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Today my reason for loving NOFX is the song Please play this song on the radio, after I have been and returned from work I will post a link to youtube if it exists. But for now, I love NOFX for the refrain of please play this song on the radio.

So as expected Tenacious D weren’t playing Glastonbury, always suspected that Jack Black may have been mistaken, after all it would be smack bang in the middle of the promotion of Kung Fu Panda, unrealistic for him and Rage Cage to strap on an oversized guitar and rock the asses off the Somerset faithful.
I heard rumours of Jables appearance on stage with some band or other, turned out it was Har Mar Superstar. In the end we were in Greece and not lording it up with the Primrose Hill set with Pimms in a field. August will be hard, knowing that the D are rocking up a storm with Metallica supporting them. No way I can do it, none at all, we are definitely going to Shambala.

So the D documentary (I am fully aware of why people come to my blog, it’s the D, I have figures to support this, 80 percent of people that come to my site, hundreds of you, come for the D.) nothing more on it at the moment, Imdb and Amazon don’t have a release date and I couldn’t see anything over at TenaciousJoes, which by the way is the best D website on the web, also check out a fan  messageboard http://z10.invisionfree.com/Tenacious_D_forum/index.php? as they are far more likely to have any news.

I have long been of the opinion that one of the greatest records ever commited to tape is The Pernice Brothers’ The World Wont End. It details in graphic detail the break up of a couple, that couple may or may not involve Joe Pernice, but if he isn’t the protagonist in the songs, he is certainly skilled at putting himself in the position of a man losing his relationship.

I first heard this in 2001, a recommendation of my friend Jon, who being a good soul could see that at the time my marriage wasn’t the most healthy of places and thought I would appreciate the album. I did, in 2001 I played that album more than any other album and even now it will get played once a month, at times painful, at other times sad, but as a document of a break up nothing comes close.

The album is in that exclusive club that has Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes and Tenacious D in it in that this album is one of my all time favourites, and it will continue to be a favourite, even after all these years and although its message no longer resonates for me so loudly, musically it is still a fine album and lyrically possibly my favourite album.

From the album my favourite track is Cronulla Breakdown, a lazy acoustic number bordering on jazz, but a lazy wine bar jazz, that actually sounds awful, the description does not do it justice, the production on that track really is crisp and clear, clearer than any other track.

Working Girls

Well last night I saw Neil Diamond at Birmingham NIA, its quite difficult to convey just how amazing his show was and the quality of his performance, but frankly it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Genuinely.

He came on stage pretty promptly just after 8pm, a huge band in tow, brass section, 3 backing singers, 2 guitarists, a bassist, a percussionist, a drummer and 2 keyboard players. They were all on small stages on the main stage, with Neil’s mic on a small stage attached to the front, this small stage moved around so it wasnt just in the middle, it went off to stage left and stage right.

My seat was in the lower block 11 and it was a very good seat, really pleased with it and for those not in a particularly good seat there were 2 huge screens either side of the stage.
So the set was pretty much the same as the one that he did in Rotterdam, a greatest hits show with smatterings of Hot August Night, 12 songs and Home before Dark, the omissions that I would have liked to have seen were possibly Mr Bojangles, Play Me and September Morn, but as the set lasted over 2 hours and it was full of hits and great songs, some songs were going to miss the cut. A highlight for me was Solitary Man but it was an absolute pleasure to hear I am I said and Hello again, really really fantastic.

I cant recall how long it has been since I wanted to see Neil Diamond, and now I want to see him again, really stunning, an excellent performer, with a great voice doing a fantastic show.

…they’ll hang themselves.

Idiot Luke Pritchard has clearly been taking too much coke, the nme has him talking shit here it appears that if Carmen Electra had turned up to his gig, then well, the article does the talking. So Luke Pritchard, how does this..this..boy measure up. Carmen Electras past beaus include….

Prince

B-Real of Cypress Hill

Dennis Rodman

Tommy Lee

Dave Navarro

So why in the name of all that is holy would she go for this little shit.

You may have found it difficult to escape all this bollocks about Emo suicide cult spearheaded by My Chemical Romance. I truly truly despair at this, this will be the point historians look back in a few millennia and nod in the knowledge that that was the point the human race went, “ah fuck it”.

I really do not know where to start, the misconception perhaps, that emo kids are really a depressed bunch intent on topping themselves, or the daily mail for propagating the myth, or the handful of teenage emo’s marching to the mails headquarters or something else.

I see on message boards and in writings on the internet this myth of emos sitting in darkened rooms crying into their sleeve and contemplating suicide through their own 6^th form poetry.

