Baggsy

It is offensive to disabled people.

Same as if you said spastrader or mp3wog.

For some reason it's acceptable to laugh at disabled people in England, but you can't laugh at overweight people. *shrug*

As we all know folks at labels loooooooove sending promos to blogs for hype, who then share the track they've been sent.

Can the BPI tell the difference between a track on a major artist's as yet unreleased album, which their publicist has been giving to trade and a track on a major artist's as yet unreleased album which has been leaked?

Of course not.

"The key phrase here is "illegal p2p": it's this that we are concerned with, not p2p use per se. If anyone wants to put their music on p2p, and they're the copyright owner, good luck to them. We're acting on behalf of copyright owners who have not given permission for their music to be on these sites."

Once more I have to ask, what the fuck is this about?

It gives me the impression you could grab yourself pretty much anything on a smaller label and it would be peachy (because they're not going to sit there with 300,000 page lists of artists and tracks, phoning up labels and bands, asking if it's ok for people to download their songs), but the second you type Metallica into a p2p client the power's cut to your house and you hear helicopters overhead within sixty seconds...

I used Napster and such, but I never liked the hassle of trying to find the songs I wanted, being restricted to what people had, etc. As most of the time I only wanted rare or live songs by artists I knew or to hear new artists, which were often not popular enough to find on P2P.

Right now I read several trusted music blogs regularly and lots more on a random basis. The trusted ones are blogs I've grown to love because they only talk about music I knew I'll probably like. In most cases they'll host one mp3 or two, have a link to the band's myspace and a link to somewhere I can buy the release. It's a fantastic situation because it lets people listen to bands they would never known to exist and if even a tiny percent buy anything or go see them live, then that's a great benefit to the band.

I would never wholesale download multiple albums. Part of me prefers to buy mp3s to cds/vinyl because I can have it there and then, part of me always wants the physical release though because I want the artwork and such. I fully understand that some people just want to consume as much music as possible though and don't care about such things.

A friend of mine recieved a letter in the post six odd months ago because he was cought downloading and sharing films via P2P. He's just a dude, the same as the majority of file sharers, who didn't realise it was as serious as it can be. He pleaded stupidity and got off with a couple of hundred quid fine. It hasn't stopped him downloading though.

I don't think it's a case of poverty inspiring great art as such, but you will find when most scenes that explode kick off it has happened in poorer areas in recent times.

The reason why that happens though is because people move to those areas because of the cheap rent, thus the artists can spend more time working on art rather then paying rent/bills.

Manchester and Brighton are two key examples of this in the last decade. The problem is that the second an area becomes cool and gets exposure, everyone moves there and rent sky rockets. Brighton is producing nothing like it was about six or seven years ago, because it's so expensive to live there since it became cool.

Even in America you've had areas like East Village and the Meatpacking districts in NY which became cool and then horrificly expensive and in LA Silverlake went from a semi-ghetto artists haven to land of those who earn $100k a year.

It's never so much poverty as living oppressed which inspires great art. Of course poverty is part of that, but it's not the defining factor. People listen when you have an interesting story or a different twist on things. The vast majority of full time artists I know are living in virtual poverty anyway.

For a start The Guillotines shit all over The Horrors.

Second of all there are a gajillion bands doing almost exactly the same thing, but better. If you really don't know and are interested check out Deathrock and Batcave music. There's some great stuff out there!

Remember when the Blues Explosion got robbed and someone got a rare as six foot chickens 1960's theramin?

The dumbest one was when Mclusky got their gear stolen in America, then an American tried to sell a guitar in it's flight case on their boards and someone from the band replied "This wouldn't happen to be one of the ones we had stolen last year in America, would it?"

Moron of the highest order.

One of less then twelve people.

Although there have been lots of cases where the person identified could qualify as less then one person.

It's still libelous, regardless of that word.

Even those omitted name stories are potentially libelous if the subject can be identified as less then one of twelve people.

They steal the artwork of Trevor Brown (check his website for the full mess, CC and their label said they'd stopped using it twice only to re-print t-shirts, then try to put it on their album cover, then sell the BANNED cds on ebay), then they 'borrow' the Channel logo, then they 'remix' two songs for other bands and keep the songs for themselves, removing the original artists name from the tracks and release them despite protest from those offended, then it transpires they wholesale ripped off other tracks released on the Creative Commons License.

And somehow they're the most innovative, important band of the last decade according to NME and co, based entirely on music they've ripped off and an asphetic they've borrowed two years late from everyone else?

Do you think they just found a KLF book on ebay for $3 and thought "Why the hell not? Worked for The Pipettes, didn't it?"

I see Pete Wentz is on his way to becoming the floppy haired Kerry Katona.

Can't wait to be asked if I've read the insane women's mag feature where Pete talks about the hell of dating a Big Brother runner up.

I ment that in regard to my previous paragraph.

The volumn of work involved in proving a download legal or illegal is what worries me. There are plenty of speed camera mistakes, but they'd rather assume everyone guilty then invest man hours checking every result to weed out all the mistakes.

