Happy New Year........

Ok, so under pain of death from Executuve Producer Robson I am being FORCED to explain why our album has not been available at some point in 2006, as stated in the heading above.

Well...

There are various reasons and quite frankly I'm about to go to the pub to get fucking larruped, so I won't go into them now. Suffice to say, it WON'T be available in 2006. However, it WILL be available in 2007. The current estimate for it's official release is some time in April via iTunes etc, but shortly before that and...erm...exclusively via the Friends of the Stars site.

Anyhoo.........Wishing all 4 of our readers a very happy 2007.

Keep on keeping on

Craig
xxx

(ps...if the spelling and punctuation is out of whack then I apologise. Drinknig has begun already. *Hic*)

Jarvis Cocker driving like Henry Paul

I was never a huge Pulp fan, but I always liked Jarvis Cocker. He's a genuine one-off and has a highly developed sense of the obsurd, especially when it comes to his own 'celebrity' status. He had the humility and honesty to admit that after years of chasing fame he found it stupid and hollow when he finally found it. A stance perhaps best illustrated when he famously went head-to-head (or rather Weidro-to-Arsehole) with Michael Jackson at the equally stupid BRIT Awards.

Anyway, here he is mowing down pedestrians, pissing off bike couriers and (of course) offering romantic advice to the down at heart with his new single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time", taken from the debut solo album, "Jarvis"

Don't think and drive? Maybe.

Ghost Hunting with Girls Aloud

Fucking hell.

First of all...What a BRILLIANT idea for a telly programme.

Second of all....What a BRILLIANT telly programme!!!!

Seriously, if you haven't seen it then do yourself a favour and go to You Tube and type in "Girls Aloud, Ghosts". The whole 2-hour show is available in 10 installments.

It's ACE.

It's The Blair Witch Project made with the help of the best UK Girl POP group since Bananarama.

What's not to like?

The long and the short of it is that the Girls are taken to various locations and then petrified beyond their wits. In the dark.

Mostly the girls scream and are generally terrified. In fact, Nadine doesn't even bother joining them in the first place and Nicola might as well not have bothered (she spends most of the time hiding away from the action) so in actual fact we only get 3/5 of the band.... Of those that do stick it out, Kimberley and Sarah are ok and pretty game but Cheryl Tweedy is absolutely fucking NAILS and gets through some Olympic-standard swearing when pushed. She does her best to appear not scared at all and is the closest thing I've ever seen to a real-life Ghostbuster.

Ghosts exist in a strange, scary hinterland between life and the ultimate, unknown beyond; where eveyrone has dead eyes and half-remembered feelings of love are distant memories. Cheryl Tweedy is married to Ashley Cole.

..

Josephine Foster is amazing....so there!

On Thursday night we took a trip to Coventry to see Josephine Foster.

Anna drove over and after spending a frustrating 30 minutes negotiating an entirely baffling road system, we parked and found the venue and went inside. Then we were told that the gig was at the 'other' venue. Unable to face getting back on the ringroad horse, we all jumped in a cab and were soon there. I can't remember the name of either venue. Coventry is only 20 miles away from where we live, so I'm always amazed what a monumental pain in the arse it is to actually get there and go about your chosen business. There was a lot of swearing in the car.

Anyway, so I came across Josephine Foster in late 2005 when a friend played me her album "All the Leaves are Gone" which she recorded with a full band and shortly afterwards I heard the solo, acoustic album "Hazel Eyes, I will lead you", both of which were released on the Chicago-based Locust label. Both albums are amazing and whilst they are quite different they are held together by the strength and originality of her voice, which is where the trouble usually starts.

See, I've been eulogising this music pretty much since I first heard it and I've faced wildly different reactions. A handful of people have felt the same was as I do but the majority have ran from the room screaming "Make it stop, make it stop!!". I'll be the first to concede that her voice is out of the ordinary and I can see how it would divide people - Quite simply, you will either love it or hate it and indeed Josephine has described herself as 'a failed opera singer', which is pretty damn accurate.

In terms of our own ranks, Anna absolutely loves it and Cam totally hates it. Ho hum. Despite this internal bun fight the fact remains that the last track on our (yawn!) forthcoming album is inspired by her.

Make your own mind up.

Listen:



















From "All The Leaves Are Gone" : Who Will Feel Bitter At The Days End?



















From "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" : The Golden Wooden Tone


Mmm?

If you didn't run from the room screaming then there are a couple of other releases to track down. A newer album on Locust called "A Wolf In Sheeps Clothing", on which she sings entirely in German (That's right, I said German) and also an uber-limited seven-song 7" (which my friend managed to get for me off of Ebay!) available from Australian label Art School Drop Out that contains one of my favorite tracks, "Sunny Moony Starry Rainy Cloudy Sky".

