Lucy Museum of Musicians - T-Rex

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

T-Rex
Qualifying Songs: 20th Century Boy, Children Of The Revolution, Hot Love

When i was a kid in Portsmouth a rumour went around that one of the drivers on the local bus was Marc Bolan's brother but it was the very early 80s and i was more concerned with getting to see ET and dreaming about what George Michael was doing.
It wasn't until much later and after i discovered that i was very much barking up the wrong tree with George Michael that i came across T-Rex and realised i may have been grumpily showing my bus pass every morning to someones famous brother.
As a latecomer to the joys of T-Rex and the whole glam rock thing altogether, having earlier dismissed anything 70s that wasn't punk as a spangly flare wearing DISCO tinged hell, i found a whole bunch of bands that i had previously ignored, one of which was T-Rex.
'Hot Love' is a simple song with repetitive lyrics and is about 2 minutes too long but wow it's effective, a guaranteed ear worm.
'20th Century Boy' has a much rougher edge to it with fat riffs as does 'Children of the Revolution' but it seems that when it came to writing lyrics Bolan hardly came to it at all. 
If only his brother had worn a pink feather boa and sparkly make up on his face when he drove the number 18 around Portsmouth then i may have taken a bit more notice at the time.

Happy Birthday To You Karl Marx

If Karl Marx was alive today he would be blowing out the candles on his 200th Birthday cake but he only made it to 64 before as Friedrich Engels said: 'He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever'.
One of the most famous Germans ever, Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery surrounded by so many other famous people that for £8 (£4 for children), you can go on a guided tour of all the famous graves in the cemetery.
In 'Marx corner', are other famous Communists and Socialists such as Claudia Jones, Ralph Miliband, Malcolm McLaren, Michael Foot, Herbert Spencer, Mansoor Hekmat, Yusuf Dadoo, Saad Saadi Ali, Chris Harman and Paul Foot.
Other famous people are Michael Faraday, Douglas Adams, George Eliot, Max Wall, Patrick Caulfield and Jeremy Beadle but the father of Communism is the main attraction with an impressively large 10 foot headstone and the words 'Workers of All Lands Unite' in gold lettering on the plinth.
I am sure that the irony of having to pay to get into the most Communist cemetery in Britain would not have been lost on the people who raged against capitalism and said that working people had nothing to lose but their chains, and now also eight pound to gawp at their headstones.

The New Arsenal Manager Is...

It's only been a couple of weeks since Arsenal announced that Arsène Wenger will step down as manager after 22 years in charge, but the speculation as to who will replace him has already reached fever pitch.
There are plenty of names in the mix: legendary former players like Patrick Viera and Thierry Henry,  big-name managers like Carlo Ancelotti and Max Allegri and young coaches, like Mikel Arteta, unproven in managerial roles.
According to odds from Betfair, Zeljko Buvac is currently in poll position, but he hasnt managed since 2001 and has been Jurgen Klopp's second for the past 17 years and speaks English like i speak Bosnian, not at all.  
Carlo Ancelotti is the second favourite and he would be a safe paiur of hands and has not only managed in England before but won the double with Chelsea.
Third choice is Massimiliano Allegri, the current Juventus manager and where the Gunners fans eyes are looking towards, a proven track record with a big club and has guided to Juventus to successive Serie A titles and two Champions League finals.
Eddie Howe is in the mix but he has no big club experience and stepping up from a small time family club like Bournemouth to Arsenal would be considered a step too far.
Brendan Rodgers annoyingly continues to be linked but that's a non starter, a big fat raspberry to that one.
Luis Enrique and slipped from favour although he has experience of managing big clubs, winning the treble with Barcelona but stinking out Roma when he managed there and he is reported to want a minimum of £200m to spend on players and that just isn't going to happen. 
Joachim Low is still a contender and he's a World Cup Winner and as Arsenal has a large German contingent, would seem to be a great fit apart from not managing at club level since 2004.
Monaco's Leonardo Jardim is an outsider and he has a great record of handling some of Europe's emerging talent into an attractive team that won Ligue 1 and reached the Champions League semi-finals last season.
The Arsenal fans i have spoken to are looking pleadingly towards Allegri and looking daggers at Brendan Rodgers.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Sum 41

