What the pop papers said: Shampoo wash Heavenly

From 1992, Shampoo - still in the bit between being fanzine writers and bona fide pop stars - take aim at Heavenly in the NME:

If you're too young to recall 1992: 'Having a go at Sarah Records' was a way of having one foot in the Pop Establishment while making it look like you were an outsider. Shampoo would go on to, erm, help promote the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie.

Tom Clarke: I am not a Hobbit

Time Out appears to have called Tom Clarke out The Enemy a Hobbit.

Tom - known for his outspoken barbs himself - giggled a little and said 'you know what? I wish I had one-tenth of Martin Freeman's charisma'.

Oh, sorry, I'll just read that again. He didn't do that.

Instead he did this:

@Leonbradley7 @theenemyband @TimeOutLondon I like how they stooped to playground insults rather than anything insightful. Poor journalism.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

If I had a pound for everytime a journalist called me a hobbit I could buy enough bullets to round them up and disfigure the lot of them.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Absolute fucking children. What they fail to appreciate is that I've achieved more than they ever will despite being a fucking hobbit.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Morons. Jealous, juvenile, inept, generically conformist morons. With your little pens. Do me a favour and get yourself a life transplant.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

It's 2014 and we're still obsessed with what people look like instead of who they are or what they do. Society needs to grow the fuck up.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Tom, Tom, Tom. They don't use little pens any more. Actually, little pens was people in bookies or Argos; most journalists used normal sized pens. They use keyboards. Although maybe you misspelled penis.

We perhaps shouldn't be surprised that Tom is threatening to shoot people in the face for a mild comment - he also uses his Twitter feed to bang on at some length about his broadband problems.

And there's this:

Twitter raped.....got to respect that ☺️

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) August 12, 2014

I have no idea what Tom is referring to. But I'm pretty certain he hasn't, actually, been raped.

Time Out did make a mistake in calling Tom Clarke a Hobbit. It's easy to get confused, but the cave-dwelling fictional creature they were really going for was a Teletubby.

The helpful reviewers of Amazon: Slap them, they're talking French

Perhaps persuaded by their Glastonbury performance, you might be thinking of buying Reflektor. Thank god Fleece Fire can stop you before you waste your £4:

The lead 'singer' can't hold a note to save his life. And they keep chucking in French just to, y'know, be arty (aka pretentious). Nothing is catchy and the lyrics are too serious. Lighten up guys! Oh, and they just had to have an album cover based on a famous sculpture because they couldn't think of any original ideas on how to express themselves.

Canada isn't too great at giving us great bands. Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Justin Bieber, Nickleback. It's all terrible.

Avoid like the absolute plague unless you're partial to having the musical equivalent of icepicks stabbing you in the ears for 75 long, LONG minutes.

- Hey, Regine, what shall we put on the sleeve?
- Hmm. Fresh out of ideas, Win. Let's just go and get a postcard from the gallery and lob that on

What I think is most acute about Fleece's insight is that they know the band are Canadian, but don't seem to know that 'speaking French' is a thing that many Canadians do habitually, not pretentiously.

Orange Juice: Why Twitter is an amazing place to be

This alone would be worth excusing that bit yesterday where everyone was pushing a Vogue cover like it was worth looking at:

There was a time before all new albums automatically received four stars. Sounds' Dave McCullough lets rip in 1982: pic.twitter.com/EPe5gTKz1w

— bob stanley (@rocking_bob) March 19, 2014

But the response is jaw-dropping:

@rocking_bob Re' Dave Mc? Poor Old Soul' fact!!!@@!!!!!-Edwyn,

— Edwyn Collins (@EdwynCollins) March 21, 2014

You might want to compare and contrast this with the Stereophonics' Mr Writer; it'll allow you to measure the actual distance between an artist and a hack.

Gordon in the morning: Gallagher rumbles on

Good news for Gordon - so far, it looks like Dan Wootton hasn't been given any more days of the week to be in charge of showbiz.

