Yeah I actually give him decent credit for where he's got to and explored from starting off as just another brit pop band. It's his mockney singing voice that grates most and the slight air of smugness that wafts over most of his output.
I've mellowed in my old age now though and can appreciate the writing that went into the songs that weren't Country house/Parklife/etc and rather like the half finished feel of this. I don't think I'm ever going to become a fan of the group as such but definitely have time in my life right now for some jangly guitar.
The idea of independent high street shops getting together and putting on a special promotional ?day? to boost their sales has always left me cold. Such events tend to be cheesy, poorly-run and too often simply remind one why the shops are struggling in the first place.
But once in a while a co-ordinated event happens that makes you yearn for the high streets of the 1980s and pledge, albeit fleetingly, never to set foot in a chain store again.
Saturday was Record Store Day. Around the UK almost 100 independent record shops got together to release limited edition runs of ?one day only? vinyl. The subtext was that independent record shops are a dying breed ? being squeezed out of existence by the internet on the one hand and the big chain stores and supermarkets on the other. There are just 269 independent record shops in the UK today, a third of the number there were five years ago. The exercise was repeated around the world.
Artists and record companies apparently leapt at the chance to take part. In the UK there were about 60 limited edition records released ? from a never-heard-before outtake from The Rolling Stones? Exile On Main Street (pressed on hand-numbered thick 7? vinyl), to The Flaming Lips? cover of Pink Floyd?s entire Dark Side of the Moon album, to new Hot Chip and Gorillaz remixes. There was also a Beatles 7?, a run of 1,000 pressings of the first new Blur song since 2003 and a cassette of the new (and poorly received) Goldfrapp album. Tiny print runs, all collectors? items.
And so out of mixture of curiosity and genuine interest in picking up some rarities, I arrived at Sister Ray on Berwick Street in London?s Soho at around 8.30 on Saturday morning. I imagined that I would be joining a pretty short queue prior to the opening at 10am. It was nothing of the sort. Even at this stupidly early hour the queue was already snaking round the corner. It was a predominantly male gathering ? effectively a queue of Nick Hornbys with ?holy crap it?s early? bags under their eyes. (Or as my wife put it when she came to meet me later: ?It looks like a queue of blokes who haven?t quite grown up?). Some had arrived at 10pm the night before.
At 8.45am Phil, Sister Ray?s manager, came out and gave us each a number (so we could go for coffee and come back without losing our place ? 53), distributed a list of the day?s releases and set out the ground-rules. Only ten people in the store at one time, only one copy of any item each. Oh, and he offered us 10pc off any non-Record Store Day item and apologised for the queue. Any nicer, and he would have popped into the nearest cafe and bought bacon sandwiches for everyone.
I made queue buddies. Very Talkative Turkish Student was doing work experience for The Libertines? management company and had come straight from his night job at a nearly club. Middle-Aged Music Geek told anecdotes about trying to get Tom Waits? autograph and was on the phone a lot to his friend who was in a similar queue outside Rough Trade East on Brick Lane. Meanwhile, Bearded Buff Man was there to buy a rare Pet Shop Boys record.
I enjoyed that queue. There was a proper sense of community. Rumours swept down the line that Rough Trade had got the entire stock of Blurs and that there was a mini-riot when the store opened as they didn?t have a ?ten at a time? system. We speculated how many of those ahead of us were eBay dealers, and swapped info about the lack of record shops on Manhattan and the cost of vinyl in Japan (I winged those ones).
At the counter, Phil was thrilled by how it had gone. Most of the biggies had sold out but I spent far more than I intended and got the last Jimi Hendrix 7? and much more. ?Goldfrapp tape?? Phil said hopefully. ?Er, no.?
As a strategy, Record Store Day clearly worked. The organisers are keen to repeat its success on a more regular basis. I gather that limited editions will be released at weekly intervals from now on. While is it a shame that these shops even have to resort to marketing tactics to get people through the door, it is heartening that the record-buying public (as opposed to the downloading or CD-buying public) still exists in droves.
On the way home I caught the eye of a man on the underground with a Sister Ray bag full of 12? records. We started chatting. For readers who live outside London, THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Conversations between strangers on the tube are as rare as a mint 7? of Frank Wilson?s 1965 ?Do I Love You?? on Tamla Motown (sorry, I Googled that. Only two copies ever pressed. ?15,000 each at least).
