Camden Market is on fire

BBC news is reporting that Camden Market is on fire, with eight engines in attendance.

[UPDATE: 9.40pm - BBC News 24 now reporting 20 engines; spreading to another building; London Ambulance say no injuries]

Godspeed, then...

Bad news - Godspeed You, Black Emperor have split up. Drowned In Sound reports this is due to the same-old, same-old reasons of 'existential freakout':

“The last American tour that Godspeed did was in the run up to the current war in Iraq. For what Godspeed did, it was very difficult for us to work out a way for us to communicate directly with the audience about what was going on. We would talk to people after the shows, or we could make announcements from the stage but so much what Godspeed was, was one-way communication.

“And I had an existential freak-out about that. That those tactics aren’t valid anymore.

“People didn’t need a rock band pointing in the direction of [how the world was at that point]. Maybe what they needed is some clumsy words, a presentation that was a little more human.

“On a personal level I now find [Godspeed You! Black Emperor] to be inappropriate [to do]. There’s a complicated back story. I reached a point whereby I was no longer willing to contribute to the steering of the ship; it was like, ‘Okay now, someone else point the direction, I love all of you, but I need to ride shotgun for a while’.

“I think that bands do have a short shelf life… they should be able to ply their trade ‘til they no longer want to.”

GYBE did manage fourteen years of shelf life, although they haven't actually done anything since 2003.

The little girls understand Pete and Chester

Oh, how it must irk Pete Wentz and Chester Bennington and their grown-up banda, to find themselves being lauded by their actual target market: the Nickelodeon's kids choice awards. Yes, culturally, they're on a par with Alvin And The Chipmunks and Hannah Montana.

The nominees in full:

Movie: Alvin and the Chipmunks,Are We Done Yet?,The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End,The Transformers.
Male Movie Star: Ice Cube, Johnny Depp, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Eddie Murphy.
Animated Movie: Shrek The Third,Bee Movie,Ratatouille,The Simpsons Movie.
Female Movie Star: Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Kirsten Dunst, Keira Knightley.
Voice From an Animated Movie: Cameron Diaz, Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld.
Song: Beautiful Girls (Sean Kingston), Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie), Don't Matter, (Akon), Girlfriend (Avril Lavigne.)
Male Singer: Bow Wow, Chris Brown, Soulja Boy, Justin Timberlake.
Music Group: Boys Like Girls, Fall Out Boy, Jonas Brothers, Linkin Park.
Female Singer: Beyonce, Fergie, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys.
TV Show: Drake & Josh,Hannah Montana,iCarly,The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Reality Show: America's Next Top Model,American Idol,Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?,Deal or no Deal.
Television Actress: Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana ), Emma Roberts (Unfabulous ), Jamie Lynn Spears (Zoey 101 ), Raven-Symone (That's So Raven ).
Television Actor: Drake Bell (Drake & Josh ), Josh Peck (Drake & Josh ), Dylan Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody ), Cole Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody ).
Cartoon: Avatar: The Last Airbender,Ed, Edd and Eddy,The Simpsons,SpongeBob SquarePants.
Male Athlete: Tony Hawk, Shaquille O'Neal, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods.
Female Athlete: Cheryl Ford, Danica Patrick, Serena Williams, Venus Williams.
Video Game: Dance Dance Revolution,Guitar Hero,High School Musical: Sing It!, Madden NFL '08.
Book: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume One: The Long Way Home,Diary of a Wimpy Kid,Harry Potter series,How to Eat Fried Worms.

Timbaland isn't a People people

At part of the slushing celebrating the Grammys, People magazine has sponsored a party for people, with Timbaland as the main draw.

It all went a little sour - alright, a lot sour - when one of his enormous entourage wasn't allowed in. Mr Land shared his frustration with the audience, honking off from the stage:

"Next time I have one of my homeboys in line, let that (expletive) in!" Timbaland shouted as the event winded down after 2 a.m. Saturday, adding that he was a "peoples person."

"I don't like to see my people turned around for some (expletive) magazine ... (expletive) y'all!"

Timbaland is such an old grump, the person who tried to smooth things over by telling journalists that the boss wasn't angry with the sponsors, just some organisational glitches, only did so off the record. When you clean-up crew is afraid of you, you need some serious time out.

Mojave 3 Weekend: Bluebird Of Happiness

This is live in Vancouver, on the 24th September 2006:



[Part of Mojave 3 weekend]

It's not just Amy having problems with deciding if she should go

As I Lay Dying have, as you'll be aware, been invited to the Grammys. They've been nominated for "best metal performance" and were quite excited. At first. Then Tim Lambesis started to think about the deal, at first in a "who are these guys to dictate taste" way, and then with slightly more serious worries. He's written about them online, as has guitarist Nick Hipa.

Hipa has decided he's going to go, and come to terms with what the Grammys are:

I don't think its right to demonize the Grammy society. They're not telling us what is and isn't good music, I think they're casting votes on who is doing what they do well... or maybe standing out the most... Now obviously they all don't know much about metal because I can't think of a single awesome thing KING DIAMOND or SLAYER did THIS year.

