The Princess of Risk

The Princess of Risk: why Aaliyah mattered. Not that you, o readers, need telling - but it’s nice to see the Guardian saying it.

STARSHIP - Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now

STARSHIP - Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now

Except not having another hit ever again. I reckon Grace Slick and Yazz still hang around down Safeways bemoaning the fact that the only way actually isn’t up, and that something did indeed stop them - being attrocious.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Streets Of Philadelphia

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Streets Of Philadelphia

Being bedridden in hospital has its down sides as well as its perks. Most of these I irradicated by replacing my saline drip with one parts Tanq and two parts tonic - it glowed eeriely at night but the evening staff barely noticed. However your entertainment factor is limited and I caught myself watching that interminable do-gooding film Philadelphia. Lulled to sleep by the terrible acting of Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks I woke to a start where I heard a tube train rumble through my room. I soon realised that this was not the case - instead it was the evil factory owner of rock (some say The Boss) Bruce Springsteen theme tune.

Now of course in a lot of ways The Streets Of Philadelphia matches the film perfectly. It is awfully dull and worthy after all, without a single performance of note. But as I frantically tried to change channels on the television something hit me. Did Bruce actually know what the film was about? Because from those lyrics you would be hard pressed to work out this was a film about AIDS. This mularky about being unrecognaisable to himself and being bruised and battered - maybe he thought the movie was about the Rumble In The Jungle or something. That rumble being his low and frankly lousy singing voice.

This was a new Bruce though, not the bombastic rocker of the eighties (and I know Born In The USA was supposed to be ironic, and I know nobody got it - but how good is a joke if nobody gets it?) This Bruce was sensitive, reflective (albeit unrecognisable to himself) and solo - having just fired the E Street Band. It was his perogative, he was The Boss. That said SOP - as this song is aptly abbreviated - was almost enough to push me back into my coma. Until I realised the other major movie which was made in Philedalphia*. Mannequin. And say what you like about Springsteen, at least he didn’t write “Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now”.

*You can shut up at the back with your Philadelphia Story bollocks.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH-LIYAH

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH-LIYAH

I’d like to see her pick herself up and try again now…

Many Thanks

Many Thanks to everyone who’s responded to our plea for help below - I’ll be getting in touch with more details before the weekend, hopefully. Or at the very latest on Sunday. Your e-mails have not gone ignored!

ILE Double Live

ILE Double Live: This is me singing loud and clear. Well, loud, at any rate. Various forum regulars, and Beth out of The Gossip (see forthcoming feature!) sing their hearts and livers out at karaoke. Get it before the lawyers do.

Tanya Headon returns

Tanya Headon returns with an account of where she’s been, and a level-headed assessment of those sizzlin’-hot New Yorkers the Str - oh, you know.

I KNOW IT’S SERIOUS

I KNOW IT’S SERIOUS

My dear readers, you perhaps deserve a word or two of explanation. Where have I been for the last two months? Not it would seem that any of you missed me - perhaps you assumed I was dallying once again in Gin Lane and thought no more of it. A forgiveable assumption but the truth is far stranger. I have in fact spent four of the last eight weeks in a coma. It was a close-run thing I can tell you, not helped by gross misdiagnosis on the part of my doctor, who thought I had suffered a stroke when in fact I had lapsed into a near-vegetative state upon hearing The Strokes.

(Note to readers, never get treated where there are staff called Dr Beat, Dr John and Dr Hook. That is not a hospital, it is the bargain bin of HMV and you are unlikely to get cured.)

Normal coma-patient-waking tactics as seen weekly on the heartwarming bit at the end of the local news were useless to me. Usually it is the touch of a relative’s hand or the sound of a favourite record that hauls the apparently brain-dead back down that long white tunnel. However I disowned my entire family at age nine when my mother signed me up for piano lessons, and as you might imagine the favourite record tactic was unlikely to work on me.

