Category: Music

Reviews, comment and Pete Doherty Suicide Watch all come under this category.

Coming up tonight – Eurovision 2008 liveblogging

~ Inquisitor

Later tonight, why not come over to Twitter and watch my Eurovision 2008 live blog? (If Twitter’s not working, I’ll do it here.) I like Sebastian Tellier. I don’t think our entry’s the worst thing we’ve ever put in; not when our last few included Scooch and Daz Sampson. Who knows, we might even come in halfway through the table… hah.

What follows behind the “continue reading” link is a reprint of my Twittering for the Your Decision show with added explanatory and exclamatory comments.

Continue reading “Coming up tonight – Eurovision 2008 liveblogging” →

Music matters

~ Inquisitor
  • Still very much enjoying on a regular basis Neon Neon (Stainless Style, a rather lovely 80s-influenced concept album about John deLorean by Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip), M83 (Saturdays=Youth, now with more vocals and yet much better than Before The Dawn Heals Us) and Nine Inch Nails (The Slip, a new Nine Inch Nails album). If you haven’t downloaded The Slip yet, now is the time to do so.
  • The new Ladytron (Velocifero) is pretty decent. Not Witching Hour quality, but well worth your time. There was a crap-quality Myspace stream, but not any more. Album’s officially out at the beginning of June and I shall be buying.
  • The Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip album features a hilarious and unexpected Dizzee Rascal backhand and a tribute to Tommy Cooper but an inferior – less spontaneous, I feel – rerecorded version of Thou Shalt Always Kill, which is a shame. It also sounds really odd on my PC, so I need to work out over the next few days if it’s my system (I’m playing most of my music ReplayGained with foobar2000, files encoded as lame 3.97 -V2, to a pair of Sennheiser open-backed headphones plugged into the high-quality stereo output port of my Envy24-chipset sound card; must try on Xbox->hi-fi and original CD->hi-fi) or if it’s just bad production. Still, good stuff on there.
    • Edit after listening to the CD in my separates system: Nah, it’s just really bad mastering compression – Scroobius’s vocal clips obviously through the spoken word intro and it gets worse from there. You can make “loud” albums that don’t sound wrong – Primal Scream XTRMNTR, for example, an exhilarating rush of an album – but it’s just bad for this album.
  • I’m still getting used to Portishead’s Third. But it’s really growing on me. (Machine Gun really was an odd choice for a first single, wasn’t it? Damn good though.)
  • Went to the last Triptych gig a few weeks ago – Mogwai and pals in the Tramway in Glasgow. Mogwai left my ears ringing for pretty much the next day. The new album material they played is, well, new Mogwai material and that’s always fine by me. Malcolm Middleton really surprised me; absolutely fantastic set. Only one completely duff act, which out of nine bands is pretty good going. Nice Rock Action sampler CD, too.
  • All this good music out there, even some with tunes and poppy and glorious, and none of it’s selling that much (although Portishead’s chart position is pleasingly steady.) Meanwhile, Scooter are #1 in the albums chart based on some shitty advertisements on music TV and an audience of idiots. There’s a lesson there, but I don’t think I like it.

For your convenience

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

A little frustrated right now: not only have my Radiohead tickets been held by Special Mail Service (the people who posted my passport to the wrong address a few years back) with the reference number I need to arrange redelivery spoken once by an automated voice over my mobile with no pen handy and no physical evidence they’ve been, but I’ve got a parcel from an online vendor sent through Initial Citylink which they failed to deliver.

I didn’t get carded, but a check on the tracking system told me that the parcel had attempted delivery; I call Citylink and they tell me that they don’t card in “secure” doorways (although mine isn’t very secure, and neither FedEx or Royal Mail have a problem carding me at all). This wouldn’t be a problem normally because Citylink open their depots quite late and I expected to be able to quickly go to the one at South Gyle (a number 22 bus away) and pick it up.

But there isn’t a South Gyle depot; it closed two months ago. They’ve moved to Livingston. As if that’s efficient for the Edinburgh area; it makes it inaccessible to anyone without a car or a tolerance for long, roundabout journeys on First Bus. And since I’m at work all day and since Citylink won’t change my address over the phone to my workplace my best hopes of getting the parcel are leaving it with my neighbours, which I’ve gone for as the least worst option.

There was an article in the Guardian business section yesterday about Citylink making large losses and dealing with it by… closing depots. Which will make people hate them more and try even harder to avoid them. I certainly won’t make the mistake of buying computer kit from a Citylink-only vendor again; and that without a bad experience before.

(And Radiohead, why SMS? You know they suck from the discbox experience; mine took way over a week to get here. Why continue with them? Why?)

