Euphony RIP April 2006 - Dec 2009

The final edition of Euphony has arrived as after three years and and over 40 mixes I feel there is nowhere left to go with the project. It's time to put it to bed for a while. I hope you've enjoyed listening to them as much as I've enjoyed putting them together. I've decided to go out with a bang and stretch the attention span to breaking point by making a 5 part mix. For those open minded and hardcore enough it can be listened to in one go or you can simply pick a mix you like the look of and listen to that. The choice is yours.
Before I sign off I must thank some people and a special mention must go to Nick Wrigley who generously paid for Euphony's hosting requirements when I hadn't a pot to piss in. He also regularly contributed music to the project and generally has been extremely supportive.
A big thanks also to Owen, Dawn Evans, Karl Eden, Louisa D'Arcy, Darcy Losell, Darren Mapletoft, Matt and Rachael, Pete and Katie, Drew Haselhurst, Danny McLewin, Soraya Lemsef, Bonnie Nelson and all at MightyVibes Reloaded (RIP) who ever heard my mixes and bestowed me with positive feedback and encouragement.
Happy Christmas and thanks for listening.

The anthem. Think of me with kindness.

James Brown - Mind Power (1973)

What it is is what it is. Deal!

Bobby Hebb - Love, Love, Love

Back on a Northern Soul soul tip momentarily...

Gene Ammons - Jug Eyes (1970)

One of my all time favourite jazz tracks. The intensity of Gene Ammons's sax solo is amazing. It makes me wanna cry with joy. George Freeman's guitar sizzles with heat. Idris Muhammad coming correct on the kit as usual. 1970. Crank it up loud, it's the definition of soulful playing. Anyone who can't take jazz is a pussy. Period.

Motown's Long Forgotten Son

For many years I've felt it's criminal that one of Motown's brightest lights Willie Hutch has been so unfairly overlooked by the record buying public. With no real massive career *hits* to speak of Mr Hutch's talents have somehow been lost amid the gargantuan shadows cast by his label mates Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. But to me he was equally as gifted whether it be in his immaculate late 60's sides that still have Northern Soul fans in a lather, his awesome 70's soundtrack work (The Mack and Foxy Brown) all the way to his slightly experimental but solid solo efforts with their cool ghetto concepts.
There's an amazing vulnerability to his voice and an edge to his music that screams out he was the *real deal*. His production's were lavish and intricate and there was a sense of craft and subtlety to his work.
Throughout his career Hutch seemed content to busy himself more behind the scenes of Motown as a staff writer and as such remained a marginal artist on a roster overflowing with big names.
He died aged 60 in 2005 at his home in Texas. His manager, Anthony Voyce, said of Hutch: "I've never met a more generous and caring person." You can feel this throughout his music, a modesty and grace. A refreshing lack of ego. The Guardian gave a reasonable obituary HERE
Sadly and most neglectfully many of his albums remain unreleased on CD except for Shout's 2009 release of his debut album 1969's 'Soul Portrait' and the current Motown issue of the seminal blaxploitation soundtrack 'The Mack'. The 1996 Motown reissue of 'Foxy Brown' has sadly been out of print for some time now but luckily I still have my copy.

I've posted a few tracks here for your scrutiny but the amazing BLOGSPORTSOUL blog has most of his albums for download HERE so indulge yourself and give due credit to an amazing artist who hopefully but sadly posthumously may one day be remembered with the same fondness as his peers.

IL VOLO - Canti e Suoni (1975)

Promo for Euphony #42. Play loud. After 3mins this becomes beautiful.

Feeling Low and Washed Out?

Good lad, love a crafty lift...

Anti-Pop Consortium - Volcano (Four Tet Remix) (2009)

Sometimes I feel like giving up on hip hop but then a track like this comes along and I enjoy it again. Every time I try to get out, they suck me back in!

SUGARCANE HARRIS - SOUL MOTION (1962)

Christ, deep track. Check the date folks. Incredible shit.

