JacobJones

they do sound like Dolly Mixture but I still maintain that the Pipettes are better. There's basically only three good Dolly Mixture songs.

I think he looks like Julie Burchill

no, no ... there's a massive alt-country sized holed in DiS. Can't wait to see lucinda williams, like. I hear laura cantrell is supporting :)

to paraphrase Tony Benn, you are "a signpost not a weather-cock"

haha.

do you know people who feel LOYAL to their supermarket? i buy music I like to listen to, not music that's been made by bands that i have loyalty towards.

no, i don't think the first EP sold enough to make anyone think they'd be massive so i don't see how the band could have had the upper hand in negotiating with a record label.

an increase in profit necessarily means an increase in turnover but an increase in turnover doesn't always mean higher profits. but there's no value in increased turnover and lower profits over the longer term, surely?

apologies for the insult.

hands up who thought the Futureheads would ever have a top ten single?

until a band have actually flogged some records when it comes to negotiating the label ALWAYS has the upper hand. And by 'turnover' you mean 'profit'. Moron.

any company which fails to meet a consumer demand will go out of business. Again, to talk of 'loyal fans' is just moronic - this isn't football.

"Not saying I'm right"

you basically said that, so long as it happens, you're right. sounds like a fairly baseless assertion to me.

"but at least give the consumer a new product"

they give the consumers what they want. if there was no demand, then they wouldn't do it.

very few bands who've never had a deal before are in any position to make demands of a record label. you're being extremely naive ...

to describe yourself as a band's "loyal fan" is just excruciating ...

oh, for fuck's sake ... you can't make a fairly ill-founded criticism and then justify it by simply SAYING you are right. Consumers can only be ripped off if they choose to be. Record labels not charities etc etc etc.

for fuck's sake, the fans have a choice in whether they get fleeced. don't spend money and then whinge about it ....

you wouldn't seriously go back and rebuy an album for a bonus DVD would you?

nothing's more important than credibility amongst anal indie losers, after all ...

i thought we'd probably come round to agreeing in the end. just, i've had heated arguments with BNP members and some of the stuff they come out with is a little frightening. they all seem to follow this hideous form of scientific racism and are obsessed with racial purity etc which would be meaningless to ordinary people. i remember at one argument this BNP lad dimissed what this girl had said by saying "well, you're mixed race and i disagree with that on principle".

i suppose i can take some encouragement from the fact that plenty of people are sufficiently apalled by them to organised events like that. But, as i said, not totally sure that it will achieve much.

Incidentally, what are you doing these days? Not spoken to you much since our trip to the pizza hut in cambridge nearly FOUR YEARS AGO. Bet you weren't expecting me to say that, eh? :)

well, if there's one thing people in those places resent it's being labelled as racist by the liberal middle-class intelligentsia. So if a bunch of fairly middle-class blokes from the south east in some stupid indie band show up and preach about how "racism is bad" i just feel it'll strengthen their resolve. i can't help but feel slightly more pro-American when i'm confronted by SWP supporting students. i think there's very much a feeling in poorer areas that it is working class people who bear the burden of immigration and multiculturalism for the benefit of more middle class people. that's why you might get, for example, a young professional couple living in east london and talking up its vibrancy and diversity and then fucking off to surrey as soon as they have kids and see how dreadful the local hospital, school etc is.

i don't think it's an issue of these people (BNP voters) having a racist ideology (nick griffin explicity does, though, which is just terrifying given his background and education n all)
It's probably a protest against bad government which has allowed different ethnic groups to divide into two distinct camps: one housing estate versus another, one school versus another etc etc. I don't think enough effort was made to assimilate those immigrants from the indian subcontinent in the 50s and 60s into their host communities. too many could get away without learning english etc.

i disagree. playing a gig in an area where there is no support for the BNP has no effect, really and if you were to play one in dewsbury, oldham, keighley, blackburn, burnley, bradford or sandwell then you'll probably only serve to encourage people to support the BNP. Basically, the BNP's underlying philosophy is so bankrupt that it shouldn't be too difficult for politicians to undermine it. Aside from that, it's up to the government to try to engineer social cohesion in those towns where there is an obvious ethnocultural dichotomy. Unfortunately, the BNP are a response to concerns felt by a small number of people. Admittedly, those fears have been exacerbated by hideously biased mainstream media but they're still there. I'm just not convinced that its about ideological racism at all.