This means Gordon can turn again to that battle of wits, or portions thereof, between Liam Gallagher and Robbie Williams.

About six years after Williams had the last word, Liam has come up with a response.

You might recall Williams suggested that Liam think about adding choruses to his song. Sadly, Liam's not going to take that lying down:

“We didn’t make a record to satisfy some requirements, this was our project. Robbie Williams said the record’s good but the songs have no chorus. I’d rather shoot myself in the balls than follow his advice."

Just the balls, mind.

The idea that Beady Eye sprang from some sort of project, almost deconstructionist in its scope, to satisfy no requirements is a surprise. You'd have expected something a little more astonishing if that really was the case, but maybe it's like when you first let rescue birds out a cage, and they just hang around where they know because they don't know how to roam free.

Sorry, Liam, you were saying?

“I do not listen to other music, so I don’t get my inspiration from anybody else, but maybe I should buy an iPod.”

An iPod. Bless. Maybe he'll look into buying a fax machine and getting Ceefax too.

But Liam, your claim that you don't listen to other music is a lie, and not even an interesting one, given how you were praising Emeli Sande the other day.
Meanwhile, Beady Eye have been asked to change the cover of their record because it has nipples on it.

Liam pretends to be anything other than delighted that anyone has even noticed he's got a record out:

Liam said: “Everyone has nipples, they could have put tape on it if they had to.”

... after all, it's not like any shop is going to have many copies; it'd only take a minute or so, right?

I think the real tragedy for Liam is that, if there has been an angry battle being fought over the oh-so-obvious 'put a tit on the sleeve, generate some publicity' move, nobody seems to have noticed that, either.

Gordon concludes this dash through the mind of Mr G by capturing his reaction to the cool response to the album from people who got past the sleeve:

He’s also not been best pleased by some of the reviews it’s had.

He added: “Ultimately the only thing I care about is how people react to the live shows.”

Good mantra to live by.

It's not really a good mantra to live by, though, is it? I suppose many bands past their prime do continue to make a decent living from touring, but given that Gallagher is already edging into "and do you have a smaller auditorium available" booking territory, "making a record which sells some copies" might be a better mantra to live by.

Still: Liam doesn't care what people say about the record.

Which is surprising news, since about four paragraphs back he was preparing to shoot his own balls off in response to, erm, Robbie William's capsule review.

Ronan Keating struggles with time, space

Simon Price, taking his reviewing duties seriously, plodded down to see Ronan Keating play at the Brighton Centre for the Independent On Sunday:

Brighton Centre, Brighton
Simon Price on pop: Lonely Ronan Keating clings on for grim death

The heading makes it quite clear, this is the Brighton Centre, in Brighton.

The review is fair, albeit unenthusiastic:

One song stands tall: the encore "Life is a Rollercoaster", written by Gregg Alexander of New Radicals, is a life-affirming anthem. Before that, however, Ronan goes into a weird, semi-humorous speech inviting us to meet him "on the pier for fish and chips", or "at the bus stop if I miss the bus". When he gets there, though, he'll be alone.

Ronan Keating - or rather, his "official", blue-ticked account - are fuming:

@nduffy8083 @simon_price01 Simon ya waffler the fish and chips gag was in Brighton so u were obviously not at the O2 tonight ha ha

— Ronan Keating (@ronanofficial) January 27, 2013

As Price points out on Twitter, this is taking "were they even at the same gig as me" to a new height - yes, he's reviewing a different gig to last night's one at the O2. That's why it's headed "Brighton Centre, Brighton".

What's even more interesting is that Ronan's official Twitter, thinking Price was passing off a Brighton review as a London review, doesn't take issue with Simon describing "an embarrassing singalong", the onstage camaraderie between Keating and his band as "fake", or the fanbase as "dwindling". No, it's just worried that a joke about the beach has been relocated to Greenwich.

