XYZ February

February right, all miserable and bastard cold, statistically a time

for reaching for a pint of vodka and a bottle of aspirin chaser, but

before mooching off this mortal coil, spare a thought for those who

have to sing for their sushi.

 So much saline is spilt in the name of pop nowadays, the top ten is

starting to feel like an afternoon at the crematorium and indicative

of a wider problem than just the uber-drama ladled onto those telly

shows. In disbelief, contestants collapse under the weight of a

result, so grateful of praise they jump around like a dog that didn't

know it could bark.

 Of course it's the most cynical and daft way of starting a career,

but the real circus began on the launch of that inevitable Christmas

winner.

 In a battle for bandwidth an offensive was launched at a Burke by

35,000 burkes. Some Facebook group takes the higher ground rallying

for the 'real' version to claim the Christmas crown, debunking Burke

as just the 'product of a competition', inadvertently starting another

competition. Duuurr...good work 'book worms. Cohens' publishers reach

for their paying-in books.

Music stirs passion but to stab the flag of intellect into it renders

it the soundtrack to some dumb bun fight between those who apparently

know and those who apparently don't.

 The smug instigators congratulated themselves on the blip they became

on the meeja radar. All a bit me, me , me but such is the way of the

internet, that big mouthed, democratic show-off that turned up summat

years ago, making the world so tiny and brilliant but giving us no

idea of how it would sate our needy excesses.

 As incredible and unifying a human tool it's become, from the 'book

to the 'space, we're all given a voice, fraught with the doubt in ever

being heard... "please listen to my demo!" and as we tread water  in a

sea of ego, there's little difference between us and that Eggnog kid,

but like a great man said 'Follow The Leader', for those three

minutes, she leads. From the intro to the verse, left turn at the

chorus and over the bridge to the exit. You've only got four minutes

to save the world but lose the Kleenex.

Nice One, Badass!

Once the dust has settles on such a great victory, the landscape never looks like the Utopia you were fighting for , but it’s a start and hopefully the effervescent fizz of support that rippled across the globe keeps its head and isn’t just the hangover cure for that petulant cowboy’s eight year piss-up.  But like the most compelling pop stars, Barak has a voice that sounds like ‘the truth’, shot through with history and legacy; but in the same way Cowell peddles his Christmas Pop Wimps, it’s been a competition about hitting the right note at perfect pitch (or maybe not, as it’s all panning out). For once I’m holding off on the usual cynical diatribe and will just thank those whose decision to go out and vote indicates a swing toward actually giving a toss about something and contrary to our apathetic times. Whether it was a vote to hand over one hell of an in-tray to the right administration, a naive little bump of Prozac to keep the nation buoyant, or just cos it’s not another bloody-minded golfer, it was the right one. 

On the cusp of America getting another chance to prove itself as ‘land of the free and home of the brave’, musicians and other divvies queue up to tap dance their way into Obamas’ glow of victory, where appropriation is the order of the day and gimps like Katy Perry (a person whose themes of gender and sexuality are as cack-handed a proposition as inviting Goebbels to a Bar mitzvah.)  just throw up that token peace sign and ‘smile’. Ugh.

Still, it’s a great end to a weird year when Winehouse became synonymous with tedium, Jigga took Glasto and the world got a bit daft with money. Business as usual then, and guaranteed there’ll be plenty more strange fruits to fuel this corner of XYZ next year. On that note I want to say thanks for (erm) reading me and as I’ve realised over the last year that, very simply, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you’re fuck all without other people. I hope the new year serves us all well. Now go and be brilliant. 

Money Talk Will Be Boring

It’s the end of the world apparently and like grabbing a fistful of prophecies from Nostradamus’s Naughty Tombola, scientists, philosophers and those ‘money idiots’ queue up, fat marker in hand to tag their names onto the grotty train to ‘I Told U So’.

Best grab your loved ones and an armful of Red Bull and head for the hills, cos if the crunch don’t get you, the icecaps will. With only a remote control to guide us , wave it anywhere near a telly and a whole spectrum of fear and blame will come coursing through that hire-purchase LCD to light the way, but check the Daily Manual for further instruction.

From what you’ve done with your kids, now swapping their Go Go’s for ASBOs , to how crap you’ve been with your cash, good advice comes second to a decent horror story. Oh, and then there’s that delicious hot potato of what you eat.

See, you get a phantom dispensation for eating overpriced offal and fine wines concocted by a scientist, so feel free to point that fat finger and call to take away the takeaways and Turkey Twizzlers. All of this is done in the best possible taste of course and to maximum panto-dramatic effect, cos we all love telly, innit! goodies vs baddies and that.

But the ‘money idiots’ have been out to lunch for too long leaving us all with a twelve figure hangover (400 billion…shit!, think how many packets of Monster Munch you could get with that) and not one sachet of Resolve in sight. The smoke and mirrors of international finance will deliver a masked blow to most over the next couple of years and it’s interesting to watch the rest of the world play catch-up with the recession that has happened in the music industry for nearly ten years. Surely it would be daft to release a record in such a climate, let alone start work on a second? But historically the entertainment business has boomed in tough times as punters strive to escape. Let’s face the music and fucking ‘avin it!