...holy shit, it's good. The song's back in Protection territory and the video (a Jonathan Glazer special) is beautiful in its shocking simplicity. See it. Love it. Buy the single in March, and maybe we can get something decent up the Top 10.
Now, about that album...
Just haven't been blogging all that much lately, or seen the need to blog. But now I'm back in business, at least in a part-time sort of way.
So, how has life gone since I went away?
So far, the best musical thing to happen this year should hopefully be Shayne Ward getting kicked off the #1 position; which will probably happen this week (to the Arctic Monkeys, dear God), at least according to Popbitch. Else, I'm looking forward to the Belle and Sebastian album.
BBC - Drugs arrest for 'singer' Doherty. Drug driving. How stupid can one guy get without actually hurting other people, and how long will it take for him to drive into a tree?
Anyway, it's time for my list of the best albums I've heard that were released this year, to counteract the NME's boringly rigged (Bloc Party?) and Q's completely wrong (Coldplay!!!!???) lists. At least for me. In alphabetical order only -
You really won't go wrong with any of these albums. If I had to pick one as #1, however, it would, of course be Kate Bush. And why shouldn't it? It's a brilliant album that never fails to surprise and has amazing charm; only Kate could get away with "Mrs. Bartolozzi", or Rolf Harris's vocal appearance on Disc 2, and make them both wonderful. Best since Hounds of Love? Oh yes.
(My favourite Kate album is The Dreaming, by the way.)
To go with this list, disappointments of the year:
And, totally subjectively, a list containing absolute 'musical' crap:
That pretty much says it all, I feel. Similar lists for movies coming soon...
"I don't like cities, but I like New York
Other places make me
feel like a dork"
-- Madonna, "I
Love New York"
Still, it's not as bad as James Blunt, so we can at least be thankful for that.
Oh, and finally fixed the CSS for the permalinks, so they look pretty. Be thankful.
The Kate Bush album, now titled "Aerial", has been awaited for ten years. It is the most eagerly anticipated album in the history of recent music. It has been kept in sheer secrecy by EMI, its distributor; music journos have had to listen to it behind closed doors on EMI's equipment, or on sealed tapes, or only hear single tracks and so on. It is meant to be secret until the 7th of November, when its glorious release will eventually make tonnes of cash for EMI; coincidentally, this is also according to Popjustice the day on which they "Copy Control" all UK product. I refuse to buy CC product (read problems on my separates system, complete failure on my portable CD or on my DVD player, and it still doesn't stop you from ripping it if you own the right CD-ROM drive), so if they "protect" Aerial, it's not getting bought.
Yip, you guessed it; it's leaked, a week before release, in a nice high quality LAME VBR rip. (Apparently the unprotected Canadian release, from the artwork inside.) Nice advertisement for Copy Control - doesn't actually stop piracy, just screws you and the artist over! Nice work, EMI.
(Although if the final album isn't CC, there will at least be some hope for the future.)
So I finally get the time to go out and look through this week's new music releases. Witching Hour by Ladytron has finally been released (you may have seen my review of the MP3 leak back in mid-August, and it's just as good as it was then), so I pick up the copy with the free live DVD - £12.99 from Fopp or Avalanche - and a second-hand PWEI CD.
However, I also went out to buy the New Order DVD releases, and came back empty handed. This despite the fact that the releases are both desirable and well-specified, especially for a fan like me who's been unable to see this material before.
The problem is the way Warner Europe are ripping off the European consumer. In the USA, the two releases (a videos DVD and the documentary New Order Story, the latter released on VHS and laserdisc in 1994 and promptly becoming rare soon afterwards) are a single Item, priced at around $24.98 - £14.21 according to the Google converter. In the UK, they're two separate discs, retailing at £13.99 each; the dual pack is a HMV exclusive priced at £24.99. Ripoff Britain or what?
