Monday, November 30th, 2009That’s Joey2tits, Evil James Harrison and I getting ready for this Friday’s CHRISTMAS BOAT PAAAAAAAAAAARTY!
Indeed. The aforementioned plus Musical Director and occasional bassist Blonde Jeremy Deacon are on their way over now for further workings. Any requests?
Monday, November 30th, 2009 Sunday, November 29th, 2009
So, The Guardian published a typically misinformed article about “the death of hip-hop” last week, called “When Will Hip-hop Hurry up and die?” Having read many of those, I could smell its racist, classist, ignorant Wrongness a mile off, and lo I did shrug it away, like so much dandruff, until my guitarist Evil James Harrison turned up for rehearsal going, “did you read that article in The Guardian? It made some interesting points…” and I had to refute those “points” at length. Points like this:
“…judging by [hip-hop's] output in recent years, it’s become a deadening force: as a listening experience, but also as something that maintains a deadlock on the musical imagination (and personal ambitions) of Black American youth. I doubt very much that this demographic has no more surprises up its sleeves in terms of sound and style, judging by past form(s) (jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, house, et al ). But that New Thing won’t come until they tire of hip-hop themselves and turn against it.”
I know, I know. Anyway, you’d think the foolishness of such statements might be self evident, but some people are deeply, deeply stupid, and not everybody’s had the pleasure of listening to mixtapes by Pill and B.o.B in the past few weeks, let alone all the awesome hip-hop-slash-rap-stuff that came out in all the other weeks this year. And regarding that bollock-naked-drooling-mental other point, “black American youth” has created so many “New Things” post hip-hop that to list them would require more words than a hundred similarly clueless Guardian hacks chained to a hundred Apple Macs pumped with a hundred thousand milligrams of mid-nineties-strength speed could mash out in a year, cotdamnit, and anyway, we’re not going to take his nonsense that seriously are we? No, we shall just put his witterings in some context: the man who wrote that silly little article about “the death of hip-hop” for The Guardian last week was one Simon Reynolds, who said of Biggie in his end of the 90s round-up:
The odd nifty catchphrase and deft rhyme, but c’mon, this man was a pig—Notorious P.I.G. more like; Piggy Smalls, heheheheh-and with a little help from his buddy Sean he almost singlehandedly set rap down its current path of spiritual bankruptcy. And he had the most unappetising vocal timbre in all of rap- asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up and fat-fuck wheezy all at once.
AHAHAHAHA! Thank you, Mr Reynolds, for the gift of laughter. In these dark days we can do with all the chuckles we can get, eh?
Thanks to Ich Lüge Bullets for the heads-up.
Friday, November 27th, 2009
As my Twitter crew already know, I spent far too long today in Myspace, a foul and stinking land I visit rarely, clearing out junk and blamming spammers. No-name no-clue Myspace rappers and rotten shindie bands one expects, but why on earth Sway feels the need to try and post three messages on my comments section about his new single is beyond me. I banned his spamming ass anyway. POW!
There were a few nice messages in there, but I feel these people would be better served hanging out here, instead of lining Rupert Murdochs greasy pockets with ad-cash (they were trying to sell me tit-implants while I was in there, “make yourself amazing!” Fuck yourself weirdo!). I have been saying this for years, but seriously, I think I am going to have to delete my Myspace. Just as soon as the new ATD.com is live and has the sexy front page music section we’ll be set.
I never liked Myspace. Ugly rotten, decrepid, foul, stinking gateway to the Galaxy Of Wrong. I remember a billion years ago when it was all about Friendster – those were the days. Friendster was a nice, sweet, innocent hangout, where all you had a list of friends and a testimonial board, where people would write things like, “I remember Akira when he was Adam Alphabet and he used to make my cry with his beautiful columns for PlayLouder. Love you man!” Ah, back in the day before No Homo. Truly, this decade has been like fifteen of them. Anyway, one day people started leaving messages like, “Friendster’s old! Come with me to Myspace!” And lo, everybody starting migrating to Myspace because it was “edgier” and you could change your background picture. That and, word on the street was it was a crazy pick up joint. So I went over there to see what the fuss was about, and sure enough I was getting propositioned by bottle blonde heavy metal chicks with Daddy issues within the frickin’ hour. So I deleted my page and moved along, speedy like. A year or so later I had to open a new account, as I was making music, and it was deemed commercial suicide to not have one. I wish I’d never bothered, that thing has been nothing but a foul drain on my soul.
I never liked Facebook much either. The early days, with all the poking and lobbing of sheep were annoying enough, but when it turned into Friends Reunited it really got lame. “Hey Ads, long time, you make music now, that’s wicked, I got three kids and a divorce, how’s life?” How’s life? Didn’t you used to call me a faggot and throw chips at me in the cafeteria, durkhead? Fuck outta here with that bullcrap! Then there’s all the exes. Facebook is a minefield of exes. Exes with many, many babies, and mortgages to boot. I have moved house more times than I could count, but there is no getting way from one’s past anymore. 100×100 pixel reminders at every corner, as if my Tellytubby tattoo wasn’t enough already.
There was about a month a few years ago when Facebook was all about playing Scrabulous with people, which was fun while it lasted, but those days are long gone. However, they did finally get around to making a Social Network that doesn’t involve people demanding you “comment” on their “pix” that actually adds value to my life, and that is Twitter (tadah!), which, for now at least, I find useful, fun, and entertaining. Today it has given me a number of excellent articles to read, along with a brilliant Spotify Pet Shop Boys playlist by David Quantick. I have been returning the favour by edumacating his ass about screw music and what “bumping” a song means. He has in turn been passing that knowledge in to his people, and as I type, all around the world men and women are listening to the screw remix of Trae’s Swang, and that makes me happy.
