Murdoc Niccals: Coachella Bound
MTVMusic, April 2010
So...long time since I’ve updated my entries on my mucky little MTV Music Blog here. What have I been up to? Well, loads of rubbish really. Since I last posted, the Gorillaz ‘Plastic Beach’ album came out premièring at Number One in most places round the world. The third and most glorious instalment of my rich & sticky Gorillaz legacy! Snazzy! A couple of US and UK Number Two spot’s too...Not bad. Mmmm.....Working out just like I always planned.....
And then there was our STYLO video which exploded onto the Net, smashing a load of records (I’m too thick to even remember which ones), a mini cinematic exposé, featuring me, 2D, and my cyborg Noodle, in a horrific car chase through the desert. If you ain’t seen it, check it out. It’s a Number One with a bullet!
Plus, right, also the evil entity that is ‘The Boogieman’ put in an unannounced appearance in the footage. I might as well spill the beans. Tell you what that thing is. The Boogieman is some underworld, demonic creature, a swirling mass of all the wickedness in the world, wrapped up in an ever-shifting cape of evil with a gasmask for a face. He is all horror personified.
(Urrrp!) Truth be told...I kind of ...promised him a lot of stuff early on. Made a deal with him. When I was still into Black Metal and all that rubbish, and I invoked him...invited him into this world...and then struck a deal with him. I needed certain people off my back and, well, he wanted ‘in’ on the Gorillaz action. I mean, who doesn’t? He said it’d give him access to the minds, hearts and souls of impressionable kids worldwide and if I agreed to, er...‘endorse’ his evil actions he’d help shift us right up the charts. Get rid of all the hassle, and make sure our album charted high. Sounded all dandy, from my point of view....
But I’ve signed a few of those Faustian pacts, and to be honest I’ve reneged on everyone of them...when it’s comes to pay up, I’m always off. Bills? I just mark them “Return to Sender”. So now he’s after me. Big style. Apparently he wants to eat my soul with “a nice Chianti” for all eternity. I think I’ve really p**sed him off. So that’s him in the STYLO video, trying to track me down. Schweinhund! I never even saw him until I got the footage back to Plastic Beach. It frightened the life out of me.
So not only do I have that to contend with all that, if you look at the video I’m also being tailed by some iconic-looking bounty hunter, who’s trying to blow my brains out for some reason. Still haven’t figured out exactly who the Bruce Willis ‘look-ie-likey’ is, but.... unless, er...that is the real Bruce Willis. In which case that’s....pretty scary stuff. It’s all scary, if you think about it. I only managed to get away from this nutter by driving my car off a cliff and into the sea. Close shave. And I thought being in a band was meant to be fun....
My therapist said something redundant like “the best way to deal with it was to confront it, head on.”. So I, er...cobbled together all the footage, the car chase, The Boogieman, the fat cop, the maniac bounty-hunter and everything and used it to promote our STYLO single....Good idea, yeah? That was mine too. Still, great video.....The stuff legends are made of.
So on top of that I did a great Gorillaz A-Z, a trawl through all of our musical influences, for Radio One. With the DJ Rob Da Bank. Very entertaining. He kept trying to touch my leg through the interview, which is a bit unsavoury, but from a musical point of view I think the programme gives a great roundabout view of where I’m at, folks. Everything from Dr. Alimantado to Zapp.... And here’s the link. Click on it, if you’re brave enough.....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r7mdw/BBC_Radio_1s_Stories_The_A_to_Z_of_Gorillaz/
That came out very slinky! And apart from all that crap, I’ve been up to something very strange, very exciting...
So, here’s the coo. The real news. The Big STUFF. ...
April 18th,, 2010. Gorillaz, oh yeah, GORILLAZ are headlining the magnificent Coachella festival out in Palm Springs, California. That’s right! We’re bringing our King Kong-sized sound right out to you Stateside to stomp all over your festival.
Now, as you might know I’m a man or two down on the regular Gorillaz band member front. I haven’t seen our guitarist Noodle since the El Mañana video that we shot back in 2006. That’s the one where the floating island got shot down and burst into flames with Noodle still on it. Well I’m not sure if you know, but that wasn’t supposed to happen. No, we got tailed onto the video shot by a couple of black helicopters, and they shot the island down, while we were filming, with Noodle on it, as a kind of warning, er...to me...for an unpaid debt....and I haven’t seen Noodle since. Still...great video.
Anyway, all I’ve got of our guitarist now is this cyborg version I built out of the DNA remains I found at the site. I picked up what I could and stuck it in a jar. I had this cyborg replica built out of these scrapings, kind of ‘Six Million Dollar Man’ - styleee. The cyborg, she plays a great guitar, but...I guess...she ain’t Noodle. But still. And ...Russel, our drummer’s still missing too. Well I say missing, that’s not true. He’s swimming his way over to Plastic Beach as we speak. I can see him in the water. Headed this way. Big bald-headed this way. And he’s MASSIVE. Must’ve been something he ate....