Now, there's usually a disadvantage of buying US discs of UK bands. Many of the music videos will almost certainly have been made on the cheap on PAL video, so there'll have to be a standards conversion to get them onto a US NTSC disc. The same applies to New Order Story. Even those videos that were made on film have probably been converted from a video source rather than going back to the original reels of 16mm, because it's cheaper. This can lead to picture quality problems, and should be avoided at all costs - you should always buy video-sourced material at the frame-rate and resolution it was intended for. This doesn't apply to films, as generally two transfers are made at the different frame rates - so avoiding conversion artifacts, which are much much more annoying than PAL speedup and thus no reason to avoid buying R2 films. But for video, you should always buy from the native source.
You would expect this would be the UK; they are, after all, a British band making videos in Britain and, throughout the 80s, on a very British record label (Factory). The only problem is that Warner aren't playing ball - the only difference between the UK and US discs of the New Order material is that the US one is region code 1 while the UK one is region code 2. That's it. We get the inferior standards-converted videos (and apparently VHS-quality New Order Story) despite the fact we shouldn't. And, to add insult to injury, we're made to pay £10 more for a different region code.
This piece of institutional cheapness is amazing. On Universal Interscope, Marilyn Manson (not my favourite either) released their complete video collection on the bonus DVD with the best-of, not charging all that more for it either. I want to see artists I actually want to buy doing that - the video collection and NOS should have been in the wasted-opportunity Retro box set (which, needless to say, I own). This sort of flagrant disregard of the fans is the main reason why no-one's buying CDs anymore, except schmucks like me.
Anyway, I have a multi-region player and a TV that can cope with raw NTSC, so Warner UK can get stuffed. I'm buying from the States. The band will get their royalty and Warner UK won't, so that's just fine by me.
Let's play a game: you are a huge Big Four record label; let's call you "Universal Island". You sign up an excellent British electro band, which we'll call "Ladytron", and pay for the recording of their new album with DJ Shadow's engineer (Kasabian's too, but we won't mention that); then you release their single, "Sugar", with absolutely zero promotion, without iTunes Music Store and so despite being "Single Of The Week" all over the place the band fails to get in the Top 40. Now you're coming up to release a new single, "Destroy Everything You Touch", which was fantastic as a cut-off speeded-up demo MP3 capped off a mix show on Radio 1 and is even better in the flesh, and... there's no out-and-out promotion for that, either, right now, no Radio 1 C-listings or anything. Then you move the date of the album so that not even the band's webmaster knows when it's coming out; currently, they're saying "October", and it was originally set for later this month.
And then you send out promos of the album before the tracklist's even been announced on the official website, without even the slightest attempt to keep them secure, and thus the album thus turns up at the "usual places" in luscious VBR quality. On one torrent site, it's got over a hundred seeders, which indicates somewhat demand for the material... Does Universal want to kill the band or what?
You can, of course, save them by simply buying the album when it comes out, because it's really very good; at least on second listening. It's a more varied album stylistically than Light & Magic, and I think that helps it; it's different, and yet it's still recognisably the same band. It's slower, which I'm not entirely sure is a good thing; but on the other hand it is wide ranging and keeps the very commendable aspects-of-dark seen on the previous albums. Also, you'll be able to buy this album, whereas 604 and Light & Magic are missing in action (courtesy of both their previous British and American record labels going under).
Or maybe, just maybe, the only reason the album is everywhere right now is clever peer-to-peer promotion; it's unlikely, but practically my entire CD collection has been built up from previewing albums on P2P services, liking them and buying them, and I'm sure there's others like me out there. What say you, Universal? More thoughts on this and other matters as I listen to the album more.
It's possibly the best use of CSS I've ever seen. It's fluid, it works in IE and Firefox, it uses tables only for what tables should be used for (lists of items), and it looks rather good. So much so that I'm going to use their journal system for specific music-blogging (articles mirrored on here, of course).
Go on, join up. You know you want to share your music taste with the world...
