Venting my spleen

Musical pidgeonholes

You can't listen to THAT, you're a metalhead. Or, you like that!. Classic lines that we've probably all encountered. But see, I'm more punk than you. Er, yeah right. Got nothing better to do then. So, all open minded people take a look at image, apply the appropriate stereotype and then decide for you what you can and can't listen to. I don't have a regulation shaved head and tatts, so I can't be into hardcore. And I don't have dreads and piercings, so I probably can't listen to the new metal shit. I look like a relic from the 80s. Get up to date man. Well sorry, but new image isn't going to dictate to me. I like what I like. I try to approach with an open mind, and t the end of the day, I'd say I listen to more stuff and have more of a passion for music than many people. Does it really have to rock 24 hours a day. I don't think so. Not if you really care about the music and if it's important to you. So listen to punk, metal, indie, grunge, techno or whatever. The worst thing is when you sell out to yourself, and listen to only the style of music which others dictate to you, or your image dictates to them.

At gigs - The one song syndrome

So, people don't like moshing, or stage diving. Ok, I can live with that. If I want to go into the pit, I will, and I know what to expect and put up with. If not, then I'll hang around a bit further back. But you know what is way more annoying and infuriating than the little knocks you may get in the pit. I'll tell you, it's that moment at nearly every gig, where the main band play the song and every goddam bastard decides that they have to go down the pit for that song. Recent examples of this phenomena would be Beautiful People - Marilyn Manson, Balltongue and Good God - Korn, Fuck it All - Machine Head, Black No 1? - Type O Negative, Caffeine or Midlife Crisis - Faith No More. You know what I mean

So you're hanging around, out of the pit, watching, and for that song, all you get is people pushing past you to go in, so you miss the song, and the very next song you miss as well as everyone that went in is knackered and are now making their way out of the pit, ... via you of course. Like, if you're going in go at the start of the gig, if not, stay the fuck away during that one song. But do not, do not go in for 1 single solitary goddamn song. Please. It annoys the living dooberies out of me, and one day someone is going to get laid out. If you ever see someone at a gig, when the song is coming on, that is having to allow people to go by, while looking like thunder, muttering to himself, curling his fist open and shut while counting to 10 to stay calm, then it's probably me. Come say hi and we'll kill them all together

Good bands splitting with labels, and the promotion of the spice girls

  • Kerbdog split with label

    Mere weeks after the release of their new album, On The Turn, Kerbdog have parted company with their record label.

  • Joyrider

    The new Joyrider album is Skid Solo due to be released on May 5th. Which should mean that they'll be touring again around about that time, which is always good news.

    The bad news however, is that the band have apparently parted company with their label, only weeks before the album was to be released. Irreconcilable diffrences regarding the album, which sounds to me like the label was going to fuck up once more on the promotion of the album and the band, just like they did with the debut, Be Special which should've been much much bigger than it was. Record labels, pretty much arseholes one and all.

  • ... Yet talentless puppets like S**** G**** get promoted

    Could someone please explain the logic that record companies use, cos it leaves me somewhere back there. I mean, over say the last year, we've had the Wildhearts messed with, Honeycrack, Skyscraper, Joyrider, Kerbdog dropped or messed with and there's probably a whole bunch that I've forgotten at the moment. Bad Religion get messed over by Sony in the UK meaning that they won't tour here. Like, what is going on.

    And then you get no talent, marketing whores such that you can almost see their strings being pulled by the puppet masters, the S**** G**** getting hyped and backing beyond recognition, and now signing deals with Pepsi Cola whereby people have to buy their drink in order to get a CD. Proof it would appear if ever it was needed, that image now conquers talent. A sad sad day for the planet. Even worse, apparently now, there is to be a new perfume marketed by Faberge (I think), who used to make Old Spice. Anyway, this will be marketed as The S**** G**** perfume, so more suckers will buy into yet another company and product, without excercising a thought process for what they are doing, and all the while these performers get richer and richer. Since when has a single 10minute live stint proven that someone can sing or have class. Bollocks. That's like saying that any footballer who scores a goal is international class. Or that my ability to string together a couple of minutes playing on my guitar makes me a virtuoso. Complete and utter crap. Proof comes in the prolonged performance of such stuff.

    People say that stuff like, oh say Marilyn Manson is offensive. That is nothing like as offensive as the pictures of the Spice Girls in their Pepsi dresses, and the knowldege that the kids that worship them will have been conned in to buying into a particular product in order to satisfy their own craving for anything and everything related to the band. It's one thing for a person to worship a band such that they'll buy everything that band releases, but it's another, totally offensive thing, to make people buy third party products in order to satisy that craving. That is more mind control, more influencing of innocent young people who have still to learn the art of thinking and reasoning for themselves, than any schlock rock kind of band will ever do. And yet they are held up as examples to children. More evidence of the 'you can like whatever you want, as long as it's what we tell you or sell you' concept.

    And then you get a true flagbearer like Alternative Tentacles being sued for distributing albums that these people consider offensive. A label that challenges people to think, gets fined to the tune of 2.2 MILLION DOLLARS. Read about the case here , along with some Biafra interviews. The world is a sick, sick place when we are effectively fined for thinking, or daring to think for ourselves.

    Don't forget, if you take offense to the above, there is my Disclaimer here for you to read.

    Hmmm, rant mode OFF