And our singer, 2D, I’ve got him with me, but y’know, he ain’t what you’d call heavy artillery...Not really the kind of guns big enough to headline a festival like Coachella as a first proper Gorillaz gig since we split in 2006....Which, even by my quite arrogant and ambitious standards, is a bit cheeky....
So, I can’t really use these guys, they’re in scraps. Anyway, to cut a long story short, with our regular Gorillaz band in pieces, I commissioned this band, right, a bunch of crack-troop session musicians, former henchmen and a couple of genuine rock legends and got them all headed-up by Mr. Damon Albarn, my old musical compadre, and Advisor-In-Chief to Gorillaz. He’s always been on hand to help us out.
This is how it went down..... Under his watchful gaze he took a couple of members of his old Gorillaz live band set up, Mike Smith the keyboard player, Cass Browne the old Gorillaz live drummer, and mixed in some new blood of the likes of Jeff Wooton, genius guitar protégé, a second keyboardist named Jesse Hackett and Gabriel Wallace, a Chicago rhythm heavyweight on extra drums ...and then added a sprinkle of some genuine ‘old school boys’ with a pedigree that any dog would tear their own tail off to play with.
D’you know what I’m saying? Get on this!!! To finish this band off right Damon book-ended this entourage with two former members of The Clash. YEAH! I KNOW! Fantastic! The Paul Simonon and The Mick Jones from your favourite band and mine....THE CLASH!!
So we gathered this lot up, stuck them in a room together with a crate of rum and 40 Rothman cigarettes and let them work out how to play MY album live. Mmmm....My hearts gone all fluttery. So when they were ready, and sounding ship-shaped, we stuck them out on the road on a tear-up round The British Isles, a bunch of secret fanclub gigs, to see if they could cut it live with the fans...
So I spent the last month or so sneaking off to the rehearsals, then stalking them up and down the country on this trail of secret gigs they performed. I was always in disguise. Had to be.. I went once as a chubby purple-haired Goth girl with big floppy lallies, another time I went dressed in lederhosen and an Alpine feathered cap, looking like the small wooden idiot boy Pinocchio.....Another time I went dressed as some kind of f**KIng nerd. No-one would recognise me dressed like that, would they. And my reasoning behind all this stupid behaviour...?
Well, I needed to check out the band, y’know, incognito. There’s too many goons on my trail for me to go out as Murdoc Niccals. And of course the G-club Gorillaz fans would just rip me apart. So I went in disguise. You see, I needed to check where we’re at, because, (and this is the thing)....I’m training this band to be my, our, Gorillaz backing band LIVE at Coachella. This lot are going to be my Gorillaz backing band!
How heavy is that?!
I’m going to take this lot over to LA, and there we’ve got some rehearsals with the collaborators, people like Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Shaun Ryder and er....Mark E. Smith....and Mos Def and De La Soul and, well, I could go on but it’d be ridiculous. Especially when I mention the choirs and the recorded visuals and the exotic orchestras...Anyway, if this lot cut it and it don’t sound like a punch-up in a music shop, I’ll insert myself like the heavyweight showbiz legend I am, right slap-bang into the middle of all of it, LIVE.... AT COACHELLA!!!
How amazing is that?!!?! It’ll be the history of music, worldwide, performing for you live on stage! If this doesn’t blow your socks out the park you’re just dead inside. Seriously. This is it. This is the one. There will be no other gig like this. I’m polishing my bass as f-f-f-ffuriously as I can. And to let you all know how it’s going down, I’m going to send out live updates and up-to-the minute news on my stupid Twitter site (that’s @MurdocGorillaz if you’re following)
Also, right, I’m going to keep my own mucky journal, with pen and paper and Polaroids, like a grown-up, throughout the whole thing! So check that out! I’ll probably fire the finished document into the Internet abyss once it’s all done. So you can see for yourself.
I’m not a man prone to excitement but this Coachella gig really is the pinnacle of all things musical.
Ineedabighitofrumrightnowtocalmmedown...Mmmmmmmmm.......(slurrrrp!!))
World War II, D-Day, The Moon Landings, The Death of Elvis....Birth of Christ! This is history in the making. If you don’t get in on this, and get your head in gear, your grandchildren, in years to come, are going to squint at you in confusion and probably kick you in the shins at your monumental stupidity. It’s not to be missed.
TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP BY!
COACHELLA, BABY!!
GORILLAZ LIVE! THE TIME IS NOW!!!! SUCK IT UP WHILE IT’S RIPE AND READY!!!!
