (and football… hey, I scored a winning goal tonight! Hurrah!) Here’s the video for the song of the moment, the song that’s been stuck in my head since that fateful night (although I can’t for the life of me remember if DJ Brian Greene played it at the aftershow disco… I was probably too busy jumping on the bouncy castle…)

Here it is: Babybird’s lovely little ditty – “You’re Gorgeous“. Enjoy!