No Rock And Roll Fun: 20 February 2011

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Madder Rose weekend: Car Song

Not the Elastica song of the same time:

[Part of Madder Rose weekend]

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Henry Rollins

Dirtfarm goes to see the now FIFTY YEAR OLD Henry Rollins kick off his spoken word tour and reports back in comic form:

Embed and breakfast man: Midlake

A quick step aside from our Madder Rose weekend to bring you this:

That's Midlake appearing on Arte's One Shot Not, for the delight of high-ended French and German viewers.

What the pop papers say: Not what the musician said

There's misquoting and then there's making stuff up. The NME's rather strange editing of Gareth Los Campesinos' words from a couple of weeks back seems to be the latter.

Gareth offers a compare-and-contrast.

What he wrote (about Becoming a Jackal):

HIS NAME IS CONOR AND HE SOUNDS LIKE BRIGHT EYES!!! Yes, but Cristiano turned out every bit as good as Fat Ronaldo, right? Decent song, thumbs up.

What the NME published:

HIS NAME IS CONOR AND HE SOUNDS LIKE BRIGHT EYES!!! Yes, but Cristiano turned out every bit as good as Fat Ronaldo, right? Liam Fray turned out to be every bit as good as... ah, this argument seems to have lost its way somewhat. Well, it's a decent song, whatever (even on its second release around), so thumbs up.

I think that adding a reference to it being a second release is fair enough - although perhaps slightly less clunky wording could have been found - but adding in a totally unrelated insult aimed at a third party under a writer's byline? That feels like a liberty too far, surely.

Madder Rose weekend: Hung Up In You

Apparently, but understandably, a short-lived MTV show called Oddville:

[Part of Madder Rose weekend]

Noiseobit: Clare Amory

Clare Amory of Excepter has died from cancer. I don't think I can improve on the words of Excepter's Jon on his SSSP blog:

Yesterday, the Space Shuttle Discovery departed Earth on it's final mission. Among the cargo aboard, was one astronaut who's name was not publicly announced. My beautiful friend, and band mate- Clare Armory has left our Planet Earth. Her soul has been set free to bless this mad universe that we all live in. I know how difficult that it is to lose a loved one to cancer. I lost my mother nine years ago to the same ravaging disease. It was the hardest thing that I have ever had to deal with in my life. My mother was 57 when she lost her 29 year battle with cancer. Clare was 35. Any age is too young to be taken from us. It hurts so much.

Here's the band playing New York's Monkeytown on the New Years' Eve before last:

Horrible, sad news.

Madder Rose weekend: Ultra Anxiety

Live at Glastonbury, from the period when Channel 4 were looking after the cameras:

[Part of Madder Rose weekend]

There is power in a union

In the face of the attempts to return to slavery disguised as budget balancing in Wisconsin, Steve Earle is dedicating his Sirius show as a show of support this weekend:

"I got this soapbox on Saturday nights, and I'm going to climb up on it and holler," Earle tells Spinner. "This is important. Collective bargaining for working people is a fundamental component of democracy, and we can't afford to let it slip away."

At a rather more sharp edge of things, Tom Morello is in the state made of cheese:

A nice lady at the airport looked at my guitar and politely asked, "Why are you going to Madison, young man?" I replied, "Because they're making history in Madison, ma'am. And I don't want to miss it."

So I flew to Chicago with Wayne Kramer (of the legendary MC5) only to find that all the flights to Madison had been cancelled due to a big winter storm. But neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dark of night can keep The Nightwatchman from his appointed task. My good friend and fellow musician from Libertyville, Illinois, Ike Reilly, picked us up at the airport and together with our small crew of rabble-rousers we began the precarious journey up I-90 through the storm.

There doesn't seem to be much else in the way of musical rallying-round, though - or perhaps it's just not getting reported that deeply?

Madder Rose weekend: Panic On

After the homemade video, here's Madder Rose doing a proper pop video:

[Buy: Panic On]
[Part of Madder Rose weekend]

Ghostwatch

Amanda Ghost, Blunt-collaborator-turned-head-of-Epic-turned-xx-collaborator, got a broadly sympathetic profiling and interview in yesterday's Guardian Film & Music:

Sony remains confident enough in her business acumen and knack for spotting talent to enter a joint venture with her new label, Outsiders, allowing Ghost to take Oh Land, a new-school Madonna by way of Björk and Lady Gaga, with her. The Dane was Ghost's first signing at Epic, but her single, Wolf and I, will become Outsiders's first release next month, funded by Sony. Ghost continues to work with Sony-signed artists including Beyoncé, Shakira and John Legend – her co-write with the latter, Getting Nowhere, is the current single for another Sony artist, Magnetic Man, and she says it was one of only three songs she wrote during her time at Epic.

