West-Ends

Men at C&A

D'you think the members of Westlife are actually ashamed of themselves for churning out such ear-blistering shite that self-decapitation is the only antidote to their warblings? And yeah, I know that they've split up - easily their greatest ever contribution to music - but I still just saw one of their videos on telly and wept openly and violently at the banality of it all.
God, imagine having made an entire career out of producing such soppy bollocks that you've become the very definition of a Mother's Day present. If Westlife's work was my reward for the fact that childbirth was the equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping through my love tunnel, my celebration of said event would involve a blender and Kraken Junior's fingers.
Anyway, back to the blarney...Not only have Messrs Byrne at al happily agreed to churn out what also passes for funeral durgery but they've also spent the greater part of their careers staring into any approaching camera as if they've found a lump in their collective knackersack. On the days when they had to make videos by gawping achingly into a lens I wonder if they actually felt a small part of their souls being bludgeoned. No wonder Louie Walsh, their ex-manager, looks as if he's been drinking from the fountain of youth. What he's really been doing is drinking the tears of these bewildered Irishmen as, yet again, they burble through turgid lyrics.
No wonder the boy Walsh was accused of making up stories about the lads for the delectation of the media because in reality the pop-throttlers look about as exciting as a set of taps. Fair play though, he stuck to tales of them being eaten by lions or violently injured rather than claiming more ludicrous assertions such as them producing groundbreaking mash-ups.
Now that they've called it quits - oh thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck - all that's left to do is erase their back catalogue in a global implosion that forms a black hole for any song that requires said singers to fawn like castrated pups. Failing that I'd be happy to administer my own kick to the group's biffins. All in the name of good music, of course.

A Little Letter...

Just put down the torch, Will. Now.

Pardon me from deviating from my regular blog posting. It's just that I have a little message for the ubiquitous Marrowfat Black Eyed Pea Will. I. Am:


Dear Mr Am
In the words of the spectacular Malcolm Tucker: Fuck the fuck off. 
You see, you're absolutely frigging everywhere and if I have to meet your turnip-faced stare one more time I'll shove ragged chip forks into my eyes. 
Are you angling for a British passport by any chance? Because I can think of no other reason why you should be ingratiating yourself so viciously upon the British public. First you pitch up on the X-Factor. Then you appear on the underwhelming screech-fest that is The Voice. From there you somehow manage to carry the Olympic torch through Taunton, although what the fuck you have to do with British heritage, sport or cider is beyond me. Then you hold hostage the entire royal family by barking your vapid lyrics at them on the Jubilee stage outside Buck House. 
Would you like us to shove a stick of Blackpool rock up your arse to complete the US-to-UK transformation? Or perhaps we could flog you publicly with a reinforced teabag? I'd even, personally, be delighted to force feed you a selection of Fray Bentos pies.
Look, Will, the problem isn't that you are here at all. It's just that you appear to be so agonisingly desperate to be noticed. It's even more embarrassing than the stuttering bollocks you churn out in the name of music. 
So spare us will you, Will? Restrain your urge to turn up to the opening of a British envelope, for fuck's sake, because with the recession, the Tories and JLS we've already got enough shit to contend with. 
Yours sincerely
The Kraken

