Tuesday 15 December 2009

Rage Against the Machine Vs Joe

Isn't it fabulous that Rage Against the Machine stand a snowballs chance in moderate weather conditions of preventing Joe from X-Factor from becoming number one for christmas?

Isn't that nice...?

Bloody lovely...

Such lovely chaps...

Your gran will love it...

Come on people!!! Rage are on Sony, Joe from X factor is on Sony!!!!!

I hate exclamation marks!!!!!

Ahhh well, available on iTunes today:

Don't misunderstand me. It is fully my intention to sell out as soon as possible and release songs about freedom and integrity through a major music company owned by a nuclear weapons conglomerate, but for now, I can claim actual integrity and genuine musical freedom, and all the money goes to a good cause too.

So channel your rebellion usefully. Wake up! oh bugger thats a Rage song too...

Wednesday 11 November 2009

A to Z through O

Some excellent photos up by a tremendous photographer by the name of Dylan Walker, a charity project for action aid...

how did he jump that high???

I know, who said white men can't jump? I'm still waiting for that call up for the NBA.

Speech DeBelle, Frank Turner and, well me too gee whizz.

Also I seem to be in fashion right now so if i were you i'd get one of these before they sell out!

X

Wednesday 21 October 2009

A Call To Arms for Hippies

It's finally finished! And the video will be up very soon! We mastered it yesterday at Fluid studios with Lilly Allen's mastering engineer, who kindly donated his services to the cause. People been amazing thus far getting behind the cause. Bloody Awful Poetry PR and Jigsaw House PR have also donated their services, and on Sunday I had the incredible Tristram http://www.myspace.com/tristramsongs and Brigitte Aphrodite http://www.brigitteaphrodite.com in the studio to lend their larynx's to the cause with some lovely ooh's and ahhs and general backing harmony loveliness...

ooh listen to me... I'm getting all excited! Maybe we can knock Simon Cowell and this year's next year's forgotten pop star off the top spot this christmas and make squillions for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

ooh ooh that sounds fun, where can i get it? i hear you say!

well, on iTunes on the 14th December or better still you can Pre-order now and bypass
iTunes' cut. £1.50, all profits to MAP (medical aid for Palestines). Single
includes A Call To Arms for Hippies, acoustic track "What is Money Anyway?"
and bonus Bronze Medallists' ringtone. After purchase, an MP3 will be
emailed to you on Monday 14th December in time to fill your digital xmas
stocking!

src="http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/105/m_43abce65e2e04831835ca
f7436667c9f.jpg" border="1">



src="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/m_523276f456bf4413b62fad
372a938e1d.gif" border="1">

Thursday 8 October 2009

2 Girls 2 Cups

So some of you may know... I also help run and produce for a record label with Joel from eARmusic and Pete from Nika records. its called Voga Parochia (http://www.myspace.com/vogaparochia). Our first release is Lulu and the Lampshades 'Feet to the Sky' and is out on 26th October (itunes Amazone etc. , 7 inch and download). Come to the launch on 26th October at Passing Clouds in Dalston. Anyway, allow me to introduce you to the girls:

Saturday 29 August 2009

The campaign gathers pace!...

Thank you to this lovely person who has invigorated the campaign to release my megaphone

Tuesday 25 August 2009

An introduction to The Megaphone Saga...

So a few weeks ago that pesky friend of mine CVeitch got arrested and had my megaphone confiscated by the police. All charges were dropped instantly and yet my megaphone was not returned!

What to do?

Why, go down to the Begravia Police Station in Victoria and begin hostage negotiations n'est pas?



To see how it got, er 'nicked' by the Police too, watch this little gem:

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Monday was a wonderful evening, I played at my friend's Ep launch in the luminaire in Kilburn. It was a brilliant line up including Stars of Sunday League (of course), Broadcast 2000, Jeremy Walmsley, Semaphore, and I said Yes.



PhotobucketStars of Sunday League

Photobucket Moi

PhotobucketJeremy Walmsley

Photobucketbroadcast 2000



There are some more pics of the night up here:

http://www.thefourohfive.com/reviews/927

and you should buy the EP too when it comes out on Jellyfish Records on 7th September because it is bloody wonderful.

x

Friday 19 June 2009

Is it too early to be thinking about Christmas?