My friend said that he?d arrived at the store a few hours after I had and that there wasn?t a huge selection left. We compared records. ?Oh wow, The Rolling Stones. Nice one,? he said.
I glanced in his bag. He had a something by Sonic Youth. My stop arrived before I had a proper look but I swear that, nestling at the bottom of the bag, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a Goldfrapp cassette."
After seeing those pictures and with the office activity at an all time low I spent a minute or two contemplating who the other TakeThaters would support and whether they were enthused by Barlow's real world moves. I quickly realised that Owen is busy saving his marriage, Orange is a depressive who probably needs to speak to his counsellor before tying his shoelaces and Howard probably doesn't even know what a politician is.
New found respect for this dude. Self-deprecation-R.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Westwood sends himself up all the time on Twitter. I suspect he takes himself a lot less seriously than many of the people who get angry about his persona.
Westwood is always hilarious, & it's equally hilarious that people get so wound up by him.
How long has he been DJing? When I was a hip-hop obsessed kid up in the Midlands, I'd pore over articles in Time Out about the Covent Garden all-dayers, and I'm sure he was in there then.
I miss the old days of Westwood's show when he used to get listeners to ring up and freestyle over the phone while the guest rappers in the studio desperately tried to hide their bemusement and were normally saved from honest critique by Tim's copious shout outs.
He had DJ Premier on his 1xtra afternoon show a few weeks back. He was asking him who'd win in a fight between Big Shug and Freddie Foxx.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Westwood is always hilarious, & it's equally hilarious that people get so wound up by him.
How long has he been DJing? When I was a hip-hop obsessed kid up in the Midlands, I'd pore over articles in Time Out about the Covent Garden all-dayers, and I'm sure he was in there then.
I think he had a moustache.
Yeah, I distinctly recall a few shots of him in the late James Hamilton's Record Mirror column in the early 80s where he was rockin' the 'stache in conjunction with a pair of Rayban Wayfarers and a Hawaiian shirt, Soul Weekender stylee.
The only thing that really annoyed me about him was his insistence on lying about his age (which he may have stopped doing now). I remember reading one of those How We Met articles in one of the supps many years back where he claimed to be in his mid-30s, and I thought, what are you on about, ya cunt, you're easily as old as me...
Vocal style and upbringing Critics have also derided Westwood's apparent emulation of Black British pronunciation and dialect, which is claimed to be at odds with his middle class British origins. In response to this Westwood stated "Honestly, baby, I get love out there, pure and simple".
I refuse to be drawn into any more political discussions after a friend insisted over and over again that they wanted to talk about it when we were half cut in the pub last week. After finally capitulating to their demands I politely asked them who they would vote for despite knowing they were a life long Tory. The confirmed that they would be voting that way again before backing it up with the justification that "Cameron seemed like a good bloke".
Words failed me and I quickly shifted my attention to the football on in the background as a means of escape.
Agreed. But I want to see PR, and the Torie scum are against that. Which leaves Clegg-mania & Vince Cable.
Which is what I want, and where I'm headed too. If I can be arsed, there being no point in my vote if the other party get a majority of two or more in my constituency. Best believe doorsteppers will get both barrels from me on how undemocratic our elections are.
No Tory boy me, never voted for 'em and hope never to do so.
But honestly, if there was a gun at my head and only two candidates, I'd go for Cameron.
Labour have had 13 years. Inequality, decadence, huge debt. Time for a change, any change.
I could never vote Torry. Ever.
I voted for Labour to get rid of the Torries. Then I voted LibDem to say FU to Blair for getting us into Iraq. But. If the choice was between a Danny Dyre and Cameron. I'd vote Dyre. If the choice was between a turd and Cameron. I'd vote TURD. It would have to be extremely dire to get me to vote Torry say, If the choice was between a Piers Morgan and Cameron. I'd vote.. No I can't even type it.
I feel you on the 'time for a change' though. We could do with a term limit, like they have in the US, to try and curb the rot that seems to set in once one party has been in power for too long. But IMO a lot of the debt problems were caused by others in the private sector, bankers and traders, on a global level, fucked us. so that's not really the fault of the Labour gov.
I really want the LibDems to do well in the election. I fear, as I said before, that a lot of people when it comes the crunch, will chicken out and feel forced to vote for one of the big two parties. What kind of democracy is that? Hopefully they do well and get some power to change the electoral system.
No Tory boy me, never voted for 'em and hope never to do so.
But honestly, if there was a gun at my head and only two candidates, I'd go for Cameron.
