Avatar Your New Favourite Band: Broken Bells

Welcome to the first instalment of what might become a regular music feature. In Your New Favourite Band we take a look at the people behind one of the latest beat combos in the pop charts. This week, please welcome Broken Bells.

Broken Bells in the darkBrooklyn-based pop combo Broken Bells come from Brooklyn in America. On the left is Thatch Heidelberg (left), who plays moody guitar and taps his foot on one of those mad pedal things that records bits of what you’re doing and then plays them back to make loops, you know, KT Tunstall used to use one when she played live, I wonder what happened to her. Heidelberg wears his anorak zipped up to the top because he feels the cold quite easily.

On the right is Winston Forthwright (right), a stage name for a man some will know by his real name (Winston Forthrite) who enjoyed limited success with a country and western EP back in 2008 titled Oh My Long Lost Darling’s Shoes. Forthwright provides lead vocals for Broken Bells, his soulful high-pitched voice almost inaudible at times except to dogs, and accompanies songs with his giant five-foot tambourine and sometimes the kazoo. He generates a much greater amount of body heat and prefers to wear his coat unbuttoned at the top.

The power behind the throne is the unspoken third member, legendary producer and DJ Nizzle who is responsible for crafting the chart-friendly pop beat sounds of Broken Bells and whose slick production and ear for a top pop number have seen them play some of the biggest stages in Brooklyn, America, where they are from. Nizzle is notoriously reclusive except when playing sold-out Brooklyn club nights and producing seven or eight albums a year, sometimes under his own name and sometimes in collaborations with other artists in outfits like Gnarled Banksy and Thunderkecks.

Broken Bells is his latest exploration of the limits of pop beat combos and, with Forthwright and Heidelberg, he looks set to triumph again.

Avatar Best Laid Plans

Every man has a dream.

The great thing about dreams is that they can be as big or a small as you would like them to be. As long as they are relatively realistic then achieving them is just about putting your mind to it.

A man came to me at the weekend and told me his dream. He said that what he wanted most of all was a small herd of goats to keep at the coast so that they could enjoy the sights, sounds and marvels that the English coast do so well, and that when he feels like a jaunt to Scarborough or Filey he can share the experience with those very goats. I told him that such a dream was easily obtained and that he should immediately set about putting his affairs in order.

When a man has a dream though sometimes it just doesn’t go far enough.

Having set about the events so that the man could have his coast goats I then pondered the idea myself and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough. It would be nice to have some goats hanging about in Whitby, waiting for me to take them through the whale bones and then across the bridge for fish and chips, but how about a little bit more? What if I had goats not only at the coast but across the whole country? What if I could stop in for a cup of coffee at Costa and high five a goat on the way out? What if a goat would tell me when the bus was running late, or pass me a small pot of porridge when I’m running late for work? It would cost a lot but what about coast-to-coast goats?

Of course I did not reveal my plans to the man because he might steal them as I had stolen his idea. As well as this, his original idea would be besmirched by my much better plans and I am not prepared to besmirch my fellow man. He will eventually learn of my objectives and he will have to come to terms with them as the rest of you mortals.

Avatar Words I Hate, part 3

It’s becoming traditional (come on, we’ve been up and running for three months, so anything that’s been running this long definitely counts as a tradition) for me to wheel out another canister of literary vitriol around the start of the month. And seeing as April is looming up ahead of us I’d better get cracking with… another Word I Hate.

This one is short, because the case can be made very quickly and nobody can argue against it.

Fayre

This word doesn’t even need to exist. We have all the words with this sound and this meaning already: we have fair, meaning an outdoor event or celebration, and we have fare, meaning food and drink and perhaps generous hospitality. Fayre is sometimes used in place of both these perfectly good word by idiots who think it lends their temporary Christmas market or their roast beef serving pub some kind of charming air of tradition and jollity. But it doesn’t do that, any more than calling your newsagent Ye Olde Shoppe gives it medieval heritage. It just makes you an idiot who has called your venture a stupid name for misguided reasons. So stop it. You cretin.

Avatar Time for a Sing Song

What with April peeking around the corner, desperate to blast us all away with Easter-based hilarity, let’s take a moment to enjoy the last day of March with a wonderful ditty.

