chrisnettleton

were awesome. I was beaming, and yes the choice of closing song was great. They have some of the best singalong chorus's I can think of, and Mike Patton seemed to be enjoying the intimacy of the tent. (Why was the stage SO small for the Radio One tent?????). Lived up to the legend. Totally.

I still have no idea why the fairly pedestrian Monkeys were on after the incendiary Prodigy??? Anyone know??? At least the Kaisers on Sunday put on a show and should have swapped places with KOL so the Festival could have ended on a high. Radio head had a great lightshow, and were musically lovely, but music to sit on the couch and chat to friends over, not the headline set of the country's biggest rock festival. Way I see it, both bands did nothing to get the blood flowing before trying to suck you into their world, and the Monkeys, shorn of the cheeky chappie identity they were always going to grow out of, have way too little variety to hold the attention of anyone but pissed-up younger brothers of Oasis fans. Of course, there were a LOT of those, and so it was fine, but there was about as much energy on show as a wet pair of jeans. Yuk. You're headlining, gentlemen, and putting on a show is YOUR JOB, so maybe instead of shuffling around and pretending to be shy and inconsequential, grab us by the bollocks and take us away to a land far away from the stink of old beer, piss and muddy wellies, or relinquish your slot to someone who can.

NIN starting with the house lights on...really threw everyone, which is a cool thing to happen in an arena show. Was slightly gutted that Perry ad-libbed many of his vocals, and sang some important hooks WAY behind the beat...kind of trashed several of their songs, despite the band being on fire...luckily at the secret gig in Centro the next day they steamrollered my ass. Loved Trent getting one of his heroes up on stage to do some numbers...Numan doesn't get anywhere NEAR enough credit by critics... the forefather of almost all alienated-rock... loved the drummer switching to piano and then back to drums mid song.. it was clever, very well arranged, and completely energising!

and it's terribly arch of you to say 'what if you get given something as a present' etc. The question boils down to whether you are prepared to pay money to own a copy of a piece of music or not. Simple as that. The person who will not sacrifice the price of two to three pints of beer to buy an album clearly does not value the album as much as the person who does. ("strategic price imperatives of commercial entities"...good lord, mate!... you looking for a job in the government press office??)

Nobody has ever defended the hefty cut that record companies take from record sales, but 15% of the wholesale price (major deal) or a profit split (indie deal), is still money, and it still pays the rent. The enormous problem in having sponsorship and advertising as the only source of income for bands is that the corporate pressure to conform is WAY more intense than record companies ever are...why do you think commercial radio, funded by advertising, takes NO risks whatsoever, and solely plays songs by established artists.
Relying solely on advertising for musicians income would kill it as an artform very quickly indeed. Commerce has no time whatsoever for art, and has always stuck with common denominators, so while you might be thinking you're sticking it to 'the evil record companies', you're in fact taking a path that would condemn you to a lifelong playlist of reality TV winners. The business model that is definitely changing is not electronic downloads, but the internet's ability to put people together, and consequently put artists together with their audiences, without needing an expensive distribution network. Twenty years ago, selling cd's mail order would have been a one way ticket to a backwater, but now it's a very real and practical business model.

Musicians dream of 'making it' not because they want to be stinking rich, but because it is the only way they can do everyday shit like buying a house or having kids. Like playing sport, it is a career of limited duration, and the desperation to 'make it' is a desperation not to end your musical career in abject poverty (the most common way for it to end). Like I said previously...one must think it through... getting music for free means it has no value to you, it means that the hard work in writing songs, in learning to play an instrument...has no value to you, and if everyone did it, then there would be no professional musicians by default, only bedroom amateurs. You only have to take a trawl on myspace to realise how bad that would be for everyone.

