proslo

I haven't been this excited about an album in ages.

I've never been in one before. Awesome gig, I thought all three acts were worth the admission (although perhaps not Manhattan Love Suicides, but only for the shortness of the set - the actual music was lovely).

By the way, I thought the crowd was rubbish. Appreciative, yes, but very static. Only a half dozen of us at the front actually seemed to be moving about. I do like the Chameleon, but the crowd doesn't half spend its time pouting...

But it seems to roughly follow this path (assuming the northernmost star in Eridanus is Dublin):

Almeria
Valencia
Barcelona
Burgos
Bordeaux
Lyons
Torino
Milan
Florence
Llubljana
Vienna
Prague
Dusseldorf
Amsterdam
London
Nottingham
Liverpool
Manchester
Dublin

Of course, I'm probably completely wrong. A lot of these aren't places I'd normally expect a US artist to play on a European tour, and he probably won't play this many dates, but as far as I can see that's the closest the lines of the constellation match up to a line of cities.

See if I can work out the European venues...

I want mushroom season to come around again.

Finally, a release date. Been looking forward to this for too long.

Anybody know where I can pre-order this? The Beggars Banquet shop isn't working.

are on Virgin Media, not because they want to, but because it's too expensive to reconnect a BT line to get proper ADSL.

I don't know anybody who's with Virgin out of anything more than pragmatism. They're a truly awful ISP.

is just fab, quite frankly.

Saw them supporting Broken Social Scene at the Scala last year, thought they were pretty good, and promptly forgot about them. Couple of weeks ago I found a few demos and singles online after really getting into Laura Marling and knowing that they were friends, and now I'm properly obsessed.

They're just so lovely. I forgot bands could be like that.

Way to get attention for the package. Not the way to play the game, fo' sho'.

but isn't Bo Diddley still performing?

Prince was the first one to come to mind though. I think he might be in the price range too.

It's definitely my second favourite show of this year (after discovering the Wire) and is on the edge of My Top 5 Shows Of All Time(c). It would easily be in there is not for the horrendous final 30-seconds of the final episode, though.

The character in the show isn't actually called Dani California, though, it's merely a nickname that Duchovny's character uses once in passing - presumably it was a conscious reference to the fact that Californication was the name of a RHCP album. Considering the show's full of pop culture references like that it's obscene and absurd to think that this will get anywhere in the courts.

it was a confirmation e-mail from seetickets, to me, thanking me for buying two tickets to see Marc Almond in Birmingham.

Shame I didn't actually buy any tickets to see Marc Almond in Birmingham, but they haven't got back to me about who the e-mail was actually for, and I've got some bloke's ticket reference number and everything.

Have they actually boycotted it?

I was there last night, near the front, and the thrower was near me - when it happened everyone stopped jumping around and several shouts of "what did you do that for, you cunt?!" came out. Kind of put a damper on the whole evening, unsurprisingly.

And Win said, "one more thing and we're never fucking playing this shitty city again," or at least that's what I heard - and nothing else was thrown, so I'm assuming they're not gone for good... I hope. I only counted three missiles overall anyway (the first that hit Win right in the middle of the face that looked like a bottle), a second bottle that just missed Regine, and a glowstick finally, which was when he said the thing about never playing hear again... if anything else was thrown.

He did seem quite jolly towards the end, in the encore, though. I think it kind of put a fire into him, in a way. Still a massively cuntish thing to do though.

Did I miss the meeting where it became cool to throw bottles at bands, and full cups of beer towards the front?

the way hipsters in the 50s who spoke in a fast rhythmic way were said to "rap"; and also the jazz accompaniement to poetry of the beat generation and its followers.

There's loads of things from the early to mid 20th century that could sound vaguely proto-rap to our ears, so I won't discount that maybe this guy, isolated, happened to think up something similar. But the important bit is when it all came together later on.

Isn't that what happened with Kate Bush? Dave Gilmour locked her in a barn for four years until she'd learned how to play every instrument that existed, invented a couple of new ones, and understood the delicate intricacies of production, or something...

odd... usually he comes across as the most lovely person ever to take to a stage with a guitar. When I saw him in London last month he couldn't stop saying how much he loved the audience.

He's got the emotional stability of a 13 year old girl, it seems.

as "Emmy hits number one spot", which made me very happy for the three or four seconds I was understanding incorrectly.

Whilst Caroline's A Victim is REALLY awful, I'll admit I really like Kate's other stuff. Even Foundations. Her acoustic stuff is really quite beautiful at times, and all this "she's the new Lilly Allen!" stuff isn't based on anything more than the accents (and they don't even come from the same parts of London, hell, Kate lives closer to Milton Keynes than Camden). Fucking music industry. It's nice that she's got a record deal, of course, but I can't help but feel she's being packaged into a product and won't realise it until too late.

we had a much bigger setlist. All we were missing were the people from Metric, and the rapper (I forget his name). Some friends of mine went to the Koko gig as well and said they weren't as whelmed.

Tickets aren't on any of the usual ticket sites (seetickets, gigsandtours, aloud, ticketmaster even), nor is it on the listings page of the Scala.

You sure he's playing over here? I heard it's going to be a rolling thunder revue-type setup over in the states, with a series of solo shows augmented with other BSS musicians, with a random mix of songs from each solo album so you'll never know what you'll get on each night. Sounds awesome to me, BSS at the Astoria last year is still the best gig I've ever been to.

I was there too - didn't see any bottles being thrown.

Unless of course they got mugged after the show, which to be honest wouldn't suprise me...

year they said they wanted to fence everything off to stop anyone getting free art. Fucking thiefs.

About 200 people are said to be heading down to the park in Lenton instead to get pissed on cheap white cider, if Facebook is to be believed.

