We Are Golden

When blogging about the summer of 1969 last week, I forgot to mention the infamous Helter Skelter murders by the Manson Family. It's remarkable that all that negative energy was in the air at (more or less) the same time as other such landmark events.

When Les Paul passed away at the wonderful age of 94 a couple of days ago, his death was marked with respect by many cognoscenti. Although he was credited with giving rock 'n roll its most essential element (i.e. the electric guitar) and pioneering another key element of the music industry (i.e. multitrack recording), there was none of the mass media attention afforded to Michael Jackson, or even Farrah Fawcett. It sure is a strange world we live in.

These are some of the thoughts swilling around in my head today as I prepared the 175th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast. Not that they actually have any bearing on the contents of this week's show, but they certainly give some context to what would be going on my blog if I hadn't given it up almost entirely for show notes of my weekly podcast.

I first played the music of the Maltese band Skimmed on my podcast in 2007, around the time I missed a gig they played at Naasha's, the now-defunct events lounge in San Gwann. They have now just released their debut single called Can't Stop, ahead of a planned EP launch on the 25th September at Lo Squero entitled Your Head Is Too Big For Your Crown. Their support act on that day will be none other than Brikkuni.

Doubt is the new recording name for Karl Baldacchino, who has also appeared on previous editions of the MMI podcast, albeit in a different guise. You may already know him as Synthact or as half of the due Corrupted Minds. I have no idea why he's now recording as Doubt (Karl, feel free to enlighten us through the comments function on this blog or your MySpace page, please) but I like the track Floating Free enough to gladly include it on this week's playlist.

Few Maltese cartoon characters have released their own pop song. So it's a delightful surprise to see Frans il-Ħamallu surfacing as MC Frans this summer. Funky Frans comes with an excellent video to accompany the song, with lyrics by Mr Herbal and music by Mr Mars. The song is quite worthy of a listen or two even without the video, but the video makes it a potential viral video hit among many Maltese internet users around the world; I'll eat my hat if you see this (uncensored) on TV in Malta. A follow-up will surely come our way sooner or later.

Last week's inclusion of ambient music has been well received by MMI listeners, enough to encourage me to play another track from this genre on MMI #175 too. This time the music is by newcomer Eric Scicluna who records as Krafteknique. The tune I've selected is called Thousand Needles and it's just one of several you can hear on his MySpace page, if this sort of thing is your cup of tea.

Gozitan metal band Inner Grey released their debut album If Symptoms Persist last year. They're playing some gigs this summer, so I thought it would be appropriate to include a track from the album as the closing song for this week's podcast. Save Me has some excellent guitar playing on it and it will undoubtedly delight all the band's fans that I've picked it to end my mid-summer show with.

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