#PARLOPHONE UK

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

The Beatles - Hello Goodbye

[fangomusic]

Nine albums: Blur.

Leisure (1991), Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994), The Great Escape (1995), Blur (1997), 13 (1999), Think Tank (2003), The Magic Whip (2015), The Ballad of Darren (2023).

[nineteenfiftysix]

pinkpantheress - just for me (To Hell With It, 2021)

[theunderestimator-2]

A picture worth way more than a thousand words: rockabilly legend & "Brand New Cadillac" songwriter Vince Taylor backstage with Joe Strummer in Paris in September 1981. The photo, taken by an unknown photographer, was in Mick Jones's possession and surfaced in 2019, when it was first published in Mojo UK magazine, (Dec. 2019 issue, p.23, Mojo UK).

According to Joe: "Vince Taylor was the beginning of British rock 'n' roll. Before him there was nothing".

(*from Keith Topping's book "The Complete Clash" Reynolds & Hearn Ltd London, the 2004 edition paperback, p.39-40): "…Born Brian Holden in London in 1939, (after the life in California and his obsession with Elvis Presley), A trip back to London in 1958 brought him a name-change… Taylor's second single for Parlophone, 'Pledging My Love', contained on the B-Side his own composition, 'Brand New Cadillac', an instant classic thanks to Taylor's histrionic vocal and guitarist Tony Sheridan's tense riff. Although it was never a hit in England, the song, and others like it, made Taylor a rock 'n' roll superstar in France during the early 1960s… His story inspired David Bowie, who met Taylor in the mid-60s and had a long conversation with him about aliens, to create the character of Ziggy Stardust. 'I met (Taylor) in The Pig's Foot restaurant in the early 80s', remembered Strummer. 'He talked to me for over five hours about the Duke Duchess of Windsor were planning to kill him with poisoned chocolate cake. .' Taylor's final years were spent as a virtual recluse in Switzerland, where he died in 1991…' .

(via)

[odk-2]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬 - 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 (𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐨) (𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟒) (MFSL: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab ) Paul McCartney from: “Beatles for Sale” (LP|UK) “Beatles VI” (LP|US)

Jangle Pop | Beatles

𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐂 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐞 @𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐞 (2662kbps) (Size: 49.7MB)

𝐉𝐮𝐤𝐞𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐔𝐊 (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Paul McCartney: Double-Tracked Lead Vocals / Bass John Lennon: Rhythm Guitar / Harmony Vocals George Harrison: Twelve-String Lead Guitar / Harmony Vocals Ringo Starr: Drums

George Martin: Piano

Produced by George Martin

Recorded: @ The EMI Studios (Abbey Road Studios) on September 29–30 and October 26, 1964 in London, England UK

Released on: December 4, 1964 (UK) June 14, 1965 (US)

Parlophone Records (UK) Capitol Records (US)

The track features a guitar riff played by George Harrison on his Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar. The sound was influential on the Byrds, who crafted their sound partly on the Beatles’ use of the Rickenbacker, and Harrison in turn adopted influences from the Byrds in his 1965 song “If I Needed Someone” - Wikipedia

[sweetpss]

My ranking based on tracks off:

Gorillaz - Demon Days

Demon Days is the second studio album by the British virtual band Gorillaz. It was released on 11 May 2005 in Japan and 23 May 2005 in the United Kingdom by Parlophone and May 24, 2005 in the United States by Virgin Records. Produced by Gorillaz, Danger Mouse, Jason Cox, and James Dring, it features De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, Roots Manuva, MF DOOM, Ike Turner, Bootie Brown of the Pharcyde, Shaun Ryder and Dennis Hopper.