Madonna remains aloof

Madonna has absolutely no idea what people are making of her new film, WE:

She said: "It's been at many festivals now - Venice, Toronto, London and I had a screening at the Museum of Modern Art, and I know a lot of people have seen it and written about it, though I have not read anything anyone's written about it. I think people will like it or not like it."

People will like it or not like it. Well, that's half right.

It's hard to see how Madonna could remain totally aloof from the reviews - surely she must have noticed the planks being hammered across cinema doors, the red crosses daubed on the walls? The report from the screening in Belguim where the entire audience put their own eyes out with spoons?

Still, when Madonna is given lemons, she has her people investigate why she wasn't presented with higher quality lemons. Turns out The Kings Speech was actually just a prequel for her film:

She added to ComingSoon.net: "While I'm happy about 'The King's Speech' because it does set up my movie in so many ways, and it gives people a reference point, the one thing besides the fact I didn't like was how Wallis Simpson was portrayed, they didn't show how close the brothers were."

That's what happens with films, Madge. Things get left out - you know, like the way your film doesn't dwell on the whole 'fawning over Hitler' bit.

Noel Gallagher responds well to criticism

For much of the last decade, people with ears have been pointing out that most Oasis music after the second album was more-or-less without redeeming merit.

For much of the last decade, Noel Gallagher has angrily defended his band's output like a BP executive denying that the oil-covered seabirds had anything to do with their gushing ineptly-drilled well.

Lately, though, Gallagher has started to concede that, actually, he's spent much of his life treading water.

Has he learned his lesson, though? That perhaps it might be worth paying attention when people start to ask questions about quality control.

No, of course not. The Edinburgh Evening News has felt his wrath:

Noel Gallagher has thrown a strop following a bad review of his latest album by the Evening News’ chief music writer – and banned him from last night’s gig at Usher Hall.

News reviewer Gary Flockhart was told he had been black-balled for describing Gallagher’s new High Flying Birds record as a “letdown” and “big disappointment” in last Tuesday’s column.

Flockhart told, erm, his own paper that he was surprised to be told he couldn't get a press pass ("That piece you wrote about him last week didn’t exactly help your cause to be honest") because his review hadn't actually been especially scathing.

Trouble for Noel is, if he only wants to be reviewed by people who slavishly believe him to be the greatest thing since Mungo Jerry, he's going to find large swathes of the planet where his entire press guest list will consist of himself, wearing a false moustache and a hat pulled down low over his eyes.

Flockhart, at least, came out of it well: not only did he get a story making Gallagher look petty out of it, but he's also got an evening off that otherwise he'd have had to spend watching Noel Gallagher And The Easily Angered Chickens.

The Kings Of Leon are only human

The Kings Of Leon don't like it when they get negative press:

Speaking to Q, the singer said: "A lot of people talked bad about my songwriting at the start, especially in America. They made us out to be a joke band and I spent the rest of my career trying to prove them wrong. I get online and I read what people are saying and if people say something negative, man, it really hurts me."

Mmm. Perhaps, you know, if you hadn't had the tiresome beards, people might have taken you a little more seriously. And if the songs had been... well, better, you might have not had so many people saying 'it's all beards covering up the lack of invention'. Perhaps.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Ripfork

Want to see reviewers getting reviewed? Try Ripfork:

Ok, I’m guessing you’re talking about a performance of some sort here. But why you needed to wank out such a confusing opening paragraph filled to the brim with hyphens, commas, and impenetrable adjectives is beyond me. If you write “ghostly,” you don’t need to follow it with “barely-there.” All tar is thick and viscous. That’s what tar is.

…on a final note…Oh my god. When will dudes of a certain age and a certain weight stop calling it a “feminine voice” sung by a female vocalist? It’s a woman’s voice

[Thanks to Michael M for the tip]

Chris De Burgh: And my Lady In red's fuming

You would have thought that, by now, Chris DeBurgh would have realised he was an acquired taste, and accepted that he's one of those people who you either can't stand, or who you go and see because you really feel as if you should do something with your evenings and you can't sit drinking all night by yourself, can you?