Fred Goodwin has volunteered to reduce his pension, lady's and gentlemen. I'd like to think I had something to do with that. Even if my anti-Goodwin song accounted for only 1 percent of the pressure on dear old Fred to pay back his exorbitant £16m pension, that means I saved the British tax payer £160,000. I should ask for a commission. UH OH: OCTOPUS MAKES CONCESSION TO CAPITALISM SHOCKER! Ye, whatever... You see, (waves hand in peace sign), I like, totally, like to bring the big corporations to account, man, but the truth is I have more things in common with them than I care to admit.

One of those things is that I start thinking about Christmas early. This year I will be releasing a Christmas single, proceeds of which will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians. An Octopus christmas number one? Fred, I'm banking on it.

http://www.map-uk.org/
http://www.youtube.com/cveitch

Photobucket

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Ever felt as if your heading in totally the wrong direction?

Well, have a chuckle at the following charming little anecdote and whatever you do do not read Paulo Cohelo and categorically do not watch The Secret...

In 2008, Syrian lorry driver Necdet Bakimci found himself stranded on a nature reserve in Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire. He was 1,600 miles from his intended destination: Gibraltar, on the southern tip of Spain. Confusingly, his sat-nav system listed Gibraltar as being in the UK (because it's a colonial outpost). Confronted with a choice of two Gibraltars, both seemingly in the British Isles, Bakimci and his cargo of luxury cars took a 3,200 mile detour.

Thursday 14 May 2009

'Everything You Could Wish an Artist to be'

You know how it is: Sometimes, its tough to accept what the critics say.

You pour your heart and soul into creating an aural master-piece and they accuse you of singing out of key or not being The Strokes or worse still; totally over-look your awesome visionary force and dismiss it with faint praise.

And then one day you spend 5 minutes ripping off Teddy Bears Picnic and suddenly your the darling of the indie press. So I say, pay no attention!

Hang on, whats that?

Talented?

Fun?

Everything you wish an artist could be?

Actually, listen to Blue Walrus, http://www.thebluewalrus.com/, these guys know what they are talking about...

Friday 3 April 2009

'Sort it Out!'

I have a feeling that I won't be able to shake this one for a while: friends, acquaintances, complete strangers even are going to run up to me in the street, align their index fingers with the horizon and my face and shout 'SORT IT OUT!'. Eventually it'll get so bad that I wont be able to leave the house, I'll have to send out my house mates for food but they'll get annoyed at me so I'll have to work out how to do online shopping (Do M&S even do that???!!!), and i'll have to answer the door to the delivery guys in a balaclava to protect my identity. When the CIA work out who I am they'll freeze all my bank accounts and I wont even be able to do that and my body will gradually atrophy into a pale, ghostly vacuum-packed bag of bones and I'll be blogging my untimely demise with all the histrionics of Jade Goody but with none of the attention.

Which is a shame, because it was a good day all in all.

Aside from saving the world by being 1/100,000th of a human blood clot that blocked the beating heart of the UK financial district outside the Bank of England in London on Wednesday 1st April, I played a gig standing on a wall to said human blood clot right after Billy Bragg and just before Get Cape Wear Cape Fly. Then I did a duet of 'Imagine' with Kate Nash, who I can confirm has the lovely toothy smile one might imagine from a girl with impeccable oral hygiene.

Oh, and then there was that Channel 4 news interview. Would someone follow me around and slap my wrist every time i say 'erm' please?

Monday 23 March 2009

Jade Goody is not my lover

Jade Goody isn't dead. I'm sorry to burst everyone's bubble on this one. Living in the mountains of india with Jimi, Janis, Morrison, Kurt and Elvis maybe, but not dead . Its all a bit too fucking perfect, dying on mothers day for fucks sake... It's all too much like Max Clifford's wet dream. I think she's actually standing in for Michael Jackson, I mean, have you ever seen those two slimey fuckers in the room at the same time?

No?

Didn't think so...

And that impostor they've got on telly selling tickets for Michael Jackson's world tour just isn't him, it doesn't look anything like him.

Will the real Michael Jackson please stand up???

What's that? He cant because he's a melting heap of plastic caught in a ray of sunlight in Neverland Paedo-ranch...?

Serves you right for undoing 60 years of the civil-rights movement, I mean white kids, why doesn't anyone notice that shit?!!?

It's all a lie I tell you!!! Everything!!!

Latest Identity Crisis

I've never watched an episode of Skins, wouldn't know a Jonas Brother if he pinched my bum on the tube and would rather be strapped naked to a mobile communications satellite and fired into space than sit through a whole episode of Gavin and Stacey. However, I do know that Bon Ivor isn't a French rhino, would give anything to sing in a cathedral with Fleet Foxes and I can remember what I was doing when Courtney shot her husband. I like to think that fits me nicely into mid-20's culture vulture demographic. Cut to first BBQ of the year on saturday. A friend puts on the 4AD 'Dark Was The Night' compilation. I ask 'Who was that band?' 15 times. Queue late 20's identity crisis.



http://www.myspace.com/yeasayer
http://www.myspace.com/spoon

Photobucket

A Call to Arms for Hippies

A new song I'm currently scribing...

