Swash Dogs and Diet Coke Heads: the 2008 rolling Guardian zing thread

Fantastic start to the year here:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/in_music_ignorance_can_be_blis.html

swatch dogs, right?

1. Post endless lazy snarky zings at the same targets week in, week out
2. ????
3. PROFIT

-- Dom Passantino, Tuesday, January 1, 2008 11:37 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

dont reveal your business plan to ilm, dom!!!

I know nothing about Jay-Z because (sweeping generalisation alert!) hip-hop stopped being interesting in about 1991

it's cuter when you put it in parenthesis.

swatch dogs, right?

-- Alan, Tuesday, 1 January 2008 19:58 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

It's an even better pun than "Alexis On Fire".

Plus we can do lots of "Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?"/"Ich luge bullets" shit later in the thread.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/noughties_so_far_the_soundtrac.html

synoptic (?) state of the pop nation address from the big man.

it's the ilm wot won it.

Another year of Dom upset that The Guardian stopped taking his calls then?

The Guide's picks for 2008, as ever, made me sigh and gnash.

Jesus Christ, what's growing on top of Petridish's eyes?

lol at petridish still going to bat for Mike Skinner in 2008.

For me the defining sound of this decade so far has been the weird/acid folk revival of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsome, Iron & Wine, Espers, Vetiver etc.

I like not being in the mainstream - the mainstream is rarely where the most influential music truly occurs.

lol at petridish still going to bat for Mike Skinner in 2008

Something to show off at the dole office, eh?

I mean, fuck it, I'll take the bait, but my god surely even Petridis has got to be embarassed to be still peddling "Haha the white mainstream is so BLAND" sub-McGee bullshit in 2008.

Who are Coldplay's "ilk"? U2? Red Hot Chili Peppers? Snow Patrol? The Fray? That's four different bands there, four different strands of "blandness" that could theoretically be taken as a way to spin this article off into something beyond "lol pop music morelike poop music amirite?", but god forbid anyone puts any thought into this shit.

It's just a stunning inability to grasp cause and effect: the biggest bands in the world have mass appeal, because, y'know, that's kind of a pre-requisite. Surely this was the same with The Beatles, The Eagles, Dire Straits, or whoever the fuck else was the biggest name in music at the time in random decades?

It gets rounded off with the usual "those negros sure do make some good music to dance to" platitudes, some random half-assed popist rhetoric left dribbling from MacPherson's face like so much plaster on a builder's radio, and then the usual turgid middle class boosterdom for Turner and Doherty, where "Fluroscent Adolescent" is an intelligent, witty, and perceptive look at modern living, rather than a big hunk of shit that lyrically would get laughed off the fucking Lowlife label, let alone anywhere else.

Also, maybe Petri could remind us who got "Dry Your Eyes" to number one, because I'm pretty sure it's those horrid icky poor people that he so rightly warns us against in his closing sentence. Vote Petridis in your Iowa Caucus: he'll bring back sterilisation of the poor and Lo-Fidelity Allstars.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/tony_naylor_the_solution_is.html

"dance acts mixing together album tracks, who ever heard of such a thing!?!!"

ok this tony naylor is the one to beat in 2008. utterly baffling article. he actually wants dance albums to be *more like* 70s rock albums so far as i can tell.

#8 Google result for "Tony Naylor": him describing Peaches as being "as vital as ever".

lololololololololololololololololololol

I thought he was saying they should be *less* like 70s rock albums. I guess the whole thing is pretty spurious (eg 45:33 is hardly likely to be a blueprint for the rest of LCD Soundsystem's career; also dude is an [ex?] dance press type so you suspect him saying "all dance albums are crap" is playing to the galleries) but hey, that's Guardian blogs

he wants albums to be albums, to "cohere", to be statements. i have no troubs with an album being a bunch of tracks, intros and all. intros are often the best bits anyway.

Naylor used to do the NME's Manchester/Liverpool stuff around 2000, I think. Big fan of Starsailor and Haven I seem to recall.

Yeah that would be right... one of those wearying 'the north will rise again' types but I think he repped for some good stuff as well

Piece in the Guide today actually leaving me speechless.

FUCKING IDIOCY, BUMFEEDING PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL HORSESHIT, WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

WHO ARE YOU CHARLES HAZLEWOOD TO INSULT OUR BRAINS LIKE THIS

OH FUCKING GREAT IT'S A BBC 4 PROGRAMME TOO

*seethes*

Charles Hazlewood on: The Arctic Monkeys "I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor"

"What's so clever is it starts with an absolute deluge of F sharp minor. Then finally when Alex Turner comes in it's actually on a C sharp major chord, which is what's known as the dominant chord in music theory. Then you're made to wait to get to that big deluge of tonic chord again until the chorus which is a brilliant way of building your expectation, holding you back like an elastic band and then letting you ping."

Charles "Lee" Hazlewood on: Dizzee Rascal "Paranoid"

"I was dropping my daughter off at nursery this morning and I was listening to this. What's interesting is it starts with the chorus ("Rinse me out, use me up, cast me down, fuck me up") and that there's this rolling bass line that underlines all the verses. That makes me think of Henry Purcell, one of our greatest composers from the 17th century who was part of a time when an awful lot of music was written over the top of what was called a ground bass. The idea was that one wrote music over one recurring bass line that's on a loop and here I am listening to Dizzee Rascal and thinking "blimey there's a ground bass.""

Charles Hazlewood on: Radiohead "Paranoid Android"

"There are parallels between them and composers like Pierre Boulez or Maurice Ravel - people who have an extraordinary ear for colour and harmony. Paranoid Android is a post-progressive rock symphony in three movements; it's got these three sections that have only a small amount of family connections. Add into the mill their extraordinary sonic imagination and the way they chose to grind in a very hard electric guitar sound just on one syllable of one word of one line of a lyric and then it's gone again."

Charles Hazlewood on: Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"

Jokes, bruv.

Charles Hazlewood on: Amy Winehouse "Back To Black"

"It's all built around one D minor chord with a lovely, really loose swung bass. The combination of the bass and the repeated chord - which might be on the beat or off the beat depending on which way you view it - is fantastic. There's something very powerful about songs that are built out of a very concentrated tonality. Back To Black never deviates from it and it forces you into a very narrow tunnel. When it does go to a different place there's an almost seismic sense of relief."

Charles Hazlewood on: John Lennon "Imagine"

"An absolute classic song with a classic song structure. What's lovely is you get those beautiful piano chords in the introduction and the voice grows organically out of that. It's not like Arctic Monkeys where the verse is saying something then the chorus catapults you somewhere else. Instead, it's the very idea that you can start a piece of music rolling then very organically the vocal line emerges from it. The chorus gradually amasses potency and once you get to the line "I hope one day you'll join us" there's an enormous sense of release. We've been in C major so that E major chord is quite an alien place to go. It comes as a real bolt out of the blue."

At this point, I would like to say FUCK

Charles HizzletotheWizzle on: The Prodigy "Poison"

"What Prodigy are doing is some fantastic old-as-the-hills form of music called counterpoint - which is one of the most mathematical constructs in all music. It centres on a type of music called a fugue. The basic way it works is you set out your melodic idea then, once that idea is being aired, another voice comes in with the same idea but a different pitch, then the voice that had the initial idea has to make accompanying material to decorate the original idea. It's done with the most amazing amount of sophistication but at the same time it's a rebel rousing, terrifying piece of poisonous (ARF) music. Someone like Mahler built up the same high velocity but then he'd give you a portion of time when you can regroup. The Prodigy are just pushing you further to the abyss."

And, finally, Charles "Brian fucking Eno" Hazlewood on: Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody"

"It always amuses me that when you watch the video it seems as if all four of Queen are singing all those harmony lines but in fact when you listen carefully you can tell it's Freddie Mercury looped on top of himself. If you look at in (sic) on paper you say to yourself that it doesn't make a consistent musical narrative but it does just hang together and it goes through a multitude of different keys. That's very weird for a pop song to do because invariably you're in a tonic key and that's where you stay. You go to some related place but basically you don't leave the continent. Whereas Bohemian Rhapsody goes to five different continents within the course of six minutes!"

WEDNESDAY 9TH OF JANUARY 2008, 10 PM ON BBC FOUR, THIS MAN WILL EXPLAIN YOU MUSIC

While I'd debate the usefulness of this excercise (other than making guilty middle-aged pop listeners feel better about themselves), this isn't "psuedo-intellectual horseshit", it's describing music using its basic vernacular.

It is kind of condescending though.

IT ISN'T DESCRIBING MUSIC AT ALL, IT'S TALKING BULLCRAP MATT, FUCKING BULLCRAP

What's so clever is it starts with an absolute deluge of F sharp minor. Then finally when Alex Turner comes in it's actually on a C sharp major chord, which is what's known as the dominant chord in music theory. Then you're made to wait to get to that big deluge of tonic chord again until the chorus which is a brilliant way of building your expectation, holding you back like an elastic band and then letting you ping

NO YOU FUCKHEAD THIS IS WHAT'S KNOWN AS 'BIG, OBVIOUS, COMMERCIAL SONGWRITING', WHO CARES WHAT EXACT CHORDS THEY USE, AS LONG AS THE DRUNKARDS ARE LEAPING AROUND WHEN THAT 'DELUGE OF TONIC CHORD' COMES BACK, THEN THE SONG HAS SUCCEEDED, OTHER THAN THAT, IT'S MUSICALLY NEAR-WORTHLESS, AND NOT EXACTLY UNIQUE REALLY GIVEN THAT IT'S BASED AROUND ABOUT AS TYPICAL AND FUCKING MUNDANE A BLUESY RIFF THAT YOU COULD EVER HEAR, I THINK WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO SAY IS THAT THE GUITARS 'GET A BIT LOUDER' IN THE CHORUS BECAUSE THAT AND THAT ALONE IS WHAT GIVES THE CLUBBERS THEIR VISCERAL SATISFACTION

What's interesting is it starts with the chorus

HOT DAMN IS THIS INTERESTING, YOU CUNT, SO INTERESTING THAT YOU THEN HAVE TO PRINT THE CHORUS OUT, AND IT CONTAINS A SWEAR, BECAUSE WE'RE THE FUCKING GUARDIAN AND WE'RE FUCKING EDGY

there's this rolling bass line that underlines all the verses. That makes me think of Henry Purcell, one of our greatest composers from the 17th century who was part of a time when an awful lot of music was written over the top of what was called a ground bass. The idea was that one wrote music over one recurring bass line that's on a loop and here I am listening to Dizzee Rascal and thinking "blimey there's a ground bass.

YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD A REAL HIP-HOP SONG AND I CLAIM MY TEN BUCKS, THIS HERE STATEMENT, BROUGHT TO US BY THE INTREPID MUSICAL ANALYST COLIN FUCKING HAZLEWOOD, IS FUCKING TRUE OF 99% OF COMMERCIAL RAP TODAY. WHY MUST YOU BRING HENRY PURCELL INTO IT, IS IT BECAUSE YOU'RE A DUMBED-DOWN SHITHEAD WHO WANTS TO LOOK CLEVER? EH? TAKE A FEW MOMENTS BEFORE ANSWERING ME, CUNT

OOH BLIMEY, THERE'S A GROUND BASS! I NEVER THOUGHT I'D HEAR A GROUND BASS IN 2008!

There are parallels between them and composers like Pierre Boulez or Maurice Ravel - people who have an extraordinary ear for colour and harmony

LOOK I'VE DONE IT AGAIN, ALTHOUGH THIS TIME I MAY HAVE A POINT, BECAUSE WHAT I'VE SAID IS SO VAGUE IT MAY WELL BE KINDA TRUE

Paranoid Android is a post-progressive rock symphony in three movements

POSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOSTPOSTFUCKOFF

ALSO I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHERE YOU GOT 'THREE MOVEMENTS' FROM, BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY WASN'T FROM LISTENING TO THE SONG

the way they chose to grind in a very hard electric guitar sound just on one syllable of one word of one line of a lyric and then it's gone again

"YOU DON'T REMEMBER, YOU DON'T REMEMBER, WHY DON'T YOU REMEMBER MY NAME" AMIRITE? YEAH, THERE IS AN ISOLATED CRUNCH ON THE FIRST "YOU". BUT IT NEVER RETURNS. EVER. NOT SIX FUCKING WORDS LATER, YOU MASSIVE BELL-END, OH CERTAINLY NOT

It's all built around one D minor chord with a lovely, really loose swung bass. The combination of the bass and the repeated chord - which might be on the beat or off the beat depending on which way you view it - is fantastic. There's something very powerful about songs that are built out of a very concentrated tonality. Back To Black never deviates from it and it forces you into a very narrow tunnel. When it does go to a different place there's an almost seismic sense of relief.

CONGRATS YOU HAVE MADE THIS SONG SOUND REALLY BORING (WHICH TO BE FAIR IT PROBABLY IS, DISCOUNTING THE EFFECT WINEHOUSE'S VOICE MIGHT HAVE, WHICH IS THE ONLY REASON ANYONE PAYS HER ANY MIND AT ALL), ALSO YOU HAVE CONSCIONABLY USED THE WORD 'SEISMIC' TO DESCRIBE A SONG HAVING THE IMAGINATION TO BREAK OUT OF ITS ONE-CHORD STRUCTURE, HENCE YOU ARE, INDUBITABLY, A WET, FLAPPING CUNT

An absolute classic song with a classic song structure

TWAT, YOU ARE PANDERING TO THE CANON, YOU ARE BEING A SOFT-HEADED LOON, YOU ARE TALKING BULLSHIT

What's lovely is you get those beautiful piano chords in the introduction and the voice grows organically out of that

READ: JOHN FUCKING LENNON PLAYS SOME SIMPLE CHORDS AND THEN STARTS SINGING, THE PRODUCTION IS NOT VERY GOOD

It's not like Arctic Monkeys where the verse is saying something then the chorus catapults you somewhere else

WHERE TO FUCKING START, BUT I'LL KEEP IT TO THIS: THE CHORUS OF 'IMAGINE' IS MORE DISTINCT FROM THE VERSE THAN IS THE CASE IN THAT ARCTIC MONKEYS SONG IN EVERY FUCKING WAY EXCEPTING FOR THE VOLUME, AND GUESS WHAT, IT'S STILL A SHITTY SONG, BUT THIS IS IRRELEVANT, BECAUSE YOUR CRASS ARCTIC MONKEYS COMPARISON SPEAKS FOR ITS FUCKING SELF

Instead, it's the very idea that you can start a piece of music rolling then very organically the vocal line emerges from it

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!!! FUUUCK YOU!!! FUCK YOU WITH A BROOMHANDLE!!! FUCKINGFUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING CUNT SON OF A CUNTFUCKING ARSECUNT

THE ABOVE IS A VOCAL LINE THAT ORGANICALLY EMERGED FROM THE PIECE OF MUSIC THAT IS MY HEADACHE HAVING READ YOUR SENTENCE

The chorus gradually amasses potency and once you get to the line "I hope one day you'll join us" there's an enormous sense of release

FROM YOUR DICK

ACTUALLY I THINK "YOU MAY SAY I'M A DREAMER" AND "AND THE WORLD WILL BE AS ONE" ARE MEANT TO BE THE MOST EUPHORIC LINES, YOUR SUGGESTION FALLS IN BETWEEN AND IS NOT PRESAGED NOR FOLLOWED BY ANY SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE MUSIC, BUT WHAT DO I KNOW, THE SONG MERELY BORES ME

We've been in C major so that E major chord is quite an alien place to go. It comes as a real bolt out of the blue.

