19/02/2005
Um... kinda late here, but... Roundup time!
entry posted by Inquisitor at 20:30
(permalink).
edited on: 08/05/2005 18:55.
categories: Misc
, Music
Yes, there has been yet another long break in transmission, mostly due to my laziness. Also, I only just installed Dreamweaver on my new PC - there were much more important things to do with a system with a powerful graphics card, like Doom III - so have finally got around to writing.
So it's time for a Culture Roundup. New Order's new album, Waiting For The Sirens' Call, has what looks like Peter Saville's worst cover ever, and it's a shame since from the unmastered MP3 leak I've heard it's really a rather good album. Who knows, maybe there's something special on the actual packaging; I wouldn't put that past Saville and Associates (the people that brought us the Blue Monday sleeve that cost more to manufacture than the price of the record) at all. Bloc Party are being called the new Franz Ferdinand by people who haven't heard the Bloc Party record, and by NME critics with nothing better to do. Michael Jackson is 'ill'. And Pete Docherty's out on bail. Again.
What is it with Pete Docherty? How many different times has he been in rehab? How many times has he been in jail? How many of Sanctuary's millions has he blown on speed, coke, smack, crack, media publicity, Kate Moss, and drugs rehabilitation he hasn't got the slightest want to do? And how many really shitty songs does it take for Q and the NME to stop comparing him to Kurt Cobain? The answers, as Dylan put it once, are blowing in the wind.
And when he does kill himself, as he inevitably will (the only other option is turning into a Shaun Ryder/Shane McGowan figure, since he doesn't have the talent or the luck to be a Keith Richards, and I can't see him doing that somehow), what's going to happen? Are we going to have a black-bordered NME? They did it for John Peel, which was rather a surprise since the modern NME doesn't give a toss about the real alternative scene that John championed throughout his DJing life, so Pete Docherty definitely doesn't deserve one. He'll get one, though. And someone will refer to it as 'The Day The Music Died', probably a Q writer. Damn, I'm getting depressed already.
Q really has gone downhill, hasn't it? It's really been pronounced over the last two years; from providing an entirely readable magazine, to doing features on Christina Aguilera, to dumbing down the reviews section to the point where Britney Spears got a four-star review, to putting paparazzi photos in the news section (the point where I stopped buying), to running incessantly similar top-100 lists in every single issue, and most importantly where a staff top 100 list put 'Definitely Maybe' as the best British album of all time when it isn't even the best British album of 1994 (Blur Parklife, Pulp His 'N' Hers, Manics Holy Bible, Massive Attack Protection, Portishead Dummy, Radiohead The Bends, Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works II, Prodigy Music For The Jilted Generation, and Morrissey Vauxhall & I are just some I can name) and so on. I'm terrified its stablemate, MOJO, will go the same way; it, UNCUT and Observer Music Monthly are the only three decent remaining music magazines, and one of them comes free with a newspaper. (Tomorrow, by the way.)
Unfortunately, commercial pressures mean it probably will, like it killed off Select, Melody Maker and the non-awful NME; can't piss off the Big Four, can you?