The Guardian has a list of last night’s Grammy award winners and nominees, which mainly focuses on young person’s artists. You’ll look in vain for an Afterword -friendly act here. But what struck me was the categories. There’s an Album of the Year – we can all understand that one – but also a Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

What’s the difference? To further complicate things, seven of the eight nominations are the same in each category, with Kendrick Lamarr winning Best Record but losing out to Billie Eilish in the Song category. She was, of course, also nominated for Record but lost out to Kendrick.

Anyone have any idea why this duplication of awards is a thing? And what makes Eilish’s a better song than Kendrick’s but not as good a record?

Talk on the Liam Payne post comparing One Direction’s fame to that of The Beatles got me thinking of a recent incident which I’d like the Afterword hive mind to consider. It was our anniversary and my wife and I were off to see a show at the Lyceum in the centre of Sheffield.

We stopped at a pub/restaurant en route for a meal and got talking to the waitress – a young lass of 18 or 19 – who wanted to know how long we’d been married, what we were doing for our anniversary etc. When she heard we were going to the Lyceum, she said that she’d been there once to see Peter Pan or some such. I replied, “Well, I’m so old, the last time I was at the Lyceum was to see U2 in 1980. Can you imagine U2 playing the Lyceum?”

For those unfamiliar with the venue, the Lyceum is a typical provincial theatre in terms of its size, seating around a couple of thousand I suppose, so whilst it was suitable for U2 at the time of the release of their second album, they quickly outgrew such venues and migrated to the enormodome circuit » Continue Reading.

Finally!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66630308

It seems to have been some time since the blog was graced by a contribution from the formerly prolific and frequently (often unintentionally) hilarious Mr Bellows. Did he flounce? Was he banned? Has the enthusiastic weed consumption finally taken its toll? Any news?

Iain Duncan Smith has been knighted. I am also an incompetent prick, yet I remain unrecognised, possibly because my incompetence doesn’t have much impact on the most vulnerable members of our society.

Normally, i am indifferent to the perennial honours system debate, but this really makes me mad, coming hot on the heels of the elevation of Goldsmith and Morgan to the Lords for services to their chum in Downing Street.

The question is, what can we do about it? The electorate have rejected the other potential governing parties. The good people of Chingford seem happy to be represented by the awful Duncan Smith. So do we just shrug and cue up the next Beatles podcast? Or is there, somewhere, revolution in the air? As Bruce so sagely put it, “you can’t start a fire without a spark,” but where’s the spark, readers?