Just to prove I didn’t make it up, here’s a screencap courtesy of a Newcastle Utd discussion board: [click to enlarge] And there’s softcore panda porn over on the BBC News Website: The look on Bai Yun’s face—“female panda in heat finally gets seen to by toy boy bear”—is hilarious.
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Love Over Gold
Somewhere in a box I have a copy of Dire Straits’ Love Over Gold on cassette. I bought it when I was a kid and listened to it on the Sony boombox that I won when I was thirteen in a competition to come up with a new advertising slogan for Pot Noodle™. Dire Straits’ […]
Read MoreMoney
This is the first time anything related to Pink Floyd has actually blown my mind: Cambridge-educated economist-turned-music-manager (Pink Floyd, The Clash, Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Billy Bragg) Peter Jenner … [has] put a figure on how much each music fan who buys music would have to pay in order for access to every song […]
Read MoreIt’s All In The Hanging
Jogging from the bank yesterday evening to catch Richard Brincklow‘s in-store performance at Passenger‘s launch of their new single [buy it now!*], I stopped to photograph this: Regulars will know that I am not an admirer of Banksy’s work, but circumstances and the shrewd planning of the staff at artrepublic temporarily turned the 2006 effort […]
Read MoreIntensive Care
Over the past few years, both here and elsewhere, I have from time to time suggested that Robbie Williams is an individual of limited talent whose output has consisted mainly of hamfisted pastiche, northern English karaoke of the sort that belongs alongside the deliberately lighthearted performances of stand-up comedian Peter Kay rather than next to […]
Read MorePoot Toots
Richard Brincklow leads a jazz trio called Sesame Forum. They have a Sunday afternoon residency at The Brunswick in Brighton. The weekend after next, The Brunswick is hosting a jazz festival, featuring people who you might have heard of, like Liane Carroll, who won Best Vocalist Award at the 2006 British Jazz Awards and is […]
Read MoreRetroactive
I’m in Dixons Currys.digital, buying a new computer keyboard. What sounds like a competent cover version of Starship’s We Built This City is playing. For a moment I wonder if it’s the start of one of those godawful trance retreads of 80s guitar hits. You know the sort of thing: Owner Of A Lonely Heart/Max […]
Read MoreTim-ba!
Talking of recycling, it looks like producer Timbaland has some explaining to do to a Finnish computer musician about a backing track that Mr Land laid down for Nelly Furtado. [The previous link goes to YouTube, but you can follow these links to MP3s of the tunes.] There’s something amusing about a deep-voiced multimillionaire hip-hop […]
Read MoreA Weekend Trip To The Recycling Centre
I’m busy so, instead of writing my own stuff, I’ll just point at the efforts of some other bloggers. This at Fisking Central is a point worth making over and over again: Utopia doesn’t refer to a better world; it’s used to describe a perfect world. Belief in human perfectability—and its accompanying rejection of all […]
Read MoreDoes What It Says On The Tin
If you have ever spent any amount of time in conversation with cokeheads in London then you will be able to testify to the authenticity of “Diary of a London Cokehead“.
Read MoreGeek Music Rant
If you can YouTube and you aren’t tone deaf then I guarantee you will enjoy this. (The guy performing reminds me of my guitar teacher who would liven up lessons by reducing the entire career of any artist I named to a needle-sharp one-minute musical pastiche. Much as I admire the songwriting of The Police […]
Read MorePanic At The 80s Disco
According to ITVNews the somewhat erratic former superstar and object of Osama’s lust Whitney Houston “is convinced that the 21-year-old [X-Factor TV talent show winner Leona] will be an international superstar and has even offered to mentor her.” Sister, you need Whitney Houston as a mentor like you need Michael Jackson as a babysitter.
Read MoreWhy Rock Pigs Have Groupies And Music Critics Don’t
According to Technorati, one of the most listened-to albums of the moment is Hinder’s Extreme Behaviour. The cover features a red-lingerie-clad cleavage and a PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT sticker. It’s trying harder than a small-town 14-year-old with a bum-fluff beard, hanging around outside Happy Shopper waving a spliff and a can of lager. To my […]
Read MoreLembit Opik Is A Media Construct
I refuse to believe that this man exists.
Read MoreMake Like A Tree
Yesterday evening I went to see Passenger—featuring Richard Brincklow on piano, keyboards, and bizarre Fisher-Price blowy thing—play at Komedia. They were excellent, but I knew that already. Great gig, guys. Reader, buy their single. What I didn’t know is that Carrie Tree, the support to the support band, is astonishingly good. She completely overcame my […]
Read MoreOverheard In New York
Someone at Harry’s Place comments that Until now, I thought Gwyneth Paltrow was Welsh.” which reminds me of being in a video rental store in NYC in the late 90s with a local. An old Tom Jones song starts playing. “Well, I never,” says I to my native companion in my conspicuously British way, “This […]
Read MoreCalvin’s Crimes
Police find marijuana, cocaine, and a firearm in gangsta rapper’s car… …George Michael in public park, blood at O J Simpson’s place, inconsistencies in statement from Jeffrey Archer, poison in enemy of Russian Mafia and KGB, Houses of Parliament adjacent to Thames…
Read MoreRevenge Of The Barlow
With the massive success of the new Take That single, Patience, I am praying that this is the moment when they become the post-break-up David Gilmour-led Pink Floyd and Robbie Williams becomes the post-The Wall Roger Waters. Same initials see, see?! Take that, Mr End-Of-The-Pier karaoke compere!
Read MorePublic Enemy
I don’t have perfect pitch. One of my long-suffering former Flatland music tutors would however be amused to read that the other day I noticed that my toothbrush was playing the key note of a Kelly Clarkson song and I wandered over to the piano and played the scale along with it—first time! I never […]
Read MoreAOR Rewrites
Squander Two is a clever fella and his impatience with irrationality is (almost) always welcome in my comments boxes. He is also a new father who has endured rather more worry than most recently. I hope his wife recovers completely and quickly. He probably came up with this brilliant revision of Alanis Morissette’s Ironic during […]
Read MoreBritney Goofs
Judge spears hypocrisy.
Read MoreHe’s Not The Anti-Christ; He’s A C-List Celebrity
Did you know that Brighton’s 80s slightly-more-than-one-hit-wonders Frazier Chorus covered Anarchy In The UK? They did. It’s more subversive than the original.
Read MorePre-Numptial
Close friends of multi-hundred selling music legend Pete McDoherty expressed their concern today at his plans to wed one-nostrilled supermodel and charity campaigner Heather Moss. “I’ve nothing against her personally,” claimed a member of McDoherty’s inner circle, “but Moss has a reputation for marrying a certain kind of man and you can see why a […]
Read MoreGood Apples
It would be so much easier to dismiss The Guardian if it didn’t employ some excellent writers. Its television critics, for example, are usually more entertaining than the programmes they review. The reason I still buy the paper on Fridays is because the “music” part of the film and music supplement actually covers popular music […]
Read MoreAnother Career Change
Do you think it’s too late for me to hang out in an African children’s home in the hope of being adopted by a superstar? Despite his best efforts Derek was unable to get all of Damian’s hair in frame. For some reason I am reminded to tell you that Our House gallery in Brighton […]
Read MoreI Blame The Jews
www.iiiiiiii.com [requires Flash and a noisy office]
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