Wednesday, September 23, 2009
LOVE ZOMBIES
Amaaaaaazing, inspirational, stunningly beautiful etc., etc., etc.
It seems that we are in the midst of International Fashion Month, or whatever the fick it is called nowadays. It seems to go on for years.
Each day you'll open a newspaper or scan the internet and you'll be confronted by endless articles debating whether or not London/New York/Paris/Milan is THE fashion capital or who is going to *save* the fashion industry. They are all written in a rather po-faced style which is even more serious than the real news stories
Oh, and you'll also be confronted by loads of front row shots of Anna "Newkiller" Wintour, minor pop stars and troll faced *It* girls.
Troll faced *It" girls seem to be walking on the catwalk, having elbowed models out of their jobs because, no doubt, *It* girls have oodles of personality.
Fashionistas will say things like this about *It* girls:
"OooOOOOOOooh, she is an amaaaaAAAAAazing person. Do you know, she turned up at the Westwood after party in, like, a vintage Balmain gown and OXFORD SHOES????????? What kind of extraordinary mind could even conceive of doing something so OFF the WALL? I know she is three foot tall and has a face like a bucket of frogspawn, but she is so INSPIRATIONAL that, like, we HAD to put her on the catwalk!!!!!!!!!!!"
Apart from the fact that you have to endure looking at pictures of Kelly Osbourne, Peaches Geldorrrrfff, Pixie Geldorrffff, Mopsa Geldorrrrffff, Moo Cow Geldorrrrffff and Alice Delllallllllallllllalllllalllial, fashion shows themselves look as if they are as boring as fuck.
Droning canned music plays while endless queues of knobbly kneed, ashen faced seven foot aliens with wide screen cheekbones and sunken zombie eyes saunter aimlessly down the catwalk wearing grey sacks. Each show seems to last for about five hours.
If anyone can explain the appeal, please feel free to do so ...
Labels: fashion, idiiots, It girls, Kelly Osbourne, the Geldorrrrffff sisters, zombies
Monday, September 14, 2009
OLD BROWN SHOE
I'm about to review a television programme, but don't analyse the review. Whenever I watch TV on a Saturday night I'm *rather the worse for wear* and a lot of the facts and details tend to be forgotten and replaced by a soup of wine, detritus and confusion. Still, I'm sure that you'll appreciate that I'm looking at the, er, bigger picture here.
The documentary I was watching was trying to persuade us that Mikhail Gorbachev was not responsible for Perestroika or Glasnost the fall of the Iron Curtain. The real catalysts for change were BEATLES.
At the moment BEATLES are being forced back into our lives because their albums have been re-mastered and there is some sort of BEATLES video game to introduce a new generation to a lifetime of buying endless reissues of BEATLES product. This documentary is part of a BEATLES Decade on BBC4. For the next ten years, BBC4 will show nothing but earnest BEATLES documentaries.
In this programme, we were informed that young people in Russia couldn't get enough of the swinging pill poppin' moptops until well into the 1980's.
The documentary I was watching was trying to persuade us that Mikhail Gorbachev was not responsible for Perestroika or Glasnost the fall of the Iron Curtain. The real catalysts for change were BEATLES.
At the moment BEATLES are being forced back into our lives because their albums have been re-mastered and there is some sort of BEATLES video game to introduce a new generation to a lifetime of buying endless reissues of BEATLES product. This documentary is part of a BEATLES Decade on BBC4. For the next ten years, BBC4 will show nothing but earnest BEATLES documentaries.
In this programme, we were informed that young people in Russia couldn't get enough of the swinging pill poppin' moptops until well into the 1980's.
Apparently, Russians didn't have any sort of fun before 1963, and even that was limited to Leonid Brezhnev singing at the Kremlin's annual booze-up in celebration of increased crop yield figures.
Well, that's complete bullshit for starters. Can you think of anyone in the world less likely to have a knees up and break into song than Comrade Brezhnev?
Hmm, perhaps he would do a couple of hours of Nico songs accompanied by a harmonium.
BEATLES music was forbidden in the USSR, so soldiers would bring back recordings of their songs from Radio Luxembourg. As a result of this, most Russians assume that BEATLES songs fade out at regular intervals, and have made a cult figure of Horace Batchelor from Keynsham in Bristol.
Some of this music found its way onto flexi discs. These were rescued from bins behind hospitals and had been used for X-rays.
According to the narrator, BEATLES songs were recorded onto Uncle Sergei's Lung.
Uncle Sergei's Lung were a thrashy and useless band who distributed music on cassette in 1982 and they were much praised by John Peel for about a fortnight because he always backed hopeless cases.
A black market flourished as BEATLES flexi discs were exchanged.
Someone on a street corner would whisper the following to shady looking potential customers;
"Pssst ... you want to get THE SHAKES???? You want to ROCK AND ROLL????"
If the customer nodded their head in compliance, the salesman would retrieve a flexi disc from his sleeve and the customer would pass over 500,000,000,000,000,000 roubles.
Hmm, perhaps he would do a couple of hours of Nico songs accompanied by a harmonium.