It's the year 2009
We are living in dangerous times
We should learn from the hippies, and why the movement failed:
Hippies don't run for government and politicians don't inhale. (OK, I know Obama did once or something, jees stop being such pedant!)

A long time ago in a time called the 60's,
People thought pop music was going to change the world.
They said things like 'All you need is love',
Took the pregnancy pill, and whatever else they could get hold of,
Bob Dylan went electric, Sgt Peppers was a hit
And people realised they could change the world if they gave a shit!

But people got jaded when Vietnam was invaded,
And Jimi, Janis and Morrison assasinated (fuck, not to mention JFK, Malcom X and Martin Luther King)
By the C.I.A.
That was the day
The music died

Take me back to 1969
When changing the world meant a corny line
Like 'Love Is You Need'
Or smoking an ounce of weed
Or taking LSD at Woodstock
Now it's the year 2009
And again we're living in dangerous times
We should learn from the hippies, and why the movement failed:
Hippies don't run for government and politicians don't inhale.

Now its forty years later.
Things have been greater.
The sexual revolution left a fishy taste
Of teenage pregnancies in council estates.
And we've still got war.
We've still got famine.
As opposed to getting out your head to The Grateful Dead
People do it now listening to Radiohead instead.

The people are still jaded.
Now Iraq's been invaded.
The Gaza strip's in Israel's grip,
Even Syria's been raided.
Still we tow the line,
Maybe now's the time
To bring the music back to life.

Today everybody's jaded.
The hippies have all traded
Free love in for a stable job and like their bell bottoms they've faded
How did it go this far.
Remember who you are,
And give the music C.P.R.

reaction to poem for a lost lover...

Many responses...
Thanks ladies!

Conclusion:

Girlies love poems (probably as long as they are not written by their own bloke), the only comment this got from a man was from a guy I went to school with who said 'You are gay', which he then deleted, presumably because he realised that if he started writing soppy poetry, he too might just be furnished with the attention from the opposite sex he so desired... But I imagine that most guys would probably think that, so I don't blame him. 18th century epicene romantic poets raising their wrists to their foreheads with studied gamine ruined poetry for the straight man, and made him hide behind a guitar.

x

Poem for a lost lover..

Written a while ago now, don't usually go in for this poem-writing malarky, but I actually quite like this one...


Seeking distraction in some frantic beat prose
No comma for breath, no space to compose.
Each full stop is filled with you
Grimaced in rapture of somebody new,
Trickling sweat in smalls of backs
Respite keeps pace with Kerouac.

Octopus World Horoscope 2009

The fog of seasonal revelry and the Great January Come-Down are gradually subsiding, leaving me with just enough clarity to gaze into my crystal skull-cap and fabricate, I mean, receive by divine transmission, the Octopus World Horoscope Of 2009.

Now, let me see, ah yes…

Capricorn – The Horned Goat (22nd Dec -19th Jan)
Continued economic turmoil and skirmishes in the middle-east dampen the optimism generated by the world ridding itself of George W, who reminded a lot of people of a certain other cloven, horned individual of popular folklore, and I ain’t talking bout no lilly fawn, well, that’d be a misunderestimation.

Aquarius – The Water Bearer (20th jan – 18th Feb)
January 24th is officially the most depressing day of the year. On this day in 2009 the indie disco washes down 30 nyquil with a bottle of Jack Daniels and slips into an unending sleep.

Pisces – The Fish (19th Feb – 20th March)
Further devaluing of the pound leads to an unprecedented rise in home repossessions. Gordon Brown, is forced to leave number 10, because he cannot keep up with his mortgage repayments. Lloyds TSB now technically owns the British Isles and evicts all 57 million inhabitants, who are forced to tread water in the channel.

Aries – The Ram (21st March - 19th April)
Lengthening Dole queues in the channel lead to a resurgence in dirge music made by miserablist football hooligans from The North with no money, no job, no matches to go to, and nothing but a dinghy and an squire Stratocaster to their name. Sales of trainers rocket as shoe-gazing is resurgent.

