The Brit Awards Shortlist is out

You can understand Adele getting a bunch of shortlist slots. But, really, British music industry? James Bay gets nominated in four categories?

Although, technically, Adele shouldn't have been in the lists at all - her album came out in December, and traditionally the Brits have covered a year running November to November. But a swift rewrite of the rules has ensured she'll turn up.

Here's the full list that people call moribund:

British male solo artist
Aphex Twin
Calvin Harris
James Bay
Jamie xx
Mark Ronson

British female solo artist
Adele
Amy Winehouse
Florence + the Machine
Jess Glynne
Laura Marling

British group
Blur
Coldplay
Foals
One Direction
Years & Years

British breakthrough act
Catfish and the Bottlemen
James Bay
Jess Glynne
Wolf Alice
Years & Years

Critics' choice
Winner: Jack Garratt
Izzy Bizu
Frances

Brits global success award
To be announced

British single
Adele - Hello
Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love
Ed Sheeran & Rudimental- Bloodstream
Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do
James Bay - Hold Back The River
Jess Glynne - Hold My Hand
Little Mix - Black Magic
Olly Murs ft Demi Lovato - Up
Philip George - Wish You Were Mine
Years & Years - King

British album of the year
Adele - 25
Coldplay - A Head Full of Dreams
Florence + the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
James Bay - Chaos and the Calm
Jamie xx - In Colour

British producer of the year
Charlie Andrew
Mark Ronson
Mike Crossey
Tom Dalgety

British artist video of the year
Adele - Hello
Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love
Ed Sheeran - Photograph
Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do
Jessie J - Flashlight
Little Mix - Black Magic
Naughty Boy ft Beyonce & Arrow Benjamin - Runnin' (Lose It All)
One Direction - Drag Me Down
Sam Smith - Writing's On The Wall
Years & Years - King

International male solo artist
Drake
Father John Misty
Justin Bieber
Kendrick Lamar
The Weeknd

International female solo artist
Ariana Grande
Bjork
Courtney Barnett
Lana Del Rey
Meghan Trainor

International group
Alabama Shakes
Eagles of Death Metal
Major Lazer
Tame Impala
U2

There are odd moments of joy in the list - I think the thirty seconds of Courtney Barnett we get when they run through the international female shortlist is going to be the highlight of the ceremony.

But, ultimately, it's the presence of Amy Winehouse which makes this so frustrating. No offence to Amy, but... she's not exactly had the most creative 2015, has she? Yes, there was a movie about her, but the message "to be an exciting female star in British music in 2015, it helped if you'd been dead half a decade" isn't exactly making much of a claim for the scene, is it?

Although if the message to women artists is "you're better off dead", that's probably more encouraging than telling the men that they should be aspiring to be James Bay.

Goodbye, Spaceboy

That's been a hell of a day. You could hear Shaun Keaveny on 6Music trying to keep it as light as possible, but also trying to keep it together. The Today programme was noticeably less interested in the other stories it had to cover; the Archbishop of Canterbury's appearance to talk about the death pangs of the Anglican Communion was cut down.

Twitter - for a while, at least - was united in positive memories. (Tumblr, being Tumblr, less so).

And it's not that Tumblr didn't have a point, it's just that its timing was off - there's time to sift through the Nazi stuff, and the China Girl video, and Tin Machine and the period when he perhaps became detached from a sense of humour. But let's have a moment to fill out the pro column first, shall we?

Here's a quick round-up of some of the coverage from today that you might have missed:

OpenLearn remembering the Banc, the Bonds and the ISP

The Western Daily Press on Bowie at Glastonbury

Vox on Bowie's part in ending the Cold War

The Local (German news in English) takes a photo tour of Bowie's Berlin

The Evening Argus on Bowie's live album recorded in Falmer

Liverpool Echo on alteregos in pop, and 1977 gig photos

The New York Times on Bowie's impact on fashion

Atlas Obscura remembers The Laughing Gnome

Billboard catches up with Peter Schilling, who had a US hit with a "sequel" to Space Oddity

Bustle collects the best Bowie lyrics

Legendobit: David Bowie

The radio alarm clicked on this morning to the words "it's been announced in the last few minutes that David Bowie has died."