Labour have had 13 years. Inequality, decadence, huge debt. Time for a change, any change.
But the things that Labour has done wrong over the years (cosying up to businesses, costly PFI deals, sleaze etc.) would be persued even more vigourously under the Tories. They are greedy cunts, pure and simply who think that everything should be for profit and personal gain.
Comments
I've mellowed in my old age now though and can appreciate the writing that went into the songs that weren't Country house/Parklife/etc and rather like the half finished feel of this. I don't think I'm ever going to become a fan of the group as such but definitely have time in my life right now for some jangly guitar.
^^^^^^^^^
STILL BITTER ABOUT THE GALLAGHER'S CALLING IT A DAY.
I noticed he was out on the campaign trail with Gary Barlow! Who I always assumed was a cunt. but now it's been irrevocably confirmed.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jam...s-proof-it-was/
Record store day?
"
The idea of independent high street shops getting together and putting on a special promotional ?day? to boost their sales has always left me cold. Such events tend to be cheesy, poorly-run and too often simply remind one why the shops are struggling in the first place.
But once in a while a co-ordinated event happens that makes you yearn for the high streets of the 1980s and pledge, albeit fleetingly, never to set foot in a chain store again.
Saturday was Record Store Day. Around the UK almost 100 independent record shops got together to release limited edition runs of ?one day only? vinyl. The subtext was that independent record shops are a dying breed ? being squeezed out of existence by the internet on the one hand and the big chain stores and supermarkets on the other. There are just 269 independent record shops in the UK today, a third of the number there were five years ago. The exercise was repeated around the world.
Artists and record companies apparently leapt at the chance to take part. In the UK there were about 60 limited edition records released ? from a never-heard-before outtake from The Rolling Stones? Exile On Main Street (pressed on hand-numbered thick 7? vinyl), to The Flaming Lips? cover of Pink Floyd?s entire Dark Side of the Moon album, to new Hot Chip and Gorillaz remixes. There was also a Beatles 7?, a run of 1,000 pressings of the first new Blur song since 2003 and a cassette of the new (and poorly received) Goldfrapp album. Tiny print runs, all collectors? items.
And so out of mixture of curiosity and genuine interest in picking up some rarities, I arrived at Sister Ray on Berwick Street in London?s Soho at around 8.30 on Saturday morning. I imagined that I would be joining a pretty short queue prior to the opening at 10am. It was nothing of the sort. Even at this stupidly early hour the queue was already snaking round the corner. It was a predominantly male gathering ? effectively a queue of Nick Hornbys with ?holy crap it?s early? bags under their eyes. (Or as my wife put it when she came to meet me later: ?It looks like a queue of blokes who haven?t quite grown up?). Some had arrived at 10pm the night before.
At 8.45am Phil, Sister Ray?s manager, came out and gave us each a number (so we could go for coffee and come back without losing our place ? 53), distributed a list of the day?s releases and set out the ground-rules. Only ten people in the store at one time, only one copy of any item each. Oh, and he offered us 10pc off any non-Record Store Day item and apologised for the queue. Any nicer, and he would have popped into the nearest cafe and bought bacon sandwiches for everyone.
I made queue buddies. Very Talkative Turkish Student was doing work experience for The Libertines? management company and had come straight from his night job at a nearly club. Middle-Aged Music Geek told anecdotes about trying to get Tom Waits? autograph and was on the phone a lot to his friend who was in a similar queue outside Rough Trade East on Brick Lane. Meanwhile, Bearded Buff Man was there to buy a rare Pet Shop Boys record.
I enjoyed that queue. There was a proper sense of community. Rumours swept down the line that Rough Trade had got the entire stock of Blurs and that there was a mini-riot when the store opened as they didn?t have a ?ten at a time? system. We speculated how many of those ahead of us were eBay dealers, and swapped info about the lack of record shops on Manhattan and the cost of vinyl in Japan (I winged those ones).
At the counter, Phil was thrilled by how it had gone. Most of the biggies had sold out but I spent far more than I intended and got the last Jimi Hendrix 7? and much more. ?Goldfrapp tape?? Phil said hopefully. ?Er, no.?
As a strategy, Record Store Day clearly worked. The organisers are keen to repeat its success on a more regular basis. I gather that limited editions will be released at weekly intervals from now on. While is it a shame that these shops even have to resort to marketing tactics to get people through the door, it is heartening that the record-buying public (as opposed to the downloading or CD-buying public) still exists in droves.
