Tag Archives: The Smiths

SEVEN-year-old boy wins £10,000 for charity in rap competition

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SEVEN-year-old boy wins £10,000 for charity in FiNDAPROPERTY.COM rap competition

Celebrities, including Russell Brand and Mick Jagger, tweet support for winning rap

Kent-based children’s hospice chYps has received a £10,000 donation thanks to the rapping efforts of a seven-year-old boy who lost his younger brother to a rare form of cancer.

A total of 67 contestants battled it out in the FindaProperty.com Rap For A Cause competition in which Dartford-based Charlie Saunders and his father Tony Saunders – rapping as “Charlie Chyps and Divvy Dad” – won the contest with more than 6,870 public votes.

The competition, run by property website FindaProperty.com, was held in conjunction with a recent advertising campaign in which a number of characters rapped about their property needs.

The contest was closely fought, with the winner receiving only 1472 more votes than Leeds-based 11-year-old Dylan Broadbent – rapping as “Dylz” – who was representing The Christie Charity which funds projects that fall outside the scope of the NHS.

“Dylz” received huge online support, including over 5401 ‘likes’ on Facebook and, in the closing stages of the competition, a tweet of support from Johnny Marr, former guitarist of The Smiths and the comedian John Bishop. Charlie had some celebrity support of his own, with encouraging tweets from Russell Brand, Mick Jagger and Nadia Sawalha.

Charlie entered the competition to raise funds and awareness for chYps, the Kent-based children’s hospice that looked after his younger brother Oscar during his battle with Ewing’s Sarcoma. By providing homecare, chYps supported the Saunders and allowed them to spend us much time as possible away from hospitals while Oscar was gravely ill. The £10,000 prize is being donated to support chYps’ respite service.

Tracie Dempster – Head of Care, chYps, said: “Winning this £10,000 is absolutely amazing and will support the chYps service in so many ways. Much of our service is funded through charitable donations and core services that each family needs, such as specialist nurses that deliver cancer support and chemotherapy rely heavily on monies from the public.

“This £10,000 will help fund our chYps respite service, which is offered to all families. Just imagine what a difference a trip to the seaside could have on a child at the end of their life with competent staff to look after the child for the whole day. We are so thrilled to have won the money and are so grateful to Tony and Charlie for winning it for us in memory of Oscar.”

Tony Saunders said: “Losing Oscar was an incredibly traumatic experience, but without chYps it would have been a hell of a lot more traumatic.

“I kept saying to Charlie, if we get to number one we’re really lucky, but at least we’re doing it for the right reasons.

“If it wasn’t for chyps and the fact they provided treatment at home, we would have been at the hospital non-stop for 18 months. But instead I was still able to run my business and pay the mortgage, Charlie was still able to have a life and go to school.”

The competition was organised by property website FindaProperty.com, following their national TV advertising campaign featuring a rapping granny, young father, and father to be, who all rap at speed about their changing property needs. The contest ran for three-and-a-half months and contestants were encouraged to upload their own rap version of the advert. Visitors to the site were then able to vote for their favourite.

To see “Charlie Chyps and Divvy Dad” perform their winning rap, please visit rap.findaproperty.com.

Happy Martyr – One Square Mile | Music Review

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Happy Martyr rapper Alex Lusty is the greatest musician of all time. Move over Cobain, Marshall, Blackwell, Doughman et al. Lusty wrote the greatest lyric of all time in his previous outfit Frigid Vinegar when he sang “you’ll always come 2nd to football and music” on ‘How Cheap is Your Love’. Never has another human being been able to express my ethos in life quite as well as Mr Lusty. Since Frigid Vinegar and that release, back in 1999, Mr Lusty’s been a busy boy releasing music with 7 different bands, including this, a collaboration with Boz Boorer, formerly of The Polecats and now working with former Smiths miserablist Morrissey.

Happy Marty’s sound is an eclectic mix of hip hop, rap, punk and rockabilly that sounds like it should be the soundtrack to This Is England.

 

 

Opening track is classic Lusty, displaying every side of him including his achilles heel of lust and passion. It’s all love and romance and Lusty snarls the lyrics with anger and regret. Delightful. Rusty Nail is in a similar vein, with a beautiful guitar track and Lusty’s spitting lyrics. If you like good, interesting, thought-provoking lyrics then this is for you. The album continues in a similar mould and if there’s one criticism is that it gets a bit formulaic and samey with the songs morphing into one long stream of strummed guitars and rapped poems.

I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed the record though, it’s stunning. It’s just to get some more airtime on my iPod it could do with a bit more variety. The band certainly have it in their sound; ‘It Never Rains But It Pours’ hints at similarities with Mike Skinner, only less dull and more interesting. They also have ‘Old Skool’, the band’s final number. It’s a fun sing-along garage rock number with it’s refrain of “there’s no fool like an old fool and I am strictly old skool”. More variety wouldn’t go amiss but it’s enjoyable. Boorer’s guitar playing is enjoyable and Lusty’s tragi-comedy lyrics keep the listener entertained.

It’s a good album, not great. Hard to live up to things when you’re the greatest ever though. I’ll await the next HM record with excitement, though. “Ladies and gentlemen form an orderly queue – I might just be the right man for you” sings Lusty on ‘This Small Town’. Indeed, you’ll do for me.

Swearing at Motorists – Burn Down the Wire EP | Music Review

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Swearing at Motorists – Burn Down the Wire EP

Dave Doughman is a tough man to please if Wikipedia is to be believed. According to the website, always an infallible source of information, the Swearing at Motorists singer has seen 16 changes of drummers during the band’s 17 year existence.

S@M were originally formed in Dayton, Ohio in 1995 when Doughman teamed up with Don Thrasher, formerly of lo-fi kings Guided by Voices and since then he’s averaged one new drummer per year. Impressive too considering that “Burn Down the Wire” is the band’s work since 2006.

This four-song EP begins with the lovely Stop, Drop & Roll, which is typical S@M, built around Doughman’s scraggly voice with him strumming away with a beautiful melodic guitar sound. This is trademark ‘motorists. A cover of The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” gets put through the mincer and comes out rather nicely with the trademark S@M sound – often described as “the two-man Who”. I know I’m supposed to but I couldn’t have put it better myself.

It’s a lovely offering and one that you hope will be followed by more. And more. What the band do best is good songwriting, vocals that are at times angry and at others fragile and a mix of melodic guitar and skuzzy garage rock riffs. Imagine Thin Lizzy mixed with Queens of the Stone Age and you’re close.

Has it been worth the 6 year wait? Burn Down the Wire’s splendid but a mere morsel at four songs short and so hard to judge on that basis. A bit like when you’re thirsty – the quality of the water’s hard to tell with any clarity, you just need to ingest it quickly. Anyway, I’m still thirsty – more please Dave!

Burn Down the Wire is out now via http://swearingatmotorists.bandcamp.com/album/burn-down-the-wire