Kenny Carter - Showdown (1966)

One of my all time favourite soul tracks. Amazingly baroque and mournful arrangement with some heavy lyrics. Skip the preamble as that's only for anal music hounds like myself.

Feeling Washed Out?

There's something about this guy. His tracks feel like faded memories. It's like browsing through hundreds of those stock photographs found in picture frames that you throw away full of listless plastic smiles, hair product, blue-eyed wholesome families or women undressing under waterfalls. Those pictures seem to illustrate that a sickening faith in consumerist culture will provide a forced optimism in the stark face of economic downturns, terrorism and nuclear annihilation. It makes you feel drained and blinkered yet somehow elated like an aural Prozac. I guess Washed Out (a.k.a. Ernest Greene) could fit in with the 'Hypnagogic Pop' movement if his music wasn't so overproduced. But thankfully it's sounds just right, somehow straddling the decades in a retro-futurist manner and leaves you dreaming of DeLorean's and electric sheep rather than recession and the hopeless decay of society.

Marc Hunter - Big City Talk (1981)

Probably Marc Hunter's best song (perhaps somewhat akin to picking the healthiest stool from a medical chart) set to some period visuals and the only one I can use as the 'official' video version has embedding disabled. Dirty punks.

Marc Hunter - Nothing But a Lie (1984)

Another strange shiny turd from Marc Hunter, full of fake dogs and 80's Volvo's. It sounds a bit like 'What A Fool Believes' by The Doobie Brothers but I can't help myself.

Marc Hunter - Island Nights (1979)

Completely naff yet totally awesome. I'm loving Marc Hunter hard at the moment. As well as being a solo artist he sang lead vocals with the Aussie rock group Dragon who are equally as generically tramp yet cool. The lyrics are very Vic and Bob-esque with 'tattooed leather gypsies and burnt out saxophones'. The best line? At one point he sings 'Nothing grows in Holland. Nothing ever will'. It could be Harlem or something else. Can't tell. No shit.

Alphabet City (1984)

Was turned onto this after reading David Keenan's 'Hypnagogic Pop' article in The Wire (cheers for the info Nick) and found out about this film 'Alphabet City' (1984). The soundtrack is rare as hell and was composed by Nile Rogers of Chic. Madonna apparently featured on a track early in her career called 'Lady Luck' by The Breakfast Club that can only be heard in one scene. The voice over claims that the soundtrack is available on Island Records yet all searches on the 'net have lead nowhere. Shame really as it all sounds kinda cool.

The Gentlemen Losers

Bibio who I've mentioned before in this blog spoke highly of these guys in a Pitchfork interview so my ears pricked up naturally. Yeah, I can see why he likes them. Their songs are like postcards from rusted towns, languid yet mournful. Check out their MySpace here

Don Slepian 'Reflections' Music Video

Found this whilst researching this 'Hypnagogic Pop' movement on Nite Jewel's MySpace site. It reminds me of office training video music yet it's oddly beautiful at the same time.

"Eleanor Rigby" by Sugarcane Harris (1972)

An absolutely incredible cover version.

Hudson Mohawke - Rising 5 (2009 Warp)

Amazing shit right here.

Zomby - Where Were U In '92? (2008)

Get out your glowsticks with this postmodern retro/futurist nonsense. Yippee!

John Hughes RIP

My childhood is officially over. RIP John Hughes, you ruled man.

Deadly Prey (1988)

Awe-inspiring ineptitude. The best 'beating a guy around the face with his own arm' scene ever committed to celluloid. SUCK THIS!!!!

Wax Stag - And How (2008)

Been playing this guy a lot recently. It's Rob Lee from the Friendly Fires 80's synth-junk solo project bizarrely named Wax Stag. It may be knowingly retro but anything that provides me with warm images of playing Outrun in some dingy arcade in the mid 80's has my seal of approval.