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

Sum 41
Qualifying Songs: Fat Lip, Motivation, Pain For Pleasure

Not easy to classify the genre Sum 41 came under, pop punk seems to lump them in with the likes of Green Day and Offspring and they are not in that class but let's go with that until we think of something else. 
Their music was a throwback to the days of punk, short fast frantic bursts of big chords and a bit of attitude and 'Pain For Pleasure' albeit far too short, has all of that though it tends to lean more towards the hair metal bands of the 80s.
The 'Pain For Pleasure' song is sometimes tagged onto the end of the music video for 'Fat Lip' which is just about larking about as a teenager and getting punched in the mouth (hence the Fat Lip) which looking at singer Deryck Whibley's face, must have happened quite a bit in his formative years.
That he managed to hook and marry the beautiful Avril Lavigne is a case of punching above his weight in the Billy Joel league. 
'Motivation' is just one gloriously big dirty riff from start to finish and apparently about being self-centred, demotivated and being too lazy to look for motivation to do anything but if your ornaments are not bouncing off the shelves and your windows aren't shaking loose then you are just not playing it at the required volume to do it justice.

He Was Doing What To A What Now?

Some people love cars, but some men LOVES cars such as a Kansas man who has been treated in hospital after police found him trying to have sex with a car.
Officers found the 24-year-old naked underneath the vehicle, attempting to interfere with the exhaust pipe but when the man failed to respond to orders to stop, officers used a stun gun to subdue him.
The obvious two questions which form in the mind are why and how but we know the answer to the latter and it might be better if we don't dwell too much on the former except to say that he really, REALLY likes his car, if indeed it was his own car.

Reluctantly, Jeremy Must Go

I like Jeremy Corbyn, i like what he stands for and a bit of Socialism is exactly what this country needs as the wealth gap widens but i can't help thinking that all the time he is the Labour Party leader, he hasn't got the required pull on voters to overthrow the Conservative Party.
With one of the worst Governments i can ever remember, and with the country in dire straits, Labour should be a shoe in to remove Theresa May and her band of not so merry men and women but the pollsters have the two main parties neck and neck and last nights local elections show that the electorate are not shifting towards Corbyn's party and that's worrying.
With a minus Midus touch, it seems that everything the Conservative's have touched for the past decade has fallen to pieces and for Labour to not capitalise amidst the swirling Windrush immigration furore should concentrate a few minds at the Labour Headquarters.
After 8 years of Conservative rule, the country is creaking at the seams from the underfunding of the NHS, the cuts in funding to public services and the slashing of the Civil Service.
If Labour can't brush aside the Conservatives now, then i can't see them ever doing it unless they replace the leader with someone more palatable to the electorate.
I'm sorry Jeremy, i think you are great but unfortunately not enough of us share that view to get you elected and in eight years, the Conservatives have run the country into the ground so we really can't afford another five years if Labour fail to overthrow them at the next election so fall on your sword Jeremy, for the good of the country.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - The Stranglers

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

The Stranglers
Qualifying Songs: Get a Grip On Yourself, Golden Brown, No More Heroes

At their height The Stranglers were as notorious as the Sex Pistols, drug busts, jail time for possession of heroin, fighting with either journalists, themselves or the audience and on one occasion the entire band were incarcerated in France for inciting a riot.
In a career spanning four decades, The Stranglers are one of the longest-surviving bands to emerge from the heady days of punk which shows a nice evolution of their music.  
Headed by the still angry Hugh Cornwell and equally punchy Bassist Jean-Jacques Buyrnel, both of who could start a fight in an empty room, the early Stranglers music was stroppy and the lyrics were almost spat at you as with 'Get a grip on Yourself' with it's keyboards running up and down the scales with great effect in the background.
More of the same on the 'No More Heroes' song which has lyrics sang in a gloriously irritable way referring to several infamous historical figures, including Leon Trotsky, Elmyr de Hory and Lenny Bruce although i'm not sure what William Shakespeare and fictional character Sancho Panza of Don Quixote fame did to be dragged into it.
'Golden Brown' was the big hit, a waltz if you please, and is the only song i can name which has a harpsichord in which isn't as bad as it sounds because it is a great song and constant rumours that it was about heroin were finally confirmed by Cornwell in 2011 but as everyone thought it was anyway it was like confirming what bears do in the woods and that the Pope's hat is indeed hilarious.

