Monday, September 17, 2007
Monkey See, Monkey Do Do
Ian Brown is a man who spends a lot of his time thinking. Most of this thinking time is generally spent in trying to remember how to get his limbs and lips to move in a sequence that allows him to create the illusion of being able to walk and talk just like a human, but occasionally his thoughts turn to other things, which is a shame as people in Ian’s inner circle would have liked to use this time to turn his attention to the surprisingly complicated art of toilet training. Recently his thoughts have turned towards the war in Iraq, a war which, to all intents and purposes, started on March 20th 2003, so it’s only taken him four and a half years to come to a conclusion on this - even a dinosaur would react sooner if you tweaked his tail - and what monumental conclusion has all this thought and intellectual power housing led him to? That war is bad. Mmm-kay.
For pretty much everyone in the world this was either a given from the get go, or an opinion held only by bleeding heart liberal commies who should go and live in Iraq if they loved Saddam that much, it was pretty much as close as you could get to a black and white issue without getting into a discussion about Spy vs. Spy, but whichever side of the fence you fell on, you had already fallen on to your particular patch of grass about a year before the war actually kicked off, but for Ian, a man whose thought processes make glacial erosion look like Formula 1 racing, he’s taken a long time to weigh up the issues and, labouring under the delusion that the rest of the country is as slow as he is, has decided to set his thoughts to music and release it as single, presumably believing that Illegal Attacks, as his single is ‘controversially’ - in much the same way that Dave Benson Phillips could be considered controversial - titled, will bring the establishment to its knees, as opposed to the half hearted shrug it’s going to be greeted with by anyone with half a brain, or the look of disgust that will be the natural expression of anyone with even a vague love for music.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if Ian had released this when the war originally kicked off then, despite its clumsy, sub sixth form lyrics and clichéd, almost self-parodic musical stylings, it might have had some value politically, even though the anti-war movement wasn’t exactly an underground organisation with even the Daily Mirror jumping onto the bandwagon in a desperate attempt to sell a few more papers, but to release it now, with even the war’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders admitting that, with a bit of hindsight, maybe going in there with all guns blazing and not much of a real idea what to do once it was all over might not have been the best idea in the world, is the sort of lazy half-assed thinking that you’d expect from a fresher whose desperately trying to fit in with the perceived conventional wisdom of his or her new found friends. It’s like turning up to a party when not only has all the vodka long gone, but there’s not even any kettle chips left. But despite the clear pointlessness of the track, Ian genuinely believes that he’s doing something important and is pushing at the boundaries of mainstream convention. He needs to get a sense of perspective; he’s not a poet, he’s not the voice of the people, he’s not some great philosopher, and he couldn’t even hold a tune in a specially designed tune holding bucket. He was in an overrated band who did little you would actually want to listen to if your record collection extends beyond the mid early nineties and is nothing more than an aggressive thug who reckons that “I’ll chop your fucking hands off” is one of the greatest bon mots of modern times. Someone give him a reality check. Or at least a banana.
For pretty much everyone in the world this was either a given from the get go, or an opinion held only by bleeding heart liberal commies who should go and live in Iraq if they loved Saddam that much, it was pretty much as close as you could get to a black and white issue without getting into a discussion about Spy vs. Spy, but whichever side of the fence you fell on, you had already fallen on to your particular patch of grass about a year before the war actually kicked off, but for Ian, a man whose thought processes make glacial erosion look like Formula 1 racing, he’s taken a long time to weigh up the issues and, labouring under the delusion that the rest of the country is as slow as he is, has decided to set his thoughts to music and release it as single, presumably believing that Illegal Attacks, as his single is ‘controversially’ - in much the same way that Dave Benson Phillips could be considered controversial - titled, will bring the establishment to its knees, as opposed to the half hearted shrug it’s going to be greeted with by anyone with half a brain, or the look of disgust that will be the natural expression of anyone with even a vague love for music.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if Ian had released this when the war originally kicked off then, despite its clumsy, sub sixth form lyrics and clichéd, almost self-parodic musical stylings, it might have had some value politically, even though the anti-war movement wasn’t exactly an underground organisation with even the Daily Mirror jumping onto the bandwagon in a desperate attempt to sell a few more papers, but to release it now, with even the war’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders admitting that, with a bit of hindsight, maybe going in there with all guns blazing and not much of a real idea what to do once it was all over might not have been the best idea in the world, is the sort of lazy half-assed thinking that you’d expect from a fresher whose desperately trying to fit in with the perceived conventional wisdom of his or her new found friends. It’s like turning up to a party when not only has all the vodka long gone, but there’s not even any kettle chips left. But despite the clear pointlessness of the track, Ian genuinely believes that he’s doing something important and is pushing at the boundaries of mainstream convention. He needs to get a sense of perspective; he’s not a poet, he’s not the voice of the people, he’s not some great philosopher, and he couldn’t even hold a tune in a specially designed tune holding bucket. He was in an overrated band who did little you would actually want to listen to if your record collection extends beyond the mid early nineties and is nothing more than an aggressive thug who reckons that “I’ll chop your fucking hands off” is one of the greatest bon mots of modern times. Someone give him a reality check. Or at least a banana.