Apparently not, though, as he's taken time out of his busy schedule to respond to a bad review the Irish Times gave him. I say "bad"; I mean "fair", of course.

Dear Mr Crawley,

I rarely read reviews, but as yours was sitting on my kitchen table, and after three sold-out shows in the Gaiety Theatre, I thought I should have a look at it; after all, receiving a favourable review in The Irish Times is about as likely as . . . well, receiving a favourable review in The Irish Times!!

Two exclamation marks? What are you, Chris? Twelve?

Still, given that you don't expect to get a good review from the paper, you'll probably chalk it up to experience, right?

Oh, no. Apparently not:

I was not disappointed. How the fond memories came flooding back, more than 30 years of them; you must have a Lexicon of Handy Insults, because you managed to use many of the same ones that have been used so many times before, and still they make me smile at their continued lack of imagination. “Small man . . . shudder . . . warbly tenor . . . mawkish balladeer . . . cringe factor . . . squeaky clean . . . snigger . . . cheesy” etc – yes, they were all there, as used by many of your colleagues before, such as Joe Breen (who, I note, has been put out to pasture in the wine section, and I am assured by friends in the wine trade that he knows as much about wine as he did about music – precious little. I wonder what they have in mind for you in your dotage? Searing critiques of primary school Christmas plays perhaps, or judging knife-sharpening competitions in Sligo?).

Interestingly, "small man" is the first thought that occurs when reading this letter. And "shudder", "warbly", "cringe factor" and "snigger" all fit, too.

Apparently, while Breen has gone off to judge knife competitions, Crawley isn't even qualified to be doing music reviews because, erm, he knows about something else as well:

Being a theatre critic and not a music critic, you must have strayed into the Gaiety by mistake last Monday night, possibly looking for the rear entrance to Neary’s pub, but you certainly arrived with the word “prejudice” burned into your furrowed brow.

When Chris DeBurgh starts having a pop at your furrowed brow, you must be able to grow potatoes in yours.

I'm not entirely sure why being a theatre critic would make it impossible for you to review music - it's not like you're sending a gardening correspondent for a report on the chess or anything. It's pop music, Chris. You don't need qualifications to review music.

Chris, though, has moved on to how loved he was:

How it must have galled you to hear the rapturous welcome I received at the start of the show; how you must have writhed at every standing ovation; how you must have cringed at every call of “Chris, we love you”; how you must have felt isolated as the audience rose to their feet as one, singing, dancing and shouting out for more; how you must have growled to yourself as you left, surrounded by so many happy people, to make your curmudgeonly way to the safety of the street outside.

Yeah, how it must have upset you to hear so many lithe teenages lovelies offering to have sex with Chris, right? How it must have stung to watch Chris being offered the throne of the nation. How your very being must wriggled like tapioca caught in the au pair's cleavage to see half a million people spontaneously explode with love, their remains reforming into a giant heart-shaped mosaic of a winking Chris DeBurgh.

Or perhaps Peter Crawley missed all those things happening. Maybe he went to the bar.

It's just funny that - with a room so full of love and positivity, DeBurgh is obsessed with apparently the only man who didn't seem that bothered.

You really should look up the word “entertainment” again, you might be surprised to see that it is all about people having a GOOD TIME!!

You might like to check a book about English usage and see if they advise double exclamation marks for anything other than chess reports.

Your churlish review is an insult to all those who enjoyed their night out, and in these days of collapsing newspaper sales and an entire new generation on the way who will get their information online, you may be looking for another job sooner rather than later.

Really? People would not buy a newspaper because someone says they like something different to that which they enjoy? No wonder you use so many exclamation marks, it sounds like your audience is comprised entirely of fifteen year-olds.

Your pals in the pub must have loved your review, but it seems that you are universally loathed in the theatre world. A leading impresario has described you as “puffed up with his own self-importance”, and a much-loved and successful actress refers to you as “that loathsome little turd”. Great accolades, to be sure.