Page Turner

Biting her tongue, thank Christ

Whoa there! Am I going mad(der)? Is it true that bob-brained popstress Jesse J has signed a deal with a major publisher to write her autobiography? Well, fuckadoodledo. So it's true that any old bugger has a book in them then.
What, pray, is with this business of squeezing autobiographies out of people who have done fuck all? I mean, what's Jesse J going to write about when she finally learns how to hold a pen properly? A trip to the Brits and her laughable choice of body stockings? 
OK, so she is doing well in a furiously competitive industry but how about giving it another decade or so before cramming the tale into 80,000 words? Yeah, I know that probably doesn't fit in with the marketing plan that's been crafted around her (so much for ignoring the price tag, eh, Jess love?) but, strewth, surely an autobiography has to be based on more than when when the subject matter finally grew pubes. 
And yeah, I know that such book fodder have sprawling fan bases to screw money out of, so there are plenty of eager teens desperate to read this tat, but come on. Don't the likes of Jesse J, and anyone else wedged into such a deal, also wonder what the frig there is to write about?
Christ, perhaps I am old fashioned and equate autobiographies with a lifetime of successful endeavours or political, scientific and cultural insights. Perhaps I like to pick up said tomes with burning anticipation at learning from a life well lived. Sorry Jess, love, but something tells me that your scribblings won't necessarily fall into these categories. Although I dare say it'll educate me fully on the joys of studded lipstick and the writing of banal pop warblings. 
And yeah, I do realise that this makes me some sort of literararary snob but that's what you get from an ex-journalist: the urge to read something of value, and not just to the record company's bean counters. I reckon Jesse J's insights will fall into one of those categories and I sure as shit know which one. 

Faking It

Me, when I get up in the morning

What the frig is all the vitriolic fuss over hot pop warbler Lana Del Ray? If the ranting on the t'web is anything to go by you'd think she'd spent her life kidnapping children to feed to her whippets. But no, she hasn't. Instead she had a failed pop career under her real name of Lizzie Grant before rebranding herself as Lana Del Ray. This, though, has turned her fans against her to the point that they're this close to holding a witch hunt. What, may I ask, the fuck?
So she found herself a new image, new name, savvy record company and banged out some new and improved songs. Amazingly that's set t'internet afire with the rage of fans who claim to have been duped. Excuse me? Duped? Oh, do you mean duped in the same way that Lady Gaga fooled the nation by not really being hatched from a giant egg when she was Born This Way? Or perhaps you mean duped in the way that Michael Jackson wasn't really a white man? Or duped, perchance, in the way that the Spice Girls presented themselves as singers?
So do these distressed fans think that Del Ray is the first popstrel to ever fake it for the fame? Oh spare me, you indignant, goon-eared fools. Who the fuck do you think fills the charts at the moment? Mustachioed, overweight, wart-sprinkled women or lythe, golden-skinned and clear-eyed beauties? And where, pray, do these beauties come from? Well, they sure as shit don't crawl out of local talent shows looking like that. They - get this - fake it. They change their images with diets, cosmetic surgery, furious gym habits and armies of stylists. Every one of their moves is decreed in the meeting rooms of record companies and the media dictates everything else, from what they say to who they shag.
In fact, you'd need a skull crammed with hamster droppings to even imagine that the usual MTV fodder hadn't been manufactured in some way. 
Del Ray has hardly dragged the music industry to a new low by cranking up her image. For frig's sake, we're talking about an industry that's accepting of the toss that's turned out by the X Factor, where desperados sell their souls just to get a walk on part in a Cheeky Girls video. Is Del Ray really more conniving and cynical than that? Unless she's Harold Shipman without the beard and scary stethoscope, I doubt it.
Which means these duped fans need to get what is commonly known as a grip. It's pop music for Christ's sake. Pop music. We're not talking about perverts parading as paediatric consultants, here, or Syria's Bashar al-Assad opening a HR consultancy. We're talking about the bollocks that Fearne Cotton knocks out on Radio 1 of a morning. 
So as we say on a Saturday night out, leave it, mate, she's not worth it. No, really. Leave. It.