My editor tried his best. He called in Emma Bunton to give me a special performance, but I relapsed the instant my hands were pried from her throat and her heaving gingham breast was out the door. He read Ben Watt’s remainder-bookshop classic Patient, before realising that it in fact was about the qualities needed to sit through one of Everything But The Girl’s jazz-house albums without chewing off your own lips. He even played a Strokes record - “Quite Easy To Explain Actually When You Find Out Who My Dad Is” - backwards to try and break the spell. (Amazingly it did not sound like a Wire record. It sounded like a Wire solo record.)

Curiously enough no coma patient has ever been woken by “Girlfriend In A Coma”, perhaps because lying cold and unresponsive is the usual female reaction to a Smiths’ fan’s sexual technique and so many a Mozophile has failed to notice his partner’s plight in the first place. Similarly “Karmacoma” by Massive Attack has caused more comas than it has cured with its abstract vibes that sound like somebody filling a didgeridoo with treacle. The idea that karma could send you into a coma is a foolish one anyhow as surely Tricky has long since exhausted his and yet continues to make rubbish albums. However his grasp of medicine is poor at the best of times: “I am paranoid and horrible when I smoke dope! It must be a rare allergy!“.

Truth is dear reader that the source of my coma was impossible for the doctors to fathom. They had me hooked up to all sorts of machines which were bleeping and bipping rythmnically along to the steady four four time of my heartbeat. Frankly the whole scenario was a bit like a Mouse On Mars gig - except it actually went on for weeks instead of merely feeling like that. In the end the doctors wrung their hands, disconnected the machines and left me there to die.

In blissful silence.

I came to - as you would imagine - almost immediately. In my NHS room in St Thomas’s I could see over all of London, and yet could hear none of it. My body had rebelled, it had gone into a protective coma to stop any more of that damned music getting to me. Well I was grateful for the rest, but my bod had overstepped the mark. It is mere selfishness to save myself from the horrors of syncopation. I came to save the world from music - and am back to do so.

Whilst in my perfectly silent room I looked over this body of work and felt that it is a fair start on my mission. But now I really shall not give quarter to any itinerent busker, let alone Bono. Music has driven me over The Edge, so it would seem churlish not to reverse back over him too - just to make sure.

THE STROKES- Yes. That Is It

THE STROKES- Yes. That Is It

See Blondie. But all male and posher.

Sorry, am I being unfair to the band du jour? Well I’ve recently been around the world and I, I, I, have been involved in the brokering and selling of many babies and even this isn’t a human rights atrocity which compares to the world going crazy ape bogshit over a New Wave band. Hello America? We did not fight the New Wave wars of 1980 to allow blokes in skinny ties ripping off Magazine to pop back in 2001. We didn’t even fight the New Wave Of New Wave wars in 1994 for this to happen. Mind you fighting S*M*A*S*H and These Animal Men was tantamount to fighting your paraplegic granny with one hand tied behind your back. Too Sussed indeed.

So like B.S.E. any national disaster we suffer will be repeated in the States seven years later. Well unroll my sleeping back and mosquito net if we don’t have a bunch of posh kids feigning attitude and ripping off Wire. Now there is an idea we have never seen before. No, we didn’t have a posh band ripping off Wire knocking around in the mid nineties fronted by someone who looked like a man. The only difference between Elastica and The Strokes is that The Strokes are actually fronted by a man - albeit a weedy whiny one who went to a finishing school. Pity they didn’t finish him off.

Stuffing MTV’s ballot box

Stuffing MTV’s ballot box: Interscope Records teaches fans how to disable cookies and vote over and over again for “My Way” and some Fred Durst-shepherded band called Puddle of Mudd. The possibly great thing about this article: There might be fewer Durst-ciples walking the world than previously estimated. (You do remember the it’s-not-payola ‘experiment’ that initially got their cover of “Faith” on the radio, yes?) The unsurprising thing about this article: A few years ago, I ran into a friend who was temping for Sony. I asked him what he was doing, and he hesitated, looked at me sorta sheepishly, and said, “I’m dialing 1-800-Dial-MTV over and over again.” Apparently, the gig paid pretty well—looks like Interscope has found a way to lower costs, uh, I mean, “fire up the fans.” Either way, the bottom line will surely look pretty sweet at year’s end, making Durst the perfect poster boy for everything Tom Frank has been talking about since Paw inked their first record deal.