Ducktails - Parasailing (2009)

Simply adore this.

Helado Negro - Dahum (2009 Asthmatic Kitty)

Helado Negro - Dahum from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.

This guy's quite interesting for me, lots of nice elements going on there.

William Shatner - It Hasn't Happened Yet

Tough times when you look to Shatner for help but help me he did. He rocks hard.

When Good Trees Go Bad...

Silly and ultimately worthless indie horror short but I found it pretty amusing in some ways.

Tom Waits - Kentucky Avenue

Gets me everytime

Yeah I know but....

People have been banging on about this guy like he's the new Burial or something. Anyway, yeah I like it but let's keep our heads shall we?

Loner Moves

Been enjoying the music of Dave Bixby lately. Something penetrating and unpleasantly haunting about it. Definitely one of the finest outsider/loner folk albums I've ever heard. It's just been reissued on CD and 180g vinyl over at Guerssen Records

Here's the blurb from the label:

"Since its discovery in the late 90s, Dave Bixby's legendary $2000 private press album from 1969 is considered by all serious record collectors as the king in the loner/ downer folk genre.

After being involved in 60s Michigan folk and garage- rock bands such as The Shillelaghs and Peter & The Prophets, Bixby started playing acoustic guitar and experimenting with LSD. After a year of drug abuse he felt broken. Starting a soul- searching, spiritual journey, he wrote '' Ode to Quetzalcoatl'' and most of the material for his second album, Harbinger's '' Second Coming'' in just one month and a half.

Assisted by fellow musician Brian MacInness, who played some guitar parts on the album, Dave recorded '' Quetzalcoatl'' using a echo- laden four track machine in a flat's living room. The sound is lo- fi and sparse: just acoustic guitars and some occasional harmonica & flute, added to Bixby's haunting, emotional vocals, spiritual lyrics and solid songwriting. The opening cut, the eerie and painful '' Drug Song'' sets the mood perfectly for the rest of the album which contains more tormented titles like '' 666'' , '' Lonely faces'' , Open Doors'' , '' Secret forest'' …Never an acoustic folk album sounded so intense as this.

Reissued for the first time under license from Dave Bixby. Carefully remastered sound from vinyl (no master tapes exists) done at Shadoks Music Studios, booklet with extensive and detailed liner notes by Matvei Procak - the guy who found Bixby in 2006 - plus some rare pictures."

Universe City - Can You Get Down (1976)

Best Disco track I've heard in a long while with its intricate and complex arrangement..

Fart FM

There are no words to describe how much I hate this. Literally no words in our current language. Perhaps an approximation may lie in the kind of words used to summon unpeakable demons from Lovecraft's 'Necronomicon' or perhaps in the fictional tongue of Mordor. Something ancient and unholy stirs, a primordial howl of anguish. Despair.

Crosby & Nash - Traction In The Rain

Perfect for this heat. So simple yet powerfully engaging.

Llama Rock

The boy only gets better, love the way the llama tries to get away from him at the the end. Kinda ruins the cool but kinda makes it cooler.

Nazia Hassan - Disco Deewane

Quite enjoying this right now. Might be good literal video material.

The Afghan Whigs

There are relatively few groups I miss from the 1990's but this one still makes me sad they split even though their output became somewhat weaker and more diluted toward the end of that decade. This is them performing at the peak of their powers and they still send shivers down my spine because they had it pure and simple. Particularly like the little dance step that Rick McCollum (lead guitar) does with his Fender Jazzmaster (cheers Nick ;). Marvel at the stony-faced composure of John Curley (bass) as around him the self loathing and charismatic frontman Greg Dulli luxuriates centre stage like a barely controlled cyclone. One of the most severely underrated bands of their generation, I'd advise you to watch this and then go out and buy Gentlemen (1993) forthwith. Listen and tremble.