Labels: Ian Brown, New Music, Worst Records
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Actual Worst Recorcs in the World... Ever
Untouchable. Not just the name of an ace single by late nineties widescreen lovelorn pop types Rialto, but also the apparent status of bulging faced thumbs aloft granddad type, Paul McCartney. And not, as you might suspect, because he's a weeping sore on the face of the music industry but instead because he was once in a successful band who last released a record over thirty five sodding years ago and people in this country have no imagination whatsoever. But because of this respect given to a man whose last release featuring any real imagination was The Frog Chorus, any vaguely musical farts that he might, for reasons best known to himself, decide to stick on a CD aren't treated with the sort of disdain that you'd normally give to self-indulgent barely literate tripe but are instead released, given an expensive promotional budget and turn up, unwanted and unrequested on radio and TV stations up and down the land. So it is with Dance Tonight, Paul's latest release, a song so bad that you genuinely begin to wonder if Paul's has some sort of grudge against the entire world as there's not really any other explanation for his insatiable desire to punish us all.
Dance Tonight is the sort of song that, if a twelve year old came up with it in a music class at school, you'd seriously wonder whether they needed to join a remedial set. It's so basic and simplistic that it barely even counts as a sketch of a song, although it does put you in mind of the sort of thing that someone who hadn't actually heard music before, but had been told what it's like, might come up with if they tried to write a tune. Although even then they'd have to be completely soulless and lacking in any sort of creative impulse whatsoever to come up with something so entirely devoid of worth as this. If this is the sound in Paul's head then he really should keep it there.
It's the sort of song which seems expressly designed to annoy, there's no effort to engage on any level other than irritation. It's the sort of thing that might be described as an earworm, in that it's catchy enough to burrow it's way into your brain, eating out the inside and leaving you with a hollow skull, which you instantly turn into a beehive, reasoning that the constant buzzing would be a much more pleasurable experience than having that bloody mandolin riff bouncing around your head like a tennis ball in an empty room. There is no point for this record to exist, other than to suck up money from deluded people who can't move on from the sixties. The Beatles were good for their time, sure, but if they're your favourite band today then, frankly, you've really not heard enough music.
Dance Tonight is the sort of song that, if a twelve year old came up with it in a music class at school, you'd seriously wonder whether they needed to join a remedial set. It's so basic and simplistic that it barely even counts as a sketch of a song, although it does put you in mind of the sort of thing that someone who hadn't actually heard music before, but had been told what it's like, might come up with if they tried to write a tune. Although even then they'd have to be completely soulless and lacking in any sort of creative impulse whatsoever to come up with something so entirely devoid of worth as this. If this is the sound in Paul's head then he really should keep it there.
It's the sort of song which seems expressly designed to annoy, there's no effort to engage on any level other than irritation. It's the sort of thing that might be described as an earworm, in that it's catchy enough to burrow it's way into your brain, eating out the inside and leaving you with a hollow skull, which you instantly turn into a beehive, reasoning that the constant buzzing would be a much more pleasurable experience than having that bloody mandolin riff bouncing around your head like a tennis ball in an empty room. There is no point for this record to exist, other than to suck up money from deluded people who can't move on from the sixties. The Beatles were good for their time, sure, but if they're your favourite band today then, frankly, you've really not heard enough music.
Labels: Paul McCartney, Worst Records
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The Actual Worst Records... Ever
Close your earsWhat on earth possesses people to go out and buy Snow Patrol records? It's a good question, and one which, frankly, is beyond us. So we turn, as we do with all of life's big questions, to 82ASK who, in answer to that poser, reply "We really don't know. It may be a genetic defect or possibly the result of too much sun. We also have a theory that it may be because people like the name" which, while not really answering our question, does at least prove why we love 82ASK so much.