A perhaps more probing piece might have asked how far the Outsiders label is a sign of faith by Sony, and how far it's part of the settlement of her contract; certainly, it's hard to see how Oh Land would fit with the Sony roster.

And that Sony are happy to work with her artistically is surely a validation of the argument that she was a creative who wandered into the wrong part of the business, rather than a rejection of that?

Mind you, when she says things like this, you can see why someone would give her an office with a sofa and a drinks cabinet in it:

[Being an executive] was magical, and fun, and depressing, and unhappy – a multitude of emotions. But ultimately it has helped me as a songwriter and a producer and a record-label boss, because I can see what happens to the product once it's completed – how it's treated, how it's marketed, how it's sold. And it makes me believe even more in the power of content, and how important it is to get that content as air-tightly brilliant as possible before you throw it to the wolves."

Product and content, product and content; and not fans or even customers but "wolves". She can approach music and artists and magic with just as much dead-eyed contempt as anyone who worked their way up from the Capitol accounts department - despite railing against record companies thinking they can treat their business like it was selling toasters.

Her final words are fascinating, though:

"It's very important we realise why the music business is failing," she says, "and I do not believe it's because of the internet. We need to focus on the quality of the music and allow artists time to develop. All creativity should be made, I believe, outside of corporations, and be nurtured with the incredible tools we have. With publicity and television and viral and online and social media, there is no reason why you can't get that music out there – and if it's good, people will respond."

Did she believe that before Sony gave her Epic? Because if she did, why did she ever take the job in the first place? And if she really believes that creativity should be made outside corporations, why is her vanity label a Sony imprint?

Her self-chosen surname is a good one: a creature who floats between two worlds, without a firm commitment to either.

Embed and breakfast man: Madder Rose

Your arms in a wild rotation this weekend, as we spend some time rummaging through the back catalogue of Madder Rose.

Considered by no less an authority than someone posting a comment under the name MadderRoseRulz as "one of the best bands which came out of the NYC area", Madder Rose ran through the 1990s like a seam of pure gold. Formed in 1991, four albums - two indie, two for Atlantic - later they sort-of fell apart just before the Millennium Dome opened, although Mary Lorson and Billy Coté would stick together to make an album of almost-drugged almost-chamber music under their own names.

We've kicked off up there with Swim, which is probably the peak of their powers. (Yes, that's the way to sell the rest of the weekend of Madder Rose tracks, isn't it? 'It's downhill from here'...)

But who knew you could take something stripped down, and strip it down even further?

Colorcoded25, fetch us your ukelele:

Buy
Swim
Panic On
Bring It Down
Hello June Fool

Madder Rose online
Trouser Press biography
Madder Rose on Last FM
Madder Rose on MySpace - contains "BBC Manchester" recordings, which I'm guessing must be from Radcliffe's graveyard shift show

More Madder Rose across the weekend
Panic On
Ultra Anxiety live at Glastonbury
Hung Up In You live on MTV
Car Song
Sleep Forever

Gordon in the morning: An important change

There's been a minor redesign over at the Sun, so it's no longer Gordon Smart's Bizarre; it's Bizarre edited by Gordon Smart.

A crucial distinction.

The other stuff is still as it ever was - N-Dubz are supposedly now "pals" with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. On closer inspection, it turns out they're being polite to each other while in the same building.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Glastonbury

A sharp piece from Johnny Dee on The First Post which explores how Glastonbury now takes £200 from people to shout over their heads to the people on the sofa:

Glastonbury is now a mainstream festival with a running order that's dictated by the primetime TV audience rather than the people who actually attend. And if you are lucky enough to get there, the huge runways taken up by the BBC cameras leave you in no doubt who the artists are performing to.

It's worth mentioning, though, that his closing words feel a bit tacked on and a bit "but then I woke up and it was all a dream."

Gordon in the morning: Allen and West

Kanye West really is an asshat, isn't he? He tweeted this bollocks:

"An abortion can cost a ballin' nigga up to 50gs maybe a 100.