British law works on proving the innocent guilty beyond reasonable doubt. I'm living in hope that if similar happens here, it isn't a speed camera situation where to minimise work and maximise income people are assumed guilty and automatically fined, then left to prove their innocence at their own cost.

How will they distinguish between legal and illegal downloading?

There have been plenty of times I've downloaded albums I own on vinyl or on several occasions cds I've left at parties/in cars/round friend's houses. Heck, I've even downloaded a cd that was accross the room that I couldn't be bothered to rip because I had the cat on my lap.

And what about all the songs sent as promo to mp3 blogs by labels? I know they can be encoded to show their origin, but surely the ammount of work required to check every copy is insane.

I hope this doesn't develop into the music industry's version of speed cameras, where it's alleged to be for our good, but more realisticly is a giant cash cow for the people behind it.

If you can't convince people to part with £3 for a cd/vinyl, you'll never make a penny with a similar model.

The reason Trant struck oil with this one is he listened to what his fans wanted and delivered. If you don't have a fan base you may as well be trying to hand cdrs out to people leaving a club.

Saul Williams is the prime example of this. Trent said himself how shocked he was that almost no one paid for the album. As much as that wasn't really talked about, neither has been Saul having to sell his music to Nike and a car company so he can keep rent paid.

In fact the chap from The Ataris ended up selling loads of his private stuff on ebay about a year ago so he could keep a roof over his kid's head and food in their stomach till the new record comes out. That was after a failed "Hey, buy our album digitally months before we release the cd" idea which instead turned out to be "Hey, someone pay for the album, then give it to all your friends and flood blogs, download services and p2p engines with enough copies so everyone you've not met on the planet can get it for free!"

I don't think anyone will ever see him as anything other then 'another bedroom dj who knocked off some poor French house and put the tunes on his myspace page'.

He didn't do it in a genius way either, he's a seventeen year old who pretended to be one half of Daft Punk, then pretended to be 'a well known British producer'.

The music itself got a giant thumbs down from everyone. This time next week no one will remember this even happened.

Bugger. There goes my 'swap two tickets out the front with sixteen year olds in return for enough to purchase a second hand car' plan.

I found it sad that Bitchy Bitchy Ya Ya Ya, did a video featuring sexyness, Myspace made it a featured video with the still of someone putting on stockings and within the week they've had 100,000 profile views.

I belive it's known as 'the Fratellis effect'.

*makes note to stuff next music video full of girls in lingerie*

How sad it is that you look across myspace and such and there's no clean cut difference in musical or clothing fashion anymore.

You can find people from Hawaii, South Africa, Bulgaria, Glasgow and Ohio who all look identical and all listen to the same mix of whatever's cool/hyped at the mo'.

The homogeny issue is more worrying then the bad music for me. That and so many people swing with shit bands who are cool, surely that's a clear sign that if the BNP acted with guile and put some crap C64 graphics on their myspace page they'd be running the country by September.

I, representing those who read daily but comment bi-monthly, would much rather read about things like this in the news section then read about Ms. Spears wearing a pink wig for the evening.

Is all about promising the moon on a stick to as many people as possible, while returning the minimum number of phone calls you can get away with.

You have to question the motives of anyone who wants to get involved in A&R. They're cut from the same cloth as people who want to be football agents.

I love Girls Aloud to the point where I'm seeing them back to back in May and it was the most exciting ticket purchase of the last six months.

Ok, aside from My Bloody Valentine.

The song in question made me smile and has a ring of truth. They only did it because they know they have a large 'indie' following, it's not like they did a track trashing how regee's been stagnent for the past decade, is it? The band know they're a parody of themselves which is part of the magic.

You can debate the depth of 'what it all really means' to music, but at the end of the day it's some of the best pop England's produced in the past decade. The same goes for the Monkees, completely manufactured, but at the end of the day enough good tunes to stuff a blue whale.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to bob your head, sing along and do a crap little dance with your girlfriend in H&M without worrying about context.

I really didn't like the ol' Jaginz, but they're really growing on me.

I think Matador will be a fine home for them.

Isn't it? When I saw the shortlist I thought this could be interesting.

I thought Feist would have sold more, so I checked and as of Jan 8th the record has gone gold with 506,575 sales according to Billboard. I demand she's evicted.

...Because my post appeared a gazillion miles from the one I thought it was going to appear behind.

I wasn't having a shot at James, but agreeing that it's nice to see some passion voiced from a staffer as some of their more vocal number really shouldn't speak so often, if ever.

Is just how bad some bands come off in the OMM piece.

Foals and These New Puritans come across as fucking morons. The writter talks about intelegent indie and holds Pulp and The Smiths up as luminaries, then uses quotes from bands that make them look like a cross between self-righteous toffs cought mid-fox hunt and Motley Crue wannabe band morons. Great work.

"We make a lot of enemies, don't we?" Because you act like pricks perhaps?

Great press for all the bands involved, I suggest in the future they just resort to skinning like kittens outside play schools.