Literal Videos

Take a music video and re-record the song explaining the visuals literally. In the hands of the inept this can be embarrassing but luckily the concept created by DustoMcNeato is remarkably funny when in his capable hands. His arguable successor is dascottjr whose creations are even more inspired and currently holds the torch aloft amid a sea of pretenders. Thanks to Nick for this :)

Darth Vadersehen Pet

Combine Geordies and science fiction and you get an unholy marriage that will only please those who get the references. Genius.

Hundred Highways - CCS (1973)

Cool as fuck jazz rock gubbins. Somewhere an HBO drama is missing the soundtrack for a great scene.

The Ocarina of Rhyme

Straight up love for these mashups of prime Nintendo Zelda tunage with hip hop stylings. Gotta give credit to Team Teamwork for mostly doing a nice job. Hear Link spit pure fire!!



It's available HERE

Z-Movies

For quite sometime now I've been obsessed with collecting awful VHS movies. It's a strange compulsion that in all honesty needs to be validated in some way in order to smokescreen the more obvious idea that there may be something deeply wrong with me. Yet I'm not alone and for fellow VHS collectors like myself there's no pleasure to be gained in gathering up the great films in that format. Oh no! It's all about the worship of trash and obscurity. The simple joy in knowing with absolute certainty that no DVD version exists is a thrill in itself. Or the insanely comforting ritual of watching the pre-film (and post-film occasionally) trailers with genuine surprise and interest because in doing so it can open up another world of desirable insanity, filth and coolness with a new batch of trophies to pursue. It's beautiful as it begets itself.

So what to look out for? It may not work for books but you can ALWAYS judge a VHS by its cover. Does it contain any of the following: ninjas, mutants, cyborgs/robots, post apocalyptic worlds, creatures, vehicles, hillbillies or Vietnam vets? These elements will guarantee a boner for all but the most discriminate of VHS collectors.


Alternatively as in many private press records it could be an awful artistic rendering with stylistically bland fonts, odd human perspectives and unappetizing still shots adorning the back. Its whole essence screams out that to actually watch this film would be such a gargantuan waste of time that the only solace you could take when it was over is that it took you considerably less time to watch it than it did the person to make it. Or actually possibly the other way round. To stick a film like this in your VCR means you have the heart of a lion but the ambition of a tramp.


When entering this world though you have to believe in failed ambition. That there's something fascinating about a glimmer of a great idea that's been executed so incomprehensibly poorly vis-à-vis the paradoxical lack of ambition/effort involved in alternatively just making a formulaic exploitation film. To enjoy these works is to willfully embrace the concept that somewhere and by some means, some guy/girl scraped together a little money and then set about crafting a celluloid turd that history probably would not bestow a footnote upon.
Collecting these films however is a more perverse art in itself. It is akin to being a member of a depraved elitist club whose single goal is to pride themselves on how rare, obscure and downright awful looking their new acquisition is compared to their last one or indeed those of their peers. I'm proud to say I belong in some form to this rogue, mutant community and I've posted about 40 or so VHS covers on MySpace and Facebook for others to cringe and wonder at. However after arrogantly believing I was a master for some years I have since learned that it is I who is truly the student after all. So good luck to you if you decide to take a walk down this idiosyncratic path. A path inexplicably shrouded in both light and shade, where there's honeysuckle in the air and dog shit on the floor. A path whose woods are lined with magic mushrooms and disused porno mags where out there, somewhere deep in the darkness, you swore you saw yourself riding a BMX to the video shop.

Living in the past with Eli Porter

I've shamefully realized that Eli Porter is in fact old news which means I'm posting stuff that everyone has seen before much like those annoying emails that contain videos or jokes you heard when the internet was clawing its way out of Mother Technology's silicon womb. I hate that and can't understand why I never encountered Eli before?
Anyway if you still can't get enough of Eli's rainman dribbling rhyme style then you can download a mixtape here. It had to happen sometime and indeed it did in May 2008.

