There'll also be an awards ceremony next December, where the people they've spent the previous year hyping win another empty frigging trophy.
Shit like this is beyond depressing. Jools Holland and fucking Glasto? Is that what the vast pantheon of Human hopes and fears as expressed by music gets reduced to? A dreary procession of sameness, sludged out with metronome predictability, purely for the delight of witless TV presenters and "tastemakers"?
Is it any wonder popular music is in the doldrums?
Monday, December 15, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Where is it?
MYSTERY surrounds the non-appearance of AS1967's "Perpetual List Of Bands To Hear Next Year". The announcement, generally seen as the only counter-balance to the wearisome procession of end - year lists and new year predictions, has been delayed for reasons which have not as yet become clear. Suggestions persist that AS1967 has become bored with it. Sources close to the blog deny this, claiming the issue relates to a lack of a suitably caustic trophy design, after tests with an inner bog roll tube didn't live down to expectations. "It actually looked like a plausible trophy" the source claimed "and there was a chance, however remote, someone would miss the point"
Photobombed randoms traded up on early business as liketivists selfie'd viral memes on this rumournews.
Photobombed randoms traded up on early business as liketivists selfie'd viral memes on this rumournews.
Saturday, December 06, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
There's a silence surrounding me...
Apt.
Previously I mentioned Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" had been released in a box set, complete with surround sound, high resolution version of the album. Conveniently priced at the rate of "a complete frigging rip off".
Out of the blue, they then released said album in surround on a stand-alone DVD, which I confidently ordered from the Pink Floyd website. Expectations were high.
A fortnight later they cancelled my order, announcing they weren't pressing any more discs. That was the end of that. Of course all this did was piss me and others off and provide an immediately lucrative new product for ebay skelpers (or is it scalpers? I think I prefer the former) to profiteer from. It is now possible to buy this single disc for more than the already extortionately priced deluxe box set.
Either way, and I know they don't need the money, Pink Floyd lose. They don't get a sale from me and the others who wanted the disc, they don't get any additional cash from the skelpers, and they end up just forcing those who wanted to buy the thing, to investigate the deep recesses of the internet in the off-chance an anticipatory back-up might appear. And who knows what else they might find, that they could have alternatively bought?
It is utter folly.
Previously I mentioned Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" had been released in a box set, complete with surround sound, high resolution version of the album. Conveniently priced at the rate of "a complete frigging rip off".
Out of the blue, they then released said album in surround on a stand-alone DVD, which I confidently ordered from the Pink Floyd website. Expectations were high.
A fortnight later they cancelled my order, announcing they weren't pressing any more discs. That was the end of that. Of course all this did was piss me and others off and provide an immediately lucrative new product for ebay skelpers (or is it scalpers? I think I prefer the former) to profiteer from. It is now possible to buy this single disc for more than the already extortionately priced deluxe box set.
Either way, and I know they don't need the money, Pink Floyd lose. They don't get a sale from me and the others who wanted the disc, they don't get any additional cash from the skelpers, and they end up just forcing those who wanted to buy the thing, to investigate the deep recesses of the internet in the off-chance an anticipatory back-up might appear. And who knows what else they might find, that they could have alternatively bought?
It is utter folly.
This is to certified that this post has been passed
So I took advantage (if "advantage" is the right word) of a discounted subscription* to Empire, the self-styled "World's Leading Movie Magazine". There's £18 I'm not getting back. It has a routine it slavishly sticks to; preview the movie, then ramp up the hype until, in the the month of its release, they print a series of oleaginous interviews with the director and the "stars", before delivering a four star review, which will be revised upwards or downwards depending on how the wind has blown in the intervening months between its cinematic and home video release. Interspersed between the emptiness are cuddly, thumbs aloft, yet somnolent interviews where never a critical word is issued or a pointed question is asked, "funny lists" and retrospectives of films they now pretend they liked.
And repeat until the Universe is a dilute gaseous stew of decaying protons
*They produce a "Limited Edition Collectors Cover" magazine especially for subscribers. It usually features a photoshopped PR still from the film they've just spent the last couple of months plugging. They are marvellous. No. Wait. That's wrong. What's the opposite of "marvellous?"