More Flat Earther Nonsense

Another day, another bunch of flat Earthers breaking news that we have been blind to, such as yesterdays revelation from the Flat Earth Convention that gravity doesn't exist.
I have always been suspicious about the whole things falling to Earth thing but now not only have we been duped about gravity but now that 2,500 mile wide Island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the one we have been unwittingly calling Australia, isn't there either.
The country of 24 million people which has given us Kylie, Nicole Kidman, Mad Max, Neighbours, Prisoner Cell Block H, Paul Hogan, Home and Away and bent sticks that you throw, is not real and was created as a cover-up for a mass murder by the British after they shipped criminals into the middle of the ocean in the 18 century and drowned them.
According to the theory, all those Australians currently living there are just Government actors and computer-generated personas, part of the plot to trick the world.
In just two days, the Flat Earthers have opened our eyes to Gravity and Australia so we can scratch Isaac Newton and Captain Cook from our history books and never be bothered by dropping things and hats with corks on them ever again but if there is no Australia then just who has been stuffing us at cricket and rugby for the past 50 years?

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Status Quo

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

Status Quo 
Qualifying Songs: Down Down, Rockin' All Over The World, Whatever You Want

Like some in this museum already mentioned, some bands discover a tune which brings chart success and then every subsequent song follows the same basic rhythm which Status Quo readily acknowledged, naming their final album 'The Search For The Fourth Chord' in reference to
the fact that the vast majority of their songs only used three.
Perhaps their finest hour came when they opened Live Aid to an audience of hundreds of millions across the planet in 1985, with 'Rockin' All Over the World', a cover of a song given the Quo rock treatment. 
'Down Down' was The Quo's only number one in the UK and was unmistakably Quo from the first lick of the intro, an up-tempo song with a bit more of a rougher edge than normal.
'Whatever You Want' is another speeded up 12 bar blues tune which became the Status Quo signature but it worked for them, they found their groove early on and it is almost impossible to listen to a Status Quo song and not tap your foot along to it.

Lucy Museum of Musicians - Sex Pistols

Qualification to The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians is they must have a minimum of three songs which would make me turn up the radio if they came on.

Sex Pistols
Qualifying Songs: Anarchy in the UK, Bodies, Pretty Vacant

Hard to think of a band who achieved so much in such a short time but within the year that they were around, the Sex Pistols changed everything and influenced so many others.
Cramming a whole career into 12 short months the Sex Pistols influence is still reverberating today and 'Anarchy in the UK' sums up the whole Punk thing sweetly, a pounding three and half minutes of amazingly angry noise and snarling lyrics.
If anything, 'Bodies' is an even angrier song and the fastest and heaviest song in the Sex Pistols back catalogue and based on a true story about a fan who turned up once at John Lydon's door wearing nothing but a clear plastic bag and holding an aborted foetus in a clear plastic bag. 
With it's constant swearing and subject matter it's never going to appear on the BBC's Desert Island Discs but it's pure Sex Pistols.
I always had my suspicions that 'Pretty Vacant', with Rotten's emphasis on the second syllable of Vacant, was just a way to squeeze out a swearword on the radio. The video took three days to film as the band were thrown out of the studio for throwing cans of lager at the cameramen and according to bassist Glen Matlock, the song's main riff was based on 'S.O.S.' by ABBA.
Everything the Sex Pistols did laid the foundation of generations of musicians to come and as in that infamous Bill Grundy interview, they were indeed very clever boys.