So. After defending this music for the last 18 months I was chuffed to finally see her play live. She completely delivered and live her voice is even more astonishing. It is completely flawless and seemingly effortless. In a small, intimate venue in front of about 30 people sprawled on sofas and in armchairs it was all the more special. The horrendous journey was well worth it.

xx

"It's Not Pop. It's History"

I was walking somewhere this morning and I started thinking about The Beatles and how it had been ages since I'd listened to them. Then I bought a banana, some tobacco and a newspaper.

I ate the banana, smoked some of the tobacco and am yet to read the newspaper. I also listened to loads of Beatles tunes in my head and I realised that I don't listen to The Beatles very often beacause I don't have to. These tunes are hard-wired in, by and large.

Several hours passed and I didn't think about The Beatles again at all. This is what happens most of the time.

*****

Later on today I went to a friends house for dinner with his family. He asked if I'd heard Love by The Beatles. Considering my earlier thoughts about the band, I nodded politely and said, "No"...which was the truth.

(Secretly, Readers, I thought: "Fuck me. Why so many Beatles things? IN ONE DAY!!!!????")

Anyway.

That thing up there...

...is beautiful.

Their songs are part of the vernacular....there are certain melodies (of thought, harmony etc..) which are human.

I hadn't listened to it...and here's why..

Ok, so a record that's been out a for few weeks already to the naked eye looks like another Beatles cash-in. A Beatles cash-in that started life as an idea dreamt up in a circus, no less. Moreover when it did come out it was beaten to Number 1 in the UK album charts by the evil men behind Westoife, with every little help from the people at Tescos. Frankly, it seems like a fish out of water and deserves to be awful at the same time.

If my punctuation was better I could write that stuff. It's Gobshite Rhetoric, and that's easier than you'd think.

....but.


The thing is.......


It's ace.

I mean The Beatles thing, this "LOVE" rekkid. It's fucking ace.

You get to hear them with BASS

....

In fact, I give it 9.5 'We took a left at Greenland' s out of a possible 10 'We took a left at Greenland' s

They popped into my head and blew my mind

xxxxxxxxxxx

..........

By the way. My friends have a 14-year-old son who reckons that The Beatles aren't ROCK.

He's probably right.

I asked him if they were 'POP, then'?

'No', he said.

"Why aren't they POP?"

...

..


He chewed his food and considered. Then he said,


"It's not POP. It's History".




BINGO!

Guilty Feet ain't got no rhythm...

For reasons I'd rather not go into at the moment, I found myself at the George Michael show the other night.

Yes, yes....

Anyway, George is currently packing them in Europe-wide with his 25 Live tour and this was the last of a 3-night sell-out stint here in sunny Birmingham. Essentially a 'Greatest Hits' tour the 2 hour set was, as they say on the wireless, 'All Killer - No Filler'. Anyone with access to a radio over the last 25 years would have known at least three quarters of the songs played and as such there was a 'carnival' atmosphere. Although I did notice that when he did the slower or lesser known tunes a few people took that as their cue to go and have a piss, which is fair enough I suppose.....Oh, and that 'Shoot The Dog' tune is still completely baffling in all respects.

However, even in the sonically atrocious vibe-vacuum that is the NEC (...Imagine a giant biscuit tin full of angry wasps) it has to be said that George sounded pretty good. I'm not a big fan by any stretch of the imagination but there is no denying that the geezer can sure carry a tune and his band were uber slick, as you'd expect I suppose. He doesn't do a great deal on stage - he just kind of smooches his way through the hits as the crowd go utterly fucking barmy, sing along and hang on his every word. He had them in the palm of his hand throughout.

For those of you who are unlikely to see the show (which is most of you, at a guess) I can faithfully report that hearing 10,000 people honking their way through Careless Whisper is a uniquely terrifying yet nevertheless strangely exhilarating experience - a bit like the Nuremburg Rallies, except with housewives and gay men instead of Nazis. It is certainly an image that will stay with me a loooong time.

Anyhow....when the show finished the frenzied crowd stripped the merchandise stalls to their very bones, grabbed their George memorabilia and headed off into the night a great, big happy throng.

One question though: Hey George, why no 'Wake Me Up (Before You Go, Go)'?

Even I would have sung along to that one.

Beyounce and Madness..

It is early December, 2006 and I've just realised that Beyounce is the best pop star on the planet.

That girl has got the lot. Everything.



BUT!

It's only POP!

....and the beautiful, unexpected thing about POP is that it will pop, spectacularly or otherwise.

The first band I really got into was Madness. I loved their videos.

So....

I played their records.

I was a skinny boy so I always had "Baggy...

Anyway.

Below is a video of some football fans doing the intro to One Step Beyond by Madness.

Here are the real words.


Hey you
Don't watch that
watch this
this is the heavy heavy monster sound
the nuttiest sound around
so
if you've come in the off the street
and you're beginning to feel the heat
well listen buster you better start to move your feet
to the rockinest rock steady beat of madness
ONE STEP BEYOND!!!



??

So.

Madness or Beyonce?

MMm?