Tuesday, September 05, 2006

fancy pants trainers and cocaine

Tonight is the music industry’s annual farce other wise known as The Mercury Music Prize. Once again, I roll my eyes to the back of my head and chuckle to myself that the holy trinity of the British Music Industry chose to nominate such irksome toss pots such as; The Editors, Muse, The Artic Monkeys and The Guillemots for the “prestigious” award. In the words of someone wiser than I once said: “What da fook?” To make matters worse they’ve paired up these big selling artists with Thom Yorke (who it is obligatory to nominate so he can do his generic Anti-Bush/Blair speech) the usual bunch obscure folkies just to make up the numbers and the head scratching, befuddling inclusion of Scritti Politti!!!???.

Surely any prize that requires a £500 entrance fee just to be considered automatically eliminates a large section of the smaller British bands for entering and paving the way for the “big boys” on their big fat major record labels to enter and in doing so it has reduced the prize to a back slapping exercise for selling more records a la The Br(sh)it Awards. Surely The Editors’ album (which alas my nearest and dearest purchased) does not warrant receiving an award for innovation? Surely the only accolade they should be receiving is the ‘Getting Away With It Award’ for managing to sell as many records as they have. For Chissake, they sound exactly like Interpol (who aren’t the best band on the planet to imitate) only with the same bloomin’ melody/rhythm on every song and in general sounding as dull as dishwater. I saw The Editors live out in Spain at The Benacissism Festival and they were every bit as boring live as they are on their record only the singer was a bigger tit than I had previously given him credit for.

The Artic Monkeys will no doubt be really hoping they win as their record isn’t selling too well I hear and they’re short of a few quid no doubt. Of course the AM album is quite good, and they’ll no doubt walk away with the prize and spend the prize money on fancy pants trainers and cocaine.

For what its worth, I will be rooting for my band de jour Hot Chip to win- but reluctantly so, as no doubt it will result in an significant increase of their ticket prices, but their excellent album ‘The Warning’ is surely a million times more deserving than any of the above on the grounds of it being innovative, interesting and different from the plethora of dullard guitar bands that get nominated year in year out. So what is the best British album of the last year? Aside from Hot Chip’s, by my reckoning it’s got to be ‘Chops’ by Euros Childs, but funnily enough I didn’t see his name on the list of nominees. Perhaps the judges would be kind enough to publish a list of all the artists who entered so I can see for myself just why some of these bands were selected for the shortlist. I reckon they didn’t have enough entrants, and chose to call upon The Guillemots as a favour, promising them a crate of beer and the opportunity to appear on Jools Holland’s 'Later' show if they turned up to the event.

Surely it’s about time someone nominated The Fall on their behalf (I can’t see Mark. E. Smith filling in the application form can you?) after all it’s about time the best British band of the last 30 years basked in a bit of their(his) deserved glory? I can’t see it happening though.
Anyway, another excellent recommendation from the chaps at Aquariam Drunk led to the discovery of :

http://www.daytrotter.com

It’s a unfathomably great music website. Please check out the ‘sessions’ section and listen to the Bonnie ‘prince’ Billy tracks (including a version of ‘New Partner’) and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, who does a full band version of ‘Tonight was a Disaster’ which the Lo-Fi genius, tape hissed Casio keyboard driven original was one of my all time favourite songs: “crying in the cab ride home/with Frank Sinatra on the radio/but it might as well have been Lil’ Kim/when every song you hear still reminds you of him”


Anyway, I found this CTFPA video on you tube as I don’t have the origional ‘Tonight was a Disaster' on this computer. Not my favourite song-but is very (Smog)-esq.




NEWSFLASH-

I’ve just learned via the CTFPA Myspace that he/they’re playing in Manchester soon (24th Sept)- woo and indeed hooo! X2

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