As with the band's eponymous 2001 debut, Demon Days and its performances were accompanied by various multimedia, including interactive features on the Gorillaz website, animated music videos and animatics. The visuals were designed by the Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett, under his design company Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Demon Days reached the top 10 in 24 countries. It reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and number 6 on the US Billboard 200, and was later certified six times platinum in the UK and double platinum in the US. Outperforming their debut, the album has sold eight million copies worldwide. The album spawned the singles "Feel Good Inc.", "Dare", "Dirty Harry", "Kids with Guns", and "El Mañana"

Please recommend other albums for me to rank-

I’m open to any genre but favor:

Rock, Pop, Heavy metal, Punk rock, Alternative rock, Indie, Grunge, Pop rock, Gothic, Synth, New wave.

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today, on October 14th, 1991 - Queen Story!

- 'The Show Must Go On' /'Keep Yourself Alive' released in UK on Parlophone

🔸"'The Show Must Go On' came from Roger and John playing the sequence, and I started to put things down. At the beginning, it was just this chord sequence, but I had this strange feeling that it could be somehow important, and I got very impassioned and went and beavered away at it. I sat down with Freddie, and we decided what the theme should be and wrote the first verse. It's a long story, that song, but I always felt it would be important because we were dealing with things that were hard to talk about at the time, but in the world of music, you could do it."

- Brian May, Interview 1994

- B-Side: 'Keep Yourself Alive' by Brian May

[clangandclatter]

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [UK Parlophone Release] (26 May 1967)

[singlesablog]

The Imperial Phase

“Left to My Own Devices” (1988) Pet Shop Boys Parlophone / EMI Records (Written by Tennant / Lowe) Highest U.S. Billboard Chart Position – No. 84

I was faced with a choice at a difficult age Would I write a book?  Or should I take to the stage? But in the back of my head I heard distant feet Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat

- from “Left to My Own Devices”

“We had been so disciplined at making four-minute pop singles, with the exception of "It's a Sin", which is five minutes. The idea was to have an album where every track was a single

- Pet Shop Boys on the idea behind Introspective

I used to joke with a friend that the two albums in Pet Shop Boys catalog that sat next to one another could have swapped their titles: Introspective (1988) could have been titled Behaviour (1990), and vice versa.  Introspection is from the Latin (“to look within”), and I guess this kind of works; an album titled Self Referential would not be nearly as catchy, if more accurate. Oddly, I always thought of introspection as being related to looking backwards, like nostalgia; in the case of the Pet Shop Boys it is perhaps just a case of inverse-ness (gay people were once called inverts), or even a thoughtful kind of literal thinking.  But who knows, they could have just pulled the title out of a bag.  The duo was never averse to fashion.

The album (if you are unware) consists of six extended tracks, and unlike the quote above, only 4 of them were released as singles, “Domino Dancing”, “Devices”, “Always on My Mind” (which preceded the record and was presented in a much different version), and “It’s Alright”.  “It’s Alright” and “Always on My Mind” are covers, “I Want a Dog” and “I’m Not Scared” are recycled cuts, so the album only contained two original songs, “Domino Dancing” (a huge hit all over the world) and “Devices” (an even bigger hit in the UK, but not in the US).  Like the EP Disco, an earlier collection of 6 extended cuts, it treated the form with respect, but also expanded the idea of what a proper album could be.  To my mind it is easily one of their very best, most original, and certainly most popular (internationally it is their best seller ever).  I love every track (with a small mark off for “It’s Alright”, which does grow a little tedious), but none as much as “Left to My Own Devices”, which is formally audacious and endlessly, thrillingly queer from a gay male perspective.

I was faced with a choice at a difficult age Would I write a book?  Or should I take to the stage?

