Tag: PIPE

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Muse Are Awesome

Regular readers of 7 Reasons will know that we have a hardcore group of regular guest writers. Marc and I could call them our groupies. But we don’t. We just call them Liz, Simon and Rob. And today it is the turn of Rob again. If you already read his blog, There Is Music In The Breakdown, or follow him on twitter, you will know that he has quite a penchant for Muse. Today we finally get to find out why. Robert. A. Foot, this is your moment.

1. The outfits. Completely non-existent in the frontman, Matt Bellamy. From sporting such catastrophic outfits as ill-fitting suits to his alien waterproof, you know that his outfits during gigs will be extravagant. Then you look to the drummer, Dom Howard, and you see him sporting his favourite superhero costume in a Halloween gig, and you know that these people are either insanely brilliant, or just plain insane.

2. Chris Wolstenholme. The most awesome man to have touched a bass guitar ever. Combine him with a Rickenbacker and a harmonica, and you have several buckets of spare amazing. His epic headbanging antics, his backing vocals and his sheer size, you would be hard pushed to find someone who you’d like to meet more. Except Jennifer Aniston in some cases. Oh, and he does use a bit of slap bass and smokes a pipe.

3. The Instruments. I’d say guitars, but that isn’t all. From the extensive range of custom Manson guitars, Bellamy can choose from a guitar made of an old bomber plane, one with built in lasers and the quintessential red glitter guitar. But, then we have the choice of double neck guitar, keytar and sparkly. My personal favourite: the purple guitar. Yes. Purple.

4. Matthew F****n’ Bellamy. Abnormally short vocal chords, Bellamy can sing insanely high notes, as shown in such tracks as Showbiz and Micro Cuts. He can also play the guitar quite well, even if he is spinning around at several hundred revolutions per minute, or if it’s behind his head. His hair also changes colour/style dramatically every few years.

5. Dominic Howard. A left hander, always a good start in my book, Dom Howard always stands out from the crowd. Whether he’s in fancy dress or wearing a pair of his brightly coloured jeans, he’ll catch your eye one way or another. Finishing each gig with the infamous sign off of “Cheers”, that is the official Dom Howard word. A typical conversation would go, in my mind at least, something like this:

Me: Hi Dom, how’re you doing?

DH: I’m alright, cheers, and yourself?

Me: Everything’s good, Dom. How’s the tour going?

DH: It’s going really well, cheers. We had a great night last week at <insert venue here>, and after it, I just thought, “Cheers guys”, because they were cheering awesome.

Me: So what’s up next for you guys?

DH: Cheers for asking, I’m going to be working on my cheers solo album called “Cheers”. It’s a one track, 68 minute drum solo album, with the one track being called “Cheers” cheers. There have been a few cheers….. etc.

6. Morgan Nicholls. The man behind the several hundred synthy bits in every song, Morgan keeps the band ticking over at all times. Whether it’s his cabasa (not a shaker) playing or playing three notes on the keyboard during Map Of The Problematique, the band simply could not function without him. Unless his wife was due to have a baby during Muse’s stint supporting U2 during their US 360 tour, in which case they can find one of Trent Reznor’s pals to deputise. Apart from those times, he cannot be replaced.

7. The Fans. We’re the best fans in the world. Some people are flying in from America, Australia, Scandinavia, Canada and even York to see them play in their UK stadium tour. Possessing the rare quality of bashing the band endlessly, then reacting with anger when someone else has a little rant, they have on average 300GB* of gig bootlegs on their computer hard drives at any one time, downloading approximately 4TB* of material over their lifetimes. Whatever you say to them, don’t call Muse a rip off of Radiohead to their faces. Just don’t.

*Source: completelymadeupstatistics.com

September 18, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Never Get Cary Grant & Carrie Grant Mixed Up

1. Carrie Grant Never Smokes A Pipe. Nor has she ever held one for artistic purposes.

2. Cary Grant Never Leant On A Piano. Nor did he have breasts.

3. Carrie Grant Has Never Been Shot At By A Plane. Nor would she enjoy the prospect.

4. Cary Grant Never Got Dressed In A Powercut. Nor was he invited to the premiere of Twilight.

5. Carrie Grant Never Got Her Hands On Grace Kelly’s Chicken Legs. Nor did Grace Kelly make her an origami swan.

6. Cary Grant Never Had A Strange Man’s Hand Down His Trousers. Nor has he ever been David Grant’s puppet.

7. Carrie Grant Never Put Her Arm Around Audrey Hepburn. Nor did Audrey Hepburn feel Carrie Grant’s nipple.

August 13, 2010
7 Reasons The 1950s Were Better Than The Present

1. Pipes. In the 1950s if you smoked a pipe, you were a stand-up fellow, a good chap, a pillar of society who drove a Morris Cowley and wore a hounds-tooth sports jacket with leather arm-patches. In the present if you smoke a pipe, you are probably embroiled in a downward spiral of addiction and degradation that will ultimately lead to you living in an alley and offering to fellate strangers in exchange for something called crack (according to television).

2. Crooners. In the 1950s there was Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Perry Como. Nowadays, we have someone called Michael Buble. He points a lot.

3. Prime Ministers. The Prime Ministers of the 1950s were Atlee, Churchill, Eden and Macmillan. That’s the man voted the greatest Briton of all time and three men with impressive moustaches. Now we have Gordon Brown. He has one eye and a clunking fist.

4. Writers. In the ’50s Kerouac wrote On The Road in a benzedrine-fuelled prose-frenzy on a continuous roll of paper, while Burroughs shot his wife in the head in Mexico and moved to Tangiers, using newspapers to form novels of rare brilliance with his pioneering cut-up technique. Modern writers tap away at their laptops fuelled by tea and ginger biscuits while a fat cat dozes contentedly by their side, frittering away most of their words on blogs and…Hang on, this is a rubbish argument, pretend you haven’t seen it.

5. Ladies Undergarments. In the ’50s ladies wore stockings and suspenders. Stockings and suspenders are brilliant. They are complex enough to be interesting from an engineering viewpoint but simple enough that, with practice, a man can learn to undo them easily. They are also great fun to tweak, resulting in a satisfying slapping noise when released – they’re even more fun to tweak than bra-straps. The modern equivalent to stockings and suspenders are tights. Tights are rubbish. The only excuse for ever choosing tights over stockings and suspenders is if you are a pair of bank-robbing Siamese twins.

6. Ladies Undergarments. In the ’50s bras were plain, under-wired things which gave some indication of the proportions of the protruberances contained within. Nowadays, women wear Wonderbras, which are awful things. You take an apparently spectacularly proportioned woman home, reach for her bra clasp and, having deftly unhooked it with a single-handed flourish, discover you’ve made molehills out of mountains.

7. Television. In the 1950s people on both television channels spoke with received pronunciation and wore evening dress while addressing weighty and sensible topics. These days, there are hundreds of channels full of the working classes. They sing and dance badly, there are women painted orange, men wearing horizontally striped jerseys with their tracksuit bottoms tucked into their socks, ruffians setting upon one another drunkenly, Piers Morgan. It’s rubbish.

Using the comments section is like asking if we can come out to play.

November 5, 2009