...since, in a poll to vote for their ideal supergroup (with separate polls for singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer), they ended up voting for Led Zeppelin. Now, ain't that the truth!
I'm going to London on Thursday, by the way, and needless to say I will be going by public transport. There's no reason not to, as far as I can see it, and it's all been booked for weeks. So I'll be writing up my experiences on Tuesday when I get back; needless to say, I won't have access to blueyonder between Thursday and Monday, so only the haloscan comments (if anything at all) will get updated. (Think I should switch to enetation? Vote now!)
That'll wait until the end of the G8 conference. There is really nothing more you can say about it until we see whether or not it'll have any effect whatsoever. Apart from saying, of course, that Pink Floyd should tour as a matter of urgency...
The Americans, whose only TV source of Live 8 was MTV (get off the air!) are somewhat annoyed because they went straight to a commercial break in the middle of "Comfortably Numb". I don't blame them at all. Quite, quite sad...
It is also notable that the US and Canadian legs were the only legs with less watchable (but much more popular) bands than at Hyde Park, although that's soon to be topped by the Murrayfield leg - the best we've got is the Proclaimers, and that really does say it all. Worse, we've got a Bedingfield; even worse, it's Natasha. A disaster in the making?
THEY STILL HAVE IT.
They're practically pensioners, they haven't played together since 1981, the non-Roger section hasn't played the songs since 1994, and THEY STILL HAVE IT.
And Roger and Dave hugged at the end; which, considering their history, is really quite something.
Well, Paul McCartney was and always will be a Beatle, but he's going to have to try really really hard to top that... why couldn't they have had an hour, Bob?
Thankfully, VHS will preserve this moment at least for a few years. I may be remembering it for a lot longer. Please, God, let them tour...
And the Who were surprisingly OK.
Don't look away...
Somewhat late in doing it, but...
Velvet Revolver. Umm. Not nearly as bad as they could have been, but just so unmemorable.
Next up: Sting. Followed by Mariah, doing various awful recent tracks, and then the unassailable Robbie (no matter how much you try). Post-Robbie, the fun begins: Who, Floyd, and McCartney...
...and ooh, Message in a Bottle sounds really good, actually. How odd. If he keeps playing Police songs, we'll be fine...
Also, it gave you a good excuse to wheel out the Cars video again, even if it was just to end up as a link into Madonna.
We can go on all day about the morality of Live 8, but I won't; I'll leave that up to the rest of you (it's notable that this is splitting the UK lefty blogosphere down the middle). All I can say is that I hope it'll do some good, which is all that can be done; cynicism or no, you have to have some hope.
And coming up: Snow Patrol, the Killers, Joss Stone, Scissor Sisters and
(barf) Velvet Revolver. By 9pm, I might well be well enough to start
blogging again, unless something else catches my eye.
I'm pretty sure I just heard Snoop Dogg let off the F-bomb at 6:30pm in the evening on national TV. Worse for him, it was a MF-bomb, accompanied by multiple other words that Ofcom don't take too much of a shine to.
The BBC really should have got in a ten-second delay and a beeper, for his set if nothing else - especially since the Floyd are definitely not going to replace the shit in "Money" for love nor.
6:40: And there's two definite MFs now! Wonder what Geldof's going to have to say to Ofcom...
...Venus Williams won. I thought Lindsey Davenport deserved it for her first two sets, and the way she was handling that all-out assault in the third... Still, it's not that bad, at least Venus was playing extremely well (from the second set tie-break onwards), so congratulations to her.
The problem with Live 8, musically, is that all the interesting acts aren't doing the British concert. Pet Shop Boys are in Russia, Bjork was in Japan, the Cure and Muse are in Paris, Brian Wilson and Roxy Music (avec Eno) are in Berlin. There is good news, though; Duran Duran are in Italy. The London gig has Paul McCartney and the Floyd, but that's about it. It may make for good ratings to have several hundred Coldplays and Robbies, but it turns me off and I'm sure it turns others off too.