"Gold diggin' bitches be getting pregnant on purpose. #STRAPUP my niggas!"

Gordon Smart describes this as "an unsavoury tweet about abortion", which seems to be a surprisingly mild response to a man not only claiming that somehow women are getting "pregnant on purpose" to secure some sort of lucrative abortion, but that the solution is to make sure you wear a condom while you treat a woman like a fuck-toy.

Who would point out to Kanye his ass-hatted-ness? Step forward Lily Allen:

"Never has a tweet put me in such a bad mood.

"This is wrong on so many levels."

Smart somehow tries to suggest there's a link between Allen being right about abortion and her recent grim experiences, which feels a bit... well, unsavoury, to be honest.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

MTV launches another awards ceremony

To a frankly bored response, MTV have announced plans for another set of music awards.

They're calling them the OMAs - not be confused with defunct soap powder brand OMO - and apparently it's up to the audience to decide what the O stands for. Probably "Oh, god, not another bloody awards ceremony."

These awards will, say MTV,

"honor the migration of music to the digital space, and celebrate the art, artistry and technology of digital music."

MTV seem unaware that digital music has been going on since Mark Knopfler was a household name and that, substantially, there's not much different about a digital version of a song and an analogue version.

What they probably mean is that they've come up with a way to get Katy Perry to turn up to sing by giving her a prize for being good at Twitter.

Justin Bieber: You'll have been worrying about his hair

Madame Tussauds - the place where tourists go if they've been bad - is about to unveil a waxwork of Justin Bieber.

"It's been difficult" explained a spokesperson, "as we were having trouble with the face - no matter what we did, it looked glassy and unreal. In the end, we just had to go with it. After all, there was a waxwork company on the way to make an effigy of him."

The big question, though, is what sort of hair Tussauds' would give the faux-Bieber. You'll be delighted to hear they're going to use his bowl cut, presumably because it's a hell of a lot easier to make.

CPS says copyright violations 'civil, not criminal'

It came a little late in the process, but the Crown Prosecution Service have dropped a case against two men accused of running a film 'piracy' website in Bristol. The Telegraph says:

The Crown Prosecution Service told Bristol Crown Court today it would not proceed with the trial following legal advice that the alleged copyright infringements were a civil rather than a criminal matter, a spokeswoman for Avon and Somerset Police said. Not guilty verdicts were recorded.

It appears the CPS had not really bothered to do much research into the case, relying instead on "facts" given to them by FACT, the Federation Against Copyright "Theft"; when they eventually looked closely they realised that criminal action was "neither necessary nor appropriate."

No word yet on how much public money has been wasted on a case designed to protect a few private interests; hopefully, though, this will be the last case of its sort.

MySpace Music decides to do without a President

Courtney Holt, who was president of MySpace Music, has decided to follow the herd and has stepped down from the role. He's not being replaced, either, with MySpace CEO Mike Jones taking responsibility for Music, too, which pretty much looks like a "keeping it going until someone takes it over or kills it off" position.

MySpace Music still does pretty good numbers in terms of visitors in the US, but hasn't been able to turn the ears into anything saleable; to add insult to injury, half-assed YouTube spin-off Vevo now outstrips it for visitors.

Georgie Davis is coming out

1970s armed robber George Davis - who has always protested his innocence - is taking his appeal to the High Court.

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with a music website?

That's why. Spandau weren't the only New Romantics who had a soft spot for the old armed blaggers, although Duran chose better than developing a Krays fetish.

The video for Friends Of Mine looks to me like a Swap Shop appearance. But surely that's an odd place to sing about armed criminals?

Gordon in the morning: Up in the air

"Posh avoids 11 hour flight sat next to Jordan" screams the front of Bizarre this morning, apparently written by someone who doesn't really know how the plane is laid out when you turn left. Or possibly someone who thinks Victoria Beckham crams herself into coach.

Gordon insists it was close, though:

THERE'S been one of those scary near-misses involving two planes - and VICTORIA BECKHAM had a very lucky escape.

She nearly spent an 11-hour flight to LA sharing the benefits of Virgin Atlantic Upper Class with somebody she can't stand - KATIE PRICE.

Except - as is usually the case with people who fly a lot and have sufficient funds - it turns out Beckham had booked herself on all the flights leaving for LA yesterday, so there wasn't even much chance she'd be on the same flight as Jordan, much less sat next to her.