On the way home I caught the eye of a man on the underground with a Sister Ray bag full of 12? records. We started chatting. For readers who live outside London, THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Conversations between strangers on the tube are as rare as a mint 7? of Frank Wilson?s 1965 ?Do I Love You?? on Tamla Motown (sorry, I Googled that. Only two copies ever pressed. ?15,000 each at least).
My friend said that he?d arrived at the store a few hours after I had and that there wasn?t a huge selection left. We compared records. ?Oh wow, The Rolling Stones. Nice one,? he said.
I glanced in his bag. He had a something by Sonic Youth. My stop arrived before I had a proper look but I swear that, nestling at the bottom of the bag, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a Goldfrapp cassette."
FACT.
After seeing those pictures and with the office activity at an all time low I spent a minute or two contemplating who the other TakeThaters would support and whether they were enthused by Barlow's real world moves. I quickly realised that Owen is busy saving his marriage, Orange is a depressive who probably needs to speak to his counsellor before tying his shoelaces and Howard probably doesn't even know what a politician is.
I wasn't aware of any record day
Could be SoulStrut 3.0s' new forum title thing, or at least the new name for TakeThatToTheBrits.Com.
Having a hobby is healthy.
Haters.
New found respect for this dude. Self-deprecation-R.
i also loved the trails he did for glastonbury a while ago when jay-z was playing...
"cows... fall back!"
How long has he been DJing? When I was a hip-hop obsessed kid up in the Midlands, I'd pore over articles in Time Out about the Covent Garden all-dayers, and I'm sure he was in there then.
I think he had a moustache.
He had DJ Premier on his 1xtra afternoon show a few weeks back. He was asking him who'd win in a fight between Big Shug and Freddie Foxx.
Yeah, I distinctly recall a few shots of him in the late James Hamilton's Record Mirror column in the early 80s where he was rockin' the 'stache in conjunction with a pair of Rayban Wayfarers and a Hawaiian shirt, Soul Weekender stylee.
The only thing that really annoyed me about him was his insistence on lying about his age (which he may have stopped doing now). I remember reading one of those How We Met articles in one of the supps many years back where he claimed to be in his mid-30s, and I thought, what are you on about, ya cunt, you're easily as old as me...
edit 52
Well, he came clean like Jeru, then.
MEIOW!
I remember those call-in freestyles. And all the Haitch-Em-Pee shoutouts. LOLz.
And when he got shot. This guy is
No Tory boy me, never voted for 'em and hope never to do so.
But honestly, if there was a gun at my head and only two candidates, I'd go for Cameron.
Labour have had 13 years. Inequality, decadence, huge debt.
Time for a change, any change.
The confirmed that they would be voting that way again before backing it up with the justification that "Cameron seemed like a good bloke".
Words failed me and I quickly shifted my attention to the football on in the background as a means of escape.
Agreed. But I want to see PR, and the Torie scum are against that. Which leaves Clegg-mania & Vince Cable.
Which is what I want, and where I'm headed too. If I can be arsed, there being no point in my vote if the other party get a majority of two or more in my constituency. Best believe doorsteppers will get both barrels from me on how undemocratic our elections are.
I could never vote Torry. Ever.
I voted for Labour to get rid of the Torries. Then I voted LibDem to say FU to Blair for getting us into Iraq. But.
If the choice was between a Danny Dyre and Cameron. I'd vote Dyre.
If the choice was between a turd and Cameron. I'd vote TURD.
It would have to be extremely dire to get me to vote Torry say,
If the choice was between a Piers Morgan and Cameron. I'd vote.. No I can't even type it.
I feel you on the 'time for a change' though. We could do with a term limit, like they have in the US, to try and curb the rot that seems to set in once one party has been in power for too long.
But IMO a lot of the debt problems were caused by others in the private sector, bankers and traders, on a global level, fucked us. so that's not really the fault of the Labour gov.
I really want the LibDems to do well in the election. I fear, as I said before, that a lot of people when it comes the crunch, will chicken out and feel forced to vote for one of the big two parties. What kind of democracy is that? Hopefully they do well and get some power to change the electoral system.
But the things that Labour has done wrong over the years (cosying up to businesses, costly PFI deals, sleaze etc.) would be persued even more vigourously under the Tories. They are greedy cunts, pure and simply who think that everything should be for profit and personal gain.
Never vote Tory.