Nothing more depressing for a young idealist student such as myself to arrive at said uni and find the Young Conservative stall the busiest at fresher's fair.

Also, what the hell is up with the hall eviction thing? The nerve. One good thing about BGP is we've got room until end of July, but still.

Rodrigo y Gabriela are one of the best things I've ever seen live, as only crazy fast spanish guitar-work can be. But to stick them with the Streets is like being offered sex with that cheerleader from Heroes only for her to do a massive shit on your chest before you climax.

Oh well. Seeing them at Latitude anyway. Rodrigo y Gabriela, not the lass from Heroes shitting on someone.

and somehow have had the album for almost a month now.

It's amazing though, and I shall not only buy a copy for myself, but one for all my friends. It should go some way to redressing the karmic balance...

It's not like this should be a surprise to anyone, it's the organic nature of popular music since way back in the 1950s. It generally goes:

A few actually alright first few bands > Lots of imitators get influenced and start to appear > Suddenly the market is saturated and people want something else > a few actually alright first bands in a different genre come along > and so on...

Not like this is anything new, really, but it's kind of predictable. Of that list at the end of the article a couple of those bands are actually alright, but then the rest are just cheap derivative knock-offs.

My money's one a dance revival. Since punk things seem to go either guitar-based to electronic to guitar again (roughly), so I'm betting on some electrical gubbins coming back into fashion.

with Starbucks that they're quite clearly one of the worst examples of shameless consumerist globalisation (yada yada yada) yet they manage to woo all the artists that tend to be against their very nature?

Like Dylan releasing that live album through them last year. It makes the bleeding heart wannabe hippy in me sad.

of the first UK Music Hall of Fame programme when they were doing profiles of all the nominees for people to be put in. On the Robbie profile Dennis Waterman said, "Robbie Williams is the greatest music artist ever produced."

I'm not sure what's worse - the idea that Robbie Williams is an "artist," or the idea that an artist is "produced" like a product. His justification was clearly implied to be because money-making = final aim of music.

It's the attitudes of people like this that mean the music industry is slowly dying. Anything that has any real talent and innovation is deserting its vice-like grip to the independence of the internet, whilst the plastic pop gets left behind as another product on the shelf.

This has become quite the essay of generalisations, hasn't it?

what's worse.

The fact I was really looking forward to this (I like the singles and albums, what can I say?) or the fact that everyone on here seems to think their shite live.

And whilst I generally leave it up my own ears when it comes to a song or album, I have a track record of agreeing with you lot when it comes to bands live. Hmm.

really really really need to get Alligator, then, because Karen's one of the weakest songs on there.

I just re-discovered Alligator again after listening to it once when it came out and filing it away in my computer as nothing special.

Now I've listened to it about two or three times a day for a month. It's amazing. Cannot wait for the new album.

I've got roughly eight parking tickets and one speed ticket in the year since I've passed my test.

Quite clearly it must be my love of Charley Patton that's to blame.

What exactly is the problem some people have with Geldof? It seems the more determined he is try and do charitable things the more people call him a "patronising tosser."

The guy's trying to raise awareness about stuff that never gets reported in mainstream media. Maybe you don't agree with his methods, but he doesn't deserve being insulted for it by any stretch. Same applied to Bono and Chris Martin. Don't demonise people just because their personalities grate a bit...

of when Joe Strummer died. I must've been in Year 9ish, and I came into school and was all, "OMG, Joe Strummer died!", but of course, nobody knew who he was.

When I said he was a member of a punk band called The Clash somebody had the NERVE to ask, "oh, are they anything like Green Day?"

Isn't that a picture of Johnny Borrell of Razorlight fame?

"I've heard your some kind of gypsy shaman. Naboo! Are you in some kind of trance?"
"No, I was listening to Fleetwood Mac."
"Ah."

I don't know why, but I was underwhelmed by Mystery Jets... and found We Are Scientists a lot more interesting. I'd actually be inclined to swap the respective scores you've given them. But then that's probably down to personal preference; I personally love the whole stage persona that WAS have built for themselves both live and on their website.

Otherwise, top review.

Hmm... Everything I've heard about them has said that he's gone from a normal unassuming teenage lad to some swaggering cocky upstart, and whilst I really didn't want to think that was the case, what he acted like at the Guildhall kind of confirmed the rumours in my eye.

Still <3 the music though.

Usually these kind of things (like the Razzies) are spot on, but Jack Johnson being in there.... nah. There are far worse hanging around, surely?

Although, that said, I can't really name any solo artists who have made it big the in the UK who aren't home grown of recent years...

at the Guildhall last night. Maximo Park and We Are Scientists sets were both far superior to the pretty much by-the-numbers Monkeys set... they walked on and Alex just kind of sneered, "So, we won that Brit then" before starting playing. Barely any chatter with the crowd and they really didn't seem like they wanted much to be there...

Forty minutes later they were done. I was bored far before then. I left during the last song (A Certain Romance, which went a bit wanky near the end) so I could go talk to We Are Scientists instead.

most of those songs when I saw them at the Hammersmith Palais, and I've they're alright. It's exactly as the description says though, songs that weren't good enough to get onto A Certain Trigger. No spoken word tracks there, m'fraid.

Mind Bomb > Infected and Infected < Mind Bomb are the same statement... :p

Curse my gothic tendencies, it's the same day I'm seeing Bauhaus.

Best British band of the 80s?

Hell yeah. By miles and miles and *miles*. Rock music that matters is hard to come by nowadays...

Loud noises kill the bits of the ear that "hear", if you're exposed to loud noises your whole life it's going to do a lot of damage. Of course those cells do die as you age anyway, but not so common to end up really hard of hearing unless you live until you're senile and spitting saliva over the bingo board on a Sunday as you sort out your false teeth. Yeah.