Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Not Forgot-Ten: November 2010

Former supermanager Peter Jenner agreed that the music industry had got pricing wrong and Sony accepted that Amanda Ghost was not the right person to run a label. The BBC admitted that some secondary reports about Ethiopian Aid might have given a wrong impression about Band Aid. The long-expected Beatles digital domination was cancelled due to lack of interest.

eMusic swapped a whole slew of indies for a major label. Senior News Corp figures started muttering that maybe it's time for MySpace to go home. Ministry Of Sound got incredibly cross when BT turned out to have deleted data, simply because it ruined their fishing trip. O2 decided that all data on their network ought to be paid for twice.

Joe Jonas was caught with a knife and, less surprisingly, Willie Nelson was caught with some blow. Marilyn Manson became a heritage act. Gerard Way changed his hair shade a bit as an act of rebellion. A New Zealand Christian group took on black metal via Facebook and won. This is not the last battle.

Robbie Williams will be selling souveniers in the gift shop as you exit.

Many toes have yet to uncurl from David Cameron getting down with Roll Deep. After five years, George Bush thought of a comeback for Kanye West. Westlife offered warm words to Ireland during the financial crisis while James Blunt announced he saved us all from nuclear Armageddon.

A Metropolitan Police gunman jollied up an inquest into a man his team had executed by dropping song titles into his evidence. Oddly, Paul Stephenson is still in post.

Splitting: Throbbing Gristle. Retiring: Elton John. Battling: Skid Row.

Radio One downgraded their regional opt-outs to the middle of the night. Danny Baker announced he's ill and we'll only be getting the odd show from the Candyman for the near future.

This month, Lady GaGa bought a share in a restaurant, and promised not to use the meatlocker as a closet.


2 comments:

Neil Comfort said...

Hi Simon - long term reader, just commenting to say thank you so much for keeping this blog going, it's always one of my first sites when I log on and never fails to disappoint. The 2010 end of year round up is (as always) a great highlight of the festive season with everything neatly pulled together and a few clear narrative threads; just as amusing as the original stories it links to.

If there's one thing I miss it's What The Pop Papers Say (not that I blame you for spurning the state of the NME these days). Just wondered if you'd seen the latest one with the "Top 100 Albums You've Never Heard"? It's the first copy I've bought in over 9 years and I've been pleasantly surprised for the following reasons:

1) It's over 90% written by band members rather than the usual style brigade;

2) It features lots of albums I'm genuinely interested in hearing, either from prior reading or due to the enthusiastic and informative writeup (a nice change from usual);

3) It has a good few (Cluster, Moebius and Plank) that I would heartily recommend to anyone, and am pleased to see Ver Kids being introduced to;

4) It's always fun (at the risk of sounding smug) to have a giggle at the NME's idea of obscure bands - like Suicide (both albums), Fleetwood Mac and, er, Queen - but the best bit is;

5) The NME, without a shred of irony, branding as 'weird and never-heard' so many bands and albums (Clor, The Cardigans, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) that *The NME* previously told us were "your new favourite band" and "one of the albums of the year without a doubt"…

Anyway thought you'd like to know - hope this makes up for my bitchy Sheryl Crow logical syntax comments back in 2003…

Cheers and long may XRRF continue!!
Neil Comfort

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the kind words... I'm going into the second decade of XRRF in a few weeks, so it's good to know that some people enjoy it.

I kind-of-miss doing Pop Papers regularly, but even on a weak week for the NME it takes a bloody long time to write...

Haven't seen the new NME yet - though I'm looking forward to it now. (Still haven't quite been able to bring myself to unsheath the Christmas one yet - Beady Eye? On the cover of the Christmas one? Really?)

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