Now, let me get this straight: it's wrong and unfair to review someone's music and call them "cheesey" or a "small man", but it's perfectly fine to describe someone's character as "puffed-up" or as a "loathsome little turd". That seems fair.

And what of you and your future ambitions? Will you continue to be an occasional critic in a country with the population of Greater Manchester, or are you, like so many of your colleagues, about to write a book/play/film script/biography? If so, I would be delighted to attend the opening/launch/ premiere.

Is DeBurgh picking on Ireland for being under-populated?

. To have gone to the Gaiety with your mind made up is unprofessional of course, but to totally ignore what actually happened and launch a personal attack is so transparent that any reader can see that it was pointless even writing it, as you were the only person who attended the show that night who didn’t ACTUALLY WANT TO BE THERE!!

If the attack was so transparent, then why does Chris feel the need to respond at such vitriolic length?

As I have always had a very positive attitude towards life, I have sympathy for your position, as it must be so poisonous to have to lurk in the shadows, riffling through the garbage bins of despair and avoiding those who think that you are an irrelevance, an irritation to be ignored and laughed about.

Yeah, how dare you simultaneously ignore and avoid people while going through their garbage and laughing at them as you ignore them. How cruel must you be to twist the rules of physics and logic simply to shrug your shoulders at a concert?

I would be very happy to meet with you and pursue these ideas further, but I suspect that you, like so many others of your kind, would lack the courage, like a dog that snarls and barks from a distance yet cowers and runs away at the first sight of reaction. Anyway, the offer is there.

Yeah, Peter Crawley - you're happy to tell people you didn't think a concert was much cop, but if someone said 'lets meet so I can call you a turd' you wouldn't want to meet up with them, would you?

Finally, whatever happens in your career, let me wish you a long and happy life, all the best,

Chris de Burgh

Just because you've compared someone to a shit, there's no need to impolite.

Just as Chris was about to head off down to the post office, he had another thought:

PS We were wondering by way of explanation and as you seem to portray yourself as a bitter and unfulfilled man, were you much teased by your school chums in the schoolyard and called “Creepy Crawley”? I think we should be told!

Notice how DeBurgh doesn't actually want to look like he was resorting to playground insults, and so instead dressed it up as a psychological query. I wonder if Chris DeBurgh (note to self - add some half-assed stuff about potty training and separation anxiety here before publishing) explains why he releases such god awful records.

Chris: People seem to like what you do enough to pay you to keep doing it. Why would you even bother to make yourself seem like a touchy idiot by writing this, much less by sending it for publication? Do you no longer have anybody around who can take you to one side and say "behaviour like this makes you look more like the subject of the review than less"?

Twittergem: Calvin Harris

Hang on, Calvin Harris is off again:

Imagine you just spent 2 years of your life making a record. on your own. every single day, long hours, working to get it sounding right
11 minutes ago from web

imagine the buzz of making something that you love, and after 2 years you finally have something you can't wait for other people to hear
9 minutes ago from web

then imagine that cd landing on the desk of "snide rich persons kid" or "pathetic london scene-FACE"
7 minutes ago from web

then them skipping through the tracks in their lunch break, and saying "well its calvin harris isn't it? 2 stars, he's a dick head"
7 minutes ago from web

I'm telling you now that it doesn't feel good
6 minutes ago from web

but, how is it that i've been playing these songs to 20,000 people at festivals this summer, and it's gone off every single time
5 minutes ago from web

BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING RICH PEOPLES KIDS there are people who will like the album who wont get the album because they saw a shit review
5 minutes ago from web

And i can't ignore it, sorry, but it does affect me, + it is hurtful, + i know that it's exactly what i wanted it to be, and i'm proud of it
2 minutes ago from web

I'm a little lost as to why, if Harris holds reviewers in such low esteem and has a following who enjoys his work so much, that he's bothered by what they say.

It's Alexis Petridis' review in the Guardian Film & Music which Harris has gone out of his way to draw attention to.

We're just waiting for Harris to tweet that his girlfriend is fuming and that he only reads the gig guide.