Back to the idea of introspection, most young gay men have an intense inner life, and we of a certain generation (coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s) were forced to find our culture on our own.  “Left to My Own Devices” is a catalogue of the thoughts and ideas that might roam around in a bachelor’s world.  One of the slyer things about the song is that most of it is spoken word.  Here we find Neil rapping (again!) but instead of trying to create the beat the effect is more like reportage than singing.  The lyrics, as usual, are a collage of ideas carefully cut and pasted to create an atmosphere of bourgeois dandyism (“I phone up a friend who’s a party animal”, “we’ll do some shopping”)—I mean, there is a lot of tea drinking in these lyrics, and I can never be sure that this is either very gay, very British, or both.  I think the Pet Shop Boys, song to song, are generally more in search of a tone where content is concerned, and I also think that tone is always meant to elude you a bit.  As long as you are dancing I don’t think they care what you think, and one sure thing about Introspective is that this certainly is a dance record, and not well understood as one of the most purchased and successful House records ever made, and if you are ever in any doubt of that, please focus on the opening of “Left to My Own Devices”, where they employed an actual opera singer (Sally Bradshaw) to sing the word “house” over and over again as if it were an aria.

All of this can be seen as sardonic (their infamous “irony”) but I always prefer to think of it as sophistication; at the very least, Pet Shop Boys take their ideas and music seriously.  If you read my blog post on Chic’s “Good Times” you can easily understand the courage of performing this style of music in earnest in a world of the backlash that “Disco Sucks” created, which effectively took the bubbles out the late 70s, forced an entire world of music underground, and ironically exploded the genre into many different forms, some of which this record preserves.  There is a level of irony abounding in “Left to My Own Devices”; aside from the gay thing, perhaps that subversiveness is built into the genre of disco music itself.  The track did not really chart in the US outside of the clubs, but that hardly mattered: one could really enjoy Introspective as a gestalt, one long thought, or even one long track.  Whenever I find that I have an itch to listen to the album it is inevitably for the opening of “Devices”, where amidst a full symphony Neil opens with “I get out of bed at half past ten” and then proceeds to take you on a long ride describing a mundane day conducted by the best producers and mixers in the world.  It is the transformation of the mundane into the extraordinary, and also the testament of an inner life revealed.  In contrast to the general success of the album, perhaps “Left to My Own Devices” is the real innovation of the 6 tracks; it may not be the most American, or the most well-known, but being an invert myself, I must say: I rather like it that way.  Is it an irony that a disco record can make one feel seen?  Maybe not.  To some of us, hiding in plain sight just comes naturally.

---

Behaviour (1990).

Tennant later regretted the release of Introspective so soon after the previous album, Actually, feeling that it pigeon-holed them as a dance act.  The melancholy follow-up, Behaviour, generally considered to be their finest achievement, was a relative failure.

I was surprised to learn that “The imperial phase” was actually put into the vernacular by Neil Tennant. The imperial phase is the period in which a musical artist is regarded to be at their commercial and creative peak simultaneously, and was coined to describe the group's feelings on their career circa "Domino Dancing" (1988). Critic Tom Ewing described three criteria for defining an artist's imperial phase as "command, permission, and self-definition".

It was genius producer Trevor Horn who came up with the line “Debussy to a disco beat” tossing it off while laying down a track.  Tennant, ever the historian, collaged it into the song, and gave Horn a writing credit on the b-side “The Sound of the Atom Splitting” as compensation.

Apparently, Neil Tennant’s mother was upset at hearing him sing “I was a lonely boy, no strength, no joy, in a world of my own” but it seems that this is just a character he was play acting: he apparently had a happy childhood.

"In a secret life I was a Roundhead general" – [In British history] the "Roundheads" were the pro-Parliamentary forces during the English Civil War of the mid-1600s. The name "Roundheads" came from the fact that they generally wore their hair trimmed short, unlike their opponents, the long-haired "Cavaliers" who supported King Charles I. (And in case you're not up on your British history, Charles I was ultimately defeated, deposed, and beheaded.) Again, Neil has pointed out that, as a child, he himself would actually have been far more sympathetic to the Cavaliers (in contrast to his more anti-royalist sympathies as an adult). 

- (Directly quoted from geowayne.com)

Pet Shop Boys are still recording. Nonetheless, the Boys 15th studio album, was released April 26th, 2024 to near universal praise.