I don't think the great freeloading masses give a flying f**k about whether or not musicians/filmmakers etc. go to the wall, so long as they can get their beloved free content. It's been like that for a while, and the self righteousness of said freeloaders makes me sick... one must think it through... if you get all your music for free, then you are not paying the artists for it. Sooner or later, they will have to stop devoting all their time to playing music, because unless they're living off daddy's trust fund, they won't be able to afford it, and will have to get a day job, leaving them mostly exhausted and unable to tour, since you can't have unlimited time off from a day job. It's all very well saying that bands who have 'made it' are all stinking rich (usually FAR less than you think, btw), but the point is that once you make a political decision that you will get all your music for free, you're not going to means test the artists your download to see whether they can 'afford it'...you shaft everybody with equal vigour.

Much as I hate it, advertising and sponsorship are the only way ahead when it comes to online music, mainly because it's sufficiently ubiqitous that said freeloading masses are unlikely to be fussy about it. What that means for the musician, god only knows. Vive la western capitalism... all those chumps pirating music are no different from bankers trying to make money out of money. Something for nothing. Damn the lot of you!

more interested in the DVD of this. (same with most live albums) the thing to relish is the chance to SEE something of a legendary band who were before your time.

any music costs next to nothing to make. Songwriters, bands, even gimmicky dance acts have a habit of omitting the time spent creating a recording, and only regarding the studio/equipment etc. costs as the cost of recording... maybe because (especially in this country) musicians have been generally brought up to think of themselves as not doing a 'proper' job. It's rubbish, really... in any other creative service industry like graphic design or advertising, you are paid by the hour (as are session musicians)...it's funny how the actual brains behind ideas, the songwriters and film directors, are actually expected to do all their work for free in the gamble that they will make future royalties.

Tour support is a worry, but that's merely a change of environment, and one perk is that if bands have no tour support, headliners record companies/agents etc. won't be able to continue with the perpetually disgusting phenomenon of the 'buy on'. It is possible to tour without crew, driving yourself around, using the house engineer, bunking on the promoters living room floor(or four to a travelodge room) and needing to sell merch to break even on van hire. When you start getting an audience, and reasonably attended headline tours, you can start thinking about improving things. Touring can be one of the main sources of revenue these days, and the aim for every band, even the small fish, should be to make it profitable.

british society should be particularly proud of the way we've brought up said 'kids' to be ignorant freeloaders. Maybe it's not just this country, but I find it truly scary the amount of people who have stopped associating material acquisition with hard work. There is no difference between the problems caused by the abstraction of music into just another form of digital content and the abstraction of money into much the same thing. The latter has led to the near collapse of the financial system, and the former is capable of wreaking enormous damage on the whole world of music. I'm afraid I absolutely disagree with placating, or even accomodating the 'kids' who believe that music collections should not impact on their pockets. I don't think bands also do enough to assemble proper albums, rather than just collections of similarly aged songs, and certainly the packaging of a cd has always been way less desirable than a 12" record...and maybe those people producing albums should perhaps try to do some innovation as to how to make the whole package more attractive... a CD digipack doesn't quite have the same impact as a gatefold vinyl sleeve, eh!

The major omission in all of these discussions is the role of radio. Radio is free to air, and you can listen to music for nothing all day... and the likes of Radio 1 should realise that as public service broadcasters, almost their first and foremost duty should be breaking new music, and absolutely not heavily playlisting things which are already successful like commercial radio does. If the days are dwindling where someone hears a track on the radio and runs out and buys it, it's because the quality of radio has become worse and worse. The unfunny talk-shit 'entertainment' that is feisted on us by so-called 'music' stations has done every bit as much damage to the music industry as downloading. Moyles, O'Connell and all should be thrown out into early evening television as fast as is humanly possible.

One thing that defenders of free downloads (probably due to ignorance) always forget is that the only artists who can AFFORD to give away songs are those who are already rich, the NIN's or Radioheads of the world (respect to Saul Williams, who isn't particularly, mind you). I'm not defending record companies or the horribly slanted royalty formula of a major record contract, or the way that bands who do receive the elusive advances are shuffled along a bandwagon that haemhorrages money, but it is a fact that it is only those who are in a position to pay their rent solely through music who are able to practise and write enough to really refine their craft. (again obviously there are plenty of signed retards who do nothing of the sort and are happy to stagnate). The only way to develop and maintain the interesting and original bands of this world is to be prepared to pay for the time they spend making music.