ONLY A FUCKING TYPICAL FUCKING CHORD-PROGRESSION, THEN, MY GOD I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY TO ANALYSE SOME CARDIACS I REALLY DO, ALTHOUGH YOUR EARS WOULD PROBABLY FALL OFF AFTER ONE SONG; IF THIS IS A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE THEN CARDIACS WILL BE LIKE A FUCKING DUMPER TRUCK FALLING OUT OF THE SKY ONTO YOUR INERT BONCE

What Prodigy are doing is some fantastic old-as-the-hills form of music called counterpoint - which is one of the most mathematical constructs in all music.

OH FUCK

SEEING AS THE SONG ITSELF IS A SIMPLE DRUM LOOP WITH AN EVEN SIMPLER LOOPED SYNTH RIFF AND AND EVEN SIMPLER LOOPED BASSLINE, YOU MUST BE TALKING ABOUT THE VOCALS, WHICH ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A SIMPLE CALL-AND-RESPONSE. OH WAIT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE SECOND SYNTH LINE WHICH CRUDELY APES THE VOCALS DURING THE CHORUS. FUCKING MATHEMATICAL STUFF MAN, GET YRSELF A CALCULATOR, WE'RE GOING TO NUMBER SCHOOL!

It centres on a type of music called a fugue. The basic way it works is you set out your melodic idea then, once that idea is being aired, another voice comes in with the same idea but a different pitch, then the voice that had the initial idea has to make accompanying material to decorate the original idea.

OH MY GOD

YOU'RE GETTING YOUR TERMS CONFUSED. THIS IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION I HAVE FOR THE ABSOLUTE AND UNASHAMED WRONGNESS OF THIS EXTRACT. THE SONG WORKS BY EMPLOYING A BUILD, MADE UP OF THE SAME SECTION NOT LAYERED OVER ITSELF, BUT REPEATED, WITH SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SYNTH LEVELS/DRUM NOISES/WHATEVER. THIS IS NOT A FUGUE. THIS IS NO WAY EVEN CLOSE TO BEING A FUGUE. STFU.

It's done with the most amazing amount of sophistication but at the same time it's a rebel rousing, terrifying piece of poisonous music

YOU'RE DOWN WITH THE KIDS AND YOU CAN MAKE AWFUL PUNS? TRULY A PRESENTER FOR THE NOUGHTIES. OH, AND BTW THE PRODIGY ARE BEING ALMOST ENTIRELY TONGUE-IN-CHEEK KTHXBI

AMAZING AMOUNT OF SOPHISTICATION MY ARSE, THIS IS BOG-STANDARD DANCEFLOOR 4/4 NO-FRILLS ELECTROPOP, DO YOU RECKON YOU COULD HEAR AUTECHRE AND LIVE, BECAUSE I DON'T, YOU WOULDN'T EVEN SURVIVE ORBITAL AND I CAN DANCE TO ORBITAL, YOU FUCKWASTE

Someone like Mahler

YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN, YOU...CUNT

built up the same high velocity but then he'd give you a portion of time when you can regroup. The Prodigy are just pushing you further to the abyss.

THE SONG DOESN'T LOSE ITS BEAT BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF QUIETER INTERLUDES IN BETWEEN THE OH-SO-SCARY VOCALS, ALTHOUGH FRANKLY IF THAT'S ENOUGH TO PUSH YOU INTO THE 'ABYSS' THEN I HAVE EVERY SYMPATHY, OH AND THE SONG IS FOUR MINUTES LONG, COMPARE AND CONTRAST WITH MAHLER, THEN REALISE THAT IF FOUR MINUTES OF VERY MILD ELECTRO IS ALL IT TAKES TO THROW YOU INTO THE 'ABYSS', YOU SHOULDN'T BE LISTENING TO ANY SORT OF MUSIC WHATSOEVER.

It always amuses me that when you watch the video it seems as if all four of Queen are singing all those harmony lines but in fact when you listen carefully you can tell it's Freddie Mercury looped on top of himself

GEE THANKS FOR THIS NUGGET NOW I LIKE THE SONG TWICE AS MUCH AS BEFORE, PS YOU ARE EASILY AMUSED, I RECOMMEND ROYCHUBBY BROWN

If you look at in (sic) on paper you say to yourself that it doesn't make a consistent musical narrative

THIS IS HOW YOU LOOK AT EVERY SONG, YOU ARE ACTUALLY DEAF, AND I CLAIM MY TEN BUCKS

but it does just hang together and it goes through a multitude of different keys

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH THOSE CLEVER QUEENS

That's very weird for a pop song to do because invariably you're in a tonic key and that's where you stay

INSTEAD OF FINDING COUNTER-EXAMPLES, OF WHICH THERE ARE BILLIONS, I AM GOING TO FART AT YOU. PFFFT

You go to some related place but basically you don't leave the continent. Whereas Bohemian Rhapsody goes to five different continents within the course of six minutes!

THE CONTINENT 'TINKLING PIANO POP', THE CONTINENT 'TYPICAL PIANO BALLAD', THE CONTINENT 'CHEESY HARD-ROCK SOLO', THE CONTINENT 'CHEESY HARD-ROCK CHORUS' AND THE CONTINENT 'CHEESY BALLAD SOLO'

YOU TRAVEL WELL, DON'T YOU

FUCK

not reading that

shame, it contains a lot of balanced and carefully-reasoned thought

charles hazelwood is good on "discovering music", shit on everything else.

Jagger in NYC

YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN, YOU...CUNT

that needs to be a post-murder line in the next juvenile paris hilton slash horror film

not reading that

-- gff, Saturday, January 5, 2008 3:41 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^lol

Notice how I filled my rant with cuss words such as 'fuck' and cunt', until right near the end, where I refrained from swearing throughout the last Prodigy and all Queen critiques, before ending with a final 'fuck', thus creating a seismic sense of release for the reader, whose delayed expectations I finally fulfilled, like a bolt from the blue. Nobody saw that 'fuck' coming. It's a bit like that bit in Hamlet.

Great thread.

Actually... astonishing thread.

"What this wall contains, is a series of bricks, interspersed by mortar"

IT DOESN'T CONTAIN ANY BRICKS YOU CUNT! ALL IT IS IS A BIG FUCKING EXPANSE OF STONE. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS. THAT IS IT!!!!

This thread is the reason why "tl;dr" was invented.

I dunno, I sort of agree with LJ, at least about that being an absolutely piss-poor excuse for... whatever it's supposed to be.

What's so clever is it starts with an absolute deluge of F sharp minor. Then finally when Alex Turner comes in it's actually on a C sharp major chord, which is what's known as the dominant chord in music theory.

Like, anyone who doesn't know music theory is gonna be totally confused by this shit ("C sharp major is the dominant chord in all of music? Well I'll be!"), and anyone who does will probably wonder why resolving the V to the i has suddenly become an especially "clever" move.

argh and just, the smugness! the way he says "big deluge of tonic chord" just reeks of 'hey look at me I'm talking about music theory but I'm doing it in a HIP EDGY WAY', especially since he just throws the term "tonic" out there randomly without even attempting to explain it or give a definition (at least we learn that, for purposes of this paragraph, "dominant" and "C sharp major" are interchangeable), so anyone who doesn't know basic music theory really has no hope of following what he's saying.

Lord they hum Andre Jones
Lord they hum Reynold Johnson
Lord I wanna fight back but I'm just so sick of bouncing
Lord I'm sick of jumping, Lord just please tell me something
My folks still dumping my music, bumping but I feel nothing
My heart is stelly pumping
My heart is stelly breaking
Sometimes I feel like I'm faking, man
I'm so sick of taking
Maybe hell ain't a place meant for us to burn
Maybe Earth is telling just a place for us to learn
Bout yo love, yo will and grace
Sometimes I wish I wasn't born in the first place
Maybe this first base, God knocked the ball up out the park
So we can come home this world right here is feeling so dark
Feeling so cold, Lord I'm feeling so old
I dunno if I can take this world right here no more
22 inch rims on the 'Lac
I guess that was yo footprint in the sand carrying us on yo back

louis taking some motherfucking names.

IT DOESN'T CONTAIN ANY BRICKS YOU CUNT! ALL IT IS IS A BIG FUCKING EXPANSE OF STONE. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS. THAT IS IT!!!!

Just like to say at this point that I listened carefully to every single one of the songs he analysed in preparation for my riposte (except Amy Winehouse, which didn't require it). Besides, I'm attacking his rhetoric and his self-important hyperbole (in a print media supplement! on a BBC programme!) as much as his (crass, shoddy) musical analysis.

louis fightin the good fight

fighting them on the internets so we don't have to fight them in the streets

Louis do you like "Party Like A Rockstar"?

Not relevant, just curious.

louis has heard "party like a rockstar"?

Well, I have now. I've heard much better. Sampled pizzicato strings tend to piss me off and it's not like they've got exciting flow. Repeating the title of the song over the chorus = dud.

Party Like A Guardian Blogger

Setup and punchline, executed like a Tottenham Hotspurs defensive error.

t-t-totally dude?

t-t-t-t-totally believing MIA will cross over this year

Did you want me to analyse Party Like A Rockstar inna C-Haze stylee? Not feelin' it.

I tried to count the potential memes in that LJ post and gave up when I got to about 20. This is already so much better than the 2007 Guardian thread.

GET YRSELF A CALCULATOR, WE'RE GOING TO NUMBER SCHOOL!

I tried to count the potential memes in that LJ post

-- Matt DC, Sunday, 6 January 2008 14:24 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.oregonhumane.org/events/album/images/telethon05/05Telethon112.jpg

Like I said its a dumb exercise and Hazlewood is totally condescending to the little people here but its kind of difficult to be given something like this and NOT sound condescending.

Louis, contrary to your post everything he says is there IS actually there but on the other hand merely pointing out that there is a ground bass in Paranoid and also in Purcell is absolutely zero help in describing what makes Paranoid great (or crap). Partly because the language of classical music falls short when talking about pop, and partly because its a soundbyte in The Guide and not a detailed piece on analysis. But if you're the sort of Guardian reader who feels guilty about listening to Dizzee Rascal and not Purcell then it might make you feel a bit better.

Also, although his conclusions are dodgy he dodgy and he doesn't go far enough in explaining any of the terms, a big deluge of tonic chord is pretty much the most obvious thing you can do in any piece of music and Hazlewood knows that. What he's saying is "these are very obvious and simple devices that also occur in classical music but they can be very effective and here's why" and you're responding with 'ZOMG YOUR MIND WOULD BE BLOWN IF YOU EVER HEARD AUTECHRE' when I suspect it probably wouldn't. But this is the problem Hazlewood invites when he starts using words like 'tonic' without explaining what they are first because it sounds like psuedo-intellectual bollocks even when it isn't really.

However if you're going to call people out on not getting their terms right, at least make sure you know what 'electro' and '4/4' mean when you're talking about dance music.

Lol 'are dodgy he dodgy'.

DO YOU RECKON YOU COULD HEAR AUTECHRE AND LIVE, BECAUSE I DON'T
Oh for changeable usernames.

In the nu-ILX era I suppose we should poll the best soundbyte in that post. It's a two-horse race between Autechre and 'IF THIS IS A BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE THEN CARDIACS WILL BE LIKE A FUCKING DUMPER TRUCK FALLING OUT OF THE SKY' for me.

I've gots to say I pretty much agree with Matt here.

Well, like I said, his motives and rhetoric I find to be just as nauseating as his actual analysis, if not more so. I might give his programme a watch, just to see if he's any better on screen. It's the sheer "We Are The Guardian, Hear Us Declaim" didacticism of the whole thing. Rubs me up in all sorts of wrong ways. This need to compare entirely different fields...in the introduction to the piece, for instance, where it is written "What Heston Blumenthal is to food, David Bellamy is to the undergrowth and Trinny and Susanah are to underwear, Charles Hazlewood is to classical music", nothing of any meaning is communicated, except a vague sense of 'great knowledge and achievement in their field', which in the cases of Bellamy (global warming denier) and T&S is almost certainly exaggerated for the benefit of entertainment. Also, the idea of 'defending pop' from classical snobs is utterly pointless; people have been analysing and hallowing pop for decades, although not in such a patronising, simplistic manner as C-Haze busts out here.

T-t-t-t-t-totally dude.

have u ever heard the expression "never apologize, never explain"?

i think it has a lot of merit.

xpost

Has Jagger been on the Irn Bru? Seems like a typical bit of Guardian Guide filler, quite how you can get in such a state about a rather uninteresting peice of fluff is beyond me. As to his motives, guess someone said can you write about these songs and we'll give a wedge of money.

funny thing is lots of ppl complain about hazelwood on the r3 messageboards. in a slightly different way, obv.

It's a thankless task being a populariser, because once you turn people onto something they get all snippy about people like you.

Good to see "You're Still The One" gettin' some love.

STOP IT TIARNAN FFS

I so didn't do it there, I swear!

sorry.

what now?

hey, jokes dude, i wish i could explain how what i said was intended to be amusing in context, but NRQ has already advised me against such conduct. :)

wrong thread. xpost

funny thing is lots of ppl complain about hazelwood on the r3 messageboards. in a slightly different way, obv

more's the pity.

jagger, out of interest, what's your background in music theory?

it's not like C-Haze is going into much depth here. if you're interested, my dad's a classically-trained violinist/singer, so i've picked up a bit from him, as well as from the countless reviews/opinion pieces on music i love that i've read down the years. i sense that your primary motivation for asking me that question is so you can snark at me afterwards, though, so my real answer is 'doesn't fucking matter'.

no no, not snarking at all - as someone clueless on theory i do find what you've got to say on this quite interesting (lose the all-caps am-dram though, it does you no good) as i saw that article and took it as read. interesting that it seems not to be the case - though matt dc seems to think differently?

maybe this would make a good standalone thread?

i mean this will probably sound dumb but could it be the case that you and CH are both correct, just coming at it from different angles? or is it just that CH is out-and-out incorrect, and that's what got you riled?

The caps-lock frenzy I stand by. There's an art to ranting. As for what I had to say on C-Haze's piece, well, I know what I'm hearing, I can follow the various threads in a piece of music and tell you what each is doing, and I understood C-Haze's terminology. That, and a healthy dose of skepticism towards the man's gushing rhetoric (read: bullshit) should be enough for anyone to spot the massive holes in his analyses. Matt claimed that what he said, although simplistic and patronising, was basically right. I'd even dispute this. All his value judgements are skewed, for instance, by this grotesque appeal to the authority that is classical music. Second, even when he gets it right, he sees wonder in the totally mundane, dressing it up in vivid terminology in order to wow us, even if what he's describing is a very, very common tenet (the 'concentrated tonality', the 'ground bass', the 'multitude of different keys' or the 'deluge of tonic chord'). Furthermore, his actual terminology is often balderdash. "Poison", a fugue?! AHAHAHA!

WAIT

He was talking about "Poison"?????????????????

lololololololol tool

S.Rose, this man^^^^^ has a helluva lot of music theory under his belt, and if he's lolling, you know something's gone amiss.

this is pretty good for an indie guilt thread

HD, are you lolling at 'poison' in that CH is chatting shit & 100% wrong or because 'poison' is simple & rubbish and doesn't warrant such analysis?

i have to admit, i do like the idea of applying classical theory to modern music and spotting the tricks and flashes of genius within a simple pop song. i'll certainly be watching this programme but i'd also like to know the points you disagree with, LJ.