-----

This post was written using analog techniques to collate facts.  After deciding on a topic, one Wikipedia entry will naturally suggest another, and then I let those concepts create an environment of creative association rather than mere fact finding. I do cross reference sources to find what is most interesting.  While some small details may be disputable, none is used for any other reason than to open up the idea at hand, and to support the belief that most pop songs are indeed works of art, with the great ones renewing themselves endlessly.

[bonedev]

Sorry this is me just being nosy, what made you so nervous about getting sued for copyright infringement? As far as I know as long as you make your own assets and such it falls under the category of parody, and as long as you don't sell it(ignoring the music part, which you could get around by using covers). Also I actually really like the monster dating sim idea, do you have any spisific OC's in mind that you would want to use?

To answer you first question

This was something I should have delved deeper on. I am NOT giving up on MxK (because this is something I really wanna do :( ) It's just I really, really, really need to do a lot of CYA (cover your ass) if I want this game to not be killed off before it even gets started. It may take a while to get permission, since I am using Damon & Jamie's original characters-- they may not mind, but big labels might. IDK how strict they could be. I'd rather be safe than finish the game, release it & get slapped with fees/lawsuits, even if they're parodied or not overtly referenced.

I plan on using just instrumentals of Gorillaz's songs in the game, but again, I don't know how strict Parlophone UK/Warner is about fan projects using their IP. I don't think a game like this has been made before, so I don't know what legal loopholes I have to go through to even make references to other musicians, animes & other IPs in MxK. I don't know how far 'fair use' or 'parody law' will go for something like this.

Since Damon & Jamie are celebrities with their own personal lives, I don't know how active they are on social media, but I pray I can reach someone who could pass this word onto them. I'm not giving up. I won't let this take the wind out of my sails. At least I'm asking now rather than when the game is near completion

As for your second question:

I have my own OCs & with my husband's help, we've come up with the idea for 16 characters, 8 guys & 8 girls. A few examples will be: A robo-cat boy, a clown boy, a fairy boy, an ogre girl, a vampire girl, & a mummy girl.

They won't all just be generic monsters. I've had a fascination with monsters & mythology from all over the world & want to incorporate monsters from all over the world (ex: a vampire from the Philippines is called a Manananggal).

This could be an opportunity to finally show off my OCs & ideas, since I've been so anxious & scared to show them off outside of DeviantArt or my husband & friends.

Plus, DnD & Baldur's Gate 3 have been mega inspirations for game mechanics

[fangomusic]

Blur, The Ballad of Darren

New music Wednesday

Out of the blue, the band surprised everyone by dropping their ninth album, a remarkable, daring, and genuinely innovative creation. The work presents a contemplative and frequently melancholic collection of songs, demonstrating that they possess significant insights into aging gracefully without losing their edge and staying up-to-date.

[joshuaboakley]

Loving the Alien (2002 Remaster)

https://www.youtube.com/watch/bfevmGay_GE Loving the Alien (2002 Remaster) Provided to YouTube by Parlophone UK Loving the Alien (2002 Remaster) · David Bowie Loving The Alien E.P. ℗ 2002 Jones/Tintoretto Entertainment Company LLC under exclusive licence to Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company Producer: David Bowie Vocals: David Bowie Producer: Derek Bramble Producer: Hugh…

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

REPORTEDLY THE FAB FOUR'S MOST UNEVEN ALBUM -- HAPPY 60th B-DAY, "BEATLES FOR SALE."

PIC(S) INFO: Released on this day 60 years ago -- Mega spotlight on "Beatles for Sale," the fourth studio album by the English rock band THE BEATLES, released on December 4, 1964 in the UK on EMI's Parlophone label. Sleeve photo by Robert Freeman.

ALBUM OVERVIEW: "It was inevitable that the constant grind of touring, writing, promoting, and recording would grate on THE BEATLES, but the weariness of "Beatles for Sale" comes as something of a shock. Only five months before, the group released the joyous "A Hard Day's Night." Now, they sound beaten, worn, and, in Lennon's case, bitter and self-loathing.

