Death of music*

HOLY POP GUACAMOLE. It's (almost) the end of music. And it's almost the end of 2008. How terrible. Thankfully, Eeyogan Quigg didn't win the X Factor, so there's no need for heads in the oven. However, the bells have tolled for the Fashionable Hipster Electronic Chap Band: found in 2008, and found dead in 2009. Here's a recap:

1) MGMT

Pant-swingingly fantastic. Provided the soundtrack to many (ie. 1) 'Skins' epitaph and made bass fat again. Their name is also a contraction of the word 'management' and is therefore 1 finger to The Man. Well done, MGMT. There are two medals in the post for you.



2) Cut Copy

They are from the other side of the world and they possess similar fun dance vibes. Added to the fact that their 2008 album straddles most of the statistically-proven 'good' musical genres and you'll find, via the 'Good Music In 2008' formula (below), that Cut Copy deserve world citizenship. Their light-hearted odyssey shows that, like changing global climates, it can truly be summer all year long. Kudos to you, Cut Copy.



==

OFFICIAL GOOD MUSIC IN 2008 FORMULA ALERT



Good Genres: Guitar-based rock music, minimal techno, French house, gospel, Germanic electro, power pop, Gameboy-core.

Q-values:
1 and under - mediocre
1.5 - optimal quality
2 and over - a bit much

==

Sadly, it's all over. This is Empire Of The Sun, a terrible palarver consisting of Him Out Of The Sleepy Jackson and some other chap who would have been better off remaining exclusive to his Oceanic electro-euphoria maestros P'nau.



As you can see, they're a bit too similar. If you could hear them, they're also a bit rubbish. Oh hang on.

==

DRAMATISATION:

(A party. Everyone is having fun)

World: Wow! This electro hipster pop thing is really great!
MGMT: We know! We love it too! That's why we did it! Go us!
Cut Copy: And us, too!
World: Yes, we love you, Cut Copy, and you, MGMT!
MGMT: And we love you, World! And you, Cut Copy!
Cut Copy: We know we're not from NYC, but...
World: That doesn't matter! We love you!

(World, MGMT and Cut Copy have some more fun. Enter Empire Of The Sun)

ALL: Oh.

(Curtain)

==

* - denotes exaggeration.

Letters Page #1

I’m quite the oracle. People ask me for advice and information all the time. Here’s the letters page, where you can see what they ask, and also what I say in response. Somehow I find the time to get around to all these people, but that’s because like all oracles, I’m an ubermensch. Not in a Nazi way, obviously.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, what is my dad's full name?

Bang Bang Bang: Your dad's full name is Angus Tarquin Kenlock. His name is as idiotic as your face. He can play the bagpipes very well, and is world famous for his knowledge of origami and cake decorating, whereas you are world famous for getting on everyone’s tits.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, is smoking weed bad?

Bang Bang Bang: Yes. The long term effects of cannabis use aren't proven, but smoking it can cause respiratory disease and exacerbate pre-existing mental health problems. However, anything that speeds up your mortality appeals to the notion of ‘the greater good’. Keep it up.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, is ‘damedable’ a word?

Bang Bang Bang: No, 'damedable' is not a word. You may mean 'damnable' which means something that is possible to be damned. An example is 'your depressingly poor grasp of the English language is damnable’.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, will I get a job?

Bang Bang Bang: Yes, you will get a job within two months’ time and it will be in the media industry. You will start as an assistant but will soon be promoted to Chief Bell End. Before you know it you’ll be selling advertising space to the Third World and you’ll be using your immense stacks of money to simultaneously wipe your bum and ignite the mud huts of your paupered neighbours.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, why is poo brown?

Bang Bang Bang: The brown colour of faeces comes mainly from bilirubin, a pigment that arises from the breakdown of red blood cells in the liver and bone marrow. However, in your case modern science hasn’t yet found out why it incessantly decides to leave via your mouth, rather than from your anus.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, what’s sex?

Bang Bang Bang: Sex is defined as 'sexual intercourse', usually the penetration of the vagina by a penis. It can also mean the category of gender to which one is assigned. To you, it could also be defined as an ‘abstract concept’.

==

Dear Bang Bang Bang, is being an A&R Assistant a cool job?

Bang Bang Bang: Yes, being an A&R assistant is a very cool job. It involves helping people to scout out talent and doing a lot of high-profile media industry hobnobbing. You can look forward to working for 15 hours a day for nothing, getting paid only in coke, which is in turn used as a voucher for erectally violating your anal rim. On top of that, you can only hope to be distrusted by both your organisation as well as the artists that you’re meant to represent and be ‘pally’ with. The best bit is that the truly creative types hate you just as much as the fat bastards with the green dollar signs for pupils. Congratulations: you’ve made it.

==

Thank you. Until the next time, I don't care.

Old Computer Games Are Well Good #2

I'm sick of driving around in normal cars. Everyone does it. Brum brum brum - let's go to the supermarket. I don't want to do it in my vital nanoseconds of nonworkdom. Fortunately, the 1990s had it sussed. They didn't want silly more-realistic-than-life Ford Escort-a-thons; oh no, they wanted ridiculous things. No brooding sub-plots and no aspirational speedster bollocks. No, the 1990s was invented for stupid hyper-age fantasies, and wildly exciting they are, too.