Two women fly to the same place at different times on the same day. Not quite such a great story, is it?

NME Awards 2011: More like the Brits than ever before

The NME Awards, sponsored by Johnson's No More Tears Baby Shampoo, were spat out last night. There were a lot of awards, too, creating the situation where there are now more NME awards winners than actual NME magazine readers.

Here's what won whomness:

Godlike Genius: Dave Grohl

Philip Hall Radar Award: The Naked And Famous

Teenage Cancer Trust Outstanding Contribution To Music: PJ Harvey

John Peel Award for Innovation: Crystal Castles

Best British Band (supported by Shockwaves)
Winners: Muse
Nominated: Arctic Monkeys, Biffy Clyro, Foals, Kasabian

Best International Band (supported by T4)
Winners: My Chemical Romance
Nominated: Arcade Fire, Kings Of Leon, The Drums, Vampire Weekend

Best Solo Artist
Winner: Laura Marling
Nominated: Florence Welch, Frank Turner, Kanye West, Paul Weller

Best New Band (supported by Boxfresh)
Winners: Hurts
Nominated: Beady Eye, Everything Everything, The Drums, Two Door Cinema Club

Best Live Band
Winners: Biffy Clyro
Nominated: Arcade Fire, Foals, Kasabian, Muse

Best Album
Winner: Arcade Fire – 'The Suburbs'
Nominated: Crystal Castles – 'Crystal Castles II', Foals – 'Total Life Forever', My Chemical Romance – 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys', Two Door Cinema Club – 'Tourist History'

Best Track (supported by NME Radio)
Winner: Foals – 'Spanish Sahara'
Nominated: Cee Lo Green – 'Fuck You', Gorillaz – 'Stylo', Janelle Monae (featuring Big Boi) – 'Tightrope', Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. – 'Bang Bang Bang'

Best Video (supported by NME TV)
Winners: My Chemical Romance – 'Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)'
Nominated: Arcade Fire – 'We Used To Wait', Brandon Flowers – 'Crossfire', Chase & Status – 'Let You Go', Gorillaz – 'Stylo'

Best Festival
Winners: Glastonbury
Nominated: Download, Reading And Leeds Festivals, T In The Park, V Festival

Best Dancefloor Filler
Winners: Professor Green – 'Jungle'
Nominated: Crystal Castles – 'Baptism', Kele – 'Tenderoni', Plan B – 'Stay Too Long', Tinie Tempah – 'Pass Out'

Best TV Show
Winner: 'Skins'
Nominated: 'Misfits', 'Never Mind The Buzzcocks', 'Peep Show', 'The Inbetweeners'

Best Film
Winner: Inception
Nominated: Get Him To The Greek, Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, The Social Network

Hero Of The Year
Winner: Lady Gaga
Nominated: Gerard Way, Julian Assange, Kanye West

Villain Of The Year
Winners: David Cameron
Nominated: Axl Rose, Justin Bieber, Nick Clegg, Simon Cowell

Most Stylish (supported by Shockwaves)
Winner: Brandon Flowers
Nominated: Hayley Williams, Lady Gaga, Liam Gallagher, Noel Fielding

Least Stylish
Winnes: Justin Bieber
Nominated: Cheryl Cole, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Liam Gallagher

Worst Album
Winners: Justin Bieber – 'My World'
Nominated: Cheryl Cole – 'Messy Little Raindrops', Katy Perry – 'Teenage Dream', Kings Of Leon – 'Come Around Sundown', My Chemical Romance – 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys'

Worst Band
Winners: Jonas Brothers
Nominated: 30 Seconds To Mars, JLS, Kings Of Leon, Tokio Hotel

Best Band Blog or Twitter
Winner: Hayley Williams
Nominated: Frank Turner, Kanye West, Lily Allen, Theo Hutchcraft

Best Book
Winner: John Lydon – 'Mr Rotten's Scrapbook'
Nominated: Carl Barat – 'Threepenny Memoir', Jay-Z – 'Decoded', Keith Richards – 'Life', Russell Brand – 'My Booky Wook 2'

Best Small Festival (50,000 capacity or lower)
Winners: RockNess
Nominated: Bestival, Kendal Calling, Latitude, Underage Festival

Best Album Artwork
Winner: Klaxons – 'Surfing The Void'
Nominated: Foals – 'Total Life Forever', Gorillaz – 'Plastic Beach', MGMT – 'Congratulations', My Chemical Romance – 'Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys'

Hottest Woman
Winner: Alison Mosshart
Nominated: Emily Haines, Hayley Williams, Lady Gaga, Shakira

Hottest Man
Winners: Matt Bellamy
Nominated: Alex Turner, Billie Joe Armstrong, Dominic Howard, Jared Leto

Muse. Laura Marling. The Arcade Fire. The only real difference between the NME Awards and the Brits this year is the audience go "oh, them" rather than "who are they?"