pop tarts? horrible? pah ...

what's the point in raising the profile of an organisation that can't have any impact on anything whatsoever? Nobody in Sandwell or Keighley is going to start espousing the virtues of multiculturalism on the back of an open air Babyshambles gig. If anything i reckon the association of "anti-racism" events with, essentially, idiotic students will only encourage people ...

i bought this band's mini album thing and, aside from that 'hollywood bowl' song, it's just dull and predictable stuff that it is a few years too late ...

so, on the new website ... the pictures of the girls in hats ... which one has turned blonde? i'm so confused ...

they do that in wearside and in boro. my mum speaks like that, like ...

do you pronounce 'tour' as 'tor' or 'war' as 'woor' ?

i've no actually heard anything. there were no MP3s on their site last time i checked but i just don't like their hair ...

much as i think Les Incompetents look as if they're dreadful, you give Terrashima five out of five ...

any university run venue is invariably soulless, i reckon. i'd just ban them outright.

but you're right about newcastle being better than northumbria. the big room at northumbria's like a leisure centre or something ...

sounds about right.

have you seen them on this tour they're on at the moment? sadly, i missed them in manc ...

buy the kate bush album too ...

oo, no ... she's lovely!

you couldn't voet for anyone though, could you? the best album i bought last year was by Polly Paulusma and my favourite gig was josh ritter. but in order to vote, i'd have to pretend to like U2 or the killers. and DiS is only slightly broader in its coverage than the NME, really - and has a far lower standard of writing ...

that doesn't make it worthwhile. should they do a tour of trunk road laybys ?

since you fear 'chavs' trying to gain 'indie cool' are you not concerned that the same thing will happen to bloc party? personally, i wouldn't give a shit either way.

franz ferdinand at least write decent pop songs whereas bloc party are flat and lifeless. as for keane, i don't massively like them, but i'm annoyed that it is as fashionable to hate them as it is to like bloc party and it's entirely unjustified - if nothing else, the bloke from keane can actually sing whereas the bloc party singer is perhaps marginally better than me....

well, that certainly answers my question, doesn't it ?

Get back to work !

actually, i've no idea if you're stupid.

if you're meant to be working till 5, how come we've been having this argument ?

michael, your arrogant witless stupidity is impenetrable and i can't be bothered to pursue this. just accept that you don't amuse, you grate.

michael, i feel someone ought to teach you the difference between the use of humour in news articles and being a supercilious pretentious tosser.

the word "please" can't constitute an entire sentence

i'm absolutely stunned by this garbage and i really don't know where to begin ...but here we go ...

this debate is simple. a band have recorded an album. some like it, some don't. Perhaps more people like it because someone somewhere decided bands that sound a bit like them are going to fashionable for a relatively short period of time. However, if their album goes to number one, the world will remain the same. No amount of "dreams and belief" will alter that.

The fact is we are just specs on a planet. Sooner you accept that the better.

Incidentally, i suspect Descartes would have hated Bloc Party too. Just a hunch.

best music coming out of the north east is made by beccy owen. then the golden virgins.

i can't imagine many people won't find funny the idea of you accusing someone else of self-importance.

why must you see everything in music as being part of some sort of revolution? the world is a far simpler place than you give it credit for ...

do explain how silent alarm has captured the spirit of the times ... no substance in that whatsoever

got a habit of talking up fucking wank then, don't you ?

no it's not important. you should support bands you LIKE. Music is infinitely more simple than DiS people are willing to admit.

oh, and i side with the person slightly further up the board. For every person who says they will buy the bloc party album as a result of reading this article, i will buy the Keane album. at least that kid can sing a bit ...

This article is impossibly embarassing. Hope you feel ashamed of yourself one day, Sean.
But a few points i'd like to raise

1) why will a bloc party number one "change" anything" you say it will "set new precedents" but that's just a meaningless sloganistic assertion. Try making some simple statements

2) We need less hype ?! That criticises itself ...

3) All this nonsense about being "post-Radiohead" (hahaha) implies that Bloc Party are progessive. Which is utterly false. Like most DiS type bands that made a breakthrough in 2004, they are utterly regressive and backward looking. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing - but, y'know, you are lying.