The best example of this is F-Zero X on the N64. Slightly less neon than its SNES counterpart (which is relentlessly dazzling, like Shane MacGowan spanking you on the face with a diamond baseball bat), the 64-bit equivalent is whippet-slick and super-space-age. Also, you get to fly around at speeds over 700km/h, which the last time I checked, was enough to wipe your face off.



An integral part of the game is the rather odd and physics-mocking track layouts, which involve a comparably orthodox pipe and half-pipe, but also a more mind-boggling cylinder which involves being magnetically attached to a big worm, which involves getting flung around like an glistening bead of jet-propelled debris. There's 29 other chumps, trying in vain to debunk you in every race as well, which brings a certain pleasure in carving your neon line through the swathes of chaff. And in the classic twist of Road Rash, you get a rival who you can endeavour to pummel the pants off especially. Because you're a citizen of the future, see. You don't have to work, because robots do all that palaver nowadays, and nuclear energy has solved all our problems, so we don't even have to pay any bills. Great, isn't it?

Witness yourself getting whipped upside down and inside out and you'll soon realise that too much F-Zero X is bad for your neck. This too is the genius, as the eccentric curvature of these space landscapes is so convincing that it seems, for a split-second, perfectly feasible to be zapping across these inverted corkscrews and whatnot. In fact, slingshot yourself over 1 of the high-altitude crests and you'll feel your googlies go all googly. It's well Pepsi Max Big One.



Add to that a soundtrack not dissimilar to Mad Capsule Markets having a Prozac party and a commentator that sounds like Sparky the Magic Piano and wham: welcome to the best bit of 1998. Okay, so you can't buy into the F-Zero X lifestyle. But when it's so frenzied, and so pick-up-and-put-downable as this, you shouldn't really want to. And if you do, you're stupid. Because they're space cars AND NOBODY DRIVES SPACE CARS YET.

Download N64 Emulator
Download F Zero X ROM

Personal Genius: Trevor Horn

There are some people who babble about this silly, overpopulated planet contributing very little apart from methane. There are some other people who make up for this by being very ace indeed. One of these people is pop impresario Trevor Horn. He is great. This is why:

The Buggles




Trevor Horn was the mastermind behind pop behemoths The Buggles. He spawned 'Video Killed the Radio Star' and thus he invented the MTV generation. He also made it clear that in the post-disco era, you didn't have to be a fittie to make a right old hittie. In fact, all of The Buggles were a bit ugly, which is why they didn't conquer the world. What a lie. They look like Hot Chip.

Malcolm McLaren



Malcolm McLaren is an irritating fucktard. He wafts across talking heads clip shows like the decrepit prune that escaped from Christmas Past and has appeared disappointingly in Christmas Present. Thanks, nan. He gesticulates his histrionics while conveniently missing the fact that he owes it all to Westwood and Johnny 'I sell margerine to The Man, for The Man' Rotten.

However, McLaren's 1983 album 'Duck Rock' is amazing. It's like The Go! Team getting all Bronx with Vampire Weekend chomping on vaseline on toast. It also developed a bit of a blueprint for breakdance riddim and rip-rip-rapping. It's fantastic. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing was overseen by Trevor Horn, who has a gay old time churning out as many variations of the Amen break as possible. Not bad for a dweeb.

Art Of Noise



Having moseyed around with Malcolm 'Shortbread tin trousers' McLaren for a bit too long, Trevor decided that it was time to reinvent music. It was the 80s, mobile phones were really big and so was business. There were these things called 'samplers', right, and you'd record something and it'd play it back. Genius. So Trevor reckons that you can just sample everything and make music doing that. Thus, you get the Art Of Noise, who are mainly responsible for the theme tune for The Krypton Factor.



Over the pond, people were thinking that Art Of Noise were some crest-of-a-wave hip-hop pioneers rather than some stuffy, stuck-up knob-twiddlers. Horn, as we know, is a bit ugly (and not black) so Art Of Noise went all anonymous. They also did that funky rendition of 'Kiss' with Tom Jones. Thanks, you make me dribble.

Tatu



Fast-forward 20 years, past the Clothes Show and the information superhighway and you get to 2003. There's this place called Russia, you might have heard for it. Anyway, there's these two fit birds, yeah, Trevor Horn produces their debut album and they become incredibly popular.

It's a very saccarine affair, but secretly it's a big metaphor for the instability of Russia, following the 1997 default on the ruble, lack of economic and social stability placed next to the yearning desire for a strong political leader. Only joking. But the album does sound very very good and there's the best Smiths cover version ever on it. Hooray! Even Morrissey loves it, and he's a miserable old sausage.

So, what have we learned today?

1) Trevor Horn is ugly.
2) Trevor Horn invented hip-hop.
3) Trevor Horn is a pillar of post-Soviet Russia.

Yes? Yes.

Wot a Rascal

I love watching the news. It's boss. It tells me what is going on in the bits of the world that affect me and how bothered I should be about it. It even prioritises the importance of each event so I don't even need to think about whether News A is more applicable to me than News B. The news more efficient than Pop Tarts!