Anyway, it was inevitable that Snow Patrol would eventually turn up in our list of The Actual Worst Records... Ever. It was only a matter of when and for what song and, indeed, we did have an entry ready to go on Crashing Cars, but reluctantly decided to spike it when the Virgin Radio audience declared it to be the best song ever written of all time, ever, ever, ever. Clearly we were wrong to consider it to be a lazy piece of beige pointlessness with all the good qualities of a Hitler/Vernon Kay genetic crossbreed. After all, who knows more about music? Us or a group of people who still think Noel Gallagher is worth listening to, think black music begins and ends with Bob Marley and who consider music made by women to be nothing more than an amusing novelty which shouldn't really be encouraged. Ah, that would be us then.
But perhaps it was fortunate that the proud expression of their deeply held opinions depressed us so much that we briefly considered jacking the site in as Gary Lightbody - a man who barely has enough personality to warrant having a name - and the rest of the band - who don't even have that - had something else up his sleeve: a song duller, more irrelevant and infinitely more irritating than anything they'd yet come up with. That song is Open Your Eyes. If you ever met him you'd almost have to congratulate him on that feat, or you would if you weren't fighting the urge to extinguish lit cigarettes on tender parts of his body in the hope that some real suffering, as opposed to feeling alternately a bit achey cause he's getting older, or vaguely maudlin but not that fussed really, when you get right down to it, because girls aren't hugely interested in him which seems to be his main inspiration, might cause him to write a decent song for once in his life. And just for the sheer enjoyment of punishing someone who truly deserves it, of course.
Open Your Eyes is the former sort of song, although it's hard to tell as the lyrics consist mainly of Gary intoning "Tell me that you'll open your eyes" in a dull monotone for pretty much the entirety of the track. If even the writer of the song can't be bothered to come up with proper lyrics - not that he can be bothered singing it either, his performance coming across with the same sort of enthusiasm and passion as someone who's been given the task of reading Piers Morgan's new 'book' aloud to an audience consisting entirely of Piers Morgan - then it's hard to know exactly why we should bother listening to it. Although given that it currently seems to crop up on every single radio station every thirty minutes, no matter what genre the station claims to cover - we're convinced we heard it on the BBC Asian Network the other day - it's not really like you're afforded much choice in the matter, the playlist clerks' eyes presumably being closed to soporific qualities of the track. Or perhaps that's why it's being played so often. The listeners doze off with, much like the track itself, barely a murmur of protest, the radio still blaring away in the background, allowing the station concerned to claim all manner of ludicrous listening figures, happily ignoring the fact that the vast majority of their audience is dozing away, drool dripping unpleasantly down their chin and with the very real possibility that they've soiled themselves in the meantime.
Ah, we're back to Virgin Radio's audience again, aren't we?
Labels: Snow Patrol, Worst Records
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Actual Worst Records... Ever
Thankfully, she didHepburn. It's a name that brings to mind glamour. It brings to mind style. And above all it brings to mind class. It may also bring to mind this, but if that's the case then you've only got yourself to blame. But with all these good, positive attributes which the name brings to mind, why on earth did a bunch of clod-footed, hammer faced cockneys, who made a collective sound like a cat falling down a set of stairs made entirely from the same material as blackboards and for whom "elocution" is what happens when you put a fork into a plug socket think that this would be a good name for their band?
I Quit, their debut, and pretty much only, single was released in the spring of 1999. We were all pre-millennial back then, our thoughts and dreams still full of optimistic thoughts of the future, not yet tainted by the terrifying horrors of 9/11, Iraq and the Arctic Monkeys still to come. It was a time when anything seemed possible and the holy grail of a perfect pop record was surely within our grasp, so it's baffling why they felt convinced that what the public was desperately wanting to hear was a bit of half arsed indie-pop with a barely thought out lyrical metaphor about a failing love affair being a bit like having a job you don't like. Though frankly if you were the guy in that situation you'd probably be desperately attempting to engineer a poor workplace environment so that she quit off her own back, thus avoiding the need for you to sack her and pay a hefty severance fee.