So the new album turns out to have been like a bush doing one last fruiting; a coda, not a rebirth.

Fuck.

Bookmarks: Pop music

Jude Rogers has done a great piece for The Pool on why pop music is brilliant:

Pop music provides emotional links back to our earliest memories and experiences, for starters. Speaking personally, it takes me, The Mum, back to me as A Child, straightaway. (My first memory? Being allowed to wash the dishes with Grandma at two-and-a-half, singing along to ABBA's Super Trouper on the radio.) It also takes me back to my parents as parents, fitting my feet into their shoes. Oh, the times I'd tell my dad what was No 1 in the charts (like The Flying Pickets' cover of Yazoo's Only You in Christmas 1983 – probably the first Christmas I can blurrily remember). Oh, the times Mam would make car journeys better by playing her Sounds Of 1963 cassette (me wiggling my shoes to The Swinging Blue Jeans' Hippy Hippy Shake as we headed off on holiday). Music soundtracked my first impressions of these important people, and it's not a coincidence. It's the way we are wired.

Djobit: Ed "Stewpot" Stewart

Ed Stewart, known as "Stewpot", has died.

One of the many who made the leap from pirate radio to the starting line-up of Radio One, Stewart wound up doing Junior Choice for years, playing Nellie The Elephant and the like.

Ah, Junior Choice. It's become a cliche to cough the word "yewtree" when writing about any DJ from this era, but his own autobiography - reviewed by Danny Baker for Rocking Vicar - did leave "Junior Choice" seeming somewhat appropriately inapproiate:

"I met my wife when she was 13, in 1970…" P.146 (He was 34 at this point)

"…my wife started on my stomach – and nothing else! – when she was 13…" P.147

"I arrived (at her parents) at 7pm and was greeted at the door by what I can only describe as a 13 year old apparition! She was simply stunning." (P147)

"…(the following year, so 14 now) I travelled to Italy to see her. I had just split from Eve Graham of The New Seekers and so, as the song goes, I was "Free Again"! P153

He marries the poor girl when she is 17. Elsewhere –

"We played a charity football match at a girls' school in Lingfield. After the match we visited some of the boarders, who were mostly epileptic. The pupils had just reached puberty and the girls wouldn't let us out of the dormitory. We had to be rescued by the staff!" (P 177)

But it's not all schoolgirls and cheeky winks. Stewpot also finds space to record his contributions to British culture, as Baker records:

And consider this. When you or I get to 66 years old and might, in a drunken orgy of self congratulation actually toy with penning something for the ages about our brief flit across these shifting sands – how much space shall we allow to that one edition of "Celebrity Weakest Link" we pitched up on. A line? A mention in the fulsome notes at the back?

Try NINE FUCKING PAGES! Nine fucking pages in a large print volume devoted to who said what on an edition of "The Weakest Link". That's a full life examined alright, Stewpot!

I swear I got through two complete highlighter pens. Wendy had to call me five times for dinner. Me! For dinner! Five times!

At Christmas 2014, the Daly Express caught up with him for a 'where are the now' piece:

I’m in touch with some of the old faces, including David Hamilton, Paul Burnett and Tony Brandon. We’ll either meet socially or at a convention, such as the tribute to pirate radio in Zurich five years ago

Not entirely convinced that people you saw at effectively a works do half a decade count as people you're in touch with.

He was alright on Crackejack, though. His role was presenter, effectively a headmaster whose idea of dress-down-Friday was to wear a blazer rather than a suit jacket. But somebody had to prove

This week just gone

The most read 2015 stories, in case you're curious:

1. Brits liveblog
2. Eurovision liveblog
3. Suede at Glastonbury
4. Grooveshark finally sinks
5. Emily Ratajkowski can't see why all the fuss about Blurred Lines happened
6. Guido Fawkes is incensed that Charlotte Church has an accountant
7. The NME gives Noel Gallagher the cover again
8. The music industry's poor mental health record
9. Conor McNicholas: The post NME years
10. NME stops charging

These came out just before Christmas:


Jennylee - Right On!