I can answer you that, he was certainly lolling about the former. Dan's not the sort to laff at 'simple, rubbish' music like that, and besides, early Prodigy gets a lot of respect here on the whole. Even I think it's a pretty decent single! Not a fugue, though. HAHAHA!

Bump for workplace analysis.

I'm not sure he's actually saying Poison is a fugue, he's saying it's counterpoint, which is true in a very simplistic sense of the word. I think he just threw the word fugue in there to show off.

The problem there is, like most of these, Hazlewood clearly likes the records and is straining to argue their worth using criteria that aren't really relevant. But the whole point is that he's saying they're commonly used techniques, I don't believe for one minute he is actually claiming any of them are as good as Mahler, or even the best examples in the whole of popular music, which is what seems to be riling Louis. Chances are he was just slung a handful of records by the Graun and told "analyse these".

... to which he could have flicked the Vs and said: "analyse that".

i'm with LJ here. i know fuck all about music theory, but this is simply an exercise in vile and pointless smugness. having to "justify" pop by recourse to classical comparisons etc: dud as fuck.

Why do you all torture yourselves so.

http://www.cinefreaks.com.ar/VDVD_secretaria.jpg

L-R: The Guardian, ILX posters

"I NEVER THOUGHT I'D HEAR A GROUND BASS IN 2008" is pretty funny

LOUIS JAGGER OTM

That How Music Works thing that was on Channel 4, with Howard Goodall, though. That was great.

I don't believe for one minute he is actually claiming any of them are as good as Mahler, or even the best examples in the whole of popular music, which is what seems to be riling Louis

This is absolutely NOT what is riling me. The pop songs might be better from certain perspectives, worse from others. It's that he's making the comparison at all, appealing to a defined and 'unquestionable' authority, that is what pisses me off.

How Music Works was good, yeh. I remember enjoying the bit about why there is no hip-hop style in classical music. (it's cos it's difficult to write down, apparently).

I agree that appealing to any higher authority, and trying to place popular music artificially in the pantheon of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Orbital is a futile and insulting excercise.

Lucky for this Hazlewood guy that he doesn't go that far, I'd say.

It was "Bach, Mozart, Davis and Orbital", get your zings right. You do realise I disowned that silly statement long ago? What a way to win an argument, playing the man rather than the ball. Besides, he's not so much referring to a universal pantheon of high-quality instrumental music as saying "ooh, now this thing you'll hear here in Pop Song A also appears in Great Piece Of Classical Music B! Pop Song A now has Automatic Credibility".

In all fairness I'm not really trying to win an argument.

You're just here to rough up your opponent, put them off their game, and sneak away with a point.

it's describing music using its basic vernacular.

I dunno, it reads to me like a 14-year-old whose just had their first-ever music theory class. There's nothing wrong with that, other than this Hazlewood goofball is apparently not 14 years old, and is presenting his opinions as "informed."

I'm not at all against using musical terminology to describe music of any genre; I do think you should actually make some attempt to be accurate in the way you use the terms, though. Using "Poison" as an example of counterpoint/fugues is ludicrous. If you're going to use a Prodigy track as an example of counterpoint, the Ally Cat remix of "Charly" makes a ton more sense in that it actually demonstrates the principles of counterpoint more clearly.

I would actually love to read an article taking a piece of pop/electronic music and explaining "this is a fugue, here's why", or even LJ's "ooh, now this thing you'll hear here in Pop Song A also appears in Great Piece Of Classical Music B!". But not, on this evidence, by this Hazlewood guy, who doesn't offer real details of why or where he's making the comparison, possibly because there is no why or where.

Poison as fugue = er, not as far as my limited understanding of fugues goes (based on having read the first few chapters of "Gödel Escher Bach" a bunch of times and the other chapters never, yet), and I'm sure there must be some fugue-like dance tracks out there (seriously, fugue structures should be easy with sequencers and totally obvious to try even if you don't know the name) which I'll never notice without having them pointed out.

Poison as counterpoint = not apart from "there is a looped single-note bassline, then a repeating 4-note synth line centred around that note, then the synth stops and a vocalist sings mostly the same note in another octave", and if that's counterpoint to you then fine, every polyphonic piece of tonal music ever is contrapunctal, can we go home now?

Also, are Guardian readers going to send in antsy letters abt this dude playing his nursery-aged kid swearwords in the car, or is Guardian Reader 2007 woolly Ikea-buying policy that the concept of swearwords is silly and outdated?

Every trance remix of "Adagio for Strings" is also a better example of counterpoint than "Poison" (unsurprisingly).

if that's counterpoint to you then fine, every polyphonic piece of tonal music ever is contrapunctal, can we go home now?

This is kind of true, given the definition of counterpoint; it's so ingrained into our musical vocabulary that it seems almost impossible to find a piece of modern music that isn't contrapunctal.

Also, are Guardian readers going to send in antsy letters abt this dude playing his nursery-aged kid swearwords in the car, or is Guardian Reader 2007 woolly Ikea-buying policy that the concept of swearwords is silly and outdated?

That was 2007 policy, 2008 policy dictates that WE'RE THE FUCKING GUARDIAN AND WE'RE FUCKING EDGY, so swears are to be used at any given opportunity, especially in front of the impressionistic young.

For some reason, when looking for fugues in contemporary popular music, I headed straight to Orbital. I'm sure someone can come up with a better example.

Is this a good place to ask why half the theory books I've read say the dominant of a minor tonic is major and half say minor? The more authoritative ones go for a major dominant, but minor seems more consistent in terms of shared scale notes.

That is the only possibly interesting thing I could think of about "this song spends a lot of time in i and then a lot of time in V" (except maybe for exactly why you put it that way round and don't say the verses are in I but the intro's on iv), which as written is a total non-shocker.

Not that things have to be unusual to be worth underlining as "this is why it's a good song", I guess. I had mixed feelings abt the Howard Goodall but I enjoyed it on the whole and he was quite good on things like that - HG wouldn't let that paragraph pass without pointing out that a) this is a pretty damn common chord pairing in and of itself, and nothing wrong with that, it gets used so much because it sounds totally obvious and natural, because b) the dominant wants to resolve back to the tonic, hence tension of dragging out the dominant for an entire verse before you do so. Which wasn't spelt out here enough either to be clear to people who don't know any theory or to seem interesting to anyone.

The more authoritative ones are using probably using melodic or harmonic minor scales as their scale baseline (which would give you a major tonic) while the others are using natural minor as their scale baseline (which would give you a minor tonic).

I'm guessing this isn't entirely heading in the direction Dom hoped for

Zinging is a broad church.

zinging from the same hymn sheet

best thread ever

Needs "BEST JAGGER POLL"

Football thread Jagger
Musical crit Jagger
Banter with the Americans Jagger
TMI Jagger

We should have a rolling 'Louis rants about and acts deeply offended by some harmless piece of fluff in the Guide' thread.

Musical crit Jagger

i'm watching this hazlewood (hazelwood? subs pls check) thing now. it's way less up its own arse than i feared.

martin fry is on as a talking head. for a glorious second i thought he was his brother. now that i would have paid several licence-fees to see.

although fuck me, he's a cock. he's talking about jamie T and sounding like a total throbber. that is not "speech rhythm", you tool.

unLESS

you

TALK

like

THIS

haha i forgot about this

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/01/an_upper_class_hero_is_somethi.html

you gotta be fuckin kidding me

Oh no he isn't.

I agree about the "let's avoid lazy stereotypes" bit. I assume the rest of the article is him bigging up some feckless posh haircut indie twats.

journalists who have never been skint

does not compute

that main band he leads off with should be killed.

I think I need to stop mistaking really lazy ideas for hanging puff-pieces off with serious manifestoes.

by 'i' you mean 'me' i guess, but that's what this thread is for! the price of freedom is eternal vigilance etc.

I mean all of us, dude.

I've just seen 2 articles by this Tony Naylor bloke this week and that's enough to know he's an anaesthetic dick, right?

Vampire Weekend's debut album, due February 25th, conjures up a world with which I'm guessing most of you are pretty unfamiliar: holidays in Cape Cod; heiresses who shop at Louis Vuitton; the architectural features of Manhattan brownstones; people who can distinguish between Darjeeling and English Breakfast tea; men called Blake.

I just realised he wrote this in the Guardian lol.

I hope Naylor keeps raising the bar like this all year. What'll his stuff be like by December?

"Vampire Weekend's debut album, due February 25th, conjures up a world with which I'm guessing most of you are pretty unfamiliar.... people who can distinguish between Darjeeling and English Breakfast tea." Who the fuck can't do that?

I've been to Cape Cod! I should rename myself Lord Poo.

xpost

I like his list of cool people in that article: Weller! Gallagher! Skinner! Wot, no Kelly Jones?

Kelly Jones' dad is the Earl of Monmouth.

Good grief this thread is mental.

Pretty sure powerblogger Tony Naylor is just trying to get the attention of the zing crew now. I assume his next article will be on why Paul Robinson is the best goalkeeper in England.

Pretty sure powerblogger Tony Naylor is just trying to get the attention of the zing crew now.

seriously.

Who the fuck is Tony Naylor?

He wrote Red Dwarf

only the guardian journalist dom could have been.

Tony Naylor may be the big man on Comment Is Free.

stelfox is a contributor -- the next dancehall lyrics hoo-hah is going to be tight.

"White guilt/Running through my mind/ White guilt/ Helps me unwind"

naylor is beating you at a game you weren't even bold enough to play

DO YOU RECKON YOU COULD HEAR STARSAILOR AND LIVE, BECAUSE I DON'T

I watched that Hazelwood thing; you're all right, he's a prick. Watching him praise the genius of Wyclef Fucking Jean then doing daddish headnodding along to one of his songs was excruicating. Also "John Lennon has the best rock voice of all time." Um, no.

Is that Hazlewood thing on the iPlayer? It sounds like high comedy.

Watching him praise the genius of Wyclef Fucking Jean then doing daddish headnodding along to one of his songs was excruicating.
-- chap, Thursday, 10 January 2008 16:03 (15 minutes ago) Link

Please say he was listening to either "It Doesn't Matter" or the one he did with Pharoahe Monch and Kenny Rogers.

i just won da bingo bought a crib in RIO

She-had-an-ass-the-size-of-sow-fam-er-ee-ca

It was the one he did with Mary J Blige, Call 911 or something.

that's one of his 5 worst efforts along with

1) thing with Bono
2) thing with Beenie Man
3) new one
4) gone til november

1) thing with Bono

This managed to pass me by, thank god. Sounds ghastly.

"ALL DE WAY FROM DOUBLING, HERE COME BONO"

4) gone til november

"TELL MY COUSIN JERRY WEAR A CONDOM/ IF YOU DON'T WEAR CONDOM, YOU SEE A RED LINE"

Wyclef needs to get his dues alongside Molko, B. Anderson, Flowers, and dude from Interpol as one of the truly awful lyricists of the past decade.

yeah but his verses on Nappy Heads are still hot

Molko's, I mean

Nappy Headed Hoos

B. Anderson would probably suck up any amount of zing to be considered "of the past decade"

lol remember when "Head Music" was supposed to cement their position as the biggest band in the country?

i remember really liking 'electricity' and 'can't get enough'. oh the shame.

wait: i didn't realise they were 'the london suede' in the US!?!

I thought the Hazlewood programme was more dull and pointless than the awful I expected of it, although yes, lolz at his head-nodding, and far too little music that was anywhere close to good enough to give the impression of the sense of credibility the show was trying to have. Who was the talking head fellow who was very with it, putting forward such lines as "even to this day, Prince..." and "the last good example was Cher's 'Believe'..."? Lucky for him that John Harris was around to take his usual worst talking head crown.

Did anyone see the Paul Morley programme on pop? It was actually pretty good, avoiding that "we're open-minded but we'll still discuss pop in an insidiously pejorative tone" thing that everything about pop (inc. the Hazlewood thing) tends to have, and also right from the off didn't make the mistake of trying to talk about EVERYTHING and so become a big mess in the way the Hazlewood one did.

The Hazlewood programme appeared to be an exercise in stating the obvious for an hour. Also, no discussion of rhythm, which is kind of a big omission. Yeah, dull and pointless pretty much covers it.

I don't believe I forgot the funniest thing about the Wyclef discussion: Hazlewood said "For me, Wyclef is the best singer in the raggae milieu since Bob Marley."

Did he say "raggae" or was that a typo?

Typo.

Awww, I had visions of Scooby Doo.

raggay more like

Rag-jay-jay

http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=807265402

Alexis has 96 friends.

Eight less than Alan Partridge.

Wow, me and him have one friend in common!

mpeople-movin_on_up.mp3

lol editor of the spectator lol

wyclef is underrated!

I try to refrain from posting on this thread, but Christ Dom, this is pathetic behaviour even by your lowly standards.

POLL

Really, Dom, do you want to end up like that Marcello Carlin?

It was among the Italians. It was real greaseball shit. They even shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open coffin at the funeral.

It was among the Italians. It was real greaseball shit. They even shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open-casket funeral.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, July 13, 2007 4:26 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Link

i think it's coffin though really.

the hazlewood show was quite interesting, to someone new to music theory and background.

john harris was just awful though, his weird lightbulb-shaped head and air of suspicious indignation - like he thinks people are taking the piss out of him, or about to unmask him for being a FRAUD. truly the most unlikeable talking head since john robb. baffling how people as visibly off-putting as this can take high-up roles in national newspapers, is he related to someone in charge or something?

He has allegedly had close relations with someone in charge.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2242087,00.html

ahaahaaahaaaahahaahahaaaa decca aitkenhead.

sight unseen -- i'm just saying.

The tragedy of what happened next, several million-pound deals later, was most vividly illustrated on the cover of Be Here Now, which featured - without an apparent trace of irony - a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool.

Decca Aitkenhead's History of Rock

The tragedy of what happened next, several million-pound deals later, was most vividly illustrated on the cover of Be Here Now, which featured - without an apparent trace of irony - a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool Noel and Liam Gallagher.

Let's get some welcome facts in here - can't the Grauniad afford researchers any more?

Definitely Maybe was not only not recorded on a shoestring but was recorded three times over in three different studios with three different producers over six months at a cost of £800 per day before the band were happy with the result. Further the costs were met by Creation (and covertly Sony). It was hardly a case of turning up at the nearest vacant cowshed one wet Wednesday morning and bashing it out in five hours.

Few X-Factor winners would be able to buy their mum a new Hoover, let alone a new house. "Million pound recording contract" does not mean you get a million pounds; it means that Syco will finance the recording of, on average, two singles and an album and also pay for marketing costs, videos, photo shoots etc. Thereafter, that's it, pal. Of course these short-term profits do little for the general profitability of record companies.

But in the end it doesn't come down to artistic quality. It comes down to the fact that the major record companies should have got immediately behind legal downloading when Napster started the best part of a decade ago. Instead the old dinosaurs in charge ran scared, instead of engaging in the strategic thinking which you would think was a cornerstone of their job descriptions, and tried to put every downloader in jail. The world overtook them and they have no one to blame except themselves for their current crisis.

I actually think that Hands' point about paying the artists a living wage instead of a huge, unrecoupable advance is not a bad idea.

Apparently this new Myspace policy of only signing people pathologically devoted to expanding and spamming their friends list every day and hiring managers to tout their band like stock options is sure to net EMI some artists who value music over profit. There's a clear gulf between the eagerly self-promotional and people who go on X Factor and talk about winning their maw a house [flash practised charming daughterly smile at cameras now].