And I mean, come on, UB40? For crying out loud. (I didn't even know they were still going...)
More blogging for the Floyd. And maybe even before.
[Inquisitor is blogging Live 8 from the perspective of an Edinburgh citizen watching TV, unable to post important letters because the Post Office has blocked up his nearest post box and is closing for a local holiday on Monday. So sit back and enjoy!]
Elton John just described Pete Doherty as a "young talent". One of these words is wrong, and if you know who Pete Doherty is it's not too hard to work out which one.
Pete Doherty really does look rather ill, doesn't he? And his stage antics are somewhat... stale. Has he gone back on the drugs again? It's a surprise he's even managed to turn up on time...
Anyway, back to Wimbledon: it's all shit for the next hour, until REM come on (and even then, that's only because they're doing The One I Love). After that, it's all shit until Travis come on, and that's only because they're apparently going to do a version of I Don't Like Mondays with the Bob-meister himself - this could be the funniest thing since their cover of Baby One More Time, and I've got the VCR ready for it.
Other highlights: Snoop Dogg (dear God, I hope he swears profusely, it wouldn't be a live concert event without it), Sting doing Every Breath You Take for the first time in several years, Paul McCartney, and the Floyd.Oh, yes, the Floyd. There is no way in hell I am missing the Floyd, and neither should you. (Besides, the two-person Who before it could be... interesting.) See you later...
Not because it's any good, but because you can prevent C**** F*** from getting to Number One by doing so. Having Chris Martin on Top of the Pops instead of the marketing-led horror of galactic proportions that is the C**** F*** single would restore some of my faith in the people of Britain that has been so, so hit lately.
BBC: C**** F*** 'heading for top spot'
Do it now. Before it's too late. And if you do it, please post here!
And to the HMV guy in the article: I'm a student, and I want that frog boiled now. There's your kitsch appeal.
Once a day is too much. Twice every ad break on every single commercial channel is taking the piss. I watch TV with sound piped through my hi-fi, and it doesn't have a remote control; as a result, and also because I don't own a PVR yet, I have to rapid-switch the channel when the frog and friends come on. Unfortunately my TV provider is Telewest Broadband so it takes about five seconds to get to a safe haven like, say, News 24. Five seconds of frog to suffer through is five seconds too much, and with the BBC strike on Monday almost certain to trigger a N24 shutdown I have a feeling I may well be about to go insane.
ITV have had 600 complaints since they started striprunning Crazy Frog every...single...ad-break...twice, but they won't willingly give up a source of revenue just because real viewers are pissed off about it (only the BARB raters count, although at least they're not watching Celebrity Wrestling either). And the ASA, which has real power, won't listen to Crazy Frog complaints about their frequency, which is supposedly up to the broadcaster; and they rejected these months before they did the ITV deal and started pushing it harder than an American crack dealer. So complain, complain, complain to OFCOM, with a quickie dropped into the ASA about the outrageous £3-a-month small-print scam they're pulling (earning them millions.)
And if you want to hurt them financially, don't buy a tone from them, complain at every opportunity, switch your domains away from Network Solutions (Jamster is part of the Verisign family), and don't buy your digital certificates from Verisign/Thawte (two sides of the same coin). Make sure to let them know...
By rights, you should hate them and everything they stand for - a couple of New York art prats glad to define themselves under the 'electroclash' term discredited by almost everyone else on the scene, who almost bankrupted a record label with their completely silly first-album recording costs (although it was Ministry of Sound, which redeems them a bit), who have once on the album given Linda Perry a songwriting credit, with self-indulgent bullshit on the inlay card, and who admitted in an interview that Casey Spooner is such a puss that he couldn't sing the word "war" without much persuasion...