Ciao for now, ‘Rillaz fans, and I’ll keep you all posted....And remember. The future is unwritten!!
Yours truly,
M. Niccals
Gorillaz of Plastic Beach.
xxxxx
And then there was our STYLO video which exploded onto the Net, smashing a load of records (I’m too thick to even remember which ones), a mini cinematic exposé, featuring me, 2D, and my cyborg Noodle, in a horrific car chase through the desert. If you ain’t seen it, check it out. It’s a Number One with a bullet!
Plus, right, also the evil entity that is ‘The Boogieman’ put in an unannounced appearance in the footage. I might as well spill the beans. Tell you what that thing is. The Boogieman is some underworld, demonic creature, a swirling mass of all the wickedness in the world, wrapped up in an ever-shifting cape of evil with a gasmask for a face. He is all horror personified.
(Urrrp!) Truth be told...I kind of ...promised him a lot of stuff early on. Made a deal with him. When I was still into Black Metal and all that rubbish, and I invoked him...invited him into this world...and then struck a deal with him. I needed certain people off my back and, well, he wanted ‘in’ on the Gorillaz action. I mean, who doesn’t? He said it’d give him access to the minds, hearts and souls of impressionable kids worldwide and if I agreed to, er...‘endorse’ his evil actions he’d help shift us right up the charts. Get rid of all the hassle, and make sure our album charted high. Sounded all dandy, from my point of view....
But I’ve signed a few of those Faustian pacts, and to be honest I’ve reneged on everyone of them...when it’s comes to pay up, I’m always off. Bills? I just mark them “Return to Sender”. So now he’s after me. Big style. Apparently he wants to eat my soul with “a nice Chianti” for all eternity. I think I’ve really p**sed him off. So that’s him in the STYLO video, trying to track me down. Schweinhund! I never even saw him until I got the footage back to Plastic Beach. It frightened the life out of me.
So not only do I have that to contend with all that, if you look at the video I’m also being tailed by some iconic-looking bounty hunter, who’s trying to blow my brains out for some reason. Still haven’t figured out exactly who the Bruce Willis ‘look-ie-likey’ is, but.... unless, er...that is the real Bruce Willis. In which case that’s....pretty scary stuff. It’s all scary, if you think about it. I only managed to get away from this nutter by driving my car off a cliff and into the sea. Close shave. And I thought being in a band was meant to be fun....
My therapist said something redundant like “the best way to deal with it was to confront it, head on.”. So I, er...cobbled together all the footage, the car chase, The Boogieman, the fat cop, the maniac bounty-hunter and everything and used it to promote our STYLO single....Good idea, yeah? That was mine too. Still, great video.....The stuff legends are made of.
So on top of that I did a great Gorillaz A-Z, a trawl through all of our musical influences, for Radio One. With the DJ Rob Da Bank. Very entertaining. He kept trying to touch my leg through the interview, which is a bit unsavoury, but from a musical point of view I think the programme gives a great roundabout view of where I’m at, folks. Everything from Dr. Alimantado to Zapp.... And here’s the link. Click on it, if you’re brave enough.....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r7mdw/BBC_Radio_1s_Stories_The_A_to_Z_of_Gorillaz/
That came out very slinky! And apart from all that crap, I’ve been up to something very strange, very exciting...
So, here’s the coo. The real news. The Big STUFF. ...
April 18th,, 2010. Gorillaz, oh yeah, GORILLAZ are headlining the magnificent Coachella festival out in Palm Springs, California. That’s right! We’re bringing our King Kong-sized sound right out to you Stateside to stomp all over your festival.
Now, as you might know I’m a man or two down on the regular Gorillaz band member front. I haven’t seen our guitarist Noodle since the El Mañana video that we shot back in 2006. That’s the one where the floating island got shot down and burst into flames with Noodle still on it. Well I’m not sure if you know, but that wasn’t supposed to happen. No, we got tailed onto the video shot by a couple of black helicopters, and they shot the island down, while we were filming, with Noodle on it, as a kind of warning, er...to me...for an unpaid debt....and I haven’t seen Noodle since. Still...great video.
Anyway, all I’ve got of our guitarist now is this cyborg version I built out of the DNA remains I found at the site. I picked up what I could and stuck it in a jar. I had this cyborg replica built out of these scrapings, kind of ‘Six Million Dollar Man’ - styleee. The cyborg, she plays a great guitar, but...I guess...she ain’t Noodle. But still. And ...Russel, our drummer’s still missing too. Well I say missing, that’s not true. He’s swimming his way over to Plastic Beach as we speak. I can see him in the water. Headed this way. Big bald-headed this way. And he’s MASSIVE. Must’ve been something he ate....