As songs go, it's very much by the numbers, the guitars get loud exactly where you expect them to, the chorus kicks in exactly when you expect and the irritation factor kicks in exactly when you'd expect it to too. The only real novelty in the track comes with singer girl's accent, whose cockney enunciation of the phrase "Kings Road, Monday Morning", is likely to have you wishing death on all those who idolise the idea of Pearly Kings and Queens. Either that or have you pray to any God who might be listening that you too were born within the sound of the bow bells. So close to the sound, in fact, that it had rendered you deaf, leaving you blissfully unaware of this track's entire existence.
Maybe she really did want to quit, but judging by this the songwriting part of her brain had given up long before she did.
Labels: Hepburn, Worst Records
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Actual Worst Records... Ever
Stereo-phonic, Mono-tonousWhy are the Stereophonics so unbelievably awful?
Think about it, it's not as easy a question as you might think. Not because it's in any way hard to think of reasons why they're so bad, there are thousands of them. So many, in fact, that we once toyed with the idea of starting up a blog called 1,000,001 Reasons Why the Stereophonics Suck which would, over time, contain exactly that, only giving up on it partly because we realised that having to deal with such a wealth of awfulness would slowly but surely drive us mad, but mainly because we felt that using the word 'suck' made us sound like a character in a pisspoor American teen sitcom, and we really didn't want that. But no, the reason it's not an easy question is because of the impossibility of pinpointing just one satisfying reason as to exactly why they're so soul destroying without exploding in a mess of anger, frustration and boredom. In desperation we turned to the 82ASK who are, frankly, the font of all knowledge who can dispense judgement with a Solomon like wisdom and asked them that very question. They answered: "Subjective whether they are awful or not, but many people agree, hence why they have only had 1 UK #1, Dakota. Some say every song sounds the same", which is a little unsatisfying. We can only assume that the writer managed to resist the urge to append the phrase "And they're clearly shit" to the end of the answer.
We're going to ignore the Dakota point. The only reason people took that particular track to their hearts was the fact that, compared to every other Stereophonics single thus far released, it sounded quite good. Compared to virtually every single other record ever released, it tends to come up wanting. Instead we're going to focus on what is undoubtedly the absolute nadir of their career: Mr Writer.
Written by lead singer Kelly Jones in a rage after the music press continued to deride his music for being turgid nonsense with all the excitement and thrills of meat and potatoes, only lacking both the meat and the potatoes which might make the experience of chowing down even vaguely pleasurable, he struck back and proved his critics wrong with a song that was, umm, turgid nonsense with all the excitement and thrills of meat and potatoes, only lacking both the meat and potatoes which might make the experience of chowing down even vaguely pleasurable. It was like Kelly had taken the gristle which makes up the back of his throat and spat it out on a plate, with a side serving of bile for good measure. "Why don't you tell it like it really is", he moaned, without even stopping for a minute to step outside his plodding, pointless, workaday existence to think, for even just a second, that, you know what, they might have a point.
It's like listening to the elongated moan of a hippo's yawn, the sound of someone slowly committing suicide by pinpricks, or the needless mewlings of a man on the bus, moaning because someone got the last Metro before him. It's the aural equivalent of a nine to five shift in an accountancy firm, but at least they get a lunch break halfway through, all we get is Kelly whining on and on, barely striking any emotional tone other than being mildly irked and coming across like a toddler who, even if you're entirely opposed to smacking, you would still think really needs a good slap.
Despite this, and, indeed, despite the rest of their back catalogue, the Stereophonics still sell in solid numbers, which is perhaps appropriate for a band who could best be described as solid - and something which they'd no doubt see as a compliment, which perhaps says it all - so much so that Kelly is now even able to enjoy the luxury of indulging in a side project. Called Only the Names Have Been Changed it's a solo album which he recorded in 36 hours, so it's nice to see he's put some effort into this and it's not a quickly tossed off vanity project with which he hopes to fleece his fans who have more money than sense. And given that they're fans of the Stereophonics, anyone who's got more than £2.37 in their wallet fits the bill. Now, we've not actually heard it yet - and nor do we have any plans to - so we may well be doing it a disservice and it could be the most exciting album released this year, full of imagination and excitement, thrills and novelty, packed to bursting with the most hook-laden hits the world has ever seen, but somehow we don't think we're going to be proved wrong if we suggest it's probably the most godawful, self indulgent load of irrelevance to hit the shops since the last Oasis album and, while it may only have taken 36 hours to record, listening to it is going to feel like one hell of a lot longer.
And he's got a girl's name. Ha.
Labels: Kelly Jones, Stereophonics, Worst Records