BEATLES music was forbidden in the USSR, so soldiers would bring back recordings of their songs from Radio Luxembourg. As a result of this, most Russians assume that BEATLES songs fade out at regular intervals, and have made a cult figure of Horace Batchelor from Keynsham in Bristol.
Some of this music found its way onto flexi discs. These were rescued from bins behind hospitals and had been used for X-rays.
According to the narrator, BEATLES songs were recorded onto Uncle Sergei's Lung.
Uncle Sergei's Lung were a thrashy and useless band who distributed music on cassette in 1982 and they were much praised by John Peel for about a fortnight because he always backed hopeless cases.
A black market flourished as BEATLES flexi discs were exchanged.
Someone on a street corner would whisper the following to shady looking potential customers;
"Pssst ... you want to get THE SHAKES???? You want to ROCK AND ROLL????"
If the customer nodded their head in compliance, the salesman would retrieve a flexi disc from his sleeve and the customer would pass over 500,000,000,000,000,000 roubles.
To love BEATLES was an expensive business.
Many of the long term BEATLES fans who were interviewed were obviously as mad as arseholes.
In a boring footnote, I will add my own experience of BEATLES IN EAST EUROPEAN COLD WAR YEARS.
On my one and only visit to my dad's homeland in Croatia, I ended up sat in the corner of my auntie's dark, one storey farmhouse in a remote village, listening to my dad and several relatives and friends gabbling away in Serbo-Croat for hours.
My dad hadn't bothered to teach me any Serbo-Croat. He didn't bother to translate any of the conversation he was having because he was kind and considerate like that.
As I sat in the corner feeling as if I might as well be watching Martian Cinema through 3D glasses, I noticed that the wallpaper in the farmhouse featured a recurring motif of a scene from the Yellow Submarine film.
My sixty year old auntie had plastered the wall with BEATLES.
That is how all pervading BEATLES were.
Labels: Back In The USSR, Beatles, Horace Batchelor, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nico, pill poppin', Yellow Submarine
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
FAC ME 'TIL I FART
Recently I had a brief exchange on Twitter with KekW about boring music biopics. He came up with the excellent suggestion of casting Jude Law as Damon Albarn in a fucking tedious Blur biopic. Can you imagine how sleep inducing that would be?
Anyway, my thoughts went off at a tangent (as is usual for ninety per cent of the day). I began to think about the film Twenty Four Hour People - the story of Factory Records. Apparently, it is based on *legend* as much as fact.
Given that I've mentioned one or two of the characters before in posts, I thought that I might as well expand on my suggestions and offer up a list of the actors who would have made the film far more entertaining ...
DANIEL CORBETT THE WEATHERMAN as IAN CURTIS
JEREMY IRONS as BERNARD SUMNERIAN BOTHAM* as PETER HOOK
JANE McDONALD as GILLIAN GILBERT
JUNE BROWN as STEPHEN MORRIS
PETER VAUGHAN as SEAN RYDER
NICHOLAS LYNDHURST as BEZ
HARRY HILL as HOWARD DEVOTO
AGYNESS DEYN as VINI REILLY
The all night party goes on
A GROUP OF BOY SCOUTS* as A CERTAIN RATIO
HAYLEY FROM CORONATION STREET as ANTHONY HAITCH WILSON'S LONG SUFFERING FIRST WIFE
ALAN PARTRIDGE as ANTHONY HAITCH WILSON (oh ... hold on ... ha ha ...)
If anyone can think of a suitable actor to play the part of Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton, I will send them a free sachet of Linco Beer shampoo.
Extra creamy ... extra dreamy ... mmmmmmMMMMMMMmmmm ...
*with thanks to Steve Wright In The Afternoon and The Boy Scout Association
Labels: Agyness Deyn, biopics, Boy Scouts, Daniel Corbett The Weatherman, Factory Records, The Kill Steve Wright Now Campaign, Vini Reilly
Saturday, September 05, 2009
LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY
Meh. It looks as if another big family gathering is in the pipeline.
Why do people feel compelled to celebrate birthdays with a zero at the end of them by forcing everyone else to enjoy themselves?
Of course, it could all be a scaremongering tactic designed to put the fear of god into anyone who doesn't like family gatherings (i.e., most discerning people). Even if it amounts to nothing, there is a vague sense of impending DOOOOOOOM which is difficult to avoid. Well, er, I have a vague sense of DOOOOOOOOOM at any rate. You mean to say that not everybody
thinks like me?????
Having conversations with other people who are not your friends is vastly overrated and often quite harrowing for a social phobic like yours truly. The importance of families is vastly overrated. Combine the two at some kind of celebration and you have the ingredients for a gruesome evening full of awkward silences, pseudo panic attacks, embarrassment, boredom and indigestion.
So I'm going to throw the comments box open to you, dear reader (singular) and ask for your advice on the matter. What excuses have you used to get out of social events? Not that I'd use them myself of course, oh no. Or you could just tell me your *hilarious* awful family gathering stories and cheer me up. Who knows, the vague sense of DOOOOOOM might evaporate ...
Labels: birthdays, bloody families, boredom, embarrassment, family gatherings, indigestion, social phobia, vague sense of impending DOOOM