Download Right On!



Grimes - Art Angels

Download Art Angels

The Dandy Warhols are doing something

The Dandy Warhols have made an album; something they haven't done for four years. They never quite split up, so it's not a comeback, but... It's a thing, anyway.

Remixes dragged back from the memory hole

It's not often you find yourself looking at a major label and thinking "that's a worthwhile thing to do", so let's raise our glowsticks to Universal, who have set to work collecting the billions of additional mixes that used to pad out 12 inch singles back in the 90s. They're then sticking them online for the first time:

“Key areas of our catalogue were unavailable to a modern audience, so there were lots of missing reference points to the younger fan on why electronic music sounds the way it does today,” said Universal’s Robin Jenkins.

Six reworkings of I Feel Love; the Mad Thatcher Disease remix of That Petrol Emotion's Hey Venus; four flavours of one-hit-wonder Crystal Water's Making Happy. It's a strange mixture, but worth a couple of minutes of a dig through.

Venuewatch: The Owl Sanctuary

Grim news from Norwich, where the cracking venue The Owl Sanctuary is closing. To make way for some redevelopment that "improves" an area by making it substantially worse. The venue's Facebook page has all the detail:

I had a call just before Christmas saying that our building has been sold to a property developer without me ever being told it was happening or given any notice what so ever as should have happened as per my lease.

Its still not really sunk in but I'll try and summarise.

After 2 years of hard work from my team and myself to create what has become one of the most respected and talked about DIY venues in the country my passion and dream has been kicked in the teeth, all we ever set out to do was create a community venue with a solid ethos that had great beer and great music and didn't have to sell its soul to provide that, it seems this day and age that's just not possible.

To make matters worse the person who has purchased the building is Richard Pratt, who owns the furniture store next door. His plan was always to knock down the back of that store, Warings (the old workshops and last remaining parts of the original cattle market) and build a huge block of flats which will be designed for upper class parasites such as himself to lock themselves away from the rest off the local community.
[...]
For me this just doesn't compute, people so filled with greed that they are willing to do that to fellow humans. All for bits of paper that they already have far too much of anyway.

That said we will close our doors for the final time on Jan 31st after a solid week of shows. Due to this bullshit I am currently in a position where I have invested a crazy amount of time and money in a venue and now have no clue about my future prospects or security for my family, nor do my friends who work here and have done for 2 years since the day we got the keys and started painting by iPhone torch as they power wasn't back on. So all we ask is please support us as much as you can until our closing date to help limit the financial damage this arsehole will inflict on us not to mention the damage to the local music scene, grass-roots touring and even the Norwich Soup Movement who are based upstairs here at The Owl.

There's a fightback brewing in the comments on the post - suggesting the venue be listed as an asset of community value, granting it protection. Good luck, guys.

Coachella: The dead shall rise and walk amongst us

This year's Coachella has announced its headliners, and the secret is out. I say "secret", it's been kept so poorly there are Motel Sixes which look down on it.

Guns N Roses and LCD Soundsystem are both returning from the dead to headline.

LCD Soundsystem's comeback is so soon after they stopped working as to probably count as a satire. The Roses is less satirical than inevitable.

Buckethead is keeping April clear, just in case.

Jazzobit: Natalie Cole

Natalie Cole, who even in death never quite escaped being "the daughter of", has died.

I never understood why she didn't bill herself as Natalie Princess Cole. At least for a bit. You would, wouldn't you?

Her life had been pitted with ill-health and addictions, but she carried on performing through them all.

Natalie Cole died on New Years' Eve. She was 65.

Hiphopobit: Mark B

Mark Barnes, known professionally as Mark B, has died.