And repeat until the Universe is a dilute gaseous stew of decaying protons
*They produce a "Limited Edition Collectors Cover" magazine especially for subscribers. It usually features a photoshopped PR still from the film they've just spent the last couple of months plugging. They are marvellous. No. Wait. That's wrong. What's the opposite of "marvellous?"
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Odds and Sods - Extreme Dispensation Volume 1
Previously I've riled against ebay skelpers artificially inflating the price of out of print SACDs. It seems they have laid the foundations for the record industry to apply the same logic to other high resolution or surround releases. Pink Floyd have announced "The Division Bell" will soon be available on blu-ray - high resolution, surround sound - the works. Unfortunately it can only be purchased as part of a limited (apt) edition box set (which helpfully includes a set of branded coasters) costing £140. To misquote - you gotta be crazy, got to be able to pick out the rip off's with my eyes closed.
Of course Record Shop Day has triggered this avalanche of limited editions. The last one was notable for some bands releasing stuff on audio cassette. Me? My new album will be only be available on CED and will be attached to the side of the next NASA mission to the outer planets.
Up yours Green Day.
Of course Record Shop Day has triggered this avalanche of limited editions. The last one was notable for some bands releasing stuff on audio cassette. Me? My new album will be only be available on CED and will be attached to the side of the next NASA mission to the outer planets.
Up yours Green Day.
Sunday, March 02, 2014
More More More
which sounds like a Thatcherite Stewarts advertisement...
The whole craft beer? Vile tasting, soapy IPA, commanding a 100% premium over superior non-craft beer, aimed at idiots with retro-Victorian beards and lumberjack shirts. I don't know what is worse, mass produced stuff with only a passing resemblance to beer, or hand crafted, artisan ales which taste like a pint of Lemon Fairy Liquid someone has accidentally stubbed a Woodbine out in?
Or maybe I do.
I bought a Sunday Newspaper today and "The Observer" reminded me why I don't. Some "commentator" gurning about pizza, lauding £900 handbags on page 9, a column called "Ethical Living" on page 51 and more which is too fucking depressing in its vacuous hypocrisy to even list. Of course the question is - who is any of this guff relevant to? Or does it purely exist to validate itself and the shovel handed wabs who write it?
Ah. The truth reveals itself.
Genuinely? I do not give one single, solitary flaying fuck about who wins which award for anything. Nor do I give a rats arse why you think someone else should have won. Or not won. There's a word for it, or at least there is now for these irrelevances. They are entirely disimportant.
And breathe.
Google is having one of its periodic "doesn't work properly in Opera" phases, making posting this nearly as much of a ball ache as reading.it.
The whole craft beer? Vile tasting, soapy IPA, commanding a 100% premium over superior non-craft beer, aimed at idiots with retro-Victorian beards and lumberjack shirts. I don't know what is worse, mass produced stuff with only a passing resemblance to beer, or hand crafted, artisan ales which taste like a pint of Lemon Fairy Liquid someone has accidentally stubbed a Woodbine out in?
Or maybe I do.
I bought a Sunday Newspaper today and "The Observer" reminded me why I don't. Some "commentator" gurning about pizza, lauding £900 handbags on page 9, a column called "Ethical Living" on page 51 and more which is too fucking depressing in its vacuous hypocrisy to even list. Of course the question is - who is any of this guff relevant to? Or does it purely exist to validate itself and the shovel handed wabs who write it?
Ah. The truth reveals itself.
Genuinely? I do not give one single, solitary flaying fuck about who wins which award for anything. Nor do I give a rats arse why you think someone else should have won. Or not won. There's a word for it, or at least there is now for these irrelevances. They are entirely disimportant.
And breathe.
Google is having one of its periodic "doesn't work properly in Opera" phases, making posting this nearly as much of a ball ache as reading.it.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Blergh!
Predatory celebrities and facebook crazes. And raunchy videos, made by crowdsourced hipsters, triggering kickstarted flashmobs, instagramed on iphones by Tweeting twerkers.
It's enough to drive me to prink.
It's enough to drive me to prink.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)