Eli_Porter-The_Elicist-2008

01 Imma Have to Give It To Mah Boi (Intro) f. J-Dub
02 The Infamous Iron Mic Freestyle
03 Deed It
04 Best Man
05 Cat On The Grill
06 Funk Mix
07 Soul Mix
08 Dirty Mix
09 Jungle Mix
10 Over 9000 f. Nappa & Vegeta
11 Eli Responds To Controversy (Marv-O, J-Dub & A-14 Diss)
12 Eli Spits Fire (Freestyle)
13 Da Best Mayne (So Hood Remix)
14 See I’m The Best
15 I Keep It For Real f. Lil Wayne
16 Eli Is Possessed (The Elicist)
17 Still The Best (Outro)

DOWNLOAD

The Friends Of Distinction - Ain't No Woman

Quality track with the type of chorus that crawls inside your ear and nibbles away at your mind sponge like in that episode of Night Gallery where that guy goes slowly mad due to a carnivorous earwig chewing his way from one side of his head to the other.....C'mon, you know the one.....

Cup Cake Dog Insanity

I'm usually indifferent to animal high jinx on any level but for some reason this one made me laugh. It's simply a beautiful comedy money shot in essence but it was the mash-up follow-ups (a la Star Wars Kid) that helped crack a smile on my Moonbase Alpha face.

Brass Construction - Movin On

Lovin' this hard right now.

Retard's Delight - Eli Porter

Eli's rapping style is somehow addictive.

Just like Rosie O'Donnell at a bisexual bridal shower.

Thanks Matt ;)

Manakin (1978)

I ride hard for these dudes and their awesome madness.

So Keep Your Lookin' Balls Locked On The Picture Radio And Prepare To Get Your Nuts Smashed!

The Lonely Island are three dudes Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg who made the dumb but pretty awesome 'Hot Rod' in 2007. They create excellent parodies of popular music styles and then fill them with immature lyrics and boner concepts. They are the ungodly children set to inherit Weird Al Yankovic's legacy. These three kids are stupid and juvenile in a way that only the Americans seem to pull off successfully. My favourite is 'Nintendo Cartoon Hour' but 'Jizz In My Pants' makes me giggle like a schoolboy who just grunted in assembly.

Thanks to Pete for the boat video send ;)

Will You Be Here Tomorrow?

Work safety video with a dark depiction of the industrial workplace due to the Tom Savini-esque gore slapped on it's face like make-up on a cheap whore. Rhyming prose there, you don't see that every day. The best one is the guy blow torching that metal barrel - for the love of God why? What possible circumstances would arise where you would need to blowtorch a barrel?
The only reason to blowtorch a barrel is if the barrel has a hole in it and consequently can no longer be used for its containment purposes. That then beggars the question, if it had a hole in it then all the liquid/substances would have poured out anyway so why fix it? Ergo a new barrel of the liquid/substance must be ordered again and as that same said liquid/substance ships in a containment device (barrel) no blow torching is required on the old barrel. It has been replaced by the new barrel. It's usefulness within the work environment has expired much like the worker who is trying to fix it and therefore it must be discarded. Even if you refuted these arguments and really had a hard-on for mending barrels then surely you wouldn't bring an instrument that produces flame anywhere near a barrel that could be flammable?
However instead of using common logic, this gaping asshole blowtorches the barrel creating an immense explosion probably killing every worker in the entire factory.
Be careful out there.
Thanks Nick ;)

