Mojo - The Music Magazine

MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI, the Beatles bhagwan who inspired a generation to seek enlightenment though Transcendental Meditation has died in Holland, aged 91 (possibly). The leadership of the TM movement passes to Maharajah Nader Raam.

We can expect a deluge of speculation regarding the integrity of an individual subject to allegations of sexual misconduct with neophyte followers. The John Lennon song Sexy Sadie, written soon after the Beatles return from the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, has always been presumed to be a veiled diatribe.

He was certainly a canny operator, having begun his worldwide movement in 1958 and realising soon afterwards the value of celebrity supporters. The Beatles were specifically targeted, visited in 1965 on the set of the movie Help!, where they were given pamphlets that left a particular impression on George Harrison.

Although many of the musicians who flirted with TM in the ’60s – including Lennon, McCartney and The Beach Boys – were to move on, others – most notably Donovan – remain adherents to this day. The TM movement is said to possess a fortune in the billions.

AS THE US ELECTION’S “Super Tuesday” passed with the main party nominations still in the balance, the candidates struggled to get their musical soundtracks in order.

Hillary Clinton has been using a song called When The Lady Smiles by ’70s Dutch rockers Golden Earring. Which probably means she has NOT seen the pervy video for the original release…

On Monday, The Grateful Dead played a show at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater explicitly to drum up support for Barak Obama in the California primary (just when he was doing so well!)…

Meanwhile, representatives of the notoriously liberal John Mellencamp have asked Republican front-runner John McCain to stop using songs. Apparently, McCain has been playing Our Country and Pink Houses at his campaign rallies. Again, it’s debatable how closely his aides have analysed the lyrics to the latter, with its troubled protagonist who pays for “the thrills, the bills and the pills that kill”. More here...

CANADIAN POP DIVA and Broken Social Scene alumnus Leslie “Feist” Feist has won the Shortlist Prize, America’s equivalent of The Mercury Prize (that is, rewarding the album that hasn’t sold but is liked by journalists). Her eclectic left-field pop record, The Reminder, pipped albums by MIA, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Spoon and Wilco and joins a pantheon of winners that includes Cat Power, Sufjan Stevens and Sigur Rós.

One of the judges was the easily impressed Gary “Snow Patrol” Lightbody, who called it “the album of the year for 2007, or any year I can think of. It’s modern and classic all at once.”

But this guy writing in the LA Times wonders why, if the idea is to divert deserved limelight onto alternative artists, they have to announce the Shortlist winner in Grammy week? Good point, well made!

And finally…

DUSTIN THE TURKEY is being backed to win Ireland’s Eurovision Song Contest nomination. The spoof puppet character – the star of RTÉ show The Den since 1990 – lampoons the emerald isle’s cultural contributions (“We’ve brought you Guinness and Westlife / 800 years of war and strife / But we all apologise for Riverdance”) in a t’ick north Dublin dialect. The song, entitled Irlande Douze Points, has REALLY upset Shay Healy, the writer of Johnny Logan's Eurovision winner What's Another Year?, who expressed disbelief that a "bunch of grown-ups could come up with this as a solution"

You can judge for yourselves…