Let me give you a little heads up here, it ain’t like that. Emo kids traditionally were into music that was loosely called emotional hardcore, the emotional side was a result of not being the in your face hardcore that was being played at the time, it was hardcore with a heart, it wasn’t woe is me, or the need to shuffle off ones own mortal coil it was just lyrically a little different, to the uninitiated you wouldn’t notice anything different. Then over time it morphed into essentially US indie, you listen to some of those albums and you wouldn’t say, ah that’s emo, you would say indie, its just American indie rock, the hardcore element was going. So, still with me? After all that in the early 2000’s it started getting big over here, and that’s when the UK kids picked up on it and every rock band there was started screaming over tracks and a slightly different version of emotional hardcore was coming out (the bubble soon burst) and this was the start of the lazy journalism. When every youngster that liked rock, that wasn’t of the modern cock rock variety, Slipknot, Metallica et al, they were referred to as emo’s, give them a black hoody, they are emos. And its easier to class bands as emo as the likes of the nme like genres, screamo, emo, post hardcore, what ever core.

All along there is this myth that emo kids are depressed individuals sat alone contemplating self harm and suicide. Get to fuck are they, they are out at gigs, out with mates, out drinking cider and laughing, enjoying themselves at festivals, at clubs and wondering where the fuck has this reputation for being sullen has come from????

So the Daily Mail, remember guys and gals, the Daily Mail was the paper that backed Hitler and only backtracked a little when we went to war, and even then the relationship still existed, look up the daily mail on Wikipedia, its interesting reading. Anyway The Daily Mail, the bastion of virtue that it is says the The Black Parade is a suicide cult. Oh my dear lord, The Black Parade can be described as many things, I like to call it a cynical stab at marketing to teenagers by men closer to my age than their age, but Christ on a bike it’s a little gothic imagery, THAT IS ALL. Its artistic license, its not took seriously, oh sorry, it is took seriously, its took seriously by a 40 something overweight journalist that likes a bit of Genesis or the odd indie track like Coldplay or late Oasis, you are a mockery of a journalist!!

Finally, these kids, marching to protest at The Daily Mail. You know there is a lot of bad shit happening in this world, famine, death, unjust wars, atrocities that a little searching on the internet could easily highlight, the government is making it more difficult for the working class to get a university education, we are taxed to the hilt and the NHS is in disarray. You, YOU want to mobilise because The Daily Mail said nasty things about a pop band. For fucks sake, God help us if there’s a war.

The rather fabulous Evangenitals have done a cover of The Ramones’ The KKK took my baby away. Its quite marvelous.

More on the band can be found at www.evangenitals.com

Britains best band, Camera Obscura are playing some gigs, and you know what for once I am served a little too well.

• 17/07/08 Kings College, London
• 18/07/08 Buttermarket, Shrewsbury
• 19/07/08 Little Civic, Wolverhampton

There are 2 sides to Alex James autobiography, a bit of a blur. You have the vacuous party going name dropper that sees the tag infidelity as an epithet that should be worn like a gawdy large 18 badge, and then there is the post epiphany Alex James that talks more about Airplanes than Champagnes. For the purposes of the book, the former is very interesting, if not a little tiresome, the latter, you are glad to see and it’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

Alex James up to the meeting of his now wife isn’t really likeable, the heart is there, and he may have been ace to drink with at the groucho, his bed fellows were Keith Allen, who you will recall is an odious toad of a man, and Damien Hurst, the emperors new clothes of the art world. So a large part of the book is spent regaling us with his tales  of his crazy times at the Groucho with these 2 fuckwits.

After all that though you see the Alex James that settles into marriage and fatherhood and farming, and it’s a nicer Alex James for it, one that is likeable, because he may think the younger Alex James is likeable, but he isn’t, he is an arsehole.

It is a well written and enjoyable read though and I would certainly recommend it.

He does come out with a beautiful line, when talking about Justine, the girl that stuck with him through so much and was the loser in his fidelity war, he said she had a murdered heart.

Before I was all cool and stuff I liked Frankie Goes To Hollywood, they were the bestest band in the world and my bedroom, perhaps worryingly for my parents were covered in posters of the band, then of course I heard the Ramones and that changed everything, but for the time between the release of Relax and the release of the second LP, Liverpool, Frankie were the best band in the world and the first band that I obsessed about.

Holly Johnson wrote Bone in my flute around 93 as a reaction to being diagnosed HIV and the need to get his story out before the mercenarious friends and ex friends got their tilted view out to the highest bidder in the tabloids.

What Bone in my flute delivers is the story of a young gay man coming to terms with his sexuality in working class Liverpool, the lifestyle that Holly lead and how he became what he was. It tells the story of his days in Big In Japan through to the rise and fall of FGTH, the litigation and the nastiness he and his partner Wolfgang received from his other bandmates.

The book really made me like Holly even more than I did before, he holds his head high and proud and I come away with a dislike for Trevor Horn and his wife and Paul Morley and disappointment in Mssrs Rutherford, Nash, O’Toole and Gill. I understand this story is a one sided story, but I feel the musician side of Frankie Goes To Hollywood would struggle writing their own names, let alone writing their memoirs.

All in all an excellent read, relly enjoyable from a former fans perspective and well worth the purchase from Amazon.