One half of Mark B and Blade, Barnes also worked as part of The Great Ones and, widely, in his own right.

In 2002, he presented a Radio One documentary on hip-hop record collecting, which is available online.

He built his own label, K-Boro Records, named after his home turf of The Royal Borough Of Kensington And Chelsea. (You can see why he shortened it.)

He'd not been especially active musically since the early years of the century; he explained to UK Hip Hop why in a 2006 interview:

Reason why is I've just not been too inspired to make any new music ‘cos I just feel like music on a whole right now is going through a very drastic, no quality control change because of the whole internet downloading, sharing thing. All of a sudden everyone who was once a music fan is now either a rapper or producer on myspace & its at a point that because of this everyone expects to get your music for free & it confuses people to whom are actually releasing music & why should they go purchase your single or LP when they can get another artists music for free. Independent record shops such as Mr.Bongo and Headnod have sadly shut down ‘cos music fans have forgotten, or maybe don’t even know what its like to go buy a 12" vinyl record or LP & be a fan of another "artist" ‘cos they think that they are somehow the next big thing ‘cos their best mate & girlfriend told them so.

No word on the cause of death.

Watch with No Rock: Shirley Manson

Shirley Manson talks to CBC about how failure can kick you up the arse and get you moving, and 20 years of Garbage:

Bookmarks: David Bowie

A brief and entertaining guide to David Bowie's adventures in gender transgression:

Alienation and gender fluidity also play out in Bowie’s music videos. A particularly enduring gestural act is performed in the music video for Boys Keep Swinging (1979), directed by David Mallet.

In the midst of his drag of Hollywood starlets, Bowie aggressively pulls his wig off and throws it off stage, then with the back of his hand, defiantly smears his lipstick across his face. Reappearing moments later as another drag persona, he repeats those gestures, as if to reinforce the gender subversion.

James Blunt tries to say the right thing, misses badly

What's really a pity about James Blunt's terrible comments about gayness is that he clearly meant well. It's just he has such a cloth ear.

This:

"But to call me gay is a compliment."

This sounds quite positive, doesn't it?

Except it followed this:

Singer-songwriter James Blunt isn't fazed by fans and critics who mistake him for gay. In fact, the five-time Grammy nominee considers it a great honor.

"I sing songs that aren’t very macho, and so people will say, ‘Oh you’re effeminate,’ or ‘gay,’ as if calling me gay were an insult," Blunt, 41, told the BBC.

Oh James. Oh James. Being "macho" isn't the opposite of being gay.

If someone listens to one of your reedy songs and says "it's a watery nothingness and sounds gay", you shouldn't be saying "yes, it's a pissweak emoticon of a song, and I am proud to have written something that sounds gay", you should be staring at them and asking why they think that gay is a synonym for feminine.

He went on to joke that he'd like to be considered "an honorary gay man," primarily because "I’m totally at ease with myself."

Oh James. Oh James. Oh, James. Apart from just how offensive the idea that you should be allowed to identify with an identity you don't identify with, you're again assuming that there's a type of person who is gay, with whom you share those attributes.

That's not how it works. The only attribute gay people have in common is being gay people.

And if you think "being at ease with" yourself is the thing that makes the difference between straight and not-straight people, you might want to ponder the mental health crises some of us experience.

Justin Bieber faces spray-can backlash

Just when Justin Bieber was in the throes of reinvention as a sort-of-sensitive artist, his past catches up with him.

Admittedly, it's only his past from the end of October, so it didn't have very far to travel to catch up with him.

Back then, his people sprayed teasers for his new album all over San Francisco. This sort of thing happens all the time, but unluckily for Biebs, this was the point where the people said that's enough:

The censure doesn't refer to the Nas song mural installed in NorCal, but rather to a slew of permanently stenciled sidewalk-graffiti ads that read "Justin Bieber Purpose #Nov 13." (The tags have survived rainstorms and persisted for nearly two months now, because they were applied with spray paint instead of sidewalk chalk.) "This prohibited marketing practice illegally exploits our City's walkable neighborhoods and robust tourism; intentionally creates visual distractions that pose risks to pedestrians on busy rights of way; and irresponsibly tells our youth that like-minded lawlessness and contempt for public property are condoned and encouraged by its beneficiaries," Dennis Herrera wrote, "including Mr. Bieber and the record labels that produce and promote him."