And yet I can't help but like the album, Linda Perry, warts and all. It's just too good to hate. Quandary, isn't it? Fischerspooner have, against the odds, managed to make a coherent and surprisingly wide-ranging electropop album that's actually worth buying; something they were threatening to do with Emerge and Turn On but didn't quite manage to do elsewhere. It sounds like they've used more instruments on the album, which helps it a lot; in fact, even the variation in lyrical style (from Spooner's own compositions to David Byrne) helps the project; Mirwais, miracle-worker on Madonna's Music and American Life (rescuing awful, awful songs and making them sound interesting), does additional production on most of the tracks; and at least it doesn't have the arrogance surrounding it that #1 had (from the title on).
Besides, "Just Let Go" is one of my electronic singles of the year so far, although I haven't heard the new single mix of Ladytron's "Sugar" yet - I did hear the Thinking XXX version, but apparently it's very different; and from my impressions of the demo if they release "Destroy Everything You Touch" it'll steamroller everything else out there. Besides, it's a step up from a fucking awful remix of "Axel F" featuring C**** F***, isn't it?
It's embarrassing to say this, I know, but this album's actually worth buying. Besides, at least I still hate the Libertines...
Other albums that aren't as bad as Pitchfork Media says they are: Garbage, Bleed Like Me (actually a fantastic album). Funny world, isn't it?
I'm watching BBC's reality-TV style Eurovision candidate show, Making Your Mind Up, named after by far Britain's least subtle entry to the ESC. Good things: Terry Wogan (you've got to love Wogan) and Jonathan Ross, who is slagging off almost everything without care for the consequences. Bad things: everything else, especially Gina G (who was crap the first time) and Jordan/Katie Price, who really shouldn't be doing this.
Song 1: Javine, ex out of Pop Rivals (kicked out of Girls Aloud, controversially, in the knockout stages). Sounds like last year's Eurovision winner, so quite frankly I'm all for it; Britain needs a chance. Popjustice are gunning for Javine and I may well end up going with them; you can vote online (from 6:35pm), tee hee.
Song 2: Tricolore's "Brand New Day" (a G4-ish 'popera' hybrid) has almost certainly the worst Eurovision candidate lyric for years:
If we could see the world through the eyes of a child
> We'd see
the dawn of a brand new day
Jonathan Ross is right about this one - as a ripoff of the Lion King music - so of course is getting pasted by the audience. Hmm.
Song 3: Gina G. Flashback to the music. Rewind to 1996. Generic Pop Song with nothing adventurous going on at all. So of course it will do well.
Now they're going around Britain a la the real ESC to show televote verdicts. I like Eurovision. I'm not sure I like this, though...
Song 4: Another ex-reality TV 'star', Andy Scott-Lee, relative to Z-list celebrity Lisa. The problem with this song is basically that it's a Westlife song, and there's nothing I hate more. It's a truly horrible one too.
Song 5: "Jordan, aka Katie Price, or the other way round." Why exactly is a six months pregnant, ex-Page 3 model, I'm A Non-Entity, Get Me Into Here! 'star' doing entering a contest which she probably won't be able to fly to? Surely she wouldn't be sick enough to get an early Caesarean in order to go out there? Worse, the song's awful - it comes from the same Generic Pop Song place as the Gina G song, although is slightly catchier and much worse produced. Jonathan Ross is claiming it's the best song, but this may be just because her dancers rip off Fischerspooner's one-step clothes removal technique (she doesn't, fortunately.)
To vote, send an email to eurovision@bbc.co.uk with the heading and text reading 'SONG 1', 'SONG 2' etc. I recommend SONG 1, if only as the least worst option (why is it that no-one decent ever tries entering?) Vote closes at 7:30pm, so get going.
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?
(Yes, a running series! And why not? Gives me a reason to write.)