(Is there a "not" missing from the final sentence?)

Isn't a career in music by definition all about self-promotion?

Yeah I'm sick of seeing Steven Stapleton's grinning face on GMTV.

...or on the front of The Wire. It's all about demographic targeting innit.

William Bennett's appearance on Loose Women was the last straw

If they brought Noel's House Party back, I like to think that Burial would be the new "Sammy the Shammy"

Does Decca Aitkenhead get paid cash money for being a fucking idiot?

William Bennett on Loose Women = TV highlight of the century.

... not as unlikely as it may sound, is he still doing that sub-Derren Brown I-can-help-you-find-a-girlfriend NLP schtick?

I forgot about that. Okay, we need somebody to pitch this idea.

Cos I'm pretty sure Coleen Nolan would administer severe smackdown.

why are you using this terrible login name again?

It's gothtard week.

It's gothtard week
Someone's dropped a bomb somewhere
Contaminating atmosphere
And blackening the sky

It's gothtard week
Someone's found a way to give
The rotting dead a will to live
Go on and never die

etc etc etc

The Jeremy Kyle Show featuring William Bennett and Tracey Emin - greatest TV ever?

The Jeremy Kyle Show featuring an audience of suicide bombers - greatest TV ever.

They'd have to time it right otherwise you'd get an extra hour of Phillllllllip "Acid House Is EVIL!!!!" Schofield and where's the fun in that?

I once heard a rumour that Schofield had some Mark Oaten-esque foibles except straight. Clearly that couldn't possibly be true.

I was told something much worse than that about him.

poor Gordon...

i often wonder about philip schofield, he seems waaay too squeaky clean. spill.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2242297,00.html

Thought that was pretty interesting but the technological aspect of it is news to me so I'm maybe not the best judge. AFAIK there's only one place where I live that gets even a few imported reggae 7"s in and they were still doing it last time I went in

would love to help yall out on a stelfox zinger but i got nothing to go on there i'm afraid. he did overlook the most important thing though, dub vendor in ladbroke grove refitting so that half the shop sells patties now. ace!

they didnt even call it grub vendor either

i often wonder about philip schofield, he seems waaay too squeaky clean. spill.

Same as what they say about Dom Joly.

Wow! about Dub Vendor.

Christ, it's been ages since I've been in Dub Vendor. Using the Tottenham Court Road Fopp template I see but on a more modest scale and therefore more successful.

"Same as what they say about Dom Joly."

??? what does it all mean?!!

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2256757,00.html

This is pretty eh but Eliza Carthy OTM!

James Rushent of Does It Offend You, Yeah?

seriously? i'm not even against that as a band name, i'm still on 'wtf'.

Other than the Tricky pick, oh so boring.

Who is Claire Teal ?

Britjazzer I think

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/02/when_did_sampling_became_so_no.html

do your fucking homework, homes.

double d & steinski possibly not unnerdy and apolitical either.

BLACK ANSWER TO PUNK

McNamee getting hardsonned in the comments:

David McNamee - you know nothing about sampling and hip hop so why bother writing about it?

"Two record decks and your dad's old funk collection was once the working-class black answer to punk."

No it wasn't - hip hop predated punk, wasn't working-class and wasn't universally black

"It was very political, but it now also seems very quaint."

No - sampling was sampling, the message may have been political but the sampling very rarely was.

"In 1989, the Beastie Boys dropped Paul's Boutique - the White Album of sampling"

To you, but not to anyone else.

"Sampling became risky business and a rich man's game, with record labels regularly checking if their musical property had been tea-leafed."

No, think of all the wonderful sample based records which came out post 1989 - Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop, Low End Theory etc. In fact most of the albums on this page: http://www.mhat.com/worldofbeats/volume14.html

"When did sampling became so non-threatening"

It never was.

Please think before you write in the future.
[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.]

it would have been cool if he'd flipped it over at the end and mentioned the nation of islam and homophobia -- that way both guardian approaches to public enemy could be combined, the mother and the whore.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2258116,00.html

What is the point of this woman? Really?

Those radical black militants the Beastie Boys.

also there was this thing called rave

As for Barton's piece, it's a bit pathetic that thirty years plus after Penny Valentine, Val Wilmer, Caroline Coon, Julie Burchill etc. music discourse is still at this stage in some quarters.

I dunno what's more depressing, the idea that Barton writes like that normally, or that she's deliberately playing the "Ooooh, pink things!" card so she can make herself Official Spokeswoman for Female Music Fans.

Her Friday column is kind of Church Of Mike Yarwood.

Maybe she's angling for a job on a certain radio station?

Morelike Poptext Lobotomised.
xp

I have forgiven Alanis Morissette for the whole of 1995-96. I have forgiven her for tainting 12 months of my life with her Jagged Little Pill, as it was played in every shop, bar and restaurant I visited. I have forgiven her the ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. I have forgiven her all of these things and more, simply because she has just delivered the most amazing cover version of the Black Eyed Peas' My Humps.

In Alanis's hands, My Humps becomes both hilarious and weirdly poignant: a Tori Amos-esque piano ballad, all sincerity and wailing and melancholic pining. And the video is brilliant - Alanis clad à la Fergie and surrounded by lecherous hunks who are all, quite patently, after her "lovely lady lumps". The filthy-pawed bastards.

I have mentioned my sincere dislike of this song on several occasions in the past and Peaches has already recorded her own inimitable cover, My Dumps. Let me assure you, I still hate it. It is quite simply the worst song of all time, a misogynistic wolf dressed up in a feminist sheep's clothing. It is a Panda Cola version of Gwen Stefani. It is as if Fergie sat down with her cohorts will.i.am (really, would you trust anyone who called himself will.i.am to write lyrics? wazzock.u.are) apl.de.ap (ditto) and Taboo (named in honour of the white wine, vodka and fruit juice beverage) and made a song out of broken biscuits. In fact I'm not even sure it is a song at all; it is the sound of someone gurning.

I am almost so dazzled by My Humps' lyrical atrociousness as to be unable to select the very grimmest lines. Could it be the opening gambit: "What you gon' do with all that junk?/ All that junk inside your trunk?/ I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,/ Get you love drunk off my hump./ My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,/ My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps (Check it out)"? Or perchance the utterly superfluous roll-call of designer labels, from Dolce & Gabbana to True Religion?

No, my friends, the absolute nadir of My Humps arrives midway through the song, when will.i.am (grrrrr) tells us about propositioning a "girl" he met at a "disco" (since Mr will.i.am recently turned 31, I'm assuming he actually means "woman" at a "club"), in a verse that ends in a bout of cackhanded eroticism:

"I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff/ Milky, milky cocoa/ Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight."

I'm not wholly certain whether I hate this segment more because of its playground innuendo, its sheer lyrical frailty or the fact that it has actually caused me to waste valuable moments of my life contemplating whether or not the Black Eyed Peas are making reference to anal sex. Argh, whatever, let me raise a toast to Morissette for making something rather lovely out of all that junk.

a misogynistic wolf dressed up in a feminist sheep's clothing

http://www.tshirthell.com/shirts/products/a812/a812_bm.gif

Really it's as hopeless as me trying to do DJ Martian.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/02/women_men_music.html

There will always be macho extremes of music -hip-hop's more graphic gangsta rap, or Nitzer Ebb's European brutalism - which tend to appeal only to a certain type of male - but such audiences are not typical men and you wouldn't want them as your friends, especially if they wear cycling shorts to clubs or address each other "homie" in the middle of Doncaster Tesco.

lol black culture is inferior

yes, all men who obsess over music are de facto Aspergics, thanks for that thoroughly researched wisdom, you ignorant coleoptera (re. "vayaecuador" comment).

Let's slag off the Times as well eh:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3393148.ece

Sorry, I saw the words "Caitlin Moran" and was suddenly struck blind.

Excessive Moran-related masturbation does that yes.

Fnarr.

A BBC website provides a glossary of “Lamby’s lingo”, including phrases such as “feelin’ it” and “wackola”.

BAN THE BBC

Thank Christ there's a glossary that tells me what havin' a bad one means!

BOSS-EYE
(Adj) pron: Boss-ay
Crossed, wandering and other optical afflictions. Considered attractive by certain DJs
"Her boss-eye really turned me on - standard!"

CHIRPSE
(Verb) pron: cherp-ss
To kiss someone.
"Did you chirpse that boss-eyed bird last night?"

CLOBBER
(Noun) pron: Clob-ber
An alternative word for clothing.
"He had on some well dodgy clobber"

FEELIN' IT
(Phrase)
To show approval or hold something in high esteem.
"That new Bat For Lashes track, I'm feelin' it!"

FRESH
(Adj) pron: Fresh
Something new and exciting.
"Your new clobber is Fresh!"

DON
(Noun) pron: Don
A man, or woman, who has achieved something notable.
"That Lewis Hamilton is a proper Don!"

HAVIN' A BAD ONE
(phrase)
Someone who is going through hard times.
"Britney Spears is havin' a bad one."

MURDERED IT
(Phrase)
1. To ruin something
"That wafty DJ murdered it. He cleared the dance floor like a fire alarm."

2. To execute something successfully
"That DJ is a don. He murdered it! The dance floor was heavin'"

NEW
(Adj) pron: New
Slightly derogative term for something insignificant.
"That Calvin Harris track is a bit new!"

STANDARD
(Noun) pron: Stan-Derd
A fact, a given. The way it is.
"The Baldwins are wafty siblings - standard"

STING-PIECE
(Adj) pron: Sting-pee-s
Something or someone that resembles something else.

WACK
(Adj) pron: Wack
Bad, rubbish, of a low standard

WACKOLA
(Adj) pron: Wack-ola
Rock bottom. The worst.
"The Manics are wack but Calvin Harris is wackola!"

WAFTY
(Adj) pron: Waff-tee
Something which is second-rate or lame
"Have you heard the new Manics single? It's well wafty!"

WOODEN
(Adj) pron: Wood-un
Something, or someone, which is incredibly wafty (see above)
"My Dad's old mobile phone is well wooden"

^Yeah, I can see how that would appeal to women.

What all women want to hear: "Did you chirpse that boss-eyed bird last night?"

You are both "wack".

Yes but y're wackola and that's worse.

Well I think the Hinge and Bracket of music writing did a fairly decent job of shooting themselves in that Times piece without our having to rub it in.

The reason why people have been criticising George Lamb is nothing to do with presumed female appeal. It is because he is an incompetent DJ with a style which is thoroughly inappropriate for 6Music.

One might as well criticise Five Live for not appealing to women. Or why does sport get the free pass and music not?

I think the Times should have commissioned Andy Capp and Flo instead

Or that brother/sister team from the last X-Factor.

Or why does sport get the free pass and music not?

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, 20 February 2008 11:39 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, but you do get that permanent summertime letter to the Radio Times "As a woman, you'd expect me to be annoyed with all the sport on the TV. Actually... I like it!" shit.

Hornby really bombed music writing back to the Stone Age, didn't he?

I dunno, I think that Hornby's influence started seeping through at the same time as a lot of other big changes (death of the fanzine, rise of Pitchfork, Conor Mack, blogging, message board zing culture), and for the elderly, confused writer, sticking to Hornby's blueprint was just the easiest thing to do.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_448y6kVhntg/RrS1Fnl0ncI/AAAAAAAABE0/iUFftX4mGNc/s400/andy5.jpg

Paphides and Moran discuss male/female music divide.

Beating up women is wackola. Don't do it kids.

I was thinking specifically about the bit near the end of High Fidelity where he and she are sitting in the car arguing about Solomon Burke vs. Art Garfunkel, i.e. middle-class, middle-aged male writer's projection of how women think and feel about and towards music. And of course he then went on to make an even bigger idiot of himself in the one where he's supposed to be a female doctor - can't remember the name of that book offhand so I'll invent one; Hail Shep Snow Bonanza.

^In his defence, still not as bad as the "lol women" stuff in School of Rock.

Kids - twenty years ago, the music press was exactly like this, which was why we had to invent Acid House and Bob the Builder.

The piece Laura Barton mentions, by Nick Coleman about his partial hearing loss, really IS AMAZING though - http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2257970,00.html

Sport doens't quite get a free pass - they pointedly have female football commentators and reporters now - but it is rather cackhanded, aye.

I'm kind of fucked-off with everyone going on and on and on about how you can only react 'emotionally' or 'intellectually' though, whether it be The Guardian of Five Live or whatever - I've got piss-all interest in what studio things were recorded in or what shoes Topper Headon wore. If I listen '-ally' at all, it's sensually. I'm into the sensation of it.

That's the way the gays listen to music.

"Oooooooh, Britney!"

The Nick Coleman piece, which I found fascinating and moving - http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2257970,00.html

I absolutely agree, but then Coleman has always been a fine writer - the extended piece he wrote in Time Out many years ago about the 12-inch of "Easier Said Than Done" by Shakatak should be carved in marble as a set example of how to do this sort of writing and carry it off. I hope his recovery continues.

The other thing that occurs to me - you don't get this sort of non-debate in the books pages. You never see a Kathryn Hughes/James Fenton throwdown about "He likes Roth. I like Keyes" do you?

So I guess it's the same story - broadsheets' view of popular music = worthless trash which gets the critical consideration it deserves.

You sometimes get why do men only read books by men when women read books by both sexes articles. Usually after some study/survey.

I think that might actually be true, by and large.

1. Post endless lazy snarky zings at the same targets week in, week out
2. ????
3. PROFIT

oh shi-

/b/tardisms on ILM?

It's a South Park reference.

Barton's just breakin your balls

Lucy Mangan writes: Oh fiddly wiffly I don't know what South Park is only a MAN would be sad enough to have that TRAINSPOTTING knowledge goshy glwoshy D'Arcy in the lake like I said to my boyy fwiendy, G, in my luxurious galumph whoops big penthouse in Wandsworth, south west London, memo to SELF replace yo-yos in BWAIN and get big orangey EATEY ones!

*finishes piece, logs off PC, turns to editor*

"Christ am I really getting paid that much for writing this shit?"
"It is a truth universally acknowledged."

The reason why people have been criticising George Lamb is nothing to do with presumed female appeal. It is because he is an incompetent DJ with a style which is thoroughly inappropriate for 6Music.

the 'female appeal' is a smokescreen innit, to detract from Lamb's true limitations.

i like caitlin's piece.

That piece is possibly even stupider. When was the last time she wrote anything about music anyway?

I'd argue that the digital age makes music more accessible but somehow less tangible.

statingthebleedinobvious4u.

like a long and tedious poster by an ilm n00b. bring back calum.

"Graeme" is a pretty sweet handle.

Lucy Mangan writes: Oh fiddly wiffly I don't know what South Park is only a MAN would be sad enough to have that TRAINSPOTTING knowledge goshy glwoshy D'Arcy in the lake like I said to my boyy fwiendy, G, in my luxurious galumph whoops big penthouse in Wandsworth, south west London, memo to SELF replace yo-yos in BWAIN and get big orangey EATEY ones!

I read her Weekend column on the way into work on Monday; a sorry start to the week that was. I shouldn't think I'll have any bridesmaids. Why? Because I don't have any friends.

She should start a thread about it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/02/28/bmgallows128.xml

Below him, the audience response has gone far beyond the usual pogoing and slam-dancing. A large space has cleared, in which about 50 kids are running at high speed - a new-ish ritual known as a "circle pit".

i don't want to sound like Derek Dull, but what exactly does any of this tell me about the music she's supposed to be discussing?