But two prizes for My Chemical Romance? Blimey. Maybe next year they might want to think about trying making votes on a form cut from the magazine count double compared to an online vote. Or perhaps just give up and merge with Kerrang.

NME lives in a world where Brandon Flowers is the most stylish person on the entire planet. Let's just think on that for a moment.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Strokes - more generous than the NME

The Strokes announce a free gig and... erm, the NME is selling tickets. What?

Justin Bieber: He's now a grown-up childman

The people responsible for marketing the Kevin The Teenager made flesh that is Justin Bieber are now trying to shift the perception of him into some sort of mature star. Jon M Chu, who earns money in the Bieber verse, can't stress to MTV how grown-up the hamster-faced child is:

"With the movie and going to the Grammys and being respected on so many different levels beyond just his own fanbase, he's really growing up and learning how to interact with people," Chu said.

He ties his own shoelaces now, and last night not only did he say he'd rather go to Pizza Hut than Chuck E Cheese, but he ordered from the grown-up menu and everything.

MTV is happy to row in with this 'he's mature' line, because it makes it sound like they're wasting their time pissing away pages on interviews with a proper singer rather than an offcut from the Toy Story franchise. In fact, it really wants to believe:

Have you noticed a change in Justin Bieber? Tell us below!

Please! Maybe you've seen him smoking a fag, or smuggling a copy of Nuts out of WH Smiths? Anything will do. Please!

Nordic Music Prize: Jonsi wins

There hasn't been a Nordic Music Prize before - kind of like a Mercury for countries that don't have a fit every time it snows - so that makes Jonsi the inaugural winner for Go.

Here he is picking up the prize:

Billy Corgan tries whimsy, gets found out, shot down

Billy Corgan tweeted a couple of days ago that new Smashing Pumpkins bassist Nicole Fiorentino is one of the girls on the cover of Siamese Dreams:

Just found out the weirdest news: our bass player Nicole (@xocoleyf) just admitted she is one of the girls on the cover of Siamese Dream

That would be an amazing coincidence, right?

The only problem is it isn't true, as Ali Laenger, the other girl on the sleeve, says so:

-- Nicole's age doesn't match. Doing the math, Nicole would have been about 14 when the pic was shot ... the girl on the album is clearly around 7.
-- Ali says the photo was shot specifically for the album, and not a candid pic as Nicole has claimed.

You could understand why Nicole might have wanted to be the girl on the sleeve. It'd be the only chance she's got of appearing on a half-decent Smashing Pumpkins record.

Gordon in the morning: Not o-Kai

Flagged high on Gordon's page today, although actually handled by The Sun news desk, is the story of Colleen Rooney being blackmailed over photos of her kid Kai.

The Sun is full of sympathy:

Frantic Coleen called the venue from their home in Prestbury, Cheshire, but the camera could not be found. Someone tried to sell the photos to media outlets, who turned them down.
[...]
A Rooneys spokesman said: "Wayne and Coleen take their son's privacy very seriously."

The paper even takes care to pixelate the face of the small child in a photo used to illustrate the story.

What do you mean, is there a whiff of hypocrisy here? Why, no, for The Sun has never run photos of the child unpixelated. Why, even if you thought they might have done, someone has quietly removed all the pages from the archive where, for example, they might have published a curiously-obtained photo of Kai visiting Father Christmas. Sure, the URL - http://cma.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3265032/Wayne-and-Coleen-Rooneys-son-Kai-visits-Santas-Grotto.html - still exists, but there's nothing on the page.

Nobody can point a finger.

Except - oops! - the stories and the photos are still in The Sun's search files. Even the photo that has been carefully pixelated out this morning is there, with Kai's face in full. And Kai meeting Santa:

(Obviously, the red splodges aren't part of the photos as they appear in The Sun. Except for Wayne.)

It's a funny thing - where would blackmailers get the idea newspapers would pay money for this sort of thing?