The Art Of Nakedness

Occasionally a piece of art can have such a profound effect that it haunts your life, clings to your shadow and becomes an internal rhythmic metronome - colouring all your senses with its emotional resonance. In 1993 Mike Leigh produced such a work and even now over fifteen years later 'Naked' lingers in my thoughts and remains one of the most profound films chronicling the human condition I've ever had the privilege to see.
Alongside Gary Oldman's 'Nil By Mouth' these films detail the sallow disintegration of British society but with very different agendas at their core. Whereas Oldman simply lifts a mirror with a measured hand and allows the viewer to saturate themselves in the despair, Leigh's film has an intellectual arc - probing and unflinchingly gazing into the abyss to look for meaning. Once seen, you're changed forever and both richer and poorer in spirit for it. It's brave and astounding cinema of the highest order and it's almost depressing writing this knowing that somehow I lack the capacity to truly sum up why these films are so important so I'll reluctantly let another do it for me. You see when I start to articulate myself internally about this my heart drips tears like a slashed blood bag, it's simply no good.
This review of 'Naked' by thearbiter on IMDB feels as though he sneaked into my room at the stroke of midnight, sat on face and stole my very thoughts a bit like a cat in those old wives tales.

Devastating, 24 June 2001
Author: thearbiter

In my adult life, this is the one and only film that has ever moved me to tears with its ending. It was like watching Michelangel applying his final daub to the Sistene Chapel, the incomprehensible achievement of a perfect artistic vision, and the attainment of a transcendent brilliance.

For years, I had fantasized about becoming a writer / director, and actually put forth some appreciable effort to that end. This film, Mike Leigh's incomparable, unprecedented masterwork, cured me of that fantasy. He said, and did, in two hours, all that I could have hoped to achieve in an entire career, and it became gapingly obvious to me that I had no business in this medium.

There is no "story" here, except that of the distilled essence of the hopeless pre-Millenial Western man, robbed of the promised nuclear annihilation he had always consciously feared, but subconsciously hoped for, if only to put the world out of its misery. The naked and the lost, the wandering spectre of the sentient living dead, and the pitiful yet mercifully ignorant companions that cross his path.

Bibio

Been loving these new tracks from low-fi ambient guitar picker Stephen Wilkinson along with the pretty if slightly stylized accompanying videos. Signed to Boards Of Canada's Mush imprint he shares their fascination with the fragments of memory left over from childhood, equally concerned with the textural elements of joy and sadness as opposed to the emotional ones. When listening to this I'm counting electricity pylons on an imaginary car journey, running my hands through virgin snow or greedily inhaling summer on my new bike. It also makes me wanna cry like an infant.

Go buy his stuff HERE

Animal Collective My Girls

This just gets better and better, like The Beach Boys performing in a wind tunnel with Tangerine Dream.

Red Riding - a good hiding?

Watching the bleak and somewhat brutal Red Riding (C4, 9pm) tonight made me think about the police force and how their dubious 'Hit first, ask questions later' approach might not be such a bad thing after all. Watching these simian-like plods slap Andrew Garfield around with glee was at once disturbing and sobering. I actually started to feel 'afraid' of the law for the first time in ages which was a refreshing experience. If your life is as sad and hopeless as mine then you may have caught Nightwatch with Steve Scott (ITV1, 12:30am) at some point and watched with despair at police trying to deal with drunken behaviour using logic, reasoning, empathy and respect. Witnessing this awful human miscommunication is as uncomfortable as meeting a distant relative at a wake and having to listen politely to their bigoted views about race and society because you don't want to cause a scene. Sometimes I want the police of old to pull up in a clapped out Ford Granada - like time cop messiahs - twatting pissheads and manhandling nonces whilst eating cream horns and drinking bitter from pint glasses with the handles still on them.
Even 'da kids' aren't scared of the police anymore, such is the state of their law-enforcing impotence.

I realise that all of the above makes me sound like Richard Littlejohn or something and that in actuality this mind spillage is mainly an attempt at loving the idea that 'baddies' get pummeled to within an inch of their life but under the proviso that I or any other innocent party would never be wrongfully fingered out as a 'baddie' and thus be subjected to the resultant pummeling.

Jimmy training with Jesus disco - Disco Dancer (1982)

Super sweet disco tuneage. This guy is coated in sweat from his disco activities. Absolutely coated.