Those of you who don't live in Scotland may not be familiar with the Jodie Jones murder case, not having had it hammered into their heads over the last three months, so I'll refresh your memories. A couple of years ago, the said Jodie Jones (a 14-year old teenager from the Easthouses council estate, an area of Edinburgh I know fairly well) ended up missing after going out to meet her boyfriend, a neddish scumbag by the name of Luke Mitchell. Later on, the body ends up being discovered just off her route to Mitchell's house, Mitchell made an absolute ass of himself both at the funeral and on Sky News, and the police process the information.
Of course, as it turns out, she did meet her boyfriend... (at least according to majority verdict.)
The Scottish media have not exactly been forward with their tact - all the newspapers had a shot of somewhat childish glee at revealing that Mitchell was the one charged with the murder pretty much the second he turned 16 - and they're even less likely to gain it now. It has been like this throughout the long, sordid, endless trial - every single night on Reporting Scotland we got a trial update, despite the fact that the evidence was always the bloody same. Just think of what the front pages are going to be like tomorrow...
And bad things are going to happen because of this; in fact, the trailer for Up Next on Reporting Scotland is what triggered me to write this. Because Jodie was one of the supposed subculture who call themselves 'goths' and consider themselves to be 'individual', and Mitchell claimed to be too, the media has found a Blame Target. And it's the same blame target as the US media found after Columbine - Marilyn Manson. As they just said: "Did the music of the rock star Marilyn Manson really influence the killer's actions?"
Well, let's see...
A) MM's painting of the Black Dahlia murders, shown on his website, isn't exactly unique to the genre. No-one's even proved to me that Mitchell even visited the website...
B) As the BBC Scotland article I linked to just above admits, but Reporting Scotland doesn't seem to be, Mitchell bought the Golden Age Of Grotesque album-with-free-DVD featuring images vaguely like said murder two days after Jodie was murdered. Oops.
("This DVD may explain how he became...a cold-blooded killer" says the idiot reporter, right now. DO THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ THEIR OWN REPORTS?)
C) As anyone who's actually listened to his music knows, Marilyn Manson is taking the piss. If there is a message in his music, it's "don't trust other people's bullshit", which is an excellent message and one I approve of highly, especially in the case of Reporting Scotland. The trappings around him? It's just theatrics. Look at his appearance in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, for instance - "I wouldn't say anything to them. I'd just listen... because no-one else did." The guy understands. He's just the new Alice Cooper, designed to piss off your parents, so lay off him.
D) There is much, much worse out there than Marilyn Manson - and I suspect Luke Mitchell may in fact known about some of it, or at least read about it. But of course, MM's name is recognisable while most of the really seamy end of the music scale isn't, so that's what gets in the media.
E) It's quite possible that angry music like MM's might actually help people get over their rage against the society they feel mistreats them - the whole 'punch in the air' thing. Radiohead and New Order did it for me, but hey, everybody's different.
So the answer to the question is, of course, no. MM is merely a symptom, as is Mitchell's self-professed 'Satanism'. Mitchell is clearly a screwed-up character; the Satanism crap and attachment to the weird end of the Gothic bandwagon is obviously a cover for real psychological problems, none of which will be solved by sending him to jail forever.
(My own suspicion? Jodie found about about his side girlfriend, and he flipped out on her. Full stop. And as Larkin said, 'they fuck you up, your mum and dad', and Luke Mitchell's amoral, uncaring, truly vile mother definitely fits the bill.)
The big problem is that this will cause a backlash, just like Columbine caused a backlash, against anyone who doesn't fit in. Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse for people who aren't 'normal' in school, something like this happens and you know it's going to. Wear black? Listen to Marilyn Manson? Use the Internet, not just for MSN? Be a bit 'weird'? We'll keep an eye on you! Never mind that you may have no intention of killing or hurting anyone - like most fans, in fact, of Marilyn Manson, all of whom take pride in being a 'rebel against conformity' by buying his albums en masse - you're marked! Even those with problems (and most MM fans are well adjusted members of society) only really need a little understanding; but, by God, we'll give them punishment!
