Musings on the byways of popular culture
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They’re beginning to build up. I still don’t know why a SHOT is now a HIT or a SAVE is now a STOP. Or why someone suddenly decided ‘assist’ should be a substitute for the perfectly adequate ‘made a goal’. One too many syllables perhaps?
I have a new one. Why has somebody decided that Manchester City footballers should wear shorts designed to look as though their braces are hanging round their arse? This is the sort of urgent question Baddiel and Skinner might once have answered. Failing them…
The ‘other side’ of the ‘Smash the System’ single – on iTunes etc. on 16 November – this is the first studio recording by ARSE and was filmed at over a dozen locations in Belfast last week (and a bit of the chaps in the studio a month ago).
Petesy has rewritten the Monkees’ classic as a commentary on punk revisionism – people with blogozines who weren’t there and so forth. And yes, the word ‘blogozine’ appears therein!
Here’s what the Petesmeister says on the matter:
‘Punk history belongs to us all. It is a history of individualism and the sense that WE have the power and when WE use that power WE can create a better world. It is not the history of the opportunist or the narcissist, although they do figure in it.
‘It is not the history of the Hollywood-style hero making a stand, changing the world and leaving the meek to bow and scrape in their wake. If you lived it you were as big a part of it as anyone else and don’t be told any different. Our contribution doesn’t seek to attack individuals but it does seek to attack the notion that we » Continue Reading.
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We’re off to the pub with mates tomorrow night, and I’ve got tickets for Tull on Monday night, so a quiet Friday evening sounds like a plan. It’s chicken tikka masala, veggie samosas, garlic & coriander poppadums, pilau rice, several bottles (I’ve already had the first) of St. Austell’s fabulous ‘Proper Job’, and a couple of episodes – at least – of ‘Father Ted’ from the spiffo boxed set. We are on to episode 4 now on our, ooh, probably fifth run through.
Whatcha up to yerselves tonight?
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The most upsetting part of this is the picture. Taylor Swift FFS?
I must get out and buy that Gibson twin neck without further delay.
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It seems Frank Kelly, who played Father Jack, has died. One of the all time great sitcom characters, his touching portrayal of the late Elvis will live long in the memory . RIP
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At Pitchfork, music journalism has become like fine art catalogue texts; something in and of itself, with no real reference to its subject, an exercise in self-pleasing pseudery. This extract is typical –
“[this CD] is anti-physical music for an anti-physical time … these 10 songs are invocations of the hyperreal, created to meet the anxieties of an age where bodies are rarely written about as sites of joy or authenticity, and more frequently discussed as zones of inequity, violence, embarrassment and pain. The desire to exist as a well-tended garden of pixels fuels many of our culture’s dominant systems: the databases of altered thoughts, distorted images, the avatars that demonstrate reaction or stand in for action. Like all of these networks and products, [this CD] answers our desire to escape the burden of physical presence — and in the process ends up sharpening and perpetuating the desire even further.”
Ri-ight. All we learn from this is that there are ten songs on the album. And that the writer needs a good slapping. Maybe the review is entirely appropriate; maybe the music is quite as arch and pretentious as the review. I for one don’t have the nerves of » Continue Reading.