Like the lady said:
"Copywritten, so don't copy me
Y'all do it sloppily
And y'all can't come close to me."

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/03/happy_mothers_day_from_the_soc.html

contemporary craig david reference

What the hell has Craig David got to do with anything?

Guardian reporting now apparently involves copying its NME awards coverage out of the Sun:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/inthenews/0,,2261097,00.html

xxpost

Dear Indie Guyz,

Please don't ever talk about music ever in public then maybe I will be able to bear to listen to yr shit.

Thx

NV

That sidebar on the blogs page is STILL telling me that Tim Jonze has "spent the last week on (his) hands and knees" - I guess no other music journalist has been "up to" anything :(

Perhaps he's covertly enlisted with Our Boys in Afghanistan.

Rosie Swash is slowly transforming into an even more inconsequential version of Hadley Freeman.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/03/happy_mothers_day_from_the_soc.html

contemporary craig david reference

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 2 March 2008 19:43 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I'd be very surprised if Malcolm Middleton's mother isn't thoroughly ashamed of him and the utter shit he's recorded over the past 15 years. She probably tells all the girls down bingo that her son is in Snow Patrol.

What I’m up to... Michael Hann

My tip of the week: Read Chuck Klosterman’s new collection of essays, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. He’s really very good – funny, sharp and incisive. Sometimes also very wrong, but who’d want an essayist they agree with completely?

Tsk tsk, that last sentence. PROPER, TRAINED JOURNALISTS wouldn't be so lax with their syntax.

Cripps on a bunion.

The Guardian is kinda like if someone gave Tim Lovejoy a whole newspaper to write.

I dunno, I think that Hornby's influence started seeping through at the same time as a lot of other big changes (death of the fanzine, rise of Pitchfork, Conor Mack, blogging, message board zing culture), and for the elderly, confused writer, sticking to Hornby's blueprint was just the easiest thing to do.

-- Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 20 February 2008 11:49 (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

^^^4-4-2

yah i linked to that elsewhere. dire. marina hyde isn't/wasn't always bad.

hate the idea of the foals, and they look mighty indie. do i need to test this assertion?

xpost

No.

That question looms over the second collaborative album by producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and vocalist Thomas Callaway, better known as Cee-Lo Green.

Why does the Guardian do this w/rappers and that? They never go Robert "Bob Dylan" Zimmerman etc.

Petridis calls out Craig McLean in that review too, in a Guardian/Observer (Music Monthly) beef.

At the risk of sounding like a bigger knob than I am I got on board with Foals sufficiently early that it still seems weird when people talk about the 'idea' of them, ie their public image is a major issue for people. They just seem like a bunch of really averagely self-aware music dorks whose profile is mainly the result of other people doing hard publicity graft for them, and now they have to concern themselves with doing interviews and trying not to sound like dickheads to Joe Fiftyquidman reading. Anyway, the album is a bit disaapointing IMO but, y'know, they're not the Courteneers, so in relative terms I'm pretty pleased they've Made It

Or Anne "Acton Bell" Bronte for that matter.

Petridish fearlessly naming names, as always.

Apparently "mediations" on mental illness have no right to be at the top of our Radio Tip Top Pain-Free charts at all.

In 1974 Petridish would have told Nick Drake to listen to more Chicory Tip.

Nice bit of misogyny and classism from Cambridge lad Petridish (though some sources indicate that his student name was rather less exotic - Alan Partridge, perhaps) at the end there.

But hang on, I thought I was the only person here who liked Foals? I'm still getting the hang of the album - first half is a bit meh but the second half is better - and I don't really care about the image or their ideas or their words, I just like the music in an unthinking way, it makes me smile and dance. I also think it sounds like the best "Graveyard and ballroom" tribute band ever, with added "Without Mercy" horn section (I swear there is a horn riff nicked directly from "Without Mercy 2" on "Heavy water"). It'll be interesting to see where they go from here, and if they can overcome the hype that's snowballed around them.

Haven't knowingly heard them, am in no great rush to hear them, rubbish writing like Hyde's is guaranteed to prevent me from ever wanting to hear them.

Of course, people forget that the kind of reader the Guardian is trying to attract is Raef.

The art of pretend surprise that songs containing unhappy subject matter can be embraced by the general public is a bit of a tired old chestnut, isn't it

"Bleeding Love" for instance.

Or perhaps Petridish was too busy pretending to like Susanna and her Magical Orchestra at the time.

He kept going on like The Odd Couple is some challenging, impenetrable album. It's really not.

By the way, I think Lost in Showbiz is funny, but I'm obviously not as cool as you lot.

Well, the album might cause Raef to scratch his head.

Lost in Showbix might have a point if the gossip wasn't usually from 3-7 days earlier.

It's all news to me, it's the only gossip I ever read.

The opposite to the Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton type of thinking occurs in this typically embarrassing piece.

(a) Who the fuck is "Bird" - as he's been dead 53 years, I'm assuming she's not referring to Charlie Parker?

(b) Why should we give one?

(c) You've only ever been to Oregon in your dreams morelike

(d) Shag Nick Cave and get over it

Indie violinist Andrew Bird, he has a thread on here I think

Laura Barton's rubbish.

I wouldn't like to rifle through it.

Or her.

What Barton's REALLY listening to:

http://www.plong.com/MusicCatalog%5CC%5CCascada%20-%20Everytime%20We%20Touch%5CCascada%20-%20Everytime%20We%20Touch.jpg

couldn't bring myself to click on 'sophie heawood meets the kooks'.

Choice quotes:

"And they didn't all go to private schools, they protest - new bass player Dan Logan was home-schooled - and what does class matter anyway?"

"The thing is," says Pritchard, "talking to other friends in bands, whether they're signed to indies or majors, they seem to have a lot more meddling from their label. But because we deliver pop songs - in their terms, songs they can work with - they always leave us to it. Our A&R guy only came to the studio once while we were recording the album."

"And they didn't all go to private schools, they protest - new bass player Dan Logan was home-schooled - and what does class matter anyway?"

hahahahaha really hope you made this up.

You couldn't make it etc etc etc.

"We're the sort of band who'd trash a hotel room - and then tidy it up afterwards," they explain.

how endearing

One says, with scary devotion, that she even went to see them play their charity gig at the Oxfam shop gig in east London.

That doesn't sound that scary

omfg omfg omfg kill

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/05/the_perils_of_the_pretentious.html

Jeeeeesus

Latest blog posts

* The perils of the pretentious album title
* Wherefore art the boy bands?
* I still don't get Jamie Lidell

Finely dice some challops.

I still don't get Jamie Lidell either

Still better than the one that consists of a Scroobius Pip vid offa YouTube and NO WORDS!

lol the jamie lidell rant involves her saying she wishes he had 1/4 as much soul as... jamiroquai

yeah but that's correct?

i still don't get jamiroquai TBH

That's coz he's shit but Lidell's no better. And he looks even worse which is some feat.

Her stuff really is the epitome of the idea of blogs serving as somewhere where you can write stuff that would be sent back quicksharp if it was a 'proper' article, and have it cheerily waved through

lol sophie heawood is on this god-awful Jacques Peretti documentary.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,2281612,00.html

Sub-Passantino at best.

As Emergency draws to its sophisticated conclusion - the last thing you hear are the words "bell-end"

This actually warms me slightly to this album, which make no mistake is a fucking pile of shite

http://music.guardian.co.uk/festivalsguide2008/story/0,,2282390,00.html

cross-ref with lord custos tribute thread

ffs

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2072639,00.html

This dude probably has hella Penny Arcade cartoons on his delicio.us account

Delightfully racial!

Illegally delicio.us!

http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2014709,00.html

Didn't this dude used to write for HHC?

SON DOOBIE - Went one better and tried his "hand" at actual porn performance. He was rubbish.

o_0

He should start a new column where he rates porn actors. Pretty sure the Guide would run it.

that list of jay-z 'thoughts' is pretty shit. the guy who does the 'day in the life' section in HHC would have done a much better job.

that list of jay-z 'thoughts' is pretty shit. the guy who does the 'day in the life' section in HHC would have done a much better job.

-- titchyschneiderMk2, Friday, 13 June 2008 11:49 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^realest of talk. That shit has consistently been the funniest music zingery of the past few years.

"7:30pm. Terror Squad AGM. Damn Remy Ma's voice irritating"

lol. cashmore shouldve kept it standard english.

As the inventor of the drunken Jay-Z game that later inspired this blog post I am personally affronted by that article.

"Critics say I'm Pete, Cash, More
I'm from (something) stupid, what kind of (something) are those"

(subs please fill this in)

I presume they'll be sending Barton to review the Jay-Z set: "As the Mississippi rolled, with its waves of foghorned siren songs, I finish my tenth glass of Bourbon, crinkle my Mint Cracknel wrapper and think of Django Reinhardt. I think of track two on the fourth M Craft album and am illusioned by the penitent rays of revelation while swamps crackle under the ghosts of my petulant feet what do you mean I'm fired CUNTS!"

(subs please fill this in)

don't push your luck, passantino.

He can't even say drink properly.

Wayne's shocking (in every sense of the word) Lollipop

1. Informal very bad or terrible: a shocking match at Leicester
2. causing dismay or disgust: a shocking lack of concern
3. a very bright shade of pink

Hattie's never gonna top this article though, where she takes blacks and Asians to task for not being as with it as whiteboy bloggers when it came to clapped out colonial wank fantasy MIA

Sparky's Magic Piano to thread.

Also crap noughties number ones made even worse by Autotune ("It's All About You," "Importance Of Being Idle" &c.) to thread.

auto-tune is not really the same as vocoder is it? for a minute i was all uh? i blame cher.

I blame Roy Vedas, if anyone else remembers them ("Fragments Of Life," at least a year ahead of "Believe").

tbh, "I'm So Hood" and "Same Girl Remix" are both fucking bangers, so T-Pain can do whatever the fuck he likes.

"Low" is underrated as well, it's, y'know, for chicks.

Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Chuck D, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Morrissey and Alex Turner.

Will Oldham, Smog, Joanna Newsom, and John Darnielle

^^^^ morbz zing goes here

'lay lady lay'? really? this woman is insane. i fuck with dylan but come on.

sheffieldstiehl

Comment No. 1173674
June 20 13:52The inclusion of Chuck d looks patronising to me, like it was the only rapper they could think of apart from morris major and the minors

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Blink-182_-_feeling_this.jpg

Maybe she likes a big brass bed?

Maybe she likes (zing deleted)

Shortly after (sic), I ran into my strangely pale and very heavy coat. It seemed the stress of who (sic) to choose was almost too much Tom Waits. There was, first, the small matter of Joanna Newsom, who didn't find Paul Simon; I find it impossible to listen to Graceland without Stuart Murdoch, often dismissed as twee Chuck D; all, to my thinking, delicious. I don't Lay Alex Turner's Fake wanky lyrics booklet?

When me it runs the work of compilation of the lyrical poet series where he is splendid in my colleague Michael Hann, when it is given, after making prompt. That surface, I note strangely thin, as learned the coat where he is very heavy, he saw. That already especially world' Just it seems to be the responsible way which is chosen; But the lyrical poet whose s is best their works and in him, you obtained the best fruit a little. It should withstand someone's pressure which it should choose almost excessively was. As for that man' Either one it is easy to understand completely, naturally - lyrical poem, after all, very militant subject, it is worldwide; Waiting of s tomu another man' So it is; s borisu Gardiner. If, 8 artists whom small problem it should include - those where large portion of our readers probably will inquire about those, so this the magnificent lyrical poet of some person - appropriately were not famous Oldham, smog, jiyoana Newsom, and John Darnielle among those - could think of that it means, excessively there was ambiguity 1st. And didn' Excessively there were other things; The heuristic space of t - the room was not Simon which is 1 years old of the lyrical poet of my taste in because of the pole, for example; For example as for me that America or Graceland' The thing impossibility which inquires about word you find; " of s; I' Way; d never her her forehead" You did not become aware in the method of using the brush on the empty her hair; It is not inside me who am tightened exactly a little. And & of beauty; There is no either place because of empty suchiyuwato Murdoch; sebasuchiyan frequently, however the refrain Murdoch' where those are sweet; The band which you were affected with under and retreats; The lyrical poem of s is cold-eyed and sharp-tongued frequently vividly. But 8 artists who are chosen are the element clear forcing bundle: The chuck D of Leonard Cohen, blues Springsteen and Patti Smith, hob D run, Joni Mitchell, Morrissey and aretsukusutana; That kind of easy beauty and the wit and, you write everything, to thinking in me, everything when word and it is tasty simply powerful, seems that verifies that it is. I don' The truth of t is said, match several of selection of song completely - I Dylan' It probably will choose; As for s that Talkin' Lay which the woman above, for example, is put; Blue of paranoia of John's canoe birch, but that' I being that simplest, because the D run is liked and it is weakest thin, from that most it calculated the margin s which, is rubbed, constituted. In addition as for me, perhaps, aretsukusu Turner' The room of for the sake of will be found; False story, and Patti Smith' of San Francisco s; S where I believe one of the most abnormal songs of existence lands. But that' s exactly me. Who you think in the booklet of itself refined lyrical poem which is worthy of?

"I got a greatest lyricists booklet from The Guardian the other day/I opened it/It said they were suckers"

"They wanted me for their freelance slaveship or whatever/Picture me giving a damn/I said DON'T TRY IT"

Black Steel in the Hour of Zings

REAL TALK: the idea of this booklet existing without Slick Rick and Nigel Blackwell is hella dumb.

Shortly after he was given the task of wearing very heavy fruits of their labours, Boris Gardiner heard of Smog buckling from Belle & Sebastian, yet beneath those sweet cold-eyed Bruce Springsteen effortless choices of Lay, I prefer calculated Alex Turner, which I believe ordinary in existence. But me deserves wanky

ok this tony naylor is the one to beat in 2008. utterly baffling article. [ ... ]

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, January 3, 2008 1:43 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Link

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/06/rewind_to_1995_and_everyone.html

The whole concept of trying to identify the "greatest" dance record of all time is always going to be idiotic - it's like trying to pick your favourite orgasm

Naylor used to do the NME's Manchester/Liverpool stuff around 2000, I think. Big fan of Starsailor and Haven I seem to recall.

-- Bocken Social Scene, Thursday, January 3, 2008 3:15 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Link

no zealot like a convert.

it's dominated by the most obvious of mainstream floorfillers: Maceo & the Macks' Cross the Tracks, Pump Up the Volume, Billie Jean, Alison Limerick's Where Love Lives, Soul II Soul's Keep on Movin'.

and yet you can take the boy out of indie, but...

What bit of the term "Radio 2" doesn't he understand?

Blogpost should have just read "It's 'Toca's Miracle'", for a dose of real talk.

Alan Titchmarsh played that last night.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/06/i_hate_festivals.html

naylor is spitting challops and holding it down for B-more and (once again) minimal techno.

The perfect gigs take place in sweaty, sold-out 300-capacity basements.

lol at desire for REALNESS of basement gig venue, but simoltaneous need for there to be at least 300 people there so its worthy of coverage

Can someone send this guy an invite to the board? He could be just the person to get ILx out of its lawyer malaise.

That might be the most original piece of writing I've read in 20 years.

Dear Mr Hann,

Don't cha wish your writers were hot like me?

Don't cha wish your writers were a freak like me?

Don't cha?

Thank you for your help in this matter, &c.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2008/04/raising_the_bar.html

Turns out dude is a Real Ale Twat as well.

