What a state

I admit, I’m something of a music snob. Not that I only listen to the one type of music and deem it far superior to anything else available and anyone who listens to anything other than this is an insufferable oaf, but that I feel there are more than a fair share of genres not fit for usage under the umbrella term music.

Apologies, umBERella.

Next time you’re in any shop that has the album chart in it, stop and take it in. Sainsbury’s, for one, has the top 100. Although it doesn’t. You can’t buy Bon Iver in there, despite hi supposedly being at number 40.
Anyway, that’s still a lot of albums (for some people. Yes, more snobbery). Yet nearly every album is a pathetic excuse for noise. Not fit for my money. Listened to by the aforementioned oafs. (tick. More snobbery.)

As you may have read, I don’t like commercial radio. But this encounter with the top 100 made me realise that these purveyors of so-called music actually make albums. That means they have more than one of these pathetic wastes of bang-on three-minutes. That’s, say, eleven predictable key changes. Or eleven uses of the same Boss drum beat. And there are 100s of albums.

Most of the time it’s not even their own rhythm section. Eh, Chris Brown?? Who needs your own when you can steal Calvin Harris’.

Still, he had nothing to do with it. He just entered the words given to him into a note matcher, I should imagine.

You may have noticed I mentioned Calvin Harris. And yes, he’s a dance music-maker. I’m not sure of the official term. But he, like many dance-music-makers, properly makes dance music. It’s complex, clever, requiring of talent and actual ears. Unfortunately for every good’un (he’s not my thing, but I can appreciate it) you have a thousand shit’uns that have more success than most bands that disappear into oblivion.

I would readily admit there aren’t currently many bands suitable for the word greatness, no band will really go on to have the success of a 90’s Oasis. And the All-American Heroes of Brucie, Young, Dylan, Jimi are a thing of mythical history. But there are endless lists of bands worthy of recognition that will forever elude them but to a small few.

I realise music goes in random cycles, anything could be in vogue next week. But with the impact clubbing has had on our whole society it will not do much but a chip into the toenail of the big, bad monster. It’s irreversible. We’re stuck in this pit of electronic, emotion-less, noise.

I’m going to pass my record collections on and they’ll be comparable to nothing more than drawings in a cave. The pictures of today painted by Conor Oberst, the landscapes crafted by Justin Vernon, the bizarreness of Thom Yorke, will be nothing to most in the same way Nick Drake is to most today.

Truly brilliant lyricists are being cast-off into the void for people who can press play.

I fear for the children.

F1 deal makes me sick

I don’t know who came up with this idea, but it is ridiculous.

This morning, BBC and Sky teamed up in a deal to both show F1 with Sky getting all the races and the BBC getting only 10.

I am really struggling here to put this in words. Say I want to keep watching F1 on the Beeb, I will now have to buy Sky just to watch 10 races that the BBC aren’t showing! I would have much preferred Sky having every race and then I know what I’ll be getting.

And just what will we be getting with Sky?

If you look at their football coverage, it seems we will get the following:

• ADVERTS
• SUPER DUPER FORD SUPER WANKY SUNDAY FORMULA ONE
• CRAP COMMENTATORS
• STUDIO ANALYSIS
• POINTLESS SLOW MOTION FOOTAGE
• RUBBISH ANALYSIS
• ADVERTS
• BRITISH IMPARTIALITY (ahem)

I would rather they gave the bloody thing back to ITV. I would rather James Allen was back commentating on his own. I would rather he was commentating while wanking himself into oblivion as he shouts over and over “Lewis Hamilton, Lewis Hamilton, OOOOOHHH.”.

I am not happy.

Oh and there’s a race this weekend. Meh.

Olympic Dreams

I doubt you would have heard or seen this, but it’s a year until the start of the Olympics. The BBC have barely mentioned it.

But I’d rather it was elsewhere. Before the patriotic, empirites (<-I believe I’ve coined that and I intend to introduce it into common usage, much like the phrase “Holy Jesus Navas“. I’m sure you’ve heard it, taken the world by storm) jump in, allow me the next few paragraphs to explain.

When the Olympics is in far flung countries it’s easy to sit back and watch it on TV behind such phrases as “It’s far far away so I’d never have been able to go anyway. So I’ll sit here and take it all in” or words to that effect. Then comes “It would be good if we got the Olympics, so we could actually go and watch it from the-them outdoors.”

Alas, no.

We’ll now have to sit and watch the sports we know nothing about and begrudgingly even call sports from a hundred miles or so away, which will make it a little uncomfortable. And before you shout me down with “Well if you applied yadda yadda yadda”, well I did. I applied for some insgnificant round of cycling and another equally insignificant hour of wide-shouldered specimens going form one end of the swimming pool to the other. Only to need to go back the other end.

But you all have fun, won’t you.

There are still tickets to the football, of course. But do I really want to pay money to watch players who haven’t had more than a week off football in about a decade running around a ground I plan on going to to watch a team I actually care about play against West Ham?

Anyway, the only player that would make it and not be English would be Bale. Who’s got a penny for his thoughts on the latest FIFA Rankings?

What’s the matter with Felipe Massa?

Felipe Massa. At one moment he can be lightning fast with excellent car control and a hunger to win. At another moment he exudes amateurism, has on track panic attacks and comes across like he couldn’t drive a shopping trolley.

He is a conundrum. An unknowable being. What will he do next? Where will he spin next? Will he ever finish or qualify in front of Alonso again?

I have tried to pin point the moment where Felipe become floppy, where Massa became messy. Many people say it was when a coil flew at him and almost killed him in 2009. Some say it was when the now infamous words “Fernando is faster than you” were uttered. I, however, think it was that last corner at Brazil in 2008 when Lewