Look, a funny monkey!
Switzerland - where everyone is equal, provided they’re grotesquely rich - has decided to ban the building of minarets after right-wing nationalists branded them a symbol of Islam’s encroachment on European values - like tolerance and freedom of belief. If you’re going to prevent one religion from flourishing, why not go whole hog and prevent them all? Raze every mosque, church, synagogue, etc and turn them into something useful, like gay saunas or abortion clinics or bigger vaults for Nazi plunder and untaxed corporate loot.
Yes, I know they’re trying to be all clever and post-modern and aaahhhh-you-weren’t-expecting-that-were-you, but, really, this is just taking the cocking piss, isn’t it! The NME is now oficially the print equivalent of a tragic middle-aged, middle-class man trying desperately to prove how hip he is by conspicuously making reference to things he thinks ‘the kids’ might be into. Let’s smother it in its sleep and remember the good times.
How the big boys roll...
In July of 2005 Sony BMG was fined 10 million dollars after the New York Attorney General’s office determined that they had been practicing payola mostly in the form of direct payments to radio stations and bribes to disc jockeys to promote various artists including Franz Ferdinand, Audioslave, and mainly Jessica Simpson. Epic Records, one of their labels, was specifically cited for using fake contests in order to hide the fact that the gifts were going to disc jockeys rather than listeners.
In October of 2007, it was announced that Sony BMG successfully sued Jammie Thomas. The single mother, who made US$36,000 a year, was ordered to pay US$222,220 in damages for making 24 songs available for download on the Kazaa file-sharing network
The Unfortunate Incident (featuring Jonny Sock)
‘One Small Step’
Silly hair and shit singers: that’s The X Factor, the nation’s sole mainstream conduit for popular music since the decline and fall of Top Of The Pops. All the songs sound the same, all the singers are alike, and the only interesting acts are mediocre, officially sanctioned hate figures. One day we’ll emerge on the other side of this unprecedented cultural drought and wonder how the hell our imaginations survived.
Charlie Brooker
What a shitty decade it's been...
The NME Top 50 albums of the decade are:
1. The Strokes – ‘Is This It’
2. The Libertines – ‘Up The Bracket’
3. Primal Scream – ‘XTRMNTR’
4. Arctic Monkeys – ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Fever To Tell’
6. PJ Harvey – ‘Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea’
7. Arcade Fire – ‘Funeral’
8. Interpol – ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’
9. The Streets – ‘Original Pirate Material’
10. Radiohead – ‘In Rainbows’
11. At The Drive In – ‘Relationship Of Command’
12. LCD Soundsystem – ‘Sound Of Silver’
13. The Shins – ‘Wincing The Night Away’
14. Radiohead – ‘Kid A’
15. Queens Of The Stone Age – ‘Songs For The Deaf’
16. The Streets – ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’
17. Sufjan Stevens – ‘Illinois’
18. The White Stripes – ‘Elephant’
19. The White Stripes – ‘White Blood Cells’
20. Blur – ‘Think Tank’
21. The Coral – ‘The Coral’
22. Jay-Z – ‘The Blueprint’
23. Klaxons – ‘Myths Of The Near Future’
24. The Libertines – ‘The Libertines’
25. The Rapture – ‘Echoes’
26. Dizzee Rascal – ‘Boy in Da Corner’
27. Amy Winehouse – ‘Back To Black’
28. Johnny Cash – ‘The Man Comes Around’
29. Super Furry Animals – ‘Rings Around The World’
30. Elbow – ‘Asleep In The Back’
31. Bright Eyes – ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’
32. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Show Your Bones’
33. Arcade Fire – ‘Neon Bible’
34. Grandaddy – ‘The Sophtware Slump’
35. Babyshambles – ‘Down In Albion’
36. Spirtualized – ‘Let it Come Down’
37. The Knife – ‘Silent Shout’
38. Bloc Party – ‘Silent Alarm’
39. Crystal Castles – ‘Crystal Castles’
40. Ryan Adams – ‘Gold’
41. Wild Beasts – ‘Two Dancers’
42. Vampire Weekend – ‘Vampire Weekend’
43. Wilco – ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’
44. Outkast – ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’
45. Avalanches – ‘Since I Left You’
46. The Delgados – ‘The Great Eastern’
47. Brendan Benson – ‘Lapalco’
48. The Walkmen – ‘Bows and Arrows’
49. Muse – ‘Absolution’
50. MIA – ‘Arular’
Blur’s ‘Think Tank’ and Babyshambles’ ‘Down in Albion’ don’t belong on any list, except the ‘pretentious and creatively bankrupt albums’ list.
Or I just have a very warm arse.PROVING WITHOUT QUESTION THAT THE SUN SHINES OUT OF DANIEL’S BOTTOM.