His opening trilogy ("No Reply," "I'm a Loser," "Baby's in Black") is the darkest sequence on any Beatles record, setting the tone for the album. Moments of joy pop up now and again, mainly in the forms of covers and the dynamic "Eight Days a Week," but the very presence of six covers after the triumphant all-original "A Hard Day's Night" feels like an admission of defeat or at least a regression. (It doesn't help that Lennon's cover of his beloved obscurity "Mr. Moonlight" winds up as arguably the worst thing the group ever recorded.)

Beneath those surface suspicions, however, there are some important changes on "Beatles for Sale," most notably Lennon's discovery of Bob Dylan and folk-rock. The opening three songs, along with "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party," are implicitly confessional and all quite bleak, which is a new development.

This spirit winds up overshadowing McCartney's cheery "I'll Follow the Sun" or the thundering covers of "Rock & Roll Music," "Honey Don't," and "Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!," and the weariness creeps up in unexpected places -- "Every Little Thing," "What You're Doing," even George's cover of Carl Perkins' "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" -- leaving the impression that Beatlemania may have been fun but now the group is exhausted. That exhaustion results in the group's most uneven album, but its best moments find them moving from Merseybeat to the sophisticated pop/rock they developed in mid-career."

-- ALLMUSIC, review of "Beatles for Sale," written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Sources: www.discogs.com/master/45799-The-Beatles-Beatles-For-Sale, X, various, etc...

[kruemel8]

Do you think they aimed a bit too high with five dates in the UK? VIPs are still available for three of them

I have no idea why they added so many gigs in the UK and I hope they (mostly Parlophone I think) have planned some promo. Tomorrow his show with MTV will be aired first time but I think that’s not enough. It’s still early days and we will see what happens in the coming weeks.

[lboogie1906]

Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu (November 7, 1988) known by his stage name Tinie Tempah, is a British rapper, singer, composer, and entrepreneur. He has been signed to Parlophone Records 2009, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. He created his own entertainment company Disturbing London in 2006, along with his cousin Dumi Oburota.

After releasing several mixtapes, he released his long-awaited debut album, Disc-Overy, in October 2010. Preceded by two British #1 singles, “Pass Out” and “Written in the Stars”, the album charted at number one and was certified Platinum the next year. In February 2011, he won two Brit Awards for Best British Breakthrough Act and Best British Single.

In November 2013, he released his second album, entitled Demonstration. Preceded by the top ten singles “Trampoline” and “Children of the Sun”, the album charted at #3 and was certified gold by the BPI the next year. In June 2015, he released “Not Letting Go”, the first single from his third album Youth. This gave him his sixth UK #1, passing Dizzee Rascal as the most by any UK rap artist. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today - March 5th, 1976

Eddie Howell "The Man From Manhattan" 7" single released

Freddie Mercury: producer/piano/bvs

Brian May: guitar

Excerpts from an interview

Jacky Gunn-Smith - Official International Queen Fan Club

Eddie Howell’s ‘Man From Manhattan‘ is one of the best known and best loved of all Queen’s collaborations.

Recorded in mid January 1976 at Sarm East Studios in London, the song was produced by Freddie Mercury, who also played piano and sang backing vocals on the track and featured Brian May on guitar. The record is so reminiscent of “A Night At The Opera” in both instrumentation and mood, that many fans regard it as virtually an “Opera” out-take. When it was launched as a single on Warner Bros records in 1976, it became a turntable hit in the UK and looked set to chart until music industry bureaucracy halted it in it’s tracks.

Birmingham born Eddie Howell began his professional career in the late 60’s, when Chrysalis music picked up on his songwriting demos and introduced him to an independent record producer, who in turn licensed his first single “Easy Street”, as a one-off deal to Parlophone in 1969.