This is, of course, something that will create more problems than it solves - because, of course, if the supposed 'goths' genuinely are persecuted, they may develop complexes like Mitchell's about it and we'll get a Scottish Columbine (with school layouts the way they are, it's very possible - a big enough knife and/or the right bits of the Anarchist's Cookbook and it'll take Armed Response to stop it), the media will blame it on Marilyn Manson and/or the Internet and the entire thing will full circle again. It's a horrifying prospect, and one that could very well be happening, in Britain, right now. Isn't that scary?
[In fact, isn't the possibility of blaming it on the Net why the pigs scoured the Mitchells' computers, discovering as a sideline that Luke's brother was viewing porno at the time of the murder? I suppose when they found that out at least some of the feeling was that of a missed opportunity...]
The best thing I can say is: the case is extremely abnormal, and can be simply explained in two words. We shouldn't make it normal, but our media looks like it's going to keep trying...
[I might as well, also, do this fine Googlebomb for Manic: we're all talking about the White House's empty rhetoric. After all, the ignorant bigots one was successful, so why not give this one a go? It's for a good cause.]
So, Band Aid 20. Um, it's not as bad as Band Aid II (the "Stock, Aitken and Waterman use some oddly familiar keyboard settings" version)...
It's for Sudan, and that area needs all the cash it can get (so sorry, WDM, I'm not with you on this one). I've always been forgiving about charity singles - even ones by S Club 7 - and it's that way with Band Aid 20. I really can't find it in my heart to hate it, despite the fact that it isn't anywhere close to being as good as the original.
Let's be fair, though - the original isn't a classic either, as I realised when watching the two back to back. The lyrics sound like they were written by Bob Geldof in ten minutes in the back of a taxi; coincidentally, they were written by Bob Geldof in ten minutes in the back of a taxi, and they haven't been changed since then ("And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas-time?" No shit, Bob.) Even though Busted learnt about what really they were singing about from a leaflet, and Joss Stone was 'persuaded' to go by her mother, that doesn't compare in the slightest with some of the extreme ignorance from the stars on the original; my own personal favourite being Spandau Ballet promising to tour Ethiopia the next year. The prickness of Justin Darkness all cock-rocking in the BA20 video is exactly like Duran Duran doing the same thing in the original, except that Duran were (and still are) even bigger pricks than the Darkness are now. Dizzee Rascal's rap isn't that awful - at least the guy has heart - and it's no worse than the Boy George section in the original. In fact, the main failings of BA20 are musically - the original has atmosphere, almost certainly due to Midge Ure (atmosphere was all Ultravox were ever capable of) and the new version - produced by Nigel Godrich, who is capable of really good, and indeed atmospheric rock production (Radiohead) but needs band participation - does not. It's as simple as that.
And it could be worse - we haven't got USA for Africa II yet, and hopefully won't, and "We Are The World" is an infinitely worse song than "Do They Know It's Christmas?" ("We are the world/we are the children"? Blecch.) So pray that won't happen. And at least there's amusing moments in the video: Bono overacting, the Darkness being pricks, Dizzee Rascal, and Charlie Busted wearing a Tool sweatshirt, which pretty much makes the video. Obviously. Tool. If you asked me to name two bands sounding less alike, Busted and Tool would basically be those two (although I'd probably say 'Busted and Bogdan Raczynski'.) If only Busted would try to sound like Tool, then I might even download their albums...
(Oh, and if any of your kids want a Bastard [sic] album, give them the Ramones Anthology instead. It's about as revolutionary, the songs are just as catchy if not more, and at least they had a drummer.)
So pray nightly to the deity, or lack of same, of your choice that we won't get a hip-hop "We Are The World" (featuring P Diddy, a message from Tupac's answering machine, and R Kelly!), don't buy the BA20 single if you don't want to, sit back and relax. It's the only way.