The argument for making cd's £5 makes me kind of sick... I'm 40, and that's what I used to pay when I was a kid, but relative to the cost of living that was WAY higher (A Yorkie was considered outrageously expensive when it came out, priced at 15p!). Most cd's cost about a tenner, which is 3 pints of beer... just what value do you so-called music lovers place on that commodity when undoubtedly you'd think nothing of spending double the cost of a CD on an irrelevant piss up?? I think there is a whole lot of the british something-for-nothing disease in this argument, the same disease that makes people in this country sit on their increasingly obese arses and believe they deserve the world on a plate.

Jello Biafra was/is one of the real deals. Can't think of too many other punks who've been arrested by the FBI. aaaahhh Fresh Fruit....

write from the heart

Genuine enthusiasm, and it's polar opposite, genuine anger or passionate detestation (did I make that word up?) are the most fun to write and the most fun to read. Amidst SOO much that is slightly nearly vaguely a bit of quite but not altogether bad nor good, a real love/hate situation provides some certainty. I would hope that DiS never has a music 'policy', and indeed that's one of the things that makes it better than the printed press... we should write from the hard, and if that sometimes swims against the stream then so be it...better to be a leader than follower... I'm a little bit against choosing soft targets, though. Picking a mainstream pop act and writing a too-clever indie kid's critique is a waste of column inches...it's much more interesting when there is an occasion to read about an unfashionable band's new exceptional record, or the hatred of a lover scorned when an 'untouchable' band drops the ball and relies on their good name to sell a crap one.

and blistering barnacles. Can't make it, and as an old skool-er I would have liked to sink a beer to celebrate... Anyway....have a fun time, Sean, and pat yourself on the back many times indeed!

Rage were really good, but I'm glad I saw them the first time around...Zack used to be like a Prawn with a firework up it's ass. I actually got bored listening to Metallica. Didn't have any fire in their bellies...Slayer a couple of years ago would have whipped their ass for breakfast!

them when Stef was playing bass/singing and Rudi was playing guitar. They're still really good, and all, but I loved the Tom Waits and Scratchy jazz dimension the band had in those days. Funny (and good) that none of it is dated... the great advantages in keeping it simple and real and not overproducing records.

One thing that guts me is that you can't seem to find anything representative of Evil Superstars on YouTube...they were a better live band (though Millionaire kick my ass!)

Slightly gutted that for some reason the entire genre of 1960-1980 funk appears to have disappeared from the consciousness of most english musicians. Think Isaac Hayes, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Parliament, Sly Stone etc. and think about any recent band in the same sentence...know what I mean! I say there is a musicians equivalent of Reading(W)Riting & (A)Rithmetic, and this country has got more and more illiterate. Even the Prince tangent is looking very withered. It's not at all good (Vive La Craig Charles on BBC6!)

the book. I think the problem maybe is that he's become so immersed in his 'must at all times be controversial and as un-PC as possible' persona that it's easy to lose the plot. Lately they've gone all flag waving, and though I can see a valid intellectual point that it should be just as acceptable to be proud to be English as it is to be proud to be Scottish or Welsh, in England such behaviour just rallies the narrow minded minority. John Lydon may have come from a white working class background, but the 'working class' that he seems to be drawn to in his old age has been all but destroyed by Thatcher and Blatcher...there ARE no people these days working 9 to 5s in manufacturing...it's either service industries and a concept called middle class that Johnny clearly hasn't grasped, the far-too-rich who were always there, and a ghettoed underclass who don't give two fucks for punk rock because it doesn't speak to them like Grime and HipHop do. The blind alley that he's been walking down of late just shows him up for for the out-of-touch Los Angeles based anachronism that he is.