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Downloadable: Sloan

Here's the link first, then: Follow The Leader, a new track by Sloan.

It's from their new album, The Double Cross, out in May. Their tenth album, and twentieth year of activity.

Jay Ferguson's quote is too good to leave languishing in a press release:

“I think every band always says of their latest LP, ‘it's our best yet!’ or perhaps ‘it's our greatest work since Exile on Main St.’, and then you hear it and you say to yourself, 'hmm, well, not quite, guys'. Hopefully I'm not joining those ranks, but for this our 10th album, I personally feel it's up there with my favorites of ours. Short and sweet with unexpected turns down different paths.”

Hands and Hague

Thanks to Jim W for this email:

Wandering around the Ox Union and spotted this lovely snap of a future Foreign Sec with his mate, the thoroughly lovely Guy Hands, behind him.

For some reason both are next to the scraggly historian EP Thompson.

Condition of the English Record Label, etc.

And here's the photo...

What a lovely vision.

At least she hasn't changed her name to Britney Green Giant Canned Asparagus Spears. Yet.

According to TMZ (which we're using here to mean "the gist is probably true but wouldn't trust the figures"), Britney Spears took "half a million dollars" for product placement in Hold It Against Me.

You wonder if this sort of deal would mean Ofcom will make them slap a P in front when they play the video on TV? Or, perhaps, if the music channels ought to be charging Britney for the access to their audiences?

Gordon in the morning: Grunt and grapple

Tom from Kasabian has taken a part in a sitcom.

I know what you're thinking: a remake of Terry And June is long overdue, but this doesn't sound like it's going to be as good as that. Walk Like A Panther, set in 1970s wrestling world and - according to the NME :

He'll play a mentally-deranged doorman in the '70s-set comedy, Walk Like A Panther, with TV chef Marco Pierre White set for a cameo. There are rumours that Noel Gallagher may pop up on screen somewhere.

Where would they find someone foolish enough to invest in that creaking set-up?

The whole scenario sounds like an idea first chopped up on Serge Pizzorno's coffee table at 3am. Which is probably pretty much the measure of how it came about – Serge has bankrolled the whole thing.

Oh.

It's written by Dan Cadan, which the NME thinks is a guarantee of quality:

the full line-up reveals that things could be a far more promising affair – the script has been written by Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels writer Dan Cadan

Oddly, IMDB does agree that Cadan has a credit on Lock Stock - but as "runner". By the time of Snatch, he was up to "assistant: Mr Ritchie". His writing credits prior to Panther runs to three movies - a rhyming tale about the devil, TV Movie Dancestar USA - which had Yoko Ono drift by - and Filth And Wisdom. He co-wrote that with Madonna. I'd totally forgotten "Madonna's directorial debut" even though I wrote about it at the time. More than once.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, Tom Kasabian's new acting role in a sitcom written by the runner from Lock, Stock. Apparently Tom found it challenging. He told Q, and Gordon has copied it out, and now we'll copy it too:

"I loved it but I was s****ing myself first of all. When I was driving on set I was thinking, 'F*** f*** f***'. It was more nerve-racking than playing Glastonbury."

To be fair to Tom, doing something you might not be very good at in front of a crowd of people can be very nerve-wracking. So Glastonbury must be pretty scary.

But, fair play to the man, he does have a good gag up his sleeve:

"Kasabian and the music comes first. Having said that, if someone said they were remaking Labyrinth I'd be quite up for playing the part of the Goblin King."

See if Serge'll put his hands in his pockets, Tom.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Jessie J: Illuminati, but nice

Jessie J's status as the B-road Lady GaGa gathers apace; she's even now getting her own Illuminati conspiracy attacks.

This is from Vigilant Citizen:

Sporting Mickey Mouse ears, a classic symbol associated with mind control programming. Other artists sporting the Mickey Mouse look? Type “Mickey Mouse” in the search box at the top of this page [on VC] and see what you find.

You get Rihanna, Aguilera and GaGa, although, interestingly, not this one:

Which, to be honest, seems to be more likely the starting point than any sort of mind control.

If wearing Mickey Mouse ears really is a sign of mind control, surely Joanie Cunningham from Happy Days must be the Big Brother of our age? No wonder Howard always wanted her to not wear the ears at the table.

You might have recognized a bunch of symbols discussed in other articles on this site, about other artists such as Rihanna or Lady Gaga.