Is there any topic he can write about?

He didn't really use the phrase "the whites of the band's eyes," did he? I'm a bit scared to check again

Nah, it was "the white band's eyes"

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/laurabarton/story/0,,2289069,00.html

Wow. Just... wow.

oh shi-

Basically that article is Fleet Foxes=

http://www.joethepeacock.com/uploaded_images/unicorn-puzzle-703227.jpg

Basically that article is unconscionable and grotesque.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/site_furniture/2006/11/23/LauraBarton_music.gif
Make-up and stickers and ponies and Myspace.com!

OK, so I burst out laughing when I first saw the byline over breakfast - but I enjoyed this piece. It's refreshing to read someone at GF&M articulating how music makes them FEEL, and communicating something more valuable than smirking, fearful, know-it-seen-it-done-it glibness.

It is a land that is peculiarly old-fashioned, populated by devils and demons, shadows and sirens and wanderers,

Wait a second, is she getting them mixed up with Fleet Services?

Mike that's all well and good but LB's niche now is that she does this pretty much every week, and this reads like someone's parodying her

But, Mike, it's articulated in a particularly nauseous, cliched manner. It applies several Narnia-esque pastoral tropes onto music that already panders in the direction of wide-eyed natural fantasy. It isn't original, interesting or insightful. It's sick-making and perniciously dogged in its adherence to an "illuminated" authorial voice.

It reads like Thomas Malory parodying her!

Do we really need identikit fortnightly turgid (and largely fictitious) prose about whatever slice of Americana bollocks *PR SUPREMO NOT NAMED FOR LEGAL REASONS* has *CONTROVERSIAL MOD EDIT* her to write about?

I mean it's even boring on Babelfish!

yeah I wasn't gonna request this one MC, probably not worth the effort

LB's niche now is that she does this pretty much every week

Oh dear, I do see what you mean.

And, er, whoops!

http://troubled-diva.com/laurafleet.jpg

It gets worse and worse.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/07/no_were_not_as_bored_as_you_ar.html

^^^dude looks like he posts to ilx

At a performance of Hymnen at the Festival Hall in the late 80s, the place was no more than 20% full. But yes, the last couple of times he came to London, the repellent trend-jumpers - technoheads, avant rockers, goateed Shoreditch types - were all over the place.

Total disgrace, of course.

Joe Queenan is the original useless challops guy.

Tom Service posts here as Jeremy Waters I think?

lol at goatees in Shoreditch.

Next week Joe Queenan takes on modern art: "You can't even tell what it's supposed to be."

No I think Michael Hann's got that gig: "My four year old child could do better. And WOULD if Camden Council machine-gunned the tourists and concentrated on providing proper creche facilities for local residents!"

There's a really, REALLY fucking annoying school of current music writing that goes 'look, you people all agree with my ill-formed opinion as well without even having thought about it or listened to anything' appeal for mob authority that runs from this right through to taking a pop at blogosphere usual-suspect popstars with a 'this hasn't sold anything so it must be shit' line. It's just fucking tiresome.

what does challops mean btw? i was away

challenging opinions.

hey that's pretty good

Zing crew straight Susie Denting this shit

xxxxpost

Matt it might actually be interesting to examine what's going on with pop artists who aren't particularly "popular" or composers who are hated by swathes of the traditional orchestral music audience. But faux-ignorant "this is the Emperor's New Clothes and I'm the little boy who can see the truth" articles are just pandering bullshit.

That makes no sense whatsoever, Dom.

I can't remember the last time I got all the way through a linked guardian article. They must hand their contributors a set of editorial guidelines which says "REMEMBER ALWAYS - TL;DR" in 48 point capitals right across the middle of the page.

Coming up in Friday's Guardian: "New Orleans Futures Market - What's That All About? Eh? Eh?" by Bob Mills COMEDIAN

This week's lazy zing at the same predictable target.

For reasons that now elude me

Um, because you were asked to write about it for the Guardian?

o shit that queenan article. complete fucking bollocks.

raw patrick, you're joking re tom service right?

That's what I was told. Dunno tho'.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2291116,00.html

Dominated by male egos for too long, a new generation of women rappers are set to give hip hop a much-needed boost.

Oh this one would be peachy if I could be arsed to read it.

Nice of the Guardian to illustrate the article with a photo of the white one.

Where is "Croydonia"?

Hail, Hail Croydonia, a country they didn't make up.

Addiscombie & Fitch

"Nice of the Guardian to illustrate the article with a photo of the white one."

she is the best looking of the lot.

Just up the road from the magical kingdom of the Heath of Thorntonia whose goblins and wood choppers elude me for the moment.

The phrase "Croydonia" first entered music journalism in the magazine "King", which ran to a triumphant two issues.

Worst remake of The Prisoner of Zenda ever.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/electronic/story/0,,2291383,00.html

^^^not a zing, this is good

Yeah, I definitely have to check that Bug album out.

This, however, is sloppily written and wrong.

The real story was that Colyer fucked off to New Orleans on his own and was a total purist; didn't want to know about skiffle or anything that wasn't pure Dixie (he was a sort of precursor to Mark Lamarr in that respect). Pissed and stoned, they slung him in the nick then deported him back and then he proceeded to piss off the rest of his band so much that they collectively decided to "fire" him and start their own group, i.e. the Chris Barber Band, and it was within that context that their skiffle thing actually started. It doesn't do to rewrite history for the sake of contemporary convenience.

Marcy, you need to start bringing that heat back to the printed press.

No, I don't think Heat would dig my individualistic, self-copyrighted style of writing.

having looked over his posts, im going to say no way is 'jeremy waters' tom service.

"jeremy waters" is max r

and max r is rob cowan

That Bug album is v.good.

Wha? Being sampled on an album track in no way equals having a hit. And even if it did there'd be longer gaps than this.

Todd Rundgren has been many things in his 60 years. This year he managed another first, when he became the artist with the longest gap between chart hits: 35 years. In February, he finally followed up I Saw the Light, a freak chart entry in June 1973, with an appearance, as a sampled voice, on Hot Chip's album Made in the Dark. That's him in the middle of Shake a Fist, drawling: "Before we go any further, I'd like to show you all a game I made up. This game is called Sounds of the Studio, and it can be played with any record, including this one - you may be surprised."

Lester needs to be more vigilant about checking his facts. Todd made #73 in November 1985 with "Loving You's A Dirty Job" in duet with Bonnie Tyler.

In addition "Bang The Drum All Day" made #86 in 1983 and both Ra and Hermit Of Mink Hollow made the UK album charts in 1977 and 1978 respectively.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/25/horror.dvdreviews

The unfortunate phrase "former orphan" inspires thoughts of Lazarus-like parents. Great film, mind.

For no greater reason than one of Friday afternoon boredom, here's today's Barton column reproduced in full:

That is close to evening, and I where it is required for the silence of the wing of sackler which looks at the exhibition of vilhelm of hammershoi of the noble academy. Poetry of subtitle attachment of silence, artist' At that exhibition of image of approximately 60 from opposite side of Danish; Show of quotation phrase from of carrier s, and Rainer Mary Rilke. " Then no one of those there must be conversation quickly in Hammershoi vis-a-vis one coma state. … " where the work is longer, is slower; So it is; In me, that is although you think, which necessary these images rejoicing more, whether the recall it does another line of rilke, pem from in the young person of poetu: " … Just one thing there now avoiding fact bolshchshe those you must make at everything, you see outside those. yourself." Enter; Internal large portion, Hammershoi' Most exhibitions which color; The apartment s to of Strandgarde 30 to Copenhagen; Bedroom and drawing room and room of note; The internal court and in the passage and the dining room furthermore it makes watching the white left door heavily clearer; Curtained where the window is thin, the edge righteousness, passing by the window to Battenberg, umenshannym solnechniy which is square it does the light/write in level brown field. And in the sideboard the woman who is shown in the window where calculation it is attached in the table, when their lead of the cable it was absorbed frequently with peaces inside them, them it was always avoided, to the view of fikchirovannomu did revolutions to our. With wire sketch of the lag nut of the guide of the gallery, as for me the explanation/learning discussion where I suppose my name, Hammershoi' The dust of the thing which makes from the dance of the dust to one sunlight, equal was given; When describes s, and the work painter of that Isao strange successor is explained at that of relationship time, to promise, the cineaste of cirque Theodor dreyer: " Stylistic affinity is not gotten over those of work respectively, " As for that you note. " As for image those concerning time because it is the dust where the empty room was moved concerning the great ceremony so and the body, and them." You speak the track/truck which it passes; The air of heat of the evening when it goes for walking which parallels to domestic and side Piccadilly as for me hammershoi' Komukomu it starts to make interest cause; As for the musical of successor s work - 1907 journalist, pishushch can summarizes the feeling of the feeling which is described as follows and, be song to that: " danskikh All painters everything eshchevse still and with silence, are original plural, inside gnezdi, even in the sunlight of the winter relation in the subordinate of sumerk, depending upon the extent nondisclosure person who remains at the large gray room…That blooms colors deeply. And robin' The only sound; furniture." Because the mahogany it is old, almost bi ku s; Naturally difficulty, decides the note silence is connected. That although it does did not have quickly that conversation with the song which necessity, and it had been silent, whether still, is. As for me exhibition' Of my taste is thought concerning; The woman and black with image s the woman and the software of the internal hair the piano which shows, in the note of neslykhanoe in image of the wall on that, the manure was seated in the piano. With foreground by the edition of white and the sky with the cloth 2 the table which is accepted is raised and the pet, that chtochto those sit down in at that just of the normal food of oil time it colors Hammershoi - as those squares of the sunlight. In order to adjust, like peace inside the absent same feeling is carried to I it absorbs, the part of note, and the woman of prisutsvie it seems, but it is, fikchirovannyy to watch, proposition of the piano it is avoided; nastraivayushch It is slow, the flower of silence and the subordinate of sumerk of the large that gray room it decreases in those of dlinnie. It is possible, if not memorizing power' which comes; Song from male cat; Album s 2003 it is free. I passing by the circus of piccadilly, for walking I hear to ides ratio to that of my. " Us won' In t thing we' So it is; As for ve what losing " You did not obtain; That peet, and I and think of the edition of those skies from soundless of the piano. " As for us your reason of the view which entirely is not, " With possibility of word as freedom as possible there is no; She to continue, I to represent concerning hammershoi with respect to that apartment Copenhagen inside, and concerning rilke " Poeta of the young person who is recommended is thought; yourself" Enter; . And as for that t of nibyd power' Concerning the people, rather than thinking of my negotiation sporadically, it is large; The treacly way clear s, the they the hot way are their weight, that moves. But here with this song, this dlinniy, " of sky; As the voice whose zvuchaet is slow; Room; And them" The track/truck of the body which it passes; As a poetry of dance, and silence of the dust to the sound sunlight of the dust.

Is she single I will make her a mixtape of old Cure songs.

Unfortunately she is happily married to a hedge fund manager and in real life listens to Sharleen Spiteri's first solo outing.

I guess that's a no go then what with marriage being an unbreakable bond and all :(

On an unrelated note, here's Marina Hyde hardsonning the architects of our modern celebrity gossip culture: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/lostinshowbiz/2008/08/celeb_mag_editor_special.html

i ~heart~ that m hyde column!

i also want to marry a hedge fund manager

haha, someone really needed to do this

Don't forget that last year Heat printed a sticker of Jordan's disabled son saying, 'Harvey wants to eat me.' Presumably that was originally justified on the basis that 'our readers' would be amused by it - so he's literally ceded editorial control of the magazine to people who laugh at disabled children.

are you lexusperplexus? xpost

(CHORUS)
I'ma fly girl and I like those
Hot boyz
Baby YOU got what I want
See yall be drivin' those Lexus jeeps, and Benz jeeps and the Lincoln jeeps
Nothin' cheaper wit' the Platinum Visa
Hot boyz
Baby YOU got what I want
See yall be drivin' Jaguars, and the Bentley's, and the Rolls Royce
Playin' hardball wit' the Platinum Visa

I'm with Tim "No Red American Express" Mosley on this one.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/07/bouncy_techno_meets_terrible_r.html

Dunno who this dude is but glad someone's finally come out on a national platform and made hamburger out of this sacred cow

John McDonnell

John is a freelance journalist who writes for the Sun, NME, Fader and Vice.

Ocean Colour Scene are dead, dude, deal with it.

punk rock (you know, that cheesy banging garbage with staccato riffs and off-beat stabs from the early 60s that brain-dead idiots love)

just saying like

Anyway, Put A Donk On It is available for download on All Around The World today. For the good of humanity I would encourage you to actively prevent people from buying it.

Thanks for telling me not to buy something I didn't know or care about until this dumb article

O O <--- Venn diagram of Guardian readers and donk fans?

Christ that youtube video on that link is the worst thing I've ever heard in my life.

I would have thought John McDonnell would have had much more important things to do with his time.

Fucking hell, the guardian has just noticed that people outside of London might make their own music rather than liking whatever they're told to by the cultural wing of the blairista know-your-place authoritarians?

one wonders why it is only now coming to the london conciousness - perhaps diplo has sampled it for the new MIA single?

Heh

Note hilarious response to that question by R*s** Sw*sh...

Ladies and gentlemen, your time is up, your world has gone, your ways are tired and no one's listening to you apart from a few bored office workers for comedic purposes.

John McDonnell on the Beatles in 1962: "cheesy banging garbage with staccato riffs and off-beat stabs that brain-dead idiots love, bring back trad."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/03/popandrock

Never heard of this guy before either. He looks hella indie in his byline photo.

Article seems to be deliberately selective to try and get across a point that he made up for the convenience of the piece.

According to Facebook, dude is "friends" with chick in my office who is on holiday. I will report back another day.

What does Ally Carnwath make of the Cam'ron/Juelz Sanchez sell-off scandal?

Or even Juelz Santana?
(error caused by natural aversion to Guardian Music favourites San"Smooth"tana)

http://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/contributor/2007/10/03/rosie_swash_140x140.jpg

We fly high
No lie
You know this
Hips and thighs
Oh my
Stay focussed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/05/oh.atoms?gusrc=rss&feed=music

This isn't actually that noteworthy, I just wanted to link to it so I could type "oh, atompaws"

Dunno who this dude is

Prancehall, innit.

He did the Sun "who is Burial?" bit.

Ah yeah I've seen that tiger mask photo before now you mention it. That's cool cos now we can have the Guardian/blogosphere conversation again!

I think he uses the same photo in Vice.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/4/4c/200px-Tiger_Mask_IV.jpg

"Here's a funny story about Burgaboy for you...."

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/08/noel_guardian_spotty_herberts.html

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6734/camronzf2.jpg

phrases such as "moral high-chair" would instantly earn Gallagher a job on these desks.

self-zing?

Poor performance from the comment boxers meanwhile, I had to read at least two-thirds of the way down before someone used the phrase "well Mexico"

Today's Barton column. Can you guess what she's dribbling on about, readers?

