mreed has written the following articles:
GULF WAR 2 : OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM is like any sequel : it has to go one better than the original. There’s more guns. More explosions. And more everything. Bigger bombs! Bigger lies! Bigger bodycounts! And it’s all delivered free to your TV. You don’t even have to go to the cinema to witness the spectacle of t»
The Manic Street Preachers have confirmed that they will headline the first night of Manchester's MOVE festival on Friday 11th July. The show, at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground, will see the Manics supported by fellow Welshies Super Furry Animals. The festival, now in its third year, seems to be y»
Raised on a diet of Diagnosis Murder and Dorothy Parker, Natalie Haynes is Britain's funniest woman. (Well, apart from my ex, who is funny in completely different - and altogether less enjoyable - ways). Natalie's naughty and nice and not the type of woman that you'll see turning into a pale imi»
Metallica have confirmed that their new bassist is Rob Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendancies. The announcement was made in the early hours of this morning on the official site. Since the departure of previous bassist Jason Newsted in early 2001, Metallica have been hard at work in rehab, erratical»
The problem with fascists is that there’s both too many and not enough of them. Most of them know - and hate - each other. In fact if the extreme right wing are anything, they’re not at all united. So much for their precious United Kingdom. Their precious Homeland. And so, this is the problem with Nick Ryan's»
“I don’t care what someone does until it affects their work. When the work suffers, then it’s fair game.” - Harry Knowles First you’ve got it, then you’ve lost it. And you don’t know quite where you lost it, but there’s some nagging feeling that you left it far behind, and you don’t know where, so you can’»
Goddamit. This is wrong. So wrong. This is like reading the diary of your best friend and realising that he’s as mundane, dull, and fucked up as you are. It breaks every last ounce of credibility that Courtney Love has : she’s auctioning off the inner thoughts of a dead man who would, no doubt, be horrified to know th»
John Peel was right: if this lot were called Eins Vie Drie Zwei and were from Mulheim, they’d be hailed as the best thing since Sliced Bread. Which is a shame, because some bands suffer from their name and their history. This is surprisingly good but most people just won’t get to hear it because of the na»
“8 Mile” is Eminem’s very own Purple Rain. Such comparisons may very well be lazy. But more than that, they’re true. Take an urban kid living in trailer park squalor. Give him dreams of music and an ability beyond his intelligence. And a spirit-crushing job. All you need to do is give him a ch»
A friend of mine brought up on a diet of lame soul and Whitney Houston asked to hear what I was listening to one day. I placed headphones on his sensible ears and played him a song. It was called “Drug Raid At 4AM”. Ingredients: Sirens. Dogs Barking. Crashing Plates. Skipping Needles. Breakneck Thr»
MP3s = DRUGS, GUNS AND WORLD CRIME The Music Industry’s always been fighting a big bad wolf. The past few years it’s been Napstar, Kazaa, AudioGalaxy or whatever the latest P2P filesharing devices are. A few years before that it was bootleggers. A few years before that it was the Ea»
Lets just say that in Germany right now, the German Government were planning to put up a 10 foot statue of Adolf Hitler in a public place. Imagine the public uproar that would cause. Yet, when the House of Commons decides to erect a statue of Mrs. Thatcher, we, the repressed British, are meant to just accept it»
In my office, I hear people talk about a strange, new and lesser life form. I’ve not seen one of them - at least, not someone who resembles a different and lower form of life, but I know that they’re here, and that they surround me. I’ve seen that sci-fi film, 'They Live'. I know they’re everywhere and a»
The Lord Of The Rings : The Two Towers isn’t a great movie. It's an epic. A flawed masterpiece. A part of a jigsaw where hopefully the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Sadly, like the first film, the McGuffin of a plot is still flimsy, and the whole experience is overcooked and unapologetically huge»
There are some moments that define our lives. You remember where you were when you found out Kurt Cobain was dead. When Richey Edwards was abducted by the aliens. Where you were when Princess Diana met her finale. And where was I when I found out?
There was a buzz in my trousers. A text on my mobile phone.