Tim, though, has more worries than just the question of who makes up the jury:

So, a few weeks go by with me battling this question in my head when I find out that as a nominated 'guest of honor,' I am not able to have even my wife come with me unless I pay $600 for her seat. I know that someone has to help pay for the ceremony, but even a nominated artist trying to bring his better half!? This is when I first started thinking the Grammys might not be for me. Later, I also learn that our label, management and parents can't go unless they pay $300 for seats that are nowhere near where we sit. Basically, all the people that deserve to enjoy this 'special' moment along with the band are unable to do so. Our record label has always been the one at the forefront of great business and marketing decisions that help bring the band to a new level of notoriety. Likewise, our managers have helped to steer us in the right direction ever since we started working with them a few years back. Then there's our lawyer, booking agent, and countless others I could name that have played significant roles in getting us to this point. And, going to the very beginning, my parents deserve so much credit for helping me pursue my dream when no one else could see it. Now, not only is some out of touch elite committee telling us what they think good music should be, but then they try to make the artists they nominate pay a ridiculous amount for the event that we can't even enjoy with all the people that really made this possible.

Now, this payday off artists is quite fascinating. Six nominees in 109 categories, even if you assume that, say, each nominee is up for three prizes, that gives a rough-and-ready potential number of 'honoured guests' of about 200... although, of course, most prizes have more than one name attached to them - but let's say that, averaging out the quartets, sextets, orchestras, producers and engineers that comes to, shall we say, six hundred people up for prizes in total? And if they each want to bring a spouse, partner, sexual intimate or stalker, that's over a third of a million dollars potentially to be made there. Before the three hundred quid a head extra guests.

Now, AILD's Nick thinks this might not be quite as outrageous as it seems:

In trying to figure out WHY they would charge us to bring people, I came up with a plausible explanation: I started thinking it would be flat-out wrong if they charged any nominee to go to the ceremony. And if they didn't charge any nominee's supporters (family, friends, managers, agents, etc.) then how would they be able to pay for the ceremony itself? The production, the venues, the performances, and the presenters, that's got to be a lot of money. If everyone I wanted to get in got in for free, and so did everyone else who got nominated, then who pays for it? It is this thinking that made me give up on being bitter about them charging us.

Hmm. Well, you might think, the large sum of cash being pocketed for the television rights might cover the cost of hiring a venue and providing some food?

And then there's a large list of sponors who are pumping money into the awards - People, GM, Delta, USA Today, Verizon, Westwood One, Hilton, Nokia, Delta. Couldn't their payments go towards paying the costs of the event?

Membership of the Academy, by the way, costs about $100 - couldn't that huge slush fund be dipped into to allow people to take their Mums to the awards?

And even if the event was going to have to be paid for out of attendees' pockets, three hundred dollars a head? You could have a pretty good time for three hundred dollars a head, don't you think?.

But making it even more galling that friends and family of the Grammy nominees are looked to for a quick payday is if you remember the point of the awards, as explained by Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow when he was trying to persuade the writer's guild to not force the event off the air:

This year, more than ever, Grammy Week and the milestone of a 50th Grammy Awards, along with the 50th Anniversary of the founding of The Recording Academy, are a centerpiece and beacon of hope, optimism, and represent literally multi-millions of dollars in sales, promotion, and marketing.

The event is a marketing tool for the music industry - and, effectively, they've found a way of charging the people without whom there would be no commercial to take part in the advertising.

If anyone should be paying the costs of the people who turn up - creating the atmosphere at the Grammys (such as it is) and giving the sponsors something to sponsor, and the audience something to watch, shouldn't it be coming out of the marketing coffers of the RIAA?

Mojave 3 Weekend: In Love With A View

This is recorded live at the Pressure Point, Brighton - probably best to steer clear if you're a hifi stickler.



[Part of the Mojave 3 Weekend]

What would Beth Ditto be doing?

The Guardian is continuing to keep faith with the What would Beth Ditto do column. This week, the person calling for help was gay:

Even if I am gay, I'm not normal gay. For starters, I don't like Kylie or macho men. What should I do?

Now, the obvious answer - how can you be living in 21st century Britain and think that the love of Kylie is mandatory for homosexuality? - is passed over; Beth does offer the obvious response:

There is no one way to be gay.

But in attempting to stretch out that screamingly obvious for two columns she wobbles into some lazy stereotyping of her own.

The reason the rainbow was chosen as our universal symbol wasn't because of its cute, bright, colourful, quirky, "gay" image. Rather, those stripes represent all humans, and the arch of the rainbow encompassing the Earth offers a comforting reminder that we come in all styles and colours - buzzcuts, long hair, lispy, butch, flaming.

Actually, the colours on the rainbow flag don't represent "all humans", Beth - the original design had them stand for sexuality; life; healing; sunlight; nature; magic; serenity and spirit, while more modern iterations of the flag have dropped (ironically) the sexuality and the magic. The 'rainbow'-ness, far from having arching meaning, actually was just a neater description of the flag than "multicoloured stripey flag". It's not, of course, the first time that Ditto has started from where she is and attempted to reverse out a convincing meaning, and - ultimately - symbols mean what you want them to.

But it's not just that Beth is twisting history, she's also going to have a quick tweak of science to make her point, too:

Rainbows hang over the Earth encompassing it with warmth and, no matter what, no human can take the rainbow from the sky. It sounds cheeseball, but that's why we adopted it.

Eh? Rainbows don't hang over the earth, do they? And they certainly don't encompass it. Or give warmth to anything. And while it's true that no person can take a rainbow out the sky, the nature of a rainbow - shimmering, impossible to touch, unobtainable, barely there and rarely seen. If you want to make too much of the rainbow symbolism, it starts to look a bit of a weak idea.

But the real