From reading his autobiog, JL had an awful lot of time for Jamaican music and the black Londoners around at the time, and it's hard to imagine him suddenly becoming racist. It's very easy to imagine him trying to say some smart arsed putdown that actually wasn't funny at all, or indeed intelligible to anyone other than himself...think about it...if the words 'such a black attitude' were indeed said then what the f**k does it mean??? It's hardly racism to say that only a black person would want PiL to reform...it is basically saying nothing at all. Obviously having the word 'black' flying out of Johnny's spiteful old gob toward Kele is going to immediately give the worst possible impression, but Lydon makes a policy of trying to piss off and get under the skin of anybody he meets and it's only those who respond in kind who seem to get on with him. As for the people who actually assaulted Kele...press charges.. send to prison. I hate the fact that entourages get away with this kind of shit, or the fact that the W'houses of the world can get away with repeated assaults when a hoodie in a fist fight is banged up without a moments thought.

Pre OK Computer Radiohead were really edgy live, mainly because of Jonny and Thom putting a lot of energy into the performance. Since then they appear to perform as introverts, and if you are not drawn into the music it becomes a piss boring show. Kiss is the diametric opposite, but Simmons should work on his own act a bit, because the Stooges they are not... having a colossal explosion every five minutes may indeed stop the audience getting bored, but it's no substitute for genuine adrenaline.

liked to have been there. Good point about the narrow horizons of the average schmindie kid...blame Oasis...indie is as mainstream as having Cheryl Cole as your ideal woman!

(Hi Dale, btw!). They're always funny beasts IN albums...like novels, in the sense that the best bits and the Deux Ex Machina is always the last third (apart from The Fragile, which was structured differently). Perhaps (if such a thing would ever happen) Trent should never do a greatest hits, but instead a greatest finales

Nothing wrong with Punk, but people lose perspective when discussing the bands of the time. Even John Lydon was not entirely without precedent (check out 'Iron Butterfly' from the Can album'Delay 1968'). In terms of energy, it's difficult to see how you can say your average punk band was any more blood,sweat and tears than beat combos like The Yardbirds twenty years previous, and Mods, Rockers, Hippies etc. were much more prevalent as youth movements.
What separated punk from the other things
is the same thing that separated 'Brit Art' like Tracey Emin from the rest of the art world... the most important thing about 'punk' bands wasn't the substance of what they did (which was frequently like a cacophonic school band), but rather how they conceptually justified it. Fucking tailor MADE for journalists, really!

he really wants to embrace is the amount of money NIN made for themselves by taking out the middle man.

It's not comparing like with like, but Prince is one of the only people I can think of who could completely play Matt Bellamy off the field... though one wonders where MB will go...imagine if Muse could mutate and evolve enough to have that kind of longevity??

they are referring to the Ray Davis-owned recording studio of the same name. I don't write much because I find it nigh on impossible to do great writing about mediocre bands. Such music gets me so depressed about the world that I dry up. This is GREAT writing, because KK does exactly what I find so difficult.
On the Kooks... though there will be always space for pop that lets you escape from your drab working day, what is frustrating about the 'indie' pop world is that it's so fucking comformist and ultra conservative. Pop has NO rules, no self righteous genre-fans to satisfy, and so long as you can write a memorable tune people can sing along to...ANYTHING goes. Great pop is a truly greast thing. Mushy Peas like the Kooks, far from being somehow cooler than the R&B world are actually a billion times shitter... Britney, Riyanna, Usher etc. are MUCH better than this!

Worst Case Scenario, the Tom Waits angle of their old bass player Stef, and the Jazz angle on the first two albums. Less keen on later quieter songs...they can get a bit MOR, though TB's lyrics are better now...obviously you have to give the guy a degree of leeway for writing in his second language. I saw them tour WCS in the Jericho Tavern, and 'Secret Hell' made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck...they had a bit more energy about them then, which I kind of missed last year. Love Mauro Pawlovski, and it makes me sad that Evil Superstars had to split, because they were awesome live, though Millionaire are brilliant, and I'd say the best live band of any of the above.