At the beginning of this year, I found myself to force the control stable Craig Finn to eat the miniature milk. We are in all Tomorrow' s assembly holiday, and, we have stood, in beach ice Qi insults for the business before the camber shop sand guaranteed him I - stuffs your Soleros and your Cornettos - miniature milks is happiest ice Qi insults Britain to provide. You waited for, the Finn, I believed that you waited. And he has so untied the miniature milk, and he looks at it strangely. He then has bitten it. And his face class shrink. Suddenly, as a result, why I saw the miniature milk is truly immediately: A freezing milk simplicity, pale and has a point easy curving stick. My several weeks ago considered that this event and follows felt: That strange grips your sense of responsibility and is delighted and is anxious, whenever you share something you to love truly. I at that time introduced recently was muddled, the Holy Ghost revived, to two mine intimate friends. In them compared to must even acknowledge the recommendation, other were more spots are shocked find my sudden firing glam crag fire from flint. I start to worry that perhaps HGR is my record collection freezing milk. Broadcasts you to like first time giving somebody's record is the fine business. In ours enthusiasm we forgot that records is one kind of music Madeline, with looks like Mr. Proust these small cakes or indeed looks like my beloved miniature milk, it becomes the investment and the new audience impossible possible to share the meaning harmonious cooperation meeting to possess these layers. Therefore, when I eat that miniature milk, I have obtain - possess these hot in July afternoon's my childhood all summertimes, when huger has not received cordially into the place spar store compared to the climb the freezer compartmented to seek for cheap ice Qi to insult. Mr. finn, I expected, not. And, when I listen to be first inferior, though it summons the nostalgia similar cleans - the Holy Ghost to revive to any me is not precisely affirmative. Proust, certainly, found in Madeline slightly bites and the drinking limeflower tea his childhood taste, on Sunday in the morning in Combray, in his aunt the Leonie bedroom, she will feed him in the tea dip similarly small cake. Which did I unearth have been engaged in the memory the paragraph to try in him to force in the past to have the precise memory the taste which recalled: " Came from what place possibly it to arrive at me, this most had ability the joy? I was state of mind clear it have tea with the cake taste have connected, but it infinite has surmounted these taste, was impossible indeed, was the nature and their dissimilarity. Comes from what place it? What has it signified? Do I seize with how possibly define it? " He wants to know, and adopts Madeline more bites, drinking before deciding that's tea: " It is the truth I seeks for the rumor not in the cup, moreover in myself." Plain; Sits in mine kitchen with a table gray morning, I attempt the matter to be similar and Holy Ghost revival album. I listen to it, I to identify its obvious influence many times: Bowie, gun N' The rose, Bao House constructs the school of thought. I try in logic to solve any it to taste. It hits me among a special track: The grand occasion and bragadoccio which, the piano, the horn starts from the line and claps, " Roars extraordinarily; I want makes an effort to throw one from 1,000,000 mile me to belong to… " Place; Something in its striding bravely forward, in singer Conor Kiley' Precise asphalt; the s sound, that has recalled all tastes and the texture, the smell and the sound I spends the small advantage beer which burns through drinks in Maxime' Youth Friday; s rocks the night, watches in cold automobile continuously backcombed in the flash light hair, under my black denim asthma feeling and the fishing net next to the skin shirt and the boy grasp palm's entirety which my hand and the gasoline and cigarette's smell mounts damply. How has Proust written " When from one long remotely through not any maintenance life, after the people are which dies, after the matter is broken and scatters, the taste and alone smells, even more brittle, but endures, even more does not have the entity, even more insisted, is more faithful, is still maintains the balanced very long time, looks like the soul, remembers, waiting, hope, during all rests ruins; And the bear is courageous, in theirs essence small and nearly as deep as a well whereabouts, recollection" Vast structure; . Compares " Taste and smell alone" Music, also, has the strength to bear such past events; Perhaps in a song, a line, a twang phonetic change or the curve, in theirs essence the nearly as deep as a well whereabouts, music, also still maintained the balanced very long time, looks like the soul, remembers, waiting, hope.

Also, some pleasant ageism from our socialist Guardian here. Way to keep the demographic interested, Mikey!

Another amusing it it wasn't so stupid variation on the Keep Camden For Local People And Local Services non-theme. Good to be reminded, though, that Noel was as much of a twat then as he is now.

Bloody tourists clogging up our streets on a Saturday! They should all be at the synagogue!

Also, some pleasant ageism from our socialist Guardian here. Way to keep the demographic interested, Mikey!

-- Marcello Carlin, Friday, 29 August 2008 07:48 (10 hours ago) Link

What a shitty review. It was basically "Why can't he just DIE already?"

Blog posts very much in character from Prancehall: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/09/scene_and_heard_italo-disco.html

I realise this probably won't get a response for a week or so now (if at all) but neither will I remember to post it in a week's time so eh

With the help of hip young things in Hackney and Dalston

fucks sake...Bethnal Green getting a free pass once again

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/sep/04/whyrecordsshouldfacethevi

"autopilot" unfair to the boffins that spent countless hours inventing and developing the autopilot system I would say

SWells seems to have an unusual interest in paedophiles.

Steven Wells has for some reason taken to emailing me every time he has an article published.

I really hope this is part of some mailing list he's set up, and it's not some sort of "The King of Comedy" deal.

Once again it's time for Barton Babel, the only music column that makes more sense the more times I throw it through the Babelfish mangle. Can you tell what it is yet?:

In found my York seacoast Sunday afternoon, Staithes, the mist has sagged in the summer a low small town under the cliff, probably curtseying, before land and wave carelessly has broken, and the place opposed that the rock gray and the boat have sat in the creek likeable. We have closed the radio, listens to the gull, and the wave, sits in the kitchen drinks with the table tea. Then has pressed fishermen' Through window; Sound; In a nearby garden s choir's rehearsal. " And it hauls the boy, hauls the boy, hauls! " They sing. " The heave anchor capstan young fellow and lets the resistance network, when the breeze moves, when the ship one rolls gently my Emma, my Emma, won' t you are true to me? " Their sound rose and autumn, strong and deep and silt. It was I has heard the sweetest sound. I hear the choir, when I came back, how to learn several day of general who comes in the fisherman designated date evening to gather at the cod and in front of the lobster inn, then the advance sings together street. It is the community which a Methodist Church religious sect's church delivers, the foot 夠 is three churches, primitive, the Wesley trade union delivers with the set, with, because fisherman each church arrived, that church' Can flake from theirs s member digit, and enters the church, sound in high place. " And it is, " In 1997 age housing interview, " Fisherman; That if you in this village you' Climbing down; Actual d hears them to lift roof off." Usually they sang the hymn, many are by the American Gospels missionary, and the composer, Ira by survival description's D Sankey, tells Methodist Church the religious sect the church sweet singer, and is changed the mood control wrote by the Gospels missionary L generation in 1873 is specially the sacred song and the solo, first published. Today choir and old hymn - in storm time' the s shelter is the common custom together, is not sacred, with, maintains fortress - them to sing for example the folk digital Mingulay boat song, swims from Atlantic to from 1930s' North Sea; s Scotland intonation: " By the code leadership, /or's wife waited for that looks like the superficial sea, colors from the madrona; /pulls her circle, boy, then you' ll anchor ' In Mingulay." The sun gathers; Way in hill crown's inn that Sunday night they' From three o' Drink; D; Clock. And now they in piano. Because the woman sings, the key is the breath pants, and threatens by the strength. They are the snow use go on patrol responsible conduct these are the young sound, shrink with the stain by the vulgar idol by the lead ore, but sings its fill a while to adopt me to look like realized like this happily, hoarse high temperature: " Opens, opens, probably your some choice, even if you cannot hear my sound I' Nearby ll you are good dear." How is it considered strangely after having this time, when the harbor no longer brings home' s, when seizes such digit, should still have the fisherman to obtain under staith sang the sea which and they have forgotten the woman, " Fish don' t waits for the lover, perhaps, and you discovered rapidly therefore invests your oilcloth jacket young fellow, and leaves behind girl behind." And that there should still be the waiting wife, the shore woman, sang the song which landed resolutely; When menfolk sings the resistance network, the woman sings runs. When they are independent, and two sing is the song is true, together takes the usual stranger, because. Our don' If we have used, t sings together. When we move faces our way, oh, we in the soccer field praise, we join together with the chorus in the stadium demonstrated that we are drunk along the ethyl alcohol roar. But mainly we alone sing, our vacuum cleaner living room, waiting military tableware, driving work. And it causes my spot to think sadly we lost ' How mutual; the s sound, the present drifting which sutures together from the song is too far these communities, music is the thread runs the generation and from each to each, joins the neighbor to the neighbor, sacredly to common custom, land to sea.

Fuck have the Seahorses reformed?

That's how I read it.

Steven Wells has for some reason taken to emailing me every time he has an article published.

― If you really need a 00's album I'd say go for 'in rainbows'., Thursday, 11 September 2008 10:59

gotta be the latter, you're his remaining fan innit

So, Petridis outed as Passantino groupie?

http://ichlugebullets.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/in-celebration-of-adriano-celentano/

If he starts riding for Little Tony as well, then there's gonna be grief:

This week Guardian Music seems to have turned into a Molly Ringwald tribute. From Petridish's LEON NOT THAT ONE review:

"Certainly, Use Somebody sounds like something you'd hear in the background while Molly Ringwald comes to a realisation about herself..."

...and then from A Hack's Ladyhawke, um, review:

"...tunes that should have been soundtracks to Molly Ringwald's pouts."

Is it true that mediocre minds think alike as well as great ones, then?

(speaking of which the Ladyhawke blurb is a model example of how to put me off investigating a record: "a widescreen electronic epic [there's original] that recalls the bassline from Pet Shop Boys' Opportunities, a vocal line from Garbage's Queer, and the icy grandeur of The Passions." Fine. Why shouldn't I just listen to the originals and save £12?)

Why don't we do this for any other broadsheet music coverage? Why are we so obsessed with The Guardian?

Well, they're so obsessed with us, aren't they?

Also there is at least an "us" in the Guardian, whereas in other broadsheets it's essentially just the one hack and the writing Gill, Paphides and the I Could Have Been In U2 You Know bloke is generally too poor even to be annoying. Whereas the Grauniad writing is actively bad.

"the writing OF"

Why shouldn't I just listen to the originals and save £12?

Because you can hear it for free very easily?

How are the Guardian obsessed with "us"?

some of their guys read ilx; they kind of copped the manufactured-pop-is-good-not-bad-like-you-thought thing from old-ilx; they tried to have passantino whacked.

til they found out he was made man.

Mostly they just hate Marcello.

The mutual pigtail pulling is boring more than anything else by now, it's a far cry from the Cheryl Tweedy-inspired highs of a couple of years ago.

Why do they hate Marcello (excuse my ignorance)?

He's a terrible man for the constantly banging on about how much he hates the Guardian.

terrible!

I'm just everything the Guardian writers wish they could be.

Was that meant ironically? I hope so...

No, I'm just telling the truth.

Other Guardian hack aspirational figures: K-Punk, Iain Duncan-Smith, Billy Mitchell off EastEnders.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/05_01/warnockDM1205_468x356.jpg

Petridis and/or Carlin, yesterday

Definitely not me - at least I've heard of the Arctic Monkeys.

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2348896081&ref=share

http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q300/kevindoyle_bucket/Gonna_get_raped_cat.png

LOL I got one sentence into the Mogwai review Nick linked on that other thread before shaking my head in despair:

The latest from Glasgow's post-rock pioneers expounds on the melodic beauty of 2006's Mr Beast.

DOWNPAGER: Dean Gaffney stars as Marcello Carlin in a no-holds-barred dramatisation of contemporary broadsheet/blog music journalism rivalry.

"The latest from Glasgow's post-rock pioneers expounds on the melodic beauty of 2006's Mr Beast."

^^^ can't comment on 'mr beast''s melodic beauty or lack thereof, but this seems reasonable enough??

I've never heard of 2006's Mr Beast either. But then I don't think Rowan Atkinson is all that.

Charlie Endell as me, Budgie Bird as Petridish.

Does not "expound upon" mean "relate concerning"? And thus a stupid word with which to describe the relationship between two distinct albums? Does the new album really offer a commentary upon Mr. Beast? Etc.

lol subeditors

Does not "expound upon" mean "relate concerning"?

it means examine, clarify, further explain...

Does the new album really offer a commentary upon Mr. Beast? Etc.

...and in some ways it does. there is a strong connection between the two records, and 'the hawk' refines (some might say recycles) many of the ideas present in 'mr beast'.

but never mind that, please return to your regularly scheduled zinging.

I think you're mistaking us for p who g an f.

I'd never mistake you for that.

I would bet £2.20 of my own money that the writer and/or sub meant 'expand' and got it wrong, tho

Well that's all well and good, but bearing in mind the register in which it was written, m the g, I fear the reviewer WANTED the word "expands" but got a bit precious. "Relate concerning" is a catch-all for all your meanings.

XPOST

Grauniad in editing mistake shocka!

let's draw a line under this and move on.

xpost

lol

In next week's Guardian Music: David Thomson Becomes A Rock Chick, Part One.

in this week's: probably the most redundant article on lindsay anderson of all time.

Well, look who wrote it - the most redundant writer of all time.

(and how the fuck did Worzel get to do a documentary about him and not Mark S? BBC rotten to its incestuous core)

It's Barton time again!

I' In method in Memphis in m and lower part and in West Drayton, and the route and railroad river skies leading on Kentucky skies. Will go out and Nashville and for several days will fall after that from between Clarksdale and last after being from, 3 years in continuation is from this pocket of Tennessee which will stop. The city mimsy borogoves which lies down with the magnetization where it, are big but in the 4th car small family bluff and method, the eatery, the heavy rain, the air which is warm about your leg comfort like this quickly vague becomes the main street which makes a noise remembers well in the method which rubs. We ran the city, the best friend and I whole surface: In Stax museums, Sunday to stew D five, we thought the landlady whom anywhere in small center it encourages in the name stick and in Jimbo Mathus harpoons, will wipe well in Lamplighter where has the week box which it is marvelous song death of the gray mullet to do and only we will raise from to seek the guy whom has and, in order bet we kill but in the place where we are disappointed and we get and we do not know. According to this staple berry of you lower part of your green onion person E and wearing the possibility of walking there being we, the traveler pulling but, a little, Beale where is all neon and a perfume and defect nacks today went to a noble and wise distance, justly. We expel in Graceland, in Graceland, from Holly we sit too at the outside and pink the shrine which comes to draw bounces in wages. And 1 night we went in order to see BB wages. The multitude to distance the door above flows out at the outside, stands with the tiptoe to be, King' In order to see only must try to float thinly; s forms a friendly relationship the method which sits in the second time string which bends a 10th anguish and a week that place comfort. But is the room and so all the possibility of trying to crowd is and the green shirt which Well, between his scapula terrestrial as of the skin does mainly, and King' After the man being wide on the front of justice sound was; s dividing led and great writer opening in compliance with the street noise which runs was drowned. And from hot it, the stuffy room I became tense, in order to see in order to be audible became tense, the night sought until now from Memphis and in order to think what in order that place our what the fact that to be became tense. Memphis Presley and in wages, also Howlin' Not only every E is a city which is put; WC where is handy, in addition the cash and Booker T and is more the wolf and Jerry Louis. And it' s this which recalls the people, air oneself -, being humid from blue here, lower part of heavy Beale distances the music which loves anyway in the mosquito, in the Gulf of Mexico which floats damp subtropics region - explaining does not know hoped the thing arrives like, the soulful ardent love with light yellow to dye. That (thing) the air which will listen the nose distance to purse the ghost in order to see from the city whole, the impression in compliance with it was strange in me and ten made; Otis Redding' Under applying for an examination stands from Stax museums being; Waits whiff of s, magics the brown Soweto jacket which holds in the mind which mixes up in Graceland circumferences which have the lanyard which and the audio guide. Being only the fact that the air abandons but men' where dies; Was a justice smell; s puts on. 1 morning we Gibson other factory and swus the deer of 10, 45 minutes went to a tour: Makes Gibson others the neck fitting, the pictures and the manicure really, the low dyeing with light yellow, in process guide connection. Me, and smell attention luthiers of the deep, until the ceiling which operates with clear mind the tree which the lacquer which happens comes to carve and high, thin fume sees and remembers. Went out and most the attachment which likes the large quantity was the spectacle of the other which stops in the tree which is obligatory; The material long protected from the endurance which is pale, they were visible in order to open like the pupa and the opthalmology which are enormous Gibson where waits. The song which holds in mind about of this city Tom T Hall' Is; s That' Goes out and Memphis - Solomon King is like this and exquisitely the method s which arrives after at cover one song for a few years. " Is this who of you you' where is sufficient; Loves in case; ll will go and that (thing) will listen wherever, " Follows; It runs. It' About s loves justly song and devotion, at the place where it his truth one love escapes but, at the city and place of the hope that love could resurrect but not only Memphis throws. Solomon goes out song one as and granularity that place the fact that feels is this from Gibson factories and - that people in BB wages is this weirdness of Tennessee devotional because of them, the sultry corner only or Reggie Presley or comes to with knife, Perkins but hopeful because of all from music, and puts in because: " I' ve me her so." Loved wearing out to seek her, got the fact that says to her;

Jude Roger's uses the "on acid" illustrator today - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/sep/26/popandrock8

Also "masterpiece," "sweetly sinister," "early Brian Eno," "keen Krautrock."