Burj Dubai

Christ, this building is a pretty amazing structure. Burj Dubai is the world's tallest building standing at 2,620ft/801m and is in fact so tall that workers on the top tier can almost see the earth 'turning' which is somewhat astonishing. They'll be building a ladder to the moon next.

The Old Guys = impotence

Watching The Old Guys (BBC Sat 9.45pm) written by the talented writers of Peep Show (Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong) makes you feel like an old man trying desperately to arouse his diminished, wrinkled pecker in front of an old time-ravaged whore that once was beautiful. You hope to get excited by the intoxicating memories of how good she could be but she's lost her luster and is a mere shadow of her former self. So you end up merely talking about your depressing life clinging to her gin-soaked platitudes that spew out effortlessly between each smoke filled exhale. Consequently you end up back at home, sullen and slightly cheapened by the whole experience. At least that's I how felt.
You see the broad comedy requisite of the BBC has sucked the life out of the duo's writing and even though Katherine Parkinson gives a nice performance as Roger Lloyd Pack's long suffering daughter it's a bit like eating a turd and commenting that the bit of sweetcorn was quite pleasant.

Edward Woodward futureshock

Been watching The Equalizer recently and finding the memories to be somewhat bittersweet. The gritty urban tint to the show's cinematography (well for the 80's anyway, it's not Cassavetes or anything) still comes through but the ridiculousness of an aging British expat cornering drug pushers and dispatching street punks with an arthritic karate chop is hard to swallow with eyes soaked in the violence juice of the last two decades.

Still, the one thing that's still great is the title sequence which to my mind is one of the finest intros to a TV show ever made. It's laced with some wonderful urban images of trains raped by graffiti, darkened alleyways, late night subways, metaphorical scales of justice - often shot from strange angles - accompanied by Stewart Copeland's pounding drums and synths creating a beautiful sense of malevolence before a shadowy character standing in a car's headlights emerges as the 'answer' to all this.

I'd like to place this in a time capsule as a high point of TV art, all 0.59 seconds of it. There would be no note with it, just a VHS of this. But then maybe I need help.

NME Awards last night on TV

I like music, really I do. To be honest, it's an obsession. But just like most things as I travel further into my thirties it's starting to look stinky in many ways. It seems to be less about music and more about people these days which is a shame. Watching these talentless goons poncing around in flamboyant clothes and unkempt hair just seemed to highlight all that is empty and vacuous about the modern music scene. Sitting through Franz Ferdinand's turgid cover of Call Me with some bint who looked a bit like a pikey Rhona Cameron, it struck me that all I really wanted to see was someone who looked normal, didn't ponce around in swanky clothes and didn't have silly hair. Then Charlie Brooker came on and I could have cried because I adore him. He sounded like a camp uncle though which was strange but seeing his beautiful gimpoid features was the highlight because at least some humanity appeared amid the faceless crowd of Alex Zane lookalikes.
Even people like Noel Fielding (whom I like) are starting to look like tits when they become embroiled in these cool and interesting 'cunt-fests'. Julian Barratt had the good taste not to attend.

Tools.

Btw Robert Smith came on to accept an award looking like a bloke who works in a bank but at weekends puts on makeup, a wig and wanders the streets drinking gin and eating kebabs whilst crying. He's nearly 50 for christ's sake. Put down the makeup son and give Sun Alliance a call.

Out Of The Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)

Feeling ill today and the best thing I could have done was curl up and watch this great 80's nihilistic incest drama. The film is a car crash of failed lives, family dysfunction, grief and futility which culminates in an event suggesting that sometimes trauma cannot be overcome but only destroyed by something equally as catastrophic. The cast are magnificent - displaying vulnerability, anger and a complex understanding of self loathing with Hopper's character in particular seemingly inviting us to gaze upon his self destruction as life and art somewhat merge as one. Bolstered too by a great soundtrack, this is an edgy 80's movie that offers no easy answers and seems effortlessly ahead of it's time.