Pop Picking

Al would turn on his table

Look, explain something to me, will you? Which is Beyonce's/ Rihanna's/ Gaga's latest single again? See, I haven't got a frigging clue because they churn them out at such a rate of knots that I fear they're colluding to create a new measurement of speed.
Just how hard do these people work? When do they ever get to take a shit? Jesus, Beyonce's been knocked up since last summer (until recently) and suddenly she's got so many singles out that I fear she's given birth to a child made of vinyl. And as for Rihanna, she's been around for the last 20 minutes but already seems to have enough released singles for a bloody box set.
I just can't keep up with them. Can you imagine what their record management meetings are like? They must consist of shiny-suited music execs pushing miniature figures of Bey/ Ri/ Whoever across a table-top map of the globe, like domination hungry Nazis, as they bark at each other about the military-like timing of the next release.
Worse, they're on a loop on TV's music channels. At any given time you can grab yourself an eyeful of Rihanna's waggling or Beyonce's jiggling just because they're never, ever off the bloody telly. Seriously, if aliens tuned into MTV they'd weep for us based on the fact that we seem to have a total of three singers worldwide.
Thing is, this lot just don't have to work this hard, do they. Don't they ever demand a break? Do they ever look at their musical achievements and think,"Fuck it. I've done my bit. I'm pissing off to the Bali dope trail for a year". Or do they live with some terrible fear that if they don't release a single fortnightly the world will forget about them in a fit of global amnesia? Christ, Grand National horses don't get flogged this hard. If I were RiRi or Bey I'd start demanding a nosebag.
Anyway, if they take a break then we'll get a break. There's only so much more of these singers that I can stand before I start pouring concrete into my ears. Yeah, yeah, yeah, RiRi, you found love in a hopeless place. Just stop fucking banging on about it will you? And yeah, Bey, finally he's put your love on top. Perhaps it was in an effort to get you to shut the fuck up.
Laydees, spare me. Girl power is one thing but girl omnipresence is doing my head in. Change the bloody record, will you?

Bleeurgh

Just. Go. Away.

Alex fucking James: strummer, cheese fondler, champagne swigger, failed artist, professional toff, skint festival organiser, Sun columnist and now sell-out personal plaything of McDonalds, KFC and Greggs.
What a complete and utter tosser.
Just sayin'.

Dawn Chorus

Yeah, you're laughing now...

Whoa! Just came out of my shed where Radio 2's Steve Wright kindly regaled me with Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing amongst other popular music choices. Having never bothered to listen to the song before, I've just realised the complete fucking outrageousness of the lyrics. No, no, no I don't mean the bits where Marv, ahem, bangs on about wanting a shag. But the part where he hounds his, undoubtedly knackered, ladyfriend with his "wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up..." and "get up, get up, get up, get up..." for the purposes of said procreative activity.
Ha! Ha ha ha ha! Haaaaaaa! Marv, mate, are you frigging kidding me with this stuff? Wake up? Get up? Jesus, are you seriously telling me that you've woken up at 3am with a semi and considered it a good idea to nudge the missus until she's wide awake just to ask for a happy finish? 
Fuckadoodle do. Marv had a shed load of kids too so bare in mind he was harassing the women who probably had, just hours before, exhaustedly collapsed into bed after a day of funnelling baby vom, spilling shitty nappies, singing The Wheels on the Bus and generally talking to one-year olds as if someone had kicked their brains to death.
And after all of that he thought it a good idea to wake them up and ask for a shag? I'll tell you something, had I been one of Marv's good lady wives he'd have needed more than sexual healing after coming at me with a woody at 3am. He'd have needed gender reassignment surgery and a good defence lawyer.
Either Sexual Healing is a testament to how utterly out of touch Marv was when it comes to the perils of mothering or it's a towering monument to a man who didn't know when to stop pushing his luck.
In fact it's a miracle that Marvin Gaye was shot by his father. Personally, had I ever woken to Marv's nudgings after endless hours of dribbling my own tit milk down my front I'd have taken a fucking gun to him myself.
Perhaps Marvin should have recorded Afternoon Delight instead, at least hedging his bets that his woman had two minutes to spare before the school run. Or perhaps Morning has Broken, with Broken being a direct reference to what would be left of him should I ever have received a stupid o'clock booty call. Yup, heal that, Gaye m'boy, heal that.