Otherwise it's going to put me off my dinner...ewww

was extreme genius. Wish it was still being made. As for PD...whatever.. grow up...you're not big and clever, being a public smackhead press whore makes you a dumb circus monkey and generally destroys any artistic credibility you might have wanted. Was in NYC a year or two ago and Fiddy drove into the upper East side in a Lamborghini, stereo blazing like a Corsa in Brixton and scored drugs, for which he pretty much instantly got busted... some people will do anything for publicity.

Pete... do some good work and get your publicity the hard(but genuine) way...or just f**k off.

have a stage sponsored by a gun company? If you're going to get into using dirty dollars to sponsor gigs, why stop with tobacco?

Remembering all the massive hoo haa over corporate sponsorship generally, this is a million times worse than a mere cola giant.

Having said that, what an own goal! In the age of the internet, the negative publicity SO outweighs the marginal promotional value of having the company name paraded in front of a relatively small amount of punters. In fact...maybe they've pissed their whole sponsorship budget down the plug with this....ha ha!

Obviously. It's the paper of the rich householder, and prob the nastiest rag of all.
However... when I was in the US, metropolitan roadworks were 24hours/day, and WAY faster, rather than the 3-6months of pissing around that characterises London... so there we have it.. if the metropolitan posh folk REALLY cared about London they would allow 24 hour works outside their house an understand that it's necessary for the efficient functioning of the city!
Slebs are too scared of the paparazz... scared of being photographed off duty without their warpaint on... but hardly anyone has the bottle to brave it out...people will get rapidly bored of photos of a middle aged woman out shopping, you'll cease to be hello-worthy, and can get on with your job, or your retirement, or whatever. The point about the paparazz is if you really stand for something, or have a proper body of work (unlike 90% of the gossip columns, famous kids, reality TV winners etc) they can't harm you!

with you. Obviously if you don't LIKE metal records, then there's a gulf of understanding that will never be crossed, but it's sad that such critique is usually aimed at the corporatised late Bizkit albums, Linkin Park etc., conveniently forgetting incredible records like 'Slipknot', 'System Of A Down', '3 Dollar Bill' and 'Follow The Leader'. For non metal fans it was probably hell, but from my point of view it was a time of progression and experimentation.... metal now is comparatively regressive and directionless.

One of the best performances I will ever see when Rollins band supported the Chilis on the Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour. It was like standing in front of a jet engine.

of Heavenly Social many years ago... Chemical Brothers, Norman Cook, Jon Carter, Richard Fearless mixing up records... heard songs off 'You've Come A Long Way, Baby' in their infancy, and the roots of Monkey Mafia and Death In Vegas.... and then for me not so long after dance music began it's decline, ceasing to do anything new or interesting... just mixtures of what had gone before. Maybe those days were the indian summer of the whole phenomenon of Rave Culture before it rid itself of all it's hippy 'alternative lifestyle' clothes and became the default Saturday Night Out.

Well done on finding the Hip Hop Hasselhof!!!

LOL

Seems to be mostly championing avante garde punk-y things of late, or the edgier side of 'Alternative' as opposed to Indie. Nowt wrong with that, in the sense of being one long Peel Session. Fairly intellectual DiS at the mo, methinks.
I'd wish for mainstream genres to break out of their bubbles and cross fertilise again. 'Indie' thinks of punk the way England fans think of 1966, and simply has not ever contemplated moving on, and metal seems to find great difficulty in remembering that before Maiden and Sabbath there were The Kinks and the MC5.
If there were bands whose songs stuck in your mind like glue, but whose influences appeared a total mystery... that would be my kind of DiS band....I wonder if such a beast exists?

what they were asking for. Also wonder who their man in EMI was, in their last stages. Keith Wozencroft, who signed and developed them, is now way up amongst the directors, and one wonders whether this means they would have had to deal with other people who maybe didn't 'get' them.