Vigilant Citizen concludes this shows just how deep things run, rather than evidence that Jessie J is pretty much nipping down the shops with some successful pop videos and asking if they could run up something similar.

The Citizen then quotes the director's vague explanation of the stuff in the video, which - ha! - proves their point:

When asked about these types of videos, directors are extremely vague and barely coherent. On the other hand, they can’t very well say to Teen Bop Magazine “Well, it’s about Illuminati mind control, where Jessie J is a Monarch slave being manipulated by higher powers”.

Although, since VC claims that the video is full of symbols doing just that, it's not clear why they wouldn't say that.

Right from the start, the video begins with a powerful and symbolic image, one that sums up the entire meaning of this piece: a teddy bear with one eye missing and a torn arm. The combination of several elements in this scene strongly point towards trauma-based mind control.

Or possibly a love of The Raggy Dolls.

Or perhaps Back-To-Front also had trauma-based mind control going on. And a back-to-front head. Sheesh, even Ian Duncan-Smith might give him a day off work with that all going on.

In another scene, Jessie J is portrayed as a ballerina in a music box, the type you have to wind-up before it starts dancing. The ballerina needs an outside force to get her to perform, another metaphor for the mind state of an industry artist and a mind controlled slave.

Or, possibly, a toy. She could just be pretending to be a toy.

But there's more:

Portraying pop stars as puppets manipulated by unseen forces from above is one of the Illuminati’s favorite ways to show their control of the industry. What better way to show the elite’s use of pop stars to program and indoctrinate the masses?

Well... how about showering Matt Cardle with money? Wouldn't it be better to not portray your puppets as, well, puppets? Because isn't showing the strings kind of giving away the magic? It'd be like having the daleks roll along saying 'we are just men pushing boxes around, and the scary voice is coming from someone else' and expecting them to be scary.

In another scene, Jessie J is sitting inside a doll house which is yet another significant setting in terms of mind control. Due to intense trauma, Monarch slaves are encouraged to dissociate from reality to escape the pain of the various tortures they must endure. The doll house is a representation of the make-believe world victims escape to when dissociation occurs. Furthermore, actual doll houses are used as props in the programming of children.

Actual doll houses. Houses that actual dolls live in. Or possibly actual houses than have been run by dolls. Pussycat Dolls, maybe. In houses. With pussycats. ON STRINGS. Like in a pantomime - and I think we all know why the word "pant" is there, don't we kids?

Hang about... Vig has spotted a one eye doll:

This scene is shown for less than a second. It is nevertheless extremely meaningful. It is a visual representation of the fractured psyche of a trauma victim. In mind control symbolism, dolls represent the alter persona created and programmed by the slave’s handler. In the video, the doll head has one eye missing, alluding to Illuminati mind control. Jessie’s eye is where the missing eye should be, effectively portraying the merger of the victim with its alter persona.

Yeah... peek-a-boo, or is it peek-a-do-as-I-say? Huh?

Here Jessie has one leg removed from her body, another reminder of the fractured mind state of the victim.

Assuming you have your mind in your legs.

But what is she wearing, Vigilant?

To further drive the point home, the singer is wearing feline-print leggings, which, as we have often seen, is a code for Sex-Kitten programming.

Wearing sexy leggings is not a code for anything; it's an attempt to be sexy. It's like saying wearing a policeman's helmet is code for having been through policeman training, rather than, you know, doing a thing policemen do after they've been to policeman school.

See those hats? Don't let them fool you; they're showing they've been mind-controlled at Hendon, even though you might think they're just pretending.

It's not clear - it never is - why the Illuminati have gone to all this trouble to build a secret musician mind control programming system only to lard the videos they're making with clues revealing it. They really are shit at secrets, aren't they? If the mafia was as rubbish as they are, they'd be called The Organised Crime Team and put photos of themselves of Facebook threatening people. "Big Ron is... telling a frightened shop owner that it would be a pity if something happened to him, by which he means he'll break his legs if he doesn't get money."

It's also not clear why the Illuminati would put all this effort into building up Jessie J, which would seem to be on a par with the Soviets infiltrating the Little Rissington Parish Council.

[Thanks to Michael M]

Spotify about to get a cash boost

There are currently negotiations going on - paused from time to time to hear an advert about boiler servicing from British Gas - to bring massive new funding to Spotify.

