No Rock And Roll Fun

TAKING THE RISE: Pinched before it disappears into the ether, Mark Sutherland's 6Music editiorial on Bobby Gillespie:
Bobby Gillespie has always been a bit of an idiot, but at least he used to have the courage of his convictions. But, as the latest Primal Scream album Evil Heat totters into the shops on the back of the usual bundle of great reviews, it's surely time to ask the question: how on earth does he get away with it?
This is a man whose band has veered from none-more-mimsy jangle pop (when the Scream were unequivocally fantastic, by the way) to greasermetal (when they were rubbish) to blissed out post-house pop (brilliant again) to wonky Black Crowes rock (rubbish) before ending up as some half-arsed techno industrial shock-rockers (rubbish again, which at least breaks the sequence). With anyone else it would be called bandwagon jumping, with the Scream, it's genius, apparently.
But what's worse is, they're now shock rockers who are too scared to shock. The album features a track called Rise which was originally, in a rather more headline-grabbing style, entitled Bomb The Pentagon. The retitling might be fair enough if Bobby G admitted that he'd been a silly boy and that now that his attempt to get a reaction had been put into rather horrible perspective he'd thought better of it.
But no. Instead he attempts to weedle out of it by saying the sentiments remain but the title was too cartoonish, and it's his right as an artist to change any element of his songzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz? it's nonsense, isn't it? He's bottled it, pure and simple, cos he wants his record released in America and/or can't face the flak he'd get. Understandable, undoubtedly, but without honesty it's difficult to take anything he says seriously again. Which, from one of the few rock stars left with something to say, is a damned shame.
Maybe you should have stuck to writing nice little indie songs like Velocity Girl, eh Bob? You were quite good at that.
And Mark... please get the BBC to make some space to store these things, could you? It's ridiculous that a site that has so much cash to spend and which happily makes room for Match the Moptops can't actually find the space on their servers to keep a series of editorials which are usually pretty nifty...