No Rock And Roll Fun

FORMING AN ORDERLY Q: So, those Q awards, then - Electric Soft Parade as best new act and Hives as best live act translates pretty much as "You'll find the Hives are slightly rowdy, but ESP will be pleasing in your Ikea lounge"; while we think Pink's Get The Party Started is a wonderful track, we're not sure the video works in quite the way its meant to - unless you take it as a piece with the Don't Let Me Get Me, the fish eye lens, the cap and the air-cow-milking doesn't come across as the self-parody its meant to. Freak Like Me as best single is wrong - sure, it's a great single, but to suggest the best idea anyone had was a note-for-not cover version of someone else's cut up is as defeating as putting Diana in the Best British Person ever league. Coldplay as best album was obviously a shoo-in; they might as well have called it "Best Album as Voted For By Readers of Q" and have done with at time of release. Giving an award of anything - even Best Producer - to Moby and his ego is akin to providing the evil octopus with a ticket to an all you can eat seafood buffet. No complaints about the Inspiration award for Echo and the Bunnymen and songwriter prize for Jimmy Cliff, although there is an element of "what took you so long?' Doubtless they'll explain exactly what the innovation that Depeche Mode are being rewarded for is - 'songs about heroin' surely can't be a first, can it?; and, frankly, the only merit we can find in Q Merit Gong for Tom Jones is that he's never been Engelbert Humperdink. Radiohead best band? Well, you can see how they might have thought so. And making Cowell least wanted is tame, lame and predicatable. Now, if they'd blocked Bono from going, that would be worth doing...