So there you go.
PS, Yes, I was always too old for Bebo.
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Did you hear the news yesterday?
Banks have achieved a surprise victory this morning when the supreme court ruled that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) did not have the power to determine the fairness of unauthorised bank charges.
The ruling on a case between the OFT and seven banks and one building society was to determine whether the fees charged for unauthorised overdrafts could be tested under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.
The supreme court found that while the OFT has power to assess the fairness of terms in consumer contracts, this is subject to limits laid down in this legislation. Regulation 6(2)(b) states that the assessment of the fairness of a term in a contract “shall not relate … to the adequacy of the price or remuneration, as against the goods or services supplied in exchange”. In other words the “value for money” equation is excluded.
The court of appeal had held that this exclusion only applied to the “core terms” of the contract and not to ancillary terms such as the charges for unauthorised overdrafts.
But the supreme court overturned this ruling, finding that the charges for unauthorised overdrafts were part of the price customers paid for banking, and therefore fell within this exclusion.
The decision is a blow to more than about 1.2 million current account customers who had already lodged claims on unauthorised overdraft fees paid as far back as 2001, but which had been put on hold by the banks until conclusion of the case.
Chief executive of consumer group Which?, Peter Vicary-Smith, said: “This is a bitter blow for the millions of people who have been patiently waiting to get their bank charges back.
“Not only does it give banks licence to charge what they like for unauthorised overdrafts, but it could have ramifications for other areas of personal finance. The banks now have no excuse for introducing other fee charges.
Basically, they’ve used OUR “bailout” money to secure a legal victory meaning they won’t have to pay us back the money they stole off us.
WANKERS!
Speaking of which, there’s a great interview with Simon Cowel from 2007 over at Playboy, which I was lead to via a Popjustice article. Mr Cowell, who has “gorilla hair” according to children on Twitter, is typically brazen in the interview, claiming his only concern is “making money, for myself and the people I work for. I mean, that’s absolutely the only criterion I attach. That’s it.”
He says lots of other things too. Here are some of my favourites.
“If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you’d see Jaws and Star Wars. In the book library you’d see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it’s like children’s food–chips, milk shakes, yogurt. I don’t have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes.”
“If I went to a French restaurant–which I probably never will again–I would ask the chef to make a plate of chips. I look at those menus in utter horror. I find them appalling.”
“Do I prefer Kelly Clarkson’s music to Bob Dylan’s? Yes. I’ve never bought a Dylan record. A singing poet? It just bores me to tears. And I’ve got to tell you, if I had 10 Dylans in the final of American Idol, we would not be getting 30 million viewers a week.”
“I’m not interested in signing murderers. Other people sign murderers. I think a lot of rap acts have murdered people.”
“People thought I was stupid for signing the music rights to the Power Rangers and the World Wrestling Federation. I was a laughingstock. I couldn’t have cared less. I was learning the business. If I could put a Power Rangers record on the charts, I must have been good.”
“Guys reach a point in our lives when we prefer TV to music. I have six TVs in my London house, including a little one in the bathroom. It’s my favorite time for watching TV.”
“There’s something I call the daytime test. If you take a girl out at night, it’s a breeze. You can drink; it’s dark. The daytime is a whole new area. [Terri Seymour] passed the daytime test.”
And finally!
Playboy: If you went to a club tonight and saw the 21-year-old Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” what would you do?
Cowell: I’d plug my ears and run in the other direction.
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009Thanks to everybody who suggested zombie anime for me to rifle through. I the end I chopped up lots of episode one of Tokyo Majin. Tokyo Majin is super dope.
I am Not Dead (Yeah Remix!) is on the I Am Not Dead (Yeah!) EP, out now on MP3 and T-Shirt.
Whooo! Zombie anime FTW!
Speaking of win, I received some pretty awesome news yesterday.
I have made it into the annuls of science!
I know this because I got an email from Dr Edd Hammill in Canada with the title, “You’ve made it into the annuls of science.” And it went a little something like this:
Dear Akira the Don…
Over a year ago I got in touch with you from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, as a bunch of us Ecology people were at a conference in London and we were wondering if you were playing at the time, don’t know if you remember, but anyhoo.
Well, following the brief discussion that we had and so forth and due to the fact that your doncasts and mixtapes kept us all entertained during very long and dull data collection sessions I decided that the next time I published a paper essentially on my own I would stick you in the acknowledgements, and lo and behold, I got one in. I’ve had confirmation that my article “Reciprocity in predator–prey interactions: exposure to defended prey and predation risk affects intermediate predator life history and morphology” has been published in the Ecology Journal “Oecologia” and you are indeed in the acknowledgements and will remain there for all time, the article will be published in paper form sometime next year. I suppose you could consider this the science world’s equivilent of a “big shout out”.
BIG SCIENCE SHOUT OUT! Owwwww! How dope is that? I AM IN THE ANNULS OF SCIENCE! And shall remain there for ALL TIME! Whoo! You know how long all time is? LONG! That’s how! BLOODY LONG! Bwa ha ha! As noted in the above remix, you could go “blap blap blap”… I am IMMORTAL! In your FACE mortality! Win on a stick!
Yes. Seriously, thank you Dr Edd Hammil in Canada, and all your clever science wizard brothers and sisters. Your scientific energy inspires me, and I shall endeavour to be deserving of the accolade you have bestowed upon me.
TO THE FUTURE! And BEYOOOOOND!
OMG THIS IS SO MY JAM 
