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Musweek: Bob Dylan, Fiddy, Frank Ocean, Bob Babbitt // Issue #22

Huw L. Hopkins rounds up this week's most important music news stories

by Huw Hopkins, July 21st, 2012 and has been Read 788 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin July 25th, 2012.

On a daily basis, we're constantly inundated with news. News about political affairs, news about what's happening in the sporting world, entertainment news that's now more like gossip as opposed to actual news, and news about family, friends, and the cat down the road. Basically, information has never been easily attainable than it is today. In some way, this is fantastic, enabling us to constantly develop our brains, and in another way, we're bombarded with so much crap we have to wade through it to get to the good bits.

Like a Virgin

Beardy Richard Branson is seemingly bored already of ripping off the British public with his bank and he wants to get back in to charging people too much for music. The man who worked with great acts like Sex Pistols, The Spice Girls and The Rolling Stones says Virgin Records has been mismanaged for the past ten years, which in fairness it has. The last time a decent song was released by the brand the world was worrying about the millennium bug. Here’s hoping the music mogul finds the spark he had in 1972 when it all started.



What a Waster

Everybody’s favourite mess Pete Doherty has been thrown out of rehab for being, well … such a complete mess. The former Libertines singer was paying over £7,000 a month for one of the world’s greatest treatment programmes in Thailand to help him get past his cocaine addiction, but apparently was being his usual douchey self to other members at the clinic.

WATCH // 'What a Waster' Live

A Jubilee to Truly Commemorate

You thought celebrating a woman with a crown on her head for 60 years was worth it? The man who changed music is about to release his 35^th studio album. Bob Dylan has announced Tempest, something many are calling his final album. Dylan’s tracklisting features titles such as ‘Long and Wasted Years’ have the blogosphere a chatter, but in reality a man of the folk legend’s intellect may even have selected the titles to generate such rumour on purpose. Of course previous song names over the past 50 years like ‘I Threw it all Away', ‘Fixin’ to Die Blues’ and ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ mean nothing.

WATCH // 'Lay Lady Lay'

Tears of Many a Clown

The funk community has lost a great this week. One of the finest bass players to ever grace the planet with his existence has died. Bob Babbitt played on some of the greatest funk and soul songs including Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy Mercy Me’, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ and ‘Tears of a Clown’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Bob Babbitt, also know as Robert Kreinar died of brain cancer, July 16^th 2012.

WATCH // 'Tears of a Clown'

All Rapped Up

Coming off the back of Frank Ocean’s closet exit, rapper 50 Cent has pledged his support for the newly outed, although he did say it might have been timed well for promotional purposes. “You can call it brave or you can call it marketing, because it was intentional”. Meanwhile, Ocean has said to the Guardian how it feels great to not live “with this freakin’ boulder on my chest”.