dan-oh

Just one idea - he could NOT leak details about how much he's giving to charity through unidentified 'guests' in order to publicise upcoming record releases.

didn't you see Live Aid?

Oh - someone else realised this as well. Well that goes to show that it's an obviously stupid idea, like ID cards.

I suppose they are admitting that it's essentially the same as the first. Self-aware and all, but still deeply annoying from a conversational, internet searching, referencing etc point of view.

Auntie (buying xmas present for nephew): "Have you got the Franz Ferdinand CD?"
HMV shop assistant: "Which one?"
Auntie: "Oh, I think it's called 'Franz Ferdinand'."
HMV bloke: "Uh-huh. Which one?"
Auntie: "Aghhh!"

I see these problems before they arise.

look, I opposed the war for all sorts of reasons. But given this thing was about Iraq, then it makes me want to agree to sending another 10000 troops in. I think the idea that you should be more against the war (and there are plenty of good reasons to have been against it) because people are threatening terrorism, is insane. Do the exact opposite of what they want, or if you can't do that, do nothing at all.

"establish a climate in which people aren't moved to violence"? ? - Better to establish a climate where people aren't moved *by* violence. Then it will stop working.

your maths is wrong. should be a "=>" or summat.

I dunno - the 'urban' that Radio 1 plays isn't really hip-hop - it tends to be piss-poor rnb pap like the Black Eyed Peas. so the less of the better.
But still, that comment about guitar-music was really depressing.

sectioned, not 'sanctioned'.
sorry...

"Like Effloresce Sean says...it's about style. There really is almost no new way of throwing together chords and a melody... it really has all pretty much been done before, so what we have is re-combining, sticking one style together with another"
Just like online opinion pieces.

But maybe DiS are paying them too much. I mean the £5 you pay for a Rough Trade compilation gets split between the 20-odd bands on the CD, plus obviously the indie-capitalists who run the label itself. So DiS are being too generous either to the bands or, ahem, to themselves.

it's coz the Streets were so 2003

"Most resonant for me was seeing Darth Sidious being vanquished by Mace Windu and calling to Anakin to help him, in a ghostly echo of Luke’s cries to his father as he suffers at the hands of the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi."

What I hate most about the Star Wars films is the way you have to be clued up on all the stupid-name stupid characters of George Lucas's stupid little fantasy world to get anything out of his tupid films.

pah. i'm gonna start a band called University Challenge, and they're gonna be massive style icons.

You're worried that people think that you're un-American coz you don't like Ricky Gervais? But the American's were so not bothered about him that they didn't even ask him to be in their version of The Office.

It's weird - I noticed something odd about the harmonies, but i really thought it sounded quite affecting and original. like something Coldplay and those other note-perfect bands could never achieve.

he criticizes 'first past the post', but doesn't say anything about proportional representation or the single transferable vote as alternatives. which is weak.

The BBC should say: look we're about 10000million times bigger than the Private Eye which isn't the slightest bit worried about libel (ie it pays out loads in damages), we can take on the pigs who do shit things and then hide behind the libel laws, sue us if you like. But they won't do that coz they're shit. Not that its libellous to say 'all politicans are rubbish'.

The main thing is the BBC need the next Labour Government to renew its charter on generous terms. The best way of sucking up to the government without being too obvious is to pretend that some story/piece of music is somehow anti-government (pretend, coz the Misty's lyrics quoted above clearly don't attack anyone more than anyone else) and then ban it. Then Blair say 'ahh, someone stamped down on artistic freedom all for me'

Lawyers have feelings too

No: a cow's udder sewn to the side of his face wouldn't make him look any uglier.

"the words will send out an immediate, positive and life-affirming message to all visitors arriving in the UK at London Luton Airport" ... because they need some consolation at this point.

hmm. but Apple doesn't have any Y chromosomes. basically, unless its some massive statement about male superiority, the title just doesn't work.

they radio1 controllers wouldn't get away with this sort of anti-music crap when John Peel was still in the office to put them to rights. i bet they were happy when he died. the scummers.

I disagree with everyone here. It's not the headline's fault if the police call pepper spray a firearm.

But for god's sake don't try and defend the police classification: pepper spray is a million miles from a gun of any sort, and it's mad and quite illiterate for the police to deal with the two things on the same footing. A knife would be much more dangerous than a pepper spray device, but from the documentation you would infer that the bloke had done something far worse than carry a knife.

The crack is completely wasting his appearence. In that picture he looks like the singer from Keane

Jesus! Who thought in terms of "blame" and "ignorance" when Elliot Smith killed himself? If anyone had said he was a "twat" on DiS the day after, they would have got 400 hostile posts. And noone would say that those 400 people would be having a "compassion competition" (in the words of some person on this thread) - because people are actually genuinely upset about that sort of mindlessly unempathic comment.

Sure, lots of DiS people are really into Elliot Smith's music - and, presumably very few people give much of a shit about Houston's work. And maybe that really does make a difference. But it seems a pretty low way of making the point that you don't like RnB or this guy's records to all chime in with snide remarks about his mental illness. And its a pretty stupid way of making the point, since the same arguments rebound on artists that you may well care about, like elliot smith and kurt cobain.

In fact, this reminds me a lot of the whole controversy over certain DiS writers taking pretty excessive amounts of joy over various rappers getting into trouble with the law. Back then, people defended this with the familar tabloid argument along the line of when someone is in the stocks, the public's got a right to throw fruit. Criminals deserve to be laughed, named and shamed ad infinitum, thrown to the lions etc. Difficult to argue against that without being labelled a liberal. But now it seems we've extended this to displaying pleasure at the misfortune and personal tragedies of musicians whose music we don't like. There's something unsavoury about it

"If the blokes crazy then I'm sure he doesn't care about a couple of sarcy comments on a message board somewhere."
Well that's certainly not funny. Unless you're being crass and nasty alan patridge-stylee - ironically. But sadly, you're not, are you?

why were they ever punk again?