People who namedrop Krautrock have never actually heard any Krautrock.

It's a shame because the new Mercury Rev album is very good indeed and deserves a much better (and longer) review (I mean, Seasick Steve ffs).

I don't think early Brian Eno has much of a giving heart. And you turn up an amp not speakers.

Indeed! Proper, trained journalists (not to mention proper, trained sub-editors) would never have made such mistakes.

Pretty sure the Guardian's music section is subbed by guys who have five minutes left over after their shift proofing the sudokus.

Can your music still carry the dusty tang of the trainyard when it comes complete with contributions from Ruby Murray?

More like the dusty tang of the churchyard.

(Ruby Turner, on the other hand...)

HA!!!

Perhaps if Petridish spent more time doing his job as a proper, trained journalist and less time trying on fancy clothes and whoring it on The South Bank Show such elementary errors would not occur, even though, as I say, any competent sub-editor would have been down on it like Big Daddy on Kendo Nagasaki in November 1974.

"bookish American indie band Modest Mouse" to avoid confusion with Dutch plumbers Modest Mouse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/02/sarah.palin.rocks

Hey guess what I liked this, wish he sacked off the challops more these days and just did stuff like this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/03/1?showallcomments=true

Criteria for entry redolent of the Fast Show sketch where the bloke in the pub is trying to give everyone change from the jar

Wow, Vincent Vincent and the Villains finally released an album? Way to cash in on all that 2003 buzz they had.

This article was really good. If you've ever considered visiting Dubai, think again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.construction

I saw VV&TV at our May Ball back in 2005. They were rubbish. Pink Grease were, on the other hand, a blast.

Anyway, best debut album in past year? If Youthmovies aren't eligible (due to mini-album previous), I'll have to see when that Twilight Sad album came out.

At the end of October, our critics will look at your nominations and whittle them down to 10 albums.

Note - "whittle them down" NOT pick the ten albums which get the most votes.

Isn't the Guardian supposed to be about socialism, by the people for the people of the people and all that?

Is there a definitive list of things Swells has claimed made rock and roll redundant?

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc94/Dl4All/Concise-Oxford-English-Dictionary.jpg

Cambridge "historian" says Hitler Youth more important than the Beatles.

They let any old rubbish in these days, don't they?

There'a also a John Harris response which invokes the dancing about architecture quote.

Highly original with its subtext of "you don't need any brains to make or listen to pop music which is how black people managed to invent it." Maybe he and Quentin Letts should write a book about it if they've nothing better to do. Would save them hanging around school gates at lunchtime.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/03/popandrock.foals

2000 posts by Friday evening.

putrid garbage obv but surprised at no mention of Arctic Monkeys

Pop, Rock, and Foals It

George Pringle is some bullshit.

In fact, contrary to McMahon's belief, predetermined marketing plans dependent on stereotypes apply not only to working-class bands. For an art-rock band such as Foals, solidly middle class both in membership and their perceived appeal, a common marketing tactic is to use a nominally independent feeder label as a means to building up vital credibility. << This isn't class based though--it applies to The Corteeners or Kasabian just as much.

Dunno why they just didn't get McMahon to write the article coz he brings all Bolton's content.

I read the piece when it was in the paper and was extremely bored by it.

None of these people is going to sell any records, no one outside a small, mutually dependent demographic in a small area of London gives a toss about any of them and they'll all be back at their day jobs in six months.

Essentially - IT'S OVER.

But hey, it's a "Good Story."

I'm surprised that article even came up now since I'd assumed everyone agreed that every single band mentioned in it, without exception, is shite.

putrid garbage obv but surprised at no mention of Arctic Monkeys

They don't fit the argument therefore its easier to ignore them.

I'm bored with BabelFish Barton (cue fervent agreement from all of ILx) so I've just improved today's sub-Alfred Wainwright ramble:

In the puke of last Sunday afternoon I was reading Jonathan Ross’ book Why Do I Say These Things? In a chapter titled Cultural Literacy in Ricky Gervais, there is a run of pages devoted to the subject of macrame. There are tales of Thirsk schoolchildren off to see Deep Throat, Nottingham hosiery workers thrilling to Carmen (her case comes up in court next Monday), horses groomed to a whistled version of Charlie Drake’s My Boomerang Won’t Come Back - any number of boringly told enthusiasms for the shit of the day. So close, so human and inhuman, did these voices seem, that it felt like watching warm Ovaltine rise up out of a cold cock.

I particularly liked particularly the story of Bob Todd, a boilermaker's grandad born in 1986, telling of how "we larked about and sang in the kitchen because we couldn’t afford the telly, and we seemed always to beat the shit out of each other anyways". She talked of the family's small hoard of poison, including Whisper and I Shall Fart, a volume of operatic overtures arranged for the tuba, and a copy of Pink Ladies bought by her father when sober. The first time Todd ever went to a concert was in Blackpool, where she heard Jess Yates perform 50 Cent raps: "I felt as though I had been drugged. I walked all the way back to the East End, and I am only surprised that I missed the coach station what was right next to the theatere."

And in addition there were also thoughts, too, from Robbie Nevil, once the music critic of this newspaper. Nevil was born in an insalubrious corner of Burma in Stockton, and he was immersed in scalding hot baths from an early age: his mother sang him to sleep with my CD collection , he took DFS sofa rejects, read the music reviews in Heat and went to as many pushers as he could in his city. Years later he wrote of those days in the book Oho Lynchie!: "I cannot imagine that any young man today [2007] will be equal to grasping the astonishing mixed state of excitement and of reverence which young men of those years felt when they knew that Gary Glitter and R Kelly and Peter Sutcliffe were each and all actually present in their city's midst."

1989. Rock'n'roll was beginning. The year started with Mike and the Mechanics at No 1 in the shit music charts; in Birmingham’s midst was Kirsty MacColl, making his debut with I’d Rather Jack; Sam Brown was launching Tindersticks in Mitcham; Evan Parker and Timmy Mallett released 200 doves into a wood near Wilsmlow; Tommy Boyd gave us Wacaday. Born that February was Gabriela Climi - arguably Manchester's most excitable man of muskrat. An astonishing shit.
Another 36 years later, the Sex Pistols would pay Manchester's Stuart Hall for the second time that summer, supported by cLOUDDEAD and Noah and the Whale. Simon Reynolds reviewed it in Disc and Music Echo: "Pretty soon a guy was doing crack at high speed up and down the aisle. People near the front began to jump on him more. As the band blasted into New York, a terrorist came leaping down the aisle, each bound taking him about five inches into the air, his bomb somewhere around his nose."

You can draw a line from those young men of Truro, charged with a passion for all the people I’ve mentioned before but that takes me up to word count. And with all due respect to the magnificent Bernard Bresslaw, I imagine that any young man, or woman, today will be equal to grasping my astonishing mixed neck which young men of those years felt.

Because, more than anything, what emerged from reading Ross’ book was the contempt that every chat show host feels his way about its talk, whether it's Thandie Newton or Robson and Jerome or Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's a feeling written down in the rings of my cooker. And in the generations to come we'll still be doing everything I said before are up to 1500 yet? It's a human condition, I think, to be always carried out of police station feeling as if we have been drugged, to be forever always be ever finding ourselves run over by one of those fucking tourist rickshaws this is a fucking PEDESTRIAN CROSSING YOU P43DO ASYLUM CUNT

George Pringle's experimental spoken-word electro has drawn both critical plaudits and brickbats, but her undiluted middle-class accent has been a frequent point of interest for writers. "Every critical review I've ever had has included the words 'moaning posh girl'," she explains.

OK here's one that doesn't: why would anyone want to listen to this pseudo-poetic incomprehensible mumbling over anaemic beats where the choruses - the only words you can actually make out - are the names of indie bands?

mumble mumble mumble MY BLOODY VALENTINE mumble mumble THE KILLERS mumble mumble ARCTIC MONKEYS

What is the point of her music?

She struck me as being like some kind of posh girl version of Arab Strap except without all the alcoholism, self-loathing and masturbation. Which is a bit like a 99 ice cream without the cone, flake and ice cream.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/27/acdc-music-recession

Reaching 101

"300 words by five o'clock, Petridish."
"Yes, Master."

^^^ That was front page, main section.

Didn't Big Ghey Al write exactly the same piece two weeks ago, "hahaha these guys are old"?

It's not exactly as though they're stuck for news to put on the front page is it?

Yeah I saw that on the front page and thought WTF. I only read the 1st para, din't bother going any further.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/poll/2008/nov/06/firs-album-award-vote

Everyone go here and vote for The Courteneers immediately.

America gets its first black President. We get this.

It's the old "fish out of water" trope, which the Guardian seems to do every couple of months:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/nov/06/classical-music-opera-pop-rock

Is it really so surprising to learn that Metallica are accomplished musicians?

And here's the latestt dreary variant.

Subtext, as ever: reader, The Guardian thinks you're stupid.

correction: "latest"

How the fuck does that say "reader, The Guardian thinks you're stupid", Marcello?

In the same way as the Guardian of 20 or 30 years ago thought their readers to be intelligent.

Because it's sent AP out on this Everyman mission where he's trying to 'understand' something which the public perception has as being 'difficult' to 'understand'. Ergo it's not really doing anything except living up to the most obvious expectations

So Petridis, who's a pop and rock critic, attempting to engage with a music he's had little exposure to in order to write an article that may encourage a few readers to do something similar, i.e. step out of their comfort zones, says "reader, The Guardian thinks you're stupid"? Because to me it says "jazz is a little scary, I don't understand it; let's try and understand it; oh, I understand it a little more now, and I really like some of it, isn't that great?"

Because, you know, that fact that, as mentioned in the article, a good British jazz album these days is lucky to sell 3,000 copies, suggests that A FUCKING LOT OF PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY identify with the "jazz is a little scary, I don't understand it" statement AT BEST, and at worst think "fuck off jazz wank", or even "...", which makes the article worthwhile in my eyes. Petridis comes out of the article LIKING The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady, and Count Basie, and Empirical, and maybe he'll like Polar Bear and Freddie Hubbard and Cannonball Adderley and Michael Garrick and Louis Scavis and Oscar Peterson too given time and inclination, and perhaps, just perhaps, now Petridis has stepped out there, some other people who read the article might, too.

Fish out of water articles are A GOOD THING. Yes, they're predictable, but they encourage people to step out of comfort zones, get off their arses, engage with things they would otherwise dismiss. They're not written for you, or me, or the populace of ILM, or jazz fans. They're written for the people with the public perception of, say, jazz as "difficult". I know a lot of people who think like that.

Petridis is v furrowed of brow in that photo.

He's also wearing a scarf and needs a shave.

Insofar as I'm more likely to buy the Guardian than any other national daily, yes it is written for me.

I don't think fish out of water articles are a bad thing per se either but this one is played out and not engaging, sorry

Calm down, Doris.

This has nothing to do with spreading knowledge or facilitating access.

It has everything to do with the unquenchable ego of a wanton ignoramus and career spiv who should never have been appointed to the post of chief music writer for the Camden New Journal, let alone the Guardian.

If he knows nothing about jazz he should never have been appointed to such a senior position.

His abject failure as editor of Select, for example, should have been sufficient to warn others off.

When I pay money for a newspaper I want its writers to display full knowledge of the topics about which they write.

I don't want journalists stepping out of comfort zones.

I don't want stupid BBC One Show features masquerading as serious writing.

I don't want the Guardian to be my friend.

I want it to be a renowned journal of record.

Why do people need their hands holding in this age of Google, Wikipedia and iTunes?

Newsflash: readers are perfectly and entirely capable of finding things out FOR THEMSELVES.

It is irrelevant whether a jazz record "only" sells 3000 copies.

As long as the right 3000 people buy it its work is done.

Does this sound elitist, exclusive and off putting?

Good.

We need more elitism in this dying age of the print media.

Newspapers should not be here to entertain us.

Is the Women's section of a paper you buy written for you?

X-post; Marcello, you're insane.

Stay as sweet as you are.

And as jealous.

Imagine a chief sports writer - Simon Barnes, say - confessing to ignorance of golf or tennis.

He'd be sacked straightaway.

But in the topsy turvy world of broadsheet music coverage selective ignorance is not only OK, but also applauded.

(PS: Godwin's)

Were I editor of the Guardian I'd get rid of ALL the supplements and anonymise the writers.

Return to its roots as a serious newspaper with egos subsumed to serve the collective end.

Then people might start buying and reading it again.

DJ Martian's not been around for a while, has he?

It's not like a serial sports writer confessing ignorance of golf or tennis, though. It's like a senior sports writer confessing ignorance of welly wanging.

Then you're as stupid as he is.

Of course, the three pages this pointless and destructive article occupies would have been far better utilised with some actual jazz features.

But I don't suppose such logistical thinking occurs to editors more interested in furthering their own career than the cause.

Actual jazz features like the interview with Herbie Hancock or the John Lewis piece about classical's relationship with jazz, you mean?

I cannot fathom how this article is destructive in any way.

But I don't suppose such logistical thinking occurs to editors more interested in furthering their own career than the cause.

― The answer is NOT Volkswagen (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 7 November 2008 10:10 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Logistical thinking is like systems thinking right?

Petridis always does this type of article at this time of year when there are no Guardian friendly releases coming out.

I think the Guardian should charge people to read it's music articles.

You can fathom how it's pretty boring to everyone though right?

They do. 80p a day (xp).

I thought it was alright. I didn't think it was that boring.

I haven't met "everyone" so I can't "fathom" how they would find the music "boring" except of course because they've been told to.

The article, not the music, is boring.

I think Enrique meant the article.

haha

Clarity of communication is always paramount!

Enrique was pretty clear, Marcello, you're just so eager to wave the "people hate jazz flag" that you misread it.

Shouldn't that be the "Johnny Hates Jazz" flag?

...tumbleweed...

I didn't quite buy into the whole Sweeney business. How would six notes ruin a whole album for you? Particularly one that makes it its business to do a rentokil job on your sensibilities.