Let's hope EMI get the memo and don't go stumbling in with take-downs.
This is the track:
I suppose anything that helps is a good thing, but can't help feeling that using a song that's thirty-five years old is a bit like picking Lord Carrington as the figurehead for your campaign. Still, at least it's not Rage Against The Machine.
Anything that attempts to shift people's interest in politics beyond merely prodding the Tories for their latest failure is to be welcomed, but Instigate Debate has fallen a bit short.
"Part of me wants to kind of clear America like an old overgrown field that needs the stubble burning and start again. Just keep the nice Americans somewhere while we do it. I think there will be a lot less oxygen being used, a lot less greenhouse gases."
The first sentence, you can understand.
The second, with the idea of putting the "nice" Americans out the way of the burning... well, that starts to make the whole thing sound a little sinister.
And the third sentence... I suppose at best you could hope that Coxon was making some sort of Swiftian point. Only he's not really Swift.
You take the "nice" people to safety, there's a "clearing" of America, and the end result is less oxygen being used.
Maybe he was joking. Maybe there's a context in which that statement isn't a millstone dangling around his neck. Maybe it's just ill-judged rather than disturbing.
Coxon does move on to suggest that he's actually imagining a world where it's American foreign policy influence that has vanished:
"That's my little dream fantasy, that they have no importance in the world. They're not some sort of power, they think they're policing the world -- and we can actually get back to how it used to be when us and Persia were good mates."
Ah, yes. Let's turn the clock back from a time when a major Western power dominates the globe through its military and financial might to, erm, a time when a major Western power dominated the globe through its military and financial might. The idea of Persia and Britain being "good mates" is laughable - in fact, Britain spent much of the early part of the last century attempting to secure the profits from Persian oil fields. Can you really disdain American cultural imperialism while hankering after the days of the British Empire?
To be fair to Graham, none of his contributions in the video seem that thought-through, and it's impressive that Instigate Debate decided to post the chat rather than just sit on it to spare the participant's embarrassment. Maybe, though, a campaign for Instigating Informed Debate might be called for?
“After what happened, I said ‘no way’ and threatened to file a complaint against them if they continued to use my music,” Mr. Shajarian said in an interview with the A.P. Though the broadcast services complied with his request, the government has responded to hundreds of other artist protests — which have included boycotting state-sponsored awards and appearing at international events wearing green, the color of the opposition — by banning their work, detaining them or forbidding them to travel.
Rumours that Chris DeBurgh has been given permission to play a gig in Tehran have been angrily, angrily denied by the Iranian authorities. The BBC reports:
It had been reported in December that the Irish singer would perform with Iranian pop group Arian.
But IRNA reported that the Music Office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had not received a request for the show, nor issued a permit.
In Iran, official permission is required to stage a concert.
We're given to understand the Iranian spokesperson then added "and you can tell the same thing to bloody Chris Rea, too..."
You'd think "probably not", but last week saw a hugely dugg story - complete with photo - which suggested that an iPod had, indeed, saved the life of a US soldier in Iraq. As with most stories with the word "Iraq" in them, the truth was slightly different, as HavanaLion has discovered:
The armor stopped the bullet.
The iPod was how Kevin Garrad found out he was shot. This is the real story. Kevin said he got into the fight with the insurgent and afterwards he did not know he was even shot. He said he returned to his bunk after the patrol, put on his earbuds and began to clean his weapon.
He said: “you get into a ritual out there.”
No music came on. He dug around in the pockets where he kept the iPod and pulled out the twisted hunk of metal that is in the pictures. He said that was how he found out that he had been shot during the fight. He was happy that his armor worked.
He said the upgraded armor he was wearing could stop the AK-47 round.
This will be good news for the Pentagon - imagine if they'd had to kit out their entire surged-up troops with full body iPods for protection.
In other Middle East conflict iPod news, Arthur Bachelor, one of the British sailors captured by Iranian forces in disputed waters, has been complaining that the goody bag he was given on release was no replacement for the iPod the Iranians apparently nicked off him:
THE gifts the Iranians gave the crew were a load of junk - and nothing in comparison to what they stole, including Arthur Batchelor's iPod, he said yesterday.
They [...] got a "granny bag" full of tat including toffees with a label saying "containing pistachio", a CD and DVD that don't work and 11 books.
These were in English and mostly aimed at trying to convert the reader to Islam with titles like Youth and Morals by Sayid Lari.
Arthur said: "The iPod was really special to me as it was a gift. It had our song on, Hold Me Tonight by Angel One, which was one of the tunes playing when we first met.
"It was in a pocket in my overalls. The guards took everything off us - including cigarettes and watches.
We're still puzzled why the Mirror seemed so outraged that the toffees had pistachio in them - do they suspect some sort of attempt to try and trigger nut allergies?
Still, at least Arthur will be able to buy a new iPod when he cashes the big cheque from Trinty Mirror, so it's not all bad. (He could also try flogging the goody bag on eBay - we bet it'd get a fortune.)
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You'd think "probably not", but last week saw a hugely dugg story - complete with photo - which suggested that an iPod had, indeed, saved the life of a US soldier in Iraq. As with most stories with the word "Iraq" in them, the truth was slightly different, as 