We had a long talk about music once, emphasis on once.

At one point I said it was a close thing between Ghostface, Iron and Wine, Panda Bear and The National for my album of 2007 and they replied "Who?"

Almost as shocking as them not knowing who Slayer was.

As far as class goes it's irrelevant unless it's made an issue, like sex, sexuality or political views. Shame on both for pandering to sell based on generalised views some people hold based on class and to encourage those views.

To Hoxton.

Don't take that as written though, because I'll probably fall asleep in the bath and miss it, like I did meet me in st. louis last night.

I managed to claim back £20 spent on a glaucoma panic related eye test, some lemsip and a box of tissues, needed while recording.

I included all the recipts and did everything correctly and I guess who ever got it in the post must have thought "This is too fucked up to question. And it's Friday afternoon."

The only reason I claimed was because someone told me when I got back that because of the family history of glaucoma I could have got the test for free. BAH!

Probably the first time in five long years I've seen someone use pretentious correctly on the internet!

I'm going to print out fifty copies of this page, roll them up and pop them inside my jacket. Thus the next time some scene kid accuses a band's pink t-shirts, or their minor chords of pretension I can pull out my wad and bosh them on the nose while screaming "BAD BOY! STOP WEEING ON THE RUG!"

Friendly Fires is the kind of love making where you put Sigur Ros on a Lasonic i931 ghettoblaster, slow dance on a rooftop at night as fireworks cascade above, then make sweet love on a blanket and whisper secrets in each others ears till dawn rises.

These New Puritans are the kind of love where you fall over drunk while going for a kebab, get concussion and half remember asking lots of awkward questions about favorite numbers and the 16th Century to the ambulance staff. You wake up under a park bench, then when your friends phone to find out what happened to you the previous night, you tell them you pulled a Spanish girl and spent the night having dirty sex in her Vectra.

Make me want to fuck.

Everyone sues everyone in America because getting blood tests cost around $1k, having your wisdom teeth out cosy $8k, and God forbid if you hurt anyone and they ake a day or two off work you'll have to pay their wages, medical and mental health specialist's bills.

Remember folks: Broken arm in Yank land = $30,000 worth of medical expenses.

Getting someone thrown on you by Akon = Priceless.

Because RHCP haven't attempted to rape popular culture dry over the fift years they've been together have they?

Even their name's a pop culture reference. Wankers.

Seemed to revolve around being in a 'hardcore-metal' band and touring with Household Name bands.

I've got more great times then I can remember from those days. Everyone associated with the scene was lovely, I'm still in contact with dosens of people from then. Not just other band people but zine folks, people who put us up/on and people who were involved in hideous nights out with Lightyear which almost always ended with twenty nude men in a petrol station at 3am or a broken bone from fighting a fence.

Great article, I've thought a couple of times that it's a shame that this era of British music is probably going to be ignored by history.

"Bring back ugly bands with iffy songs only deluded test-print-vinyl collecting fan boys can love!" Screamed the sniffy child. "How can we be elitest about bands my little sister likes and my Dad sings along to while he drives to work?"

warned us all about head banging?

They were right.

Sorry for calling you an idiot Mum. :(

Songwritter, musician, artist, actor and now puppet master.

Is there anything the man can't do?

I'm counting the hours until he opens a kebab shop called Fist Fuck.

we deodorant bomb the bastards back into reality.

Someone needs to hang a banner above the entrance to the dorms proclaiming "Your fine art degree isn't going to seem so smart when you're doing data entry."

Of Brainlove's band? The one with twelve second long songs about fish fingers?

That man could rape a bus full of primary school students, eviscerate them, pay someone to suicide bomb the bus and then dance naked around the burning remains while chewing on a child's arm soaked in PCP in a five hour long BBC live special and avoid prison.

Why pay £45 to see in three nights what you'd otherwise pay around £18 to see?

Brighton isn't Camden and you could travel one and a half miles between venues/bands and like last year you could find the venue overfull anyway when you arrive.

So, rather then seeing loads of bands you want to, you end up seeing twelve band, of which four you wanted to and eight you've never heard of before or since.

I can't find a way to justify £45 for a ticket for three days of bands I'd pay £6 a time to see.

If anything I think the album convinced a lot of people they're a one trick pony who's trick was entertaining for the length of a two minute Chris Cunningham av presentation.

Every year since 1986, or does it just seem like it?

Then 97% of myspace bands will play in the next two years.

How many more bands with the word ghost in their name are going to be confirmed? How ace would it be if they all played the same show?

"Wow, how good were Ghost baby?"

"Ghost baby? They're on next, that was Black Cherry Ghost. Wasn't it?"

"Nah, their van broke down, they're still stuck somewhere. I tell you that was Ghost of a Thousand."

Let's hope the Boyzone and Spicegirls reunions go off as well.

23 by Blonde Redhead craps in a plastic bag, duct tapes the bag over Neon Bible's head, then kicks it down the stairs while insulting it's mother.

Fifty quid for

"Indonesian sand sucks"

Worst song title ever.