Taurus – The Bull (20th April – 20th May)
Sales of skinny jeans plummet as people are forced to dress in neoprene survival wear. American Apparel’s share value collapses, Johnny Borrell offers to donate ½ all Razorlite’s earnings to help the ailing store. The share value collapses further.

Gemini – The Twins (21st May – 20th June)
After Andy Murray wins Wimbledon his genes are spliced with Lewis Hamilton’s to create an army of cloned warriors that repopulate the British Isles and do whatever Nicole Scherzinger tells them.

Cancer – The Crab (21st June – 22nd July)
Glastonbury is sunny, The Pussy Cat Dolls play to a sold out audience of 57 Million Andy Hamiltons, Michael Evis buys Zimbabwe with the profits and ends the tyranny of Mugabe.

Leo – The Lion (23rd July – 22nd Aug)
Simba the Lion King over throws Michael Evis after he turns Zimbabwe into the world’s largest dairy farm. A special dispatch of cows is sent immediately to wean Britney Spears into adulthood.

Virgo - The Virgin (23rd Aug – 22nd Sept)
Kfed comes clean about in-vitro treatment, it emerges that the much-maligned Britney has been a virgin all along and she marries Justin Timberlake. Not to feel left out, Timbaland raps at the wedding ceremony.

Libra – The Balance (23rd Sept – 22nd Oct)
Obama-mania fades as the American economy continues to free-fall. America can no longer economically support its war on brown people with oil. China threatens to declare war on Freedom until Arnold Schwarzenegger stages a military coo, seizing power and revealing that he actually is an indestructible terminator. Phew! Freedom is again obligatory for all.

Scorpio – The Scorpion (23rd Oct – 21st Nov)
After the hottest summer on record polar ice caps fail to re-freeze, homeless polar bears sue United States for their contribution to the loss of their natural habitat. Due to deepening financial crisis, US is unable to pay and forfeits all lands to the polar bears.

Sagittarius – The Archer (22nd Nov – 21st Dec)
Repairs to the CERN particle accelerator are at last completed. Homeless Schwarzenegger leads a terminator army into Europe, eliminates fierce resistance from wave after wave of dairy cows, and Murray/Hamilton clones, captures the device and uses it to create a braze new world. Neon lycra body suits, aerobics classes for all, and techno! Techno! TECHNO!

The Octacle has spoken…
He speaks quite a lot, actually. It gets him into quite a lot of trouble. Anyone’d think he enjoyed it.
http://www.myspace.com/ollytheoctopus

Camel Toe and Whine

Ahhhh... Christmas time, when the nuclear families go into melt down, fissioning in small family house-sized reactor chambers before erupting outwards as soon as fucking possible thank you very much into the ensuing days, sprinkling clouds of radio-active fall out over large swathes of our great country like some sort of cheery chernobyl.

Still, here we are, successfully out the other side, probably about a stone heavier, with enough socks to last until next year (in fact, the next couple of weeks will be remarkable as the only weeks in the year that I will be wearing matched pairs), and most of us with just enough of that latent family tension and frustration to unleash on lovers and friends through the otherwise dull months of january and february.

I say most of us because Christmas was a beautifully low key affair for my family this year. My dad was off in Spain, sunning himself in the cool rays with a troupe of baby-boom hippies who still believe that their love is going to save Iraq, one of my sisters was out in thailand doing the lotus position, and my mum was sick with bird flu, so all engagements with extended family were duly cancelled.

Cut to me and my one remaining sibling in a bar in south-central Edinburgh at 8pm on Christmas day trying cinnamon infused pear vodka with a man called Sue and a drunk gentleman from New Zealand who works in the Beef industry. We are both vegetarians, don't really drink and have names appropriate to our sex ( OK, so Oliver can be a girls name in france, whatever). We had nothing at all in common, it was starting to feel like any other Christmas...


"Marry an orphan. You'll never have to spend boring holidays with the in-laws. At most, an occasional visit to the cemetery." ~ George Carlin

2008 Summarised for Future London Underground magazine

It’s almost new year, AGAIN. Only one more year of the noughtys. Bloody hell. I’m going to get old soon and my tentacles are going to start to shrivel. I better start praying or something.

New year is when my superstitious streak really comes to the fore. Usually it is solely channelled into picking up pennies from the street because some-one once told me ‘See a Penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck’ (although I do this with something akin to fundamentalist zeal, and may the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster pity the poor old granny who gets in between me and that shiney coin in the gutter…). At this time of the year, though, all the good intentions, forward looking, and reflection gets me all existentially hot under the collar, horny for prevarication. You see, I’m too cynical and twisted to be an optimist so instead I turn to superstition.