And our singer, 2D, I’ve got him with me, but y’know, he ain’t what you’d call heavy artillery...Not really the kind of guns big enough to headline a festival like Coachella as a first proper Gorillaz gig since we split in 2006....Which, even by my quite arrogant and ambitious standards, is a bit cheeky....
So, I can’t really use these guys, they’re in scraps. Anyway, to cut a long story short, with our regular Gorillaz band in pieces, I commissioned this band, right, a bunch of crack-troop session musicians, former henchmen and a couple of genuine rock legends and got them all headed-up by Mr. Damon Albarn, my old musical compadre, and Advisor-In-Chief to Gorillaz. He’s always been on hand to help us out.
This is how it went down..... Under his watchful gaze he took a couple of members of his old Gorillaz live band set up, Mike Smith the keyboard player, Cass Browne the old Gorillaz live drummer, and mixed in some new blood of the likes of Jeff Wooton, genius guitar protégé, a second keyboardist named Jesse Hackett and Gabriel Wallace, a Chicago rhythm heavyweight on extra drums ...and then added a sprinkle of some genuine ‘old school boys’ with a pedigree that any dog would tear their own tail off to play with.
D’you know what I’m saying? Get on this!!! To finish this band off right Damon book-ended this entourage with two former members of The Clash. YEAH! I KNOW! Fantastic! The Paul Simonon and The Mick Jones from your favourite band and mine....THE CLASH!!
So we gathered this lot up, stuck them in a room together with a crate of rum and 40 Rothman cigarettes and let them work out how to play MY album live. Mmmm....My hearts gone all fluttery. So when they were ready, and sounding ship-shaped, we stuck them out on the road on a tear-up round The British Isles, a bunch of secret fanclub gigs, to see if they could cut it live with the fans...
So I spent the last month or so sneaking off to the rehearsals, then stalking them up and down the country on this trail of secret gigs they performed. I was always in disguise. Had to be.. I went once as a chubby purple-haired Goth girl with big floppy lallies, another time I went dressed in lederhosen and an Alpine feathered cap, looking like the small wooden idiot boy Pinocchio.....Another time I went dressed as some kind of f**KIng nerd. No-one would recognise me dressed like that, would they. And my reasoning behind all this stupid behaviour...?
Well, I needed to check out the band, y’know, incognito. There’s too many goons on my trail for me to go out as Murdoc Niccals. And of course the G-club Gorillaz fans would just rip me apart. So I went in disguise. You see, I needed to check where we’re at, because, (and this is the thing)....I’m training this band to be my, our, Gorillaz backing band LIVE at Coachella. This lot are going to be my Gorillaz backing band!
How heavy is that?!
I’m going to take this lot over to LA, and there we’ve got some rehearsals with the collaborators, people like Bobby Womack, Little Dragon, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Shaun Ryder and er....Mark E. Smith....and Mos Def and De La Soul and, well, I could go on but it’d be ridiculous. Especially when I mention the choirs and the recorded visuals and the exotic orchestras...Anyway, if this lot cut it and it don’t sound like a punch-up in a music shop, I’ll insert myself like the heavyweight showbiz legend I am, right slap-bang into the middle of all of it, LIVE.... AT COACHELLA!!!
How amazing is that?!!?! It’ll be the history of music, worldwide, performing for you live on stage! If this doesn’t blow your socks out the park you’re just dead inside. Seriously. This is it. This is the one. There will be no other gig like this. I’m polishing my bass as f-f-f-ffuriously as I can. And to let you all know how it’s going down, I’m going to send out live updates and up-to-the minute news on my stupid Twitter site (that’s @MurdocGorillaz if you’re following)
Also, right, I’m going to keep my own mucky journal, with pen and paper and Polaroids, like a grown-up, throughout the whole thing! So check that out! I’ll probably fire the finished document into the Internet abyss once it’s all done. So you can see for yourself.
I’m not a man prone to excitement but this Coachella gig really is the pinnacle of all things musical.
Ineedabighitofrumrightnowtocalmmedown...Mmmmmmmmm.......(slurrrrp!!))
World War II, D-Day, The Moon Landings, The Death of Elvis....Birth of Christ! This is history in the making. If you don’t get in on this, and get your head in gear, your grandchildren, in years to come, are going to squint at you in confusion and probably kick you in the shins at your monumental stupidity. It’s not to be missed.
TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP BY!
COACHELLA, BABY!!
GORILLAZ LIVE! THE TIME IS NOW!!!! SUCK IT UP WHILE IT’S RIPE AND READY!!!!
Ciao for now, ‘Rillaz fans, and I’ll keep you all posted....And remember. The future is unwritten!!
Yours truly,
M. Niccals
Gorillaz of Plastic Beach.
xxxxx