Part-written in turn by Reuben, but mainly by me, let us present to you the marvel that is ‘Barry The Chinchilla’. If you can remember the ‘Woman in a Tabbard’ song from the Big Breakfast then you should sing it along to that tune.

Barry The Chinchilla

Barry the Chinchilla
He bought a big gorilla
Used to play for Aston Villa
(His) favourite colour is manilla
Likes to dance along to ‘Thriller’
Wrote a play with Arthur Miller
Once was flattened by a pillar
Was an extra in ‘Godzilla’
Drinking pints of sarsaparilla

BUT

(Poor old) Barry the Chinchilla
Wicked Audrey was his killer
Bumped him off with cordless driller
(Finished off by his gorilla)
Then she went after Priscilla

(No more) Barry the Chinchilla
Nor his sister, sweet Priscilla

Avatar Missing

MISSING

We are seeking information on the whereabouts of “Kevil”. He is a bit taller than me and has far longer legs, and is characterised by turning up here and posting comments after weeks away just as I finally get round to making my hilarious “missing” poster, which I’m using anyway because I’ve made it now.

If you have any information about this individual please raise your hand.

Avatar Box Memories

The human memory is an unreliable tool. Things that you think you remember can be twisted and exploited because people are unreliable and easily influenced. If, like me, you know how superbly atrocious your mind is you learn to record everything or at least as much as you can in the written form. This is starting to feel like a lecture…

And it’s not. The boxes in the corner of my room have bore witness to many a stimulating conversation over the years and sadly the pen and pencil work is starting to fade. Before all these “ideas” are lost to time I thought it best to record them for posterity here, of all places, so we can revel in their warm fuzziness. You may also be able to help remind me just what the fuck they mean. In no particular order I present ‘Box Memories’:

1. Women’s werewolf rights
2. No HAT, no HOLMES!
3. Jam flaps
4. Flip reverse my sandwich
5. Chris = Biggy Bam
6. Adjacent apples on the shelf of life
7. It’s not what we do, it’s the way we do it
8. Epic nonny
9. Steam hot prayers (that was Tom’s stag do, I remember that)
10. I say it, but I don’t mean it
11. I had big boots that day for sure
12. NEW PAPPLES ALBUM = 15% and rising
13. Anvil hands
14. I’m gonna hit you with the fist of gratitude. SLAP!
15. It was too lonny gone ago…
16. RED WINE = MAN WINE. ROSE = GIRL WINE
17. My moustache is off the scale!
18. Apples for thought
19. MAN LIKES HIS DRINK
20. I’d like a BIG FAT January
21. Gourmet = small and shafted
22. “Sock Lions”
23. … it will make your face bleed with smiles
24. Get your warranty out of my chude!
25. I dream of having a database of moods
26. I need a rocket
27. HAIRY ON THE GO!
28. Total toilet
29. 30 = dead (how nice)
30. Banh-kuok (rolled bread, french bread, bread)
31. Big nay
32. Plentingtons = plenty of things

There’s also a faded flame that appears to say ‘Uncle Now’ and of course the now infamous Michael Jackson test.

Question: Am I dead?

If your answer is yes, you are Michael Jackson
If your answer is no, you are someone else

Avatar Neil Armstrong gets a Time Machine (using a Time Machine)

Here at da beans we do like to consider everything before we make our minds up. There is absolutely no point in rushing in with an idea or an opinion unless it has been thought through with a considerable degree of certainty.

Still, this kind of logic is nothing when faced with the abstract mind of a child. Who’s child? My child.

This child does not obey the laws of anything other than what I tell him, and quite possibly his teacher. That said there is still a realm of “eh?”, a dark corner of his mind that does not allow anything in that refuses to conform to that happy rainbow of “surely not”. I bore witness to such a thing recently which was documented in my notebook, which was as follows:

“Neil Armstrong… gets a time machine (which he can only use once) to travel into the future to get a better time machine to make him famous. Then the world blows up.

Note: if you get a time machine go back in time and destroy him!”

I have looked at this page in my notebook on many occasions, and indeed I was there when he was talking about this, and still I am baffled as to what it actually means. Any help that anyone can throw my way would be very gratefully received.