The news got even better yesterday. Jeremy Paxman was doing his political chatty thingy, when he suddenly bellows:

"SO, DIZZEE RASCAL, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE U.S. ELECTIONS?"

We then cut to a split screen, shared by Mr. Rascal (aka Dylan Mills) and someone else who was black. It might have been Maya Angelou, Tracy Chapman, Dave Benson-Phillips. I forget. Although it was nice to see the Rascal on the BBC news spaffing out his political weltanschaaung, which amounted to '1 chap is good for morale, but you need a whole load of brothers to do the change thing', the best bit was watching him say it in his Dizzee Rascal way. He was shuffling around like - for some bizarre reason - he hadn't featured on too many white-media political discussion segments before, and was trying his best not to suffix anything with 'an' ting'. Kudos, Dizzee Rascal.

Because it was TV History, it made it onto the front page of the BBC web page. Note the impressive pouting:



In fact, it could have been the most impressive pouting ever seen on the BBC homepage, if it were not for the SIMULTANEOUS pouting on the image responsible for promoting the BBC radaptation of Dickens' 'Little Dorrit':



Kudos also goes to the BBC's Web 2.0 wizards, who have somehow made their promotional material match my end-user feelings on the matter. "Little Dorrit? Hmm, don't fancy that much. Have a pout instead, kidder." Why the world (UK) needs to see a serialised TV version of Little Dorrit, no one knows. But we've got it, and it's pouting. Let's hope for more BBC pouting in the future. A pouting Charlie Boorman sampling the culinary delights of the River Mersey. A pouting Jonathan Dimbleby venturing through the depths of deepest Aldershot. Pouting corpses on Casualty. We can only hope.

Of Time and the Shitty

One of the most rubbish things about existing is pretending to like people that secretly you don’t like. Maybe they’re your spouse’s best friend or your son’s brattish chums. Perhaps they’re the teacher that holds the key to your ambitions. Whoever they are, there’s a chance that there’s 1 in your life.

Mine is currently the British film director Terence Davies. He’s recently made this film called ‘Of Time and the City’, which has received good reviews, including getting seriously bummed off in Cannes, and is out in UK cinemas this month. I write a film page which loves things from Merseyside, so I’ve had to cover a lot of Terence’s activity in the last few months. I’ve had a chat with him and watched his stuff and I’ve decided that it’s all self-indulgent pants. However, I have to put him in because he’s local and it’s big waves in a small pond etc.



Except he isn’t really that local. Sure, he’s from Liverpool, but he hasn’t lived there for 25 years. His new film, reinvigorating his career was actually funded using a competition used to inspire creativity and forward-thinking film making in the area. I think it’s a bit cheeky, especially alongside the press kit labelling the film an elegy. Liverpool’s dead, see. At least it has been since Terence Davies decided to leave town.

He’s seen as very poetic, but I see it as over-sentimental, drivelling rubbish by someone who should stick to his cosy rural living and stop inflicting his neuroses upon perfectly innocent members of the public. I don’t have any problem being positive and encouraging about initiatives like his, and support independent film fiercely, but I think this particular foray (and Terence’s involvement) is a con. :(.

Old Computer Games Are Well Good #1

Being retro is well cool. Look at Calvin Harris. He gets out his 'Amiga' and bangs out some 'tunes' and now he's apparently shafted Kylie and is the soundtrack to DFS. Good on him. However, playing old computer games is much more fun and in some cases only takes 5 minutes, considerably shorter than the full length version of 'Acceptable In The 80s'.

Everyone bangs on about Street Fighter this and Mario Kart that, but the best computer game is obviously 'Kick Off 3: European Challenge' by Anco (pictured) on the SNES.



Although people would rather you bought into a bit of old-skool FIFA action, or maybe International Superstar Soccer (pre-cursor to Pro Evo), this particular gem has a flowing game dynamic, as well as the tactical option 'Sit on it'. The rickety gameplay is endearing and honest, which allows you to pull off some funky moves which aren't possible in the more rigid titles of the time. The goalkeepers sometimes erroneously come off their lines for crosses, spilling the ball left, right and centre. There's often an infuriating incident, but the genius lies in the fact that it makes the player feel unlucky, rather than the victim of some AI conspiracy.

Kick Off 3 was also designed in an age when games were getting used to the idea of right and wrong. It's great to play a game in which you can benefit from some outrageous offside decisions or cynical unprofessionalism (Steve Bennett and Mark Clattenburg take note). It even has the state-of-the-art inclusion of the backpass rule, which is groundbreaking for 1993/4. The crowds (fat and penant-waving) sing a wonderful, pitch-shifted rendition of 'Ole Ole'. Basically, the game is brilliant and you should give it a go - if you don't, you deserve to get your eyes popped with rusty pins.

There are loads of other great old computer games, but this is my current favourite. Here you can see me taking on the mighty Anco United. I'm obviously Brazil which is my way of opting into an unobtainable, aspirational lifestyle. It's my 'The Hills', okay? OKAY?!

Download the ZSNES Emulator
Download the Kick Off 3: European Challenge ROM