No Rock And Roll Fun

"THEY JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND": Beware of young men bearing grudges. After all this time, Damon Albarn has popped up moaning about how the NME covered his trip to Africa. Albarn seems a little put out that the 'me took the chance of the journey it made with him to Mali to chat about how Blur were falling apart at the seems:

"I took the NME to Mali when we were rehearsing, and I was just devastated by the impression that they gave at the end. I'm trying to open this up for people like myself. The NME doesn't go to Africa very often, and I was really excited about the whole idea. At the end, I felt absolutely… does it mean that musicians' adventures around the world are destined to remain in the broadsheets and in the travel sections of magazines, and the kids never have access to this and are permanently force-fed crap?"

A lot of people, of course, have the feeling that, rather than using his connections to promote Mali music, Albarn is more interested in promoting himself using Mali music as tool. The fact that he then uses subsequent interviews to moan about how the NME failed to treat his cultural daytripping as the most important thing to happen to Africa since the discovery of diamonds, instead of enthusing over the Mali musicians he has so much at heart, tends to confirm this thesis.