At Long Last - Freedom

It's been over a year now since I started this place. I started it at a time when I really should've been working hard at university instead of writing swear words and offending disabled people. At long last, this place will no longer suffer, for the foreseeable future anyhow, as I'm now finished with higher education. The sense of relief is unbelievable. I'll be getting mortal drunk tonight, mortal drunk tomorrow night and mortal drunk all day Saturday, so this post here is a bit like one of those special one off episodes of a sitcom that are actually quite shite. You know when Friends sometimes do a full half hour where it's basically just made up of old scenes and flashbacks and it's lazy as fuck? Well, that's what I'm going to do here.

I thought that after just over a year, and after finishing university, what better way to celebrate my freedom and my just over a year anniversary, than posting up some of the fantastic complaints I've had made against me. Some of these haven't seen the light of day before, some maybe shouldn't be getting put up here to be honest, and one definitely won't be getting put up as I was described as "inhumane" by the artist that I'd reviewed, and it was a bit awkward and I felt a bit guilty and I probably should've got into a bit more trouble than I did for some of my comments. Anyhow, that is a totally different story.

So what I'll do is, is to post a few sentences below, all of which are comments made about things I've said over the past few years. Sorry that this seems to be a bit of a self indulgent wank fest, but fuck it, so here we go:

"You must know these fuckers"

"Well i think this review is not based on a musical opinion, but a boring old cunt who has lost touch with reality and can't see the creativity the Arctic Monkeys are bringing to the table. If you bother to listen to the rest of Favourite worst nightmare, you might chage your perspective of just how wrong you are"

"eeee i remember the day, when you could just make an album and not worry about what some ugly bald sandancer thought about it. Now it seems, they're all top class music journalists. The writer clearly has a very eclectic music collection ranging from ricky martin to milli-vanilli. I sincerely hope that he's not going to review his own record collection otherwise, we can look forward to some riveting reviews on, aqua, gary glitter and the fast food rockers. Long live the NME"

"I'm sorry to say; but I fear your ears could be on the way out.

There are some truly brilliant lyrics in this album and cannot see how you feel the album is just ok?
Obviously opinion counts a lot here.

And from what I'm trying to gauge from you, can you honestly say this album is down there with the likes of Lipstick Traces and Lifeblood?"

"All-right Baldy? I thought it's time that people knew that you actually were some half-man-half-dog 2 headed weirdo spawned on the toxic waste dump that is Shields"

"You write like a retard and obviously have no taste in music. Go fist fuck yourself!"

"Your a fucking wanker, at least we can talk on a computer, we are glad that we don't talk rubbish like you, we even bet that our life is better than yours, you know nothing about deaf people, nothing.

Hearing people like you are obliviously wankers and ignorant.

Bloody retard

your sincerely :-) have a nice day... not"

"Lot of anger there, dude."

So that's the basic ones, but now my favourites ones, which are with regards to a review I did of a local bands album. Obviously my review didn't sit too well with them. To be honest, all I did was speak the truth whilst other local rags splurged the bands press release word for word instead of having a bit of integrity. Anyhow, here you go:

"Narked Magazine is probably a better description for your magazine. The review for The Mosaics was obviously written by some moron who is on something and quite honestly doesn't have a clue.

Won't even waste any more of my time writing to you....life is too short to bother about people who write dribble!

Check out a proper magazine like the Crack and read the reviews

FAN OF THE MOSAICS"

"I'd like to start by saying that I am not your stereotypical Mr Angry, who makes a habit of writing to newspapers and magazines, I'm just a local thirty something, who loves music and spends a great deal of time listening to bands on the north east scene

I have just picked up the latest issue of your "Narc" magazine and read your obviously "unbiased" review of the forthcoming Mosaics album.

Where do you publish your magazine, do you live on Earth with the rest of us, do you have your head in a bucket ?!

How anyone can describe The Mosaics as being no better than "a million and one unsigned bands across the country" and "a watered down Coldplay" is beyond me.

The Mosaics are without doubt, one of the best bands to come out of the north east in who knows how long, as I'm certain any genuine reviewer who has seen the band would gladly testify.

I think the real clue is in the text of your review - you mention "pushy parent management" so you obviously have some personal knowledge of the band and obviously some sort of axe to grind.

Yes, the band are apparently partly managed by a family member, but what's your problem with that ? - Paul Weller, the godfather of cool, has been managed by his father John Weller, for the past thirty four years !!

Be honest, what's your real problem ? - did The Mosaics knock you back at an audition or something ? / is it frustration at your own lack of talent ? / are you stuck in a dead end job ? / are you not getting enough ?

I notice you mention "orange boiler suits" and "being chained to a radiator whilst a laughing soldier takes polaroids of his comrade wanking on your forehead" - hey, whatever turns you on !!

Perhaps if you're trying to put out a genuine music magazine, you should cut down on the "extra curicular activities" and just concentrate on the music - or perhaps you got something in your ears from an over excited soldier !

The Mosaics are a young, brilliant, superbly talented local band with great songs, who with the right breaks could really get somewhere.

I console myself that Oasis, Blur and Pulp who "ignited something inside you" probably got equally stupid reviews from pricks like you in their early days and still managed to make it !!


A "genuine" local music fan "

So there you have it. The review that got this reaction is somewhere on here, just do a search at the top for it if you want to have a look.

I'll be back on Monday most likely and will get back into the swing of things then.

Westerberg

Very nice interview with Paul Westerberg up at Pitchfork. You can find it here. I'll be free in two weeks time, at long last. Interesting interview anyhow, mostly talking about the greatest band that never was. Enjoy.

Bit of an Update

I did these singles reviews a while back now, so they're wholly irrelevant, but I've only got round to updating this place just now, only 3-4 weeks left of studies before I have my life back.

The Long Blondes – Century

This single has a bit of a dark 80’s feel about it that doesn’t really sit too well with me. It sounds a bit like the type of music that might be played at a disco for scary weirdo people. Imagine if a TV detective was hunting down a member of some sick and depraved cult and their investigations led them to some underground discotheque. The dance floor would be full of people who look like the scary woman from that Shakespears Sister video, and they’d all be drinking blood from Gothic chalices and grinding and writhing around to this song. It’s pretty awful and makes me feel extremely uncomfortable; I probably wouldn’t like to listen to this song at night on a walk alone in the park, in case the weirdo people dressed in leather cat suits jumped out from a bush and drank my blood. The Long Blondes have managed to create a knife wielding maniac of a song which, after 16 listens, doesn’t seem to have any form of redeeming qualities. All in all a terribly depressing and frightening song that will turn teenagers into scary weirdo people, and that’s not a good thing.


The Xcerts – Do You Feel Safe?

Biffy Clyro, Biffy Clyro and Biffy Clyro. This is who The Xcerts so obviously sound like. This single is no exception to that. Aside from any Biffy comparisons, The Xcerts, from Aberdeen, try to cling desperately to their Scottish accents through the forced American vocals. “Emo” isn’t my bag in fairness, so maybe I’m biased. But this song conjures up everything I hate about that whole “suburban kid in generic black hoody with his nails painted black” sub-culture. Bland is probably too complimentary for this shower of filth. In answer to the song title, no I don’t feel safe, I feel physically sick in all honesty. To my ears, there’s far too much shouting, far too much stupid big drums, far too much “wow, I’ve got a new distortion pedal”, and far too much weak and uninspiring lyrical content. However, if you like that sort of carry on, then you’ll probably love to listen to this whilst shagging on a gravestone and moaning on about how you hate the world. Outrageous stereotypes put away to one side, this is truly horrible and a massive disappointment from a much talked about band.