Losing the Plot

Aye, the sound gimps are here

If I watch one more TV show that treats its audience as if they just got washed up on Thick-as Shit Shore I'm going to be certified illegal. Twice in recent days I've been privy to the sort of incidental and accompanying music that could only have been the work of severely en-gimped producers/ editors/ who-the-frig-ever. 
I've just witnessed a show about hiking which did for soundtracks what Harold Shipman did for patient care. To accompany footage of a group of women walkers, some pancake-eared fool chose Sisters are Doing it for Themselves before playing Why Does it Always Rain on Me when it, er, rained and Shine On when, you guessed it, the sun came out. It was like listening to my own cranial fluid seeping from my ears.
I was also recently forced to take note of one of these vile daytime property shows as it was piped into my dentist's waiting room (presumably to save him the cost of anaesthetic). To ram home the fact that one property was collapsing the overpaid sound goon chose Danger! High Voltage. Go West led us numbingly into a piece on a house in Devon and when some gaff got sold at auction Nina Simone turned in her grave when Feelin' Good got reeled out.
Shit on a brick, it's like TV for the hard of thinking. And to think that there are people out there - mouthbreathers, I suspect - who think that this is must-see TV. 
Exactly how low-brow can viewing get? And to think that somewhere is a TV exec who decrees this stuff fit for public consumption. How the fuck would they feel if they had to watch telly that was the viewing equivalent of a jar of Cow & Gate? Of course, that is based on the assumption that once they have proclaimed this tripe viewable they're then so busy swigging Gray Goose, snorting gak and boffing their assistants in the disabled toilets that they never have to view their own fetid creations. John Loggi Baird would poke out his eyeballs with a cathode ray tube just to witness it all.
So spare us the televisual mush, will you? If I want to be treated like a retarded barnacle I'll start watching Channel 5 and perhaps you could accompany it with Suicide is Painless as a little send off to my intelligence. That or Going Underground.

Taking the Mick

Praying for a Buble-free Crimbo

Quick! Call the rozzers! Christmas has been hijacked! Oh, hold on, no it hasn't, it's just Michael Bublé and his Crimbo album. It might as well be a hijacking though. You'd think that Micky Bubbles - as we call him in our cave - has bloody well invented Christmas, the way he's being slathered all over the nation. 
For fuck's sake, he's on the radio and telly so much that I've started mistaking him for Santa. Kraken Junior thinks that on Crimbo Eve a grinning Canadian warbler is going to drop down the chimney just to initiate her into his housewife-cluttered fan base. 
In fact, between his crooning rendition of Silent Night and his nice-guy persona it's a Christmas miracle that ITV/ Daily Mail/ the hags from Loose Women haven't mustered their own hijacking of Bubbles himself, kidnapping him just to drool over his middle-of-the-road style of innocuousness.
Look, I'm sure that he's a lovely guy. But can someone just turn the man off now? I dunno, send him to Labrador where he can bang out Little Donkey without it representing another assault on our tellies/ radios/ festive sensibilities.
That's it, Bubbles. Bugger off to your own baubles and leave ours to dangle in peace.

Blast from the Past

Oooh, remember..?

Give me strength and kick me in the chops. Do you know what I saw yesterday? A bar called Retro which intices in it's slurring clientele with - wait for it - 90s music. I know, I know, 90s music is now retro according to this deeply avoidable watering hole. 
For fuck's sake. I'm still wearing knickers from the 90s. I have eyeliner that dates back to 1996. How can that decade possibly be retro? It was all of 12 years ago. 12 years! Worse, the doors to this pit of despair were festooned with pictures of the likes of Oasis and the Prodigy, as if they were relics from a previous age.
Look, if you wanted to relive the 90s you could probably do it by tuning into Heart FM. You hardly need a flux capacitor for Christ's sake. I mean, if you walked backwards fast enough you could nudge the bloody 80s so the 90s is hardly going to be a problem. 
And, for better or worse, I've been trying to imagine the people who go there. My assumption is that it's full of braying students who joyously proclaim how Chumbawumba produced the soundtrack to their childhoods before shouting things like "Oooh, remember...!" about various adverts and comedians as if they died on the stroke of midnight at the end of 1999.  
Worryingly, though, now that we're pitching headlong into 2012 said Retro will probably start advertising the Noughties as if it were a time of air raid sirens and rationing. Before you know it there'll be 8 year olds cooing about how Britney bloody Spears informed their childhood musical influences.
Jeez, never have I felt older or more out of date. Seeing Retro yesterday was the emotional equivalent of a a fifteen year old shouting "Fuck off, grandma!" at me. I'm 40 for God's sake. As if I didn't feel sidetracked enough by the fact that I'm not a size 6, have never tried meow meow and have never queued up for an X Factor audition.
Anyway, I suspect that Retro isn't really aimed at krakens like me, is it? Tell you what though, give it 15 years and I'll open my own bar, labelling the 20teens as the new retro. That'll give the 90s huggers something to chew over. Revenge never goes out of date does it?