Working as a songwriter throughout the early 70’s, Eddie’s next venture into recording came in 1975 when he signed to Warner Bros records as an artist. thursdaysHe released two singles, “Long Story” and “Can’t get over you”, and his debut LP “The Eddie Howell Gramophone Record”, which featured members of “Brand X” and guitarist Gary Moore.

The album was launched at a promotional gig at Thursday’s club in Kensington. Eddie’s band included Phil Collins on congas, Jack Lancaster on saxophone and Robin Lumley on keyboards. Explains Eddie, ”In the audience that night was Freddie Mercury who had been brought along to the gig by my manager David Minns. It was there that he first heard “Man From Manhattan”, which was a newly written song included in the set. After the gig we met and he was very complimentary about the song and offered to produce it. I remember we all went down to ‘The Elephant on the River’ to celebrate”.

Enthused by the prospect of his first foray into production, Freddie wasted little time in getting started. ”I gave him a two track guitar/vocal demo of the song” recalls Eddie, ”and a couple of days later he called and said let’s get going. Studio time was booked at Sarm East Studios and true to form, Freddie quickly took control of the sessions; ”He did lots of pre-production work on the song’s structure and the harmony arrangements”, reveals Ed. ” He had a mini cassette recorder loaded with ideas for the track, backing vocals and answering phrases”.

”We took a week to record the song”, remembers Eddie, ”which was a long time in those days, but because of Freddie’s involvement, Warners gave us a blank cheque. The sessions were quite intense, there was never a lull. Brian came in to play hismikestone2 guitar parts and the musical rapport between him and Freddie was plain to see, they were on the same page. One day, a hand-held spinning bell-cymbal in the key of ‘D’ was required by Freddie for one ping at the end of the track and the studio didn’t have one, so a runner was dispatched to scour the streets of London in search of one. The session was adjourned for half a day while we waited down at the Shazam Indian restaurant in Brick Lane for the bell to arrive. It eventually arrived and took about a minute to record, it must have been the most expensive ping ever recorded”.

On the final day of recording, a trio of Warner Bros top brass flew in from California and made a beeline for Sarm East studios to meet Freddie. Recalls Eddie, ”They probably thought the red carpet would be rolled out as they were paying for the recording sessions, but instead they were kept waiting in reception for about four hours. When they were eventually granted an audience, the charm offensive was full onlongstory3 and it was all smiles and bonhomie. At the end of the session, after the final playback, Freddie turned to me and said, ‘If this isn’t a hit, sue Warner Bros ‘ ”.

The finished article obviously had a heavy Queen influence with the presence of Freddie and Brian on the track, but ”Man from Manhattan” was far from a tribute to Queen. ”I wrote the song after my first trip to Manhattan in late 74”, reveals Eddie, ”I was reading ‘The Godfather Papers’ by Mario Puzo and the song was about those mafia characters who lead a double life. Musically, I had ‘Dead End Street’, by the Kinks in mind, complete with trombones and a walking double-bass”.

Prior to the ban, ”Manhattan” made top 50 in the UK, top 20 in Australia, Belgium and South Africa and top 5 in Holland, but sadly, as a consequence of the ban, it was never released in America or many of the world’s other major territories.

When it was issued as a single in 1976, Warner’s publicity department played up the Queen connection as much as they could, and “Manhattan” rapidly became a turntable hit in the UK. The record received heavy rotation on the airwaves – particularly in Europe where it became a big hit. Then, just when it looked set to climb the charts in the UK, the Musicians Union mysteriously discovered that Jerome Rimson, the American bassist hired by Freddie for the sessions, had been working in Britain without a permit. This obliged them to place a ban on any and all further UK media exposure due to his ‘Illegally’ recorded playing. A decision which effectively killed off the record.

Having recently regained the rights to his back catalogue recorded during his time with the label, Eddie is now releasing the tracks digitally. ”Man from Manhattan” is first up, more to follow…

(source: https://manfrommanhattan.wordpress.com/)

📸 Pic: Freddie Mercury and Eddie Howell in control room