Last year a friend, who I will call H, told me that what ever you do on Hogmanay will prophesise how you will spend the whole year to come. OK, so she also once told me that the Tsunami was mother-nature’s way of claiming back some of the 80% water with which humans are composed, and that drinking your own urine is good for you, but this really snared my imagination. I subscribed to the gospel of H. I just skimmed over the jarring bits about tsunamis and pee because the idea that a single day could pre-determine a whole year was just too good. I started concocting lucid fantasies of creeping into Wembley stadium on new years eve with my guitar and a PA and jamming all night with all my best pals and an entourage of hired strippers, or filling my bath tub with my life savings and rolling around in them all night long in the nude with a kidnapped Pussycat Doll. Clearly these could only preface a year of unprecedented success and good fortune, or perhaps prison.

As it happened I spent new year 2007-2008 like everybody else, pissed out my skull at my mates house party. I did, however, manage to jam in the bells with a live guitar rendition of Auld Lang Syne as well as cram in a clandestine, deviant shag with my girlfriend on said mate’s couch (shit, I hope he’s not reading this, actually, he’d love it really, I should be more worried about her). ‘Great!’, I thought when I emerged from the fog of hangover sometime on the afternoon of January 1st with the help of a Bagel on Brick Lane, a classic year of music and deviant sex was surely mine.

2008 has indeed been a massive year for me, and filled brimful with music. I’ve put together 2 bands, Surprise! and Bronze Medallists, done hundreds of gigs, produced several EPs, got a song on a TV ad, promoted fantastic music across London and even put on a guerrilla music festival. Olly the Octopus has a life of it’s own now too, my music videos and stunts have blossomed into a minor You Tube phenomenon, rivalling for sheer popularity ‘my cat fell behind the sofa’ and ‘my camcorder footage of Lindsay Lohan on the red carpet at a premiere’. I get asked to travel up and down the country to make liberals chuckle with self-important condescension and repressed types wince with unease and, I hope, just a little psycho-sexuality, and occasionally I even get asked to write the odd column for a fanzine! It really was a great year and the first of my life when I could rightfully claim what I had told girls for years, that I made my living from music baby.

So the gospel of H has already done something in it’s first year that none of the world’s other major religions have managed in several millennia, it has passed the test of empirical scrutiny, I am living proof. A new religion is birthed, and I heartily recommend the teachings. I fully intend to beckon in 2009 in a bath of money in Wembley stadium and I encourage you to join me. ‘Wait!’, I hear you cry, ‘What about the deviant sex with your girl friend bit? Did that work too?’. Well, we broke up in March, but if you don’t mention that I wont mention Leviticus.

For more teachings from the great Octopus visit

http://www.myspace.com/ollytheoctopus

Bromley Times Article on my Cunning Stunt

A bit of press regarding my latest protest, apparently the revolution was televised too, on ITV London news.

Boris busker Olly planning new stunt

19 November 2008




A SINGING protester who was ejected from the London Mayor's People's Question Time has revealed he is planning another political stunt.

The 28-year-old singer, known as Olly the Octopus, was thrown out of the event at the Civic Centre in Bromley earlier this month for his impromptu Song For Boris, as reported in the Times.

Speaking exclusively to the Times, he said that he is in the process of planning another political stunt.

The Scottish-born singer, from East London said: "I write a lot of songs about socio-political subjects that won't get distributed by mainstream means so I plan these stunts and film them on YouTube.

"I am planning another one at the moment, all I can say is watch this space."

On his latest stunt involving the London Mayor, he added: "He seems an affable, lovely chap but I am concerned about his policies."

The musician only just got through the first verse of his song on November 6, before the crowd started booing and he was escorted out of the premises.

He said: "Of course I expected it, it is a very conservative area so I expected heckles.

"Sometimes there is no use preaching to the converted, it is better to present people with ideas that are different to mine.

"I was a little bit gutted, I would have liked to have finished the song, but I couldn't say I didn't expect to come up to some resistance."

His first stunt was at the Church of Scientology headquarters in Tottenham Court Road.

He said: "I am not a fan of the church so me and my team went in and I started singing a song extolling the virtues of Scientology and we got the cameras out. They got a bit heavy and chucked us out."

Other songs in his collection include a recently penned Farewell To George Bush and Camden's Burning after the fire in February this year.

Olly the Octopus is due to perform a collection of his songs at the Proud Galleries in Camden tonight at 8pm.

To see his performance for Boris, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v =NqJ5e8yV7Qo.