All That Jazz

You reckon?

It's always the same isn't it. Just when you think the world can't get any bleaker, that evil has finally won it's battle against mankind and we're doomed to perish in the toilet bowl of our own weaknesses things get just that little bit worse. Today that happened to me. How? I discovered the term 'experimental jazz'.
Experimental. Jazz. Experimental fucking jazz. God, hasn't the world suffered enough at the hands jazz alone? What the frig did we do so wrong that it had to be winched up a level to experi-bloody-mental?
Jazz is distilled evil. Throw it in a lab beaker, place it over a bunsen burner and once the juices have evaporated you're left with a bubbling layer of tiny gnashing demons. I hear that someone did the same with experimental jazz once but went blind and deaf and then their children melted so we'll never know the results.
Like slugs, Gary Rhodes and lemon curd, there is no conceivable reason for the existence of jazz. I mean, can't the tuneless find something else to do, like chiropody or mole hunting? Do they have to parp into a clarinet or twang an overstrung double bass while nodding like meth heads?
Anyway, it's safe to say that I shan't be badgering iTunes for the latest in experimental jizz, sorry, jazz. I shall, though, be splashing out on ear plugs, anti-nausea medication and something fetid to shove up the nearest nodding trumpet. Now that's an experiment I'd be happy to see.

Greatest Tits

N-Dubz, post-styling

I gather, according to my more yooful and, er, with it, counterparts that N-Dubz has released a Greatest Hits album. May I ask the inevitable and obvious question: what the fuck?
N-Dubz? Greatest Hits? They've only been around for the last six weeks and even then are only well known because they look like Jeremy Kyle audience members who looted clothes that fit them. That and the fact that one of them wears ridiculous hats to detract from a face like an abattoir.
What unimaginably tuneless arse fodder have they managed to conjure into an album-worth of tracks? How much gap-toothed grunting and squealing have they fashioned into a stocking-filler? God only knows and I sure as fuck don't intend to listen to find out. Instead I'll listen to the squalling of mutilated monkeys, overlay it with the sobbing of children and then picture Fazer, Tulisa and Dappy flogging it in Asda. That should do it.

Ugly Noise

Aye, another dose of Nickelwank

Oh Christ, I rarely blog about music because a) there's a lot of shit stuff about and I don't have the time to lambast it all and b) there's a lot of great stuff about but I hate being nice. So here's a rare foray into the world of popular beat combos:
What the fuck is that caterwauling otherwise known as Nickelback's latest single When We Stand Together? Fuckadoodledoo, have you ever heard such earnest, self-righteous bawling in all of your life? It makes me want to fill my aural canals with quick drying cement. Here's a taste of what the fop-haired knobwads have unleashed on the world:
When we could feed a starving world/ With what we throw away/ But all we serve are empty words/ That always taste the same
Worse, it sounds like a Eurovision entry, but the type that bags nil points before the losing warblers get packed off back to the arse end of Bulgaria. 
This song, Nickelwank, is not music. It is an infection. A pus-busting boil that must be lanced with a six foot needle and a decontamination chamber. All that bollocks about feeding the world with empty words that taste the same? Well they're choking the fuck out of me.