Bieber could be fined USD2500 for each stencilling, plus the cost of putting things right.

Amazon do a good thing

Let's start 2016 with a warm, amusing story.

Pegida, the German Nazis have released a pop song, and it's doing fairly well in terms of downloads.

That might not sound too amusing - and it isn't - but there is an upside.

Amazon, noting that they're raking in money off sales on this tatty piece of shit, came up with a fuck you Nazis plan. They're giving the money to help refugees.

Yep, they might struggle with paying their taxes, but at least Amazon have come up with a way to ensure that far-right propaganda helps fund the very people the nazis demonise.

Jedward are taking on ISIS

The world is ending the year weary, as a tiny band of tiresome-but-weaponised dullards try to run a ruler of terror across the planet.

Listen up, ISIS: Sure, you're an over-rated prepubescent wet dream that's hung around way too long.

But we've got our own over-rated prepubescent wet dream that's hung around way too long, and they're taking you on.

Jedward are touring airports to somehow counteract terrorism:

The Irish twins will embark on a series of gigs across Europe to reassure their fans that "everything will be okay​".

However, those wanting a performance from the duo will be left disappointed, as the two will just be meeting fans.

"We're not performing but instead we plan on defying the current fears about terrorism by reassuring our fans that everything will be okay​," John told the Irish Sun.

I know what you're thinking - you wouldn't trust Jedward to accurately predict the weather if they were stood outside in a thunderstorm, so to what extent is their reassurance that there's nothing to be worried about actually reassuring?

On the other hand, what a superb riposte to ISIS. "Yeah, guys, look, we're so bothered by you, we've got Jedward on the case."

The Home Office said there are no plans to raise the threat level to Chico in the foreseeable future.

15 Step: Valete

Lynn Anderson, country singer
Yao Beina, singer
Miriam Bienstock, co-founder, Atlantic Records
Cilla Black, singer
Errol Brown, singer, Hot Chocolate
Billy Butler, soul singer
Brandon Carlisle, drummer, Teenager Bottlerocket
Lewis Chin, manager
Jim Diamond, singer, PhD
Alan Diaz, rapper Pumpkinhead
Little Jimmy Dickens, novelty country singer
Val Doonican, singer
Kim Fowley, manager
Andy Fraser, bassist, Free
Edgar Froese, founder, Tangerine Dream
Lesley Gore, teen pop star
William Guest, singer, Gladys Knight And The Pips
Chris Hardman, "Lil Chris"
Josie Jones, Liverpool legend
Johnny Kemp, new jack swinger
Ian Kilmister, Lemmy from Motorhead
B B King, singer
Ben E King, singer
Kelvin Knight, drummer, Delta 5
Andriy "Kuzma" Kuzmenko, leader, Skryabin
Carey Lander, keyboardist, Camera Obscura
Curtis Lee, singer
Jess Marquis, dj
Charmaybe Maxwell, singer, Brownstone
Jim McCann, singer, The Dubliners
Keith Mitchell, head beak, Captain Beaky
Joe Moss, manager, The Smiths
Rico Rodriguez, trombonist
Demis Roussos, singer
Ralph Sharon, keyboardist
Percy Sledge
Chris Squire, bassist, Yes
Steve Strange, singer, Visage
Jazz Summers, manager and label owner
Robbin Thompson, singer, Steel Mill
Jackie Trent, songwriter
Paul Walden, Guru Josh
Trevor ("Dozy") Ward-Davies, bassist, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Titch
Scott Weiland, Stone Temple Pilot

15 Step: Releases

Part of 15 Step