Monday 1 June 2009

pregnant women are smug

i tweeted this over the weekend, but having been singing it to myself since i discovered it, i felt it deserved a wider airing:


Pregnant Women are Smug from Erika Lindhome on Vimeo.




It's the work of garfunkel and oates who are a couple of jobbing actresses united by a sense of a humour. Their Worst song medley is also worth a listen. enjoy.

Monday 9 February 2009

someone make me stop watching this crap

I have become transfixed by a spectacle of such hideousness that i am now unable to go bed for fear of missing the next gawp-worthy atrocity. I feel like a cctv operator forced to stare at a fog bound motorway across which someone has constructed particularly spikey brick wall. I'd always assumed the Grammys would be an essentially harmless musical circle-jerk: dull speeches, robotic, monochrome versions of the year's most inoffensive hits and a few quick cuts as members of linkin park are forcibly removed by security. Internet, i have been hopelessly naive. They are actually trying to destroy the fabric of music.

Where do you start? The announcer sounds like a live version of my bank's automated phone system, calling out the names of musical luminaries with all the passion of an autistic belgian accountant. Then there's the insistence on shoe-horning wildly dissonant artists into blood-curdling collaborations: Justin Timberlake dragging Al Green down to his level? ghastly. not painful enough for you? how about Stevie Wonder accompanied by the Jonas Brothers? i had to break one of my own fingers just to get through that one. I was still reeling from the vindictive cluelessness that led to Coldplay being nominated for best rock album when they ACTUALLY FUCKING WON IT! Rock? Coldplay? Awesome. Seriously, well done guys. The stage set for Katy Perry's shambolic rendition of her record executive erection maintenance device consisted of various giant plastic versions of pretty much every type of fruit. except oranges. that's a subtle as the evening has got so far.

Then there's the sheer, crushing, stilted ineptitude of the whole thing. OK the Rock is never going win a prize for Best Reading of an Autocue on a Large Translucent Plastic Island, so perhaps don't make him do a two and a half minute comedy routine containing precisely one joke. don't let mily cyrus sing live, particularly not alongside someone who can actually sing. when introducing ESTELLE, singing ESTELLE'S song American Boy with Kanye West rapping away alongside, try say, introducing ESTELLE the person who's song it is rather than the idiot with Thriller hair and a god delusion.

There has been one good bit, Radiohead playing with a marching band. but you could see the embarrassment seeping through Thom Yorke's spasmodic, "i actually have talent so don't care" dancing.

I expect my pointless self-congratulatory schmaltz to at least be effectively stage managed even if the music itself is cock. that the Grammys couldn't even manage that frankly comes as a bit of a shock. and we're expecting the music industry to sort out such complex issues as copyright and file-sharing? not to mention nurturing the next generation of genuine artists? dear christ.

I'm looking forward to next year's ceremony already. if they can top this they might actually generate some kind of musical black hole, sucking the entire monstrous edifice into itself, crushing it to the size of a higgs boson and then hurling it across the dimensions never to be seen again. and i wouldn't want to miss that.