The Manic Street Preachers follow up their latest tour and greatest hits album with the re-release of their new double-sided single - featuring new song "Forever Delayed" and a brand new recording of their 1992 classic "Motorcycle Emptiness". The band recently re-recorded, re-arranged and re»
Guns N Roses have done it again, in traditional Guns N Roses style, the band are reported to have cancelled the remainder of their first American tour in a decade on the basis of an unspecified illness in an unspecified member of the band. However rumour has it that guitarist Robin Finck has left the g»
“STEAL THIS ALBUM”.... Don’t dare do as System of A Down suggest. They don’t want you to actually “Steal This Album“. They need you to buy it. Like many new CDs, their new album is copy-protected with Key2Audio, some new form of copy protection that means that your CDs don’t play in y»
Australian stadium-rockers INXS have announced their first show in London since the death of vocalist Michael Hutchence in 1997. The band perform an acoustic show in London on Sunday 15th December at the Shepards Bush Walkabout (next door to the Empire, if you really need to know where it is). Ti»
I’ve got a great idea for a band. Take 10% Elvis, 10% Jesus, 40% proof Blues, 9% of Tennants Super, 4% Mao Tse Tung (a dash of), 5% Acid bleeps, 5% Country & Western, 5% big cowboy hats, 12% a demented fallen preacher, and aliases like Rock Freebase, Little Boy Dope, The Spirit, and The Mountain Of Love. And then we»
This is the most important film you will see all year. It could change lives. It’s not about big explosions, merchandising, t-shirts, or selling you popcorn. It isn’t about making you feel good or giving you a night's entertainment. It peels the top off the American Psyche and exposes the gaping holes ins»
In America they call places like this Sheds. Big corrugated tin cans where the sound bounces off like a radar signature. You’re herded into your seat, told to sit down and shut the fuck up like you’re at school, and people treat you like a leper if you dare to try and enjoy yourself. Security guards shine tor»
They’re almost a relic. A leftover. The band from Britpop that Would Not Die. Because preconceptions and prejudices are bad enough. Sometimes, a brilliant past can be as damaging as being unknowns. In other peoples eyes, Suede are yesterdays men. An album in at Number 24 (and out just as fast), sin»
Everyone's favourite boyband-muppet turned world-conquering Uberman, Robbie Williams, is due to play FOUR nights at Knebworth next summer. Whilst nothing has yet been confirmed, sources close to the industry have a hotline to staff at DIS Towers and tell us that tickets are due to go »
Forget that this lot are fortysomethings who have day jobs as directors at an obscure ad agency. Forget that they used to have worse haircuts than Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Forget that at their nadir, they were Debbie Harry’s backing band at Wembley Stadium and that they made some of the most godawful dance-f»
Charidee. Doncha just love it? It gives people like Phil Collins that warm glowy feeling inside, as they pledge their time to yet another useless cause, throwing money at a problem, instead of trying to solve it. So, tonight the music is almost irrelevant. Music, for all its beauty, all its greatness, a»
American rock recluses Guns’N’Roses kicked off their first world tour in a decade in traditional style in Vancouver - by failing to turn up and sparking a riot at the venue. The band failed to arrive and cancelled the show over an hour after it was due to start. 15,000 fans rioted in the streets outside t»
Here’s a few keywords for the Alabama 3. Swagger. Funk. Blues. Country. Western. Techno. Acid. Elvis. God. Cocaine. Trotsky. Gangsters. Genius. Sounds like my kind of world. A world where they don’t play anything as prosaic as a ‘gig’. They’re called Sermons. And they don’t go on ‘tour»
The world is full of useless compilation albums of previously available material which are cheap, tacky cash-ins to squeeze every last penny out of us. Meanwhile, the archives are full of thousands and thousands of hours of material that really should see the light of day. And here’s where we start to get»
"Every agent defects. Every artist sells out"
- William Burroughs.
This band used to mean EVERYTHING.
They used to want to turn Buckingham Palace into rubble. They wanted to destroy rock’n’roll. They could change people lives. They opened people’s horizons. They brought people in»