The Oxford Union claimed that inviting Griffin and Irving was in order that their views be proved wrong in debate. Free speech is one thing, but are the members of the union so up their own arse that they think that you can argue a bit and all of a sudden, the guest speakers will hold their hands up, and say...Oh Gosh, Oxford Union, I'm so glad you showed me the error of my ways, I leave here a reformed person. For Irving to deny the holocaust in the face of masses of tangible evidence to the contrary shows that he's not a logical debating scientist type, but rather someone wishing to twist history to fit his own view of the world. Griffin is just glad for any opportunity he is given to paint the same fascism as terribly reasonable and the natural home of the average Joe. Belief is not founded on logical debate.

I seem to remember Morrissey being one of those who mourned the passing of england with a capital E. Haven't read the NME article. Unfortunately, in the days where England was this terribly well mannered place populated by Ladies and Gentlemen, our dear governments were invading, pillaging, destabilising and generally stomping the fuck out of the rest of the world. We made the Americans look like angels, and created most of the unstable war zones that exist in the world today. You want to get nostalgic, than make sure you remember EVERYTHING.

Are responsible for some of my favourite live shows, though it's funny how they are labelled as a seminal hardcore act in these pages. In the early 80s, indeed, but by the 90s they had become a fusion of Big Star/Cheap Trick/Jellyfish and one of the most entertaining live bands I can think of.

I can't think of a GREAT band where there is only one dominant ego. Whatever the reasons for their split, it was Oliveri's punkish sense of fun combined with Josh's more classic sense of songwriting that made those two records, and without the former the band is a little disembowelled. The songs may be great, but it all takes itself a bit too seriously.

I know to an extent BJM has come into success by a wildly different route than said former child star, but when it comes to exploiting his own image in order to be successful, he can't really claim to be wholly innocent. Every single schmoe in a band wants to be on the front cover of the paper. What is clearly offensive is the industry pressuring female r&b stars to walk and talk like strippers, but is that pressure really there?...Or is it a case of girls complicitly getting down to the basest form of attracting attention. Let's face it, mainstream r&b is so fuckin generic, that maybe they (stars and their surrounding suits) think it's the ONLY way to attract attention to songs that are mostly highly polished turds.

Keane's sustained mush, 2001 is as sparse as a concrete prison camp.
I'm trying to imagine...Da-Da-Da De-Da...Mr Tee-Oh-Double-Emm

But Corin Hardy totally rules.

that the place to casually slag off a band is not the obituary notice of one of it's members. Whether you like his band or not, have some fucking respect.

a dig at bass players too. Not sure whether to question the questionable science, since this seems to be one piece of news originally due for release on 1/4/07, but it's definitely true that sound propagates better through denser mediums, and that while clouds of soot (i.e. particulate carbon) might somehow deaden sound, it's hard to see quite how the CO2 would be reduced into soot in the upper atmosphere.

Sounds like Elastica pretty much, but with a stabb at My Chemical Romance at the (slightly superflous) outtro section. For a band so conscious of their image and following in the long line of Johnny Thunders worshippers was a bit surprised to see them all wearing their guitars really high up like session players. I guess it's a bit too reliant on style over songwriting, but it makes me chuckle how the jeans-and-t-shirt wearing visually monotonous masses always get so perturbed by bands who try to DO something with the way they look. This is really little different from many bands on these pages...competetent and tight, delivered with plenty of attitude, but beneath the musical clothes doth not lie the foundations of a hit single.

It's just weird to try to accomodate "...By applying our expertise in artist development ..." with a modern major label. They just don't DO that shit any more.

I'm no fan of the Stereophonics, but the way V2 broke them (by rigorously touring the band for two years) was a great way of developing them and getting them a solid fanbase. Somehow I can't imagine that Universal are going to have two years of belief for a new artist.

I liked Kula Shaker (less for Govinda and Tattva and more for Grateful When you're Dead). MUCH rather them than the Corals of the world, because KS were a proper good band, great drummer, great bass player, great guitarist, great keys, great energy. Completely retrogressive, but they do it very very well.