I know what you look like, so don't ever come near Stroud

Pitchfork, it's fair to say, isn't fond of the Airbourne Toxic Event and their self-titled album. It's not that that the site couldn't find any value in it; only that it found 1.6 marks' worth of value.

In a bid to try and look like they're taking it in good part, TATE sent an open letter in response.

It tries to adopt a "couldn't care less" attitude:

Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.

They forget, though, that "water off a duck's back" wouldn't have become a metaphor if the water splashed noisily into the pond chuntering away about how bloody brilliant it is to roll off a back and how, really, it's more about the duck than about the water.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it.

If this is meant to be a shrugging off, it misfires - it's like watching someone try to shrug off a rubber minidress.

It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

If 'Pitchfork bands' are so genre-bound (and, indeed, they may well be) and TATE aren't that sort of band, one might wonder why they're taking so much time to object to the review. Would, say, Miley Cyrus spend much time crying over a cold shoulder from Mojo?

Nobody likes to be slagged off (except for that small subset who find a sexual thrill) but, really, the way to change people's minds - if you want to - is probably to record a better record next time round.

Ronson accepts criticism with good grace

Quite wonderfully, Mark Ronson inadvertently picks a headline for his 'bad review' blog entry which could come from Half Man half Biscuit's song:

THE NME IS FULL OF SH*T

And, of course, he only reads the gig guide any way.

Ronson then runs an email which he claims is from whoever reviewed his Glasto set in the paper denying they actually wrote the review as they were "sitting on a bus" at the time - we're nowhere near our copy of this week's paper at the moment but the 'disguised' identity of the emailer is going to be fairly easy to crack, as Ronson must know. It's wrong of the NME to assign a review to someone else's byline, but it's certainly not fair of Ronson to effectively out a writer criticising their employer by publishing a private email.

Especially as Ronson has no idea what went into the review:

i got the following email from a journalist at the NME in reference to what i imagine was a scathing review of my glasto performance (if only i read the mag, i might know what it said....oh well)

And is there to be a petulant gesture at the end?

Oh, yes:

my nme award for 2008's best international solo artist will be on ebay as soon as the morons send it to me. i doubt the bidding will go that high and it makes an excellent doorstop.

Aww, so one of the writers doesn't like you and you throw your toys onto eBay. Ronson might want to think about growing a thicker skin - or at least sticking to the sort of shallow group who'll give you a thumbs-up whatever they actually think.

[UPDATE: The review sits under a group of "Next year's headliners" with the byline of New Music editor Alex Miller.]

Gordon in the morning: Gordon is the story

Sit down, and then place your head between your legs. For today, we come to offer our sympathy for Gordon Smart, not to point out how shoddy he is. Just for today, like.

Gordon got cornered by Jay-Z in a nightclub ("trendy London club Paper", as Gordon puts it) to take issue with Smart's Gallagher-pandering review of Mr. Z at Glastonbury:

He told me: "You were the only one who gave me a bad review. Everyone else said it was history.

"I’m not one of those guys who gets cut up about good or bad reviews but you missed the moment, man.

"It was a first for Glastonbury and you didn’t get it. You’re a non-believer. I was making history and you missed the moment."

Not that he could care, Smart's paper's full of shit, and he only reads the racecard, anyway.

"I have sold your paper on stage for the last few weeks.

"I made history on Saturday and that can’t be taken away from me.

"It was something new, never done before, and I’m proud."

And Beyonce's fuming.

There's nothing more pathetic than someone over-reacting to a review which diverges from their self-image; you'd have thought that Jay-Z would have had a little more dignity than to indulge in this sort of thing - and, certainly, he might have chosen to argue on grounds of quality rather than his misplaced "history in the making" mythology.

Kanye had proof-read rant

You'd have thought the only justification for Kanye's grumpy reaction to a bad review was that it was written in haste.

It turns out that this is the cool-headed version: before he calmed down, Kanye had originally instructed the reviewer to commit suicide. Charming.