Yeah, I'm slightely dubious about the idea of presenting an article as a list when the items on the list:
(i) can't in any way be ordered 1, 2, 3 etc (unless, say, the Kaiser Chiefs are 4-Britpop-units-more Britpop than the Ordinary Boys)
(ii) don't really hang together anyway.

I mean, OK, all the bands are vaguely Britpop in some embarrassing way (from whence the humour arose, etc), but half of them are one's that Adie likes, and half of them she hates. Its just not much of a *list*. I mean are we gonna end up getting the sort of pisspoor filler you get in broadsheet supplements like "5 things you didn't know about anything", or even just "7 Things"?

In all other respects I enjoyed the article

tigermilk and sinister are generation-defining classics. fact.
But they didn't win because of that, but because 80% of their fans are geeky web obsessives, and all of that 80% almost certainly voted.

That's absolute bollocks: self-defence is a complete defence to any criminal charge (being a justification rather than a mere excuse). Killing someone in self-defence (ie reasonable force etc) is NOT manslaughter - there's no liability at all.
Mere 'provocation' (which includes supposed self-defence that falls short of being necessary /reasonable) reduces murder to manslaughter - you were probably thinking of that.
On Satpal's side of the story (which the jury didn't even get to hear, let alone properly consider), he was being stabbed in the face by the racist thugs - which definately justifies fighting back and hence he committed (as ADF are correct in saying) "no offence".

That's Al Murray on the right isn't it?

It is. gosh!

i cried when i heard they were discontinuing it

better than its neighbours. more trees, less pikeys. i hate kent

Key Stage 2 level actually: I'm sure you are expected to understand angles by age 11

How many jewish rappers are there anyway?

And that the bottling was for musical reasons is underlined by the fact that the whiter-than-white Rasmus received the same treatment.

It's as if no-one saw him, which is a bit silly. I didn't go this year - what was he like?

DiS trolls more like. hehe. heh.

this kind of po-faced inability to detect satire probably plays into the hands of the extreme right

No but seriously - is it really statistically the quietest bank holdiay for the paddington to reading line? I mean this is the sought of 'detail' (a bit like the detail of whether your rails are properly welded together so that you don't kill dozens of people in massive train disasters) that i'm not confident those 'trustworthy' directors actually lift a fucking fat finger to research.

but you'd simply disappear over there for critising the government (or increasingly, for critising your employer) or being in a punk band and the like. some people are actually far worse of as a result of the liberalisation of the economy, and government at all levels is still hopelessly corrupt. by all accounts, vietnam is a better example of a post-maoist society - i dunno, maybe i'd rather be growing up there.

thats not even a fully-formed argument. you present someone with a completely irrelevant hobbesian choice and when they refuse to rise to the bait no doubt you smirk and feel all smug and warm inside.
I do hate the corruption and the exploitation of the west, but like most people i would hate to be pointlessly uprooted from my home and sent to a country which is worse. Obviously. The fact that i think eg, modern day china is appalling IN NO WAY detracts from my belief that the west is also applalling and could be made a far happier place. Your logic is utterly shit.

"Bush represents Middle America...the fuck he does"
Sure he does! You don't have to be anything at all like someone to 'represent' them: take robin hood, george orwell or tony benn (all can be said to represent the working classes despite being toffs) or indeed morrissey (a hero to - and model for - english middle-class youngsters depite having distinctly working class origins himself).

At any rate the worldview of the playboy at the top actually pretty much does mirror that of the middle american: venal, nasty, utterly rejecting empathy for people who look or act differently, deeply anti-intellectual, primitively religious and ambitious for personal success without any higher desire to contribute to the world (and from a psycological point of view, christian evangelising comes under the heading of pursuit of 'personal success' rather than contribution). In all these respects he's on the same level as the average american, only with vastly more inherited wealth.

Not that michael moore actually ever tries to analyse anything on this sort of level. he's become a bit wank since his tv stuff frankly.

hows about they get paid for painting big letters on their robes to spell out the name of some evil corporation? ideally, it would be one with a 23 character name. or they could form a lottery syndicate. or set up a brothel which they all take turns staffing and pimping for.

at the very least they could keep overheads down by buying food and booze in bulk from the cash-and-carry. in fact, i'm sure that they are very sensible and do this anyway. but it *is* quite a conundrum how bands like this are financially viable. and how does pete docherty afford a £300,000 a year heroin habit? I don't understand the world...

sure, they're a good band - which is why i reckon they should have done more than one other album, and they should have got better and better until they all died of exhaustion, by rights.
oh and the Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle is loads of fun. come on now!

do you really need to use that many wacky metaphors and similes in one article? it actually makes it quite tiring to read. or maybe you get special pro rata bonuses for shovelling them in. in which case fair enough; I'll just skim read from now on.

but they did fuck all after Marquee Moon.

That was a very nicely structured article. 9/10 for structure. Well done!

There isn't much of a 'market' when about 2 different promoters divy up the festival scene between them and there is no competition on price.

Also the 'free market' doesn't work at all if people are continually being misled, esp by things like booking fees and gig guides which should be included in the price. Frankly, if a festival ticket is stated to be £100 in large print on the posters, but the only way you can actually get a ticket is to pay an extra £6 to ticketmaster, then the advertsing is not so much "misleading" as "lying" - the OFT should nail Mean Fiddler et al for that alone.