DST have previously bunged cash into Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, so they know what they're doing (unless they're just incredibly lucky); this new funding values Spotify at about USD1billion - and that would only make sense if they really are about to launch in the US.

Twittergem: Westwood

Let's check in with @TimWestwood:

its been so long since I've been to the gym - they'd change all the equipment. I didnt know what to do - so I left. What a waste of protein

A waste of protein? Tim, don't be so hard on yourself.

Gordon in the morning: News in brief shorts

Kylie Minogue has kicked off her Aphrodite Les Folies world tour. But, of course, there's only one thing on Gordon's mind:

KYLIE MINOGUE donned hotpants for her return to live touring – six years after vowing she would never again wear skimpy shorts.

The Aussie singer, 42, danced in a denim version of the gold pair that made her bottom a sensation back in 2000.

What did she play? Were there new songs? How was her voice?

Ah, that Gordon cannot say. But he does know this:

And on stage in Hernig, Denmark, on Saturday night Kylie was still as toned as when she chose the look for her Spinning Around video.

What a tremendous arse. And yet he has a newspaper column.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Radiohead

The Laugh-Out Loud Cats welcome the new record:

CC-BY-NC-ND licence by ApeLad

Duffy has had enough-fy

The frankly rotten sales of her second album have sent Duffy to a dark place, reckons the Sunday Mirror, which claims a friend says she's thinking of giving it all up:

A pal of the Welsh warbler reveals: “She’s really down about the last album, Endlessly.

“It didn’t sell well and charted terribly and she isn’t trying again and making a comeback.

“She wants to have a quiet life and start over. Duffy made a truckload of cash with the first album and through her endorsements with Diet Coke, so she’s comfortable and able to enjoy some down-time. She’s not got management right now and has met a few people about taking over. But she’s just not interested."

It's surprising quite how badly the second coming of Duffy went - Well Well Well, the first single off Endlessly, stalled outside the top 40; Endlessly did make it to the top ten - just - but doesn't even appear to have gone Gold yet in the UK.

The suspicion has to be that she was a highly-weaponised delivery system for Bernard Butler's work, and once she struck out on her own, she has found the world a colder place. To be fair to her, she was always going to struggle to find something that was going to outrun Mercy - still the number one choice for cereal adverts and unthreatening faux-edgy restaurant dining room music.

Dappy is filled with self-doubt

It's almost heartbreaking:

In an interview with The Observer, Dappy admitted: "I get depressed. I've gone to dark places for days when I've seen our music videos have dropped off the TV airplay charts. Or I read a rude comment about us on YouTube. It fills me with self-doubt."

Jesus, man, if you go to a dark place every time someone says something rude about you on the internet, you must be living in a place that makes Wookey Hole seem like Florida.

It's fascinating to see that 'dropping off TV airplay charts' causes Dappy self-doubt - does he think that once you enter a chart you're going to stay there forever? Has he never stopped to ponder how it could be that The Beatles aren't still at number one?

Beady Eye: It's all about moving on

The Guardian's Film and Music supplement met with Liam Gallagher, and he was keen to stress that Beady Eye is a new start after all the troubles with his brother at the end of Oasis:

"We've all moved on"

Yes, Liam has put all that Oasis business behind him and moved on.

His claim might be slightly undermined by coming at the end of this section:

More surprising was Noel's complaint about "the lack of support and understanding" from his bandmates.

Liam almost explodes at the mention of that line. "Absolute fucking bollocks. That's the thing that makes me want to throw up. I just look at him now and think, 'You're a fucking fake.' It's like, if you want to fucking leave the band, leave the band. If you want to stay at home with your kids, stay at home with your kids. If you wanna have five years off, have five years off. We'll sit down as a band and talk about it. But don't start going, 'I was bullied out of the band.' Fucking shite."

Archer sighs. "That statement was surreal as fuck."

To the outsider, I say, it read like Liam and Noel had a huge row, and Noel was hurt that the others didn't back him up.

"Noel doesn't need backing," says Archer.

"Back him in what?" snorts Gallagher.

What, then, do they think he meant?

"I think he wrote it on the spur of the moment," says Bell, ever the peacemaker. "He's probably mortified now."

"Not that mortified, cos he's still got it up on the fucking website, which I've tried to take down," spits Gallagher.

"Has he?" asks Archer.

"It's been two fucking years," says Gallagher, sounding increasingly angry and hurt. "Take the fucking statement down. It's over. We're all grown up. We've all moved on."