Later tonight

~ Inquisitor

I will be Twittering liveblog coverage of the Eurovision selection, assuming Twitter’s up (and if it isn’t, I’ll be updating it on wordpress.com.) As a preview: I’m not hopeful.

A mainstream attitude

~ Inquisitor

So the nominations for the NME Awards‘ Villain Of The Year category are:

  • George W. Bush
  • Tony Blair
  • Gordon Brown
  • David Cameron
  • Johnny “Razorlight” Borrell
  • Amy Winehouse.

Exactly what has she done to deserve this? All she’s done is have a breakdown while having the indignity to not totally submit to everything the paparazzi want to do to her. Not that it matters, of course, because Bush will win just as he’s done every year since 2003, but it’s the principle of the thing. Of course, the NME love dealing in pap photos of her, so I can guess whose side they’re on…

The Hero Of The Year list features a guy named Ryan Jarman, who in a first for me with current musicians I actually had to Google. He’s the singer in the Cribs, so I think that pretty much decides how hopeless this list is; worse, he said this:

“The mainstream attitude of indie bands today is a bigger problem than global warming”

meaning that indie bands shouldn’t actually try to make, you know, interesting music – an “indie” attitude in NME terms isn’t about how many copies you sell, it’s how many XTC riffs you can rip off in a much less appealing way without any form of originality or tune.

Half the awards are sponsored, too – very indie. The live act award is of course sponsored by Carling, whose brand is on what’s possibly the worst toilets in Glasgow (at least that I’ve had the misfortune to use) and the Best Video award features only one interesting video (Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.”). Best Album Artwork is abominable. Many of the artists in the Worst Band award could do with being swapped with the Best Band award; they’d look about the same (you can keep the Hoosiers though).

If you want to vote on this tawdry excuse for an awards show you have to give IPC (that is to say Time Warner) your address and navigate a whole bunch of this-is-opt-in, this however is opt-out check boxes. Privacy invasion much? They can go please themselves; I certainly won’t.

In Rainbows update

~ Inquisitor

The email I’ve just received says that the files for the album download will be 160Kbit MP3s. Depends on whether it’s 160 ABR or CBR, of course, but still not that shabby. Should be tomorrow morning (along of course with Portal and HL2 Episode Two), so stay tuned for a review then.

Edit at noon: The zip has just downloaded really, really quickly off the distribution server – Radiohead have obviously got their act together with regards to bandwidth. The files are 160CBR, but sound pretty good though. First stage review soon (and rest assured, I won’t be with that guy on the BBC site who thinks Pablo Honey is their best album.)

Tony Wilson, 1950-2007

~ Inquisitor

Just on News 24 now. Manager and record mogul for some of the greatest bands ever, the person who first put the Sex Pistols on TV and long-time reporter on Manchester’s local Granada Reports. It had been coming for a while, but the news is still a shock. And damn, Wikipedia are quick…

Full tribute appearing in this space soon.

Just as a matter of amusement…

~ Inquisitor

Here is the autoresponse I received for my complaint about the BBC cutting short the Spinal Tap and Metallica sets at Live Earth (but leaving James Blunt’s untouched.)

Thank you for your e-mail.

We recognise that some viewers of the ‘Live Earth’ concert were annoyed that the sets by Metallica and Spinal Tap were not shown in full.

We were keen to show elements of all concerts from around the world and took editorial decisions in advance and on the day, about the times and places we would do that.

The concerts were very fluid in London and around the world and there was certainly no prejudice about heavy metal music or any other music; just a determination to do the best for the entire audience watching on BBC TWO and One during the day. This is inevitably a fine balance and we cannot please everyone all of the time. However, we of course apologise if any particular viewers were disappointed.

Please be assured that your comments have been fully registered and added to our daily audience log. This is an internal document that is made available to the web production teams and senior BBC management.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact the BBC.

The thing is, they’d already shown the Rihanna clip they played over the Spinal Tap all-bass “Big Bottom” in between a few artists earlier on that day, and a few of the many terrible pause-ridden between-act interviews could have used Crowded House being played over them. Plus, they had hours of time to use for that sort of thing during all the delays in the US gig. And it’s odd that they only did it to the acts that were actually popular and whose appearance was special, isn’t it?

They should have shown the full London gig. No interruptions, no zero-information interviews. Clips from other concerts and/or the short films in between bands. No excuses.

[edited: aargh, late-night unspotted malapropisms. Corrected.]

Metallica fans may wish…

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

…to complain to the BBC about BBC1 cutting off Enter Sandman from Live Earth to instead play Katie Melua and Crowded House from other LE gigs.

Spinal Tap fans may also wish to put in a complaint here – they’ve cut one song from the end here to bloody Rihanna and interactive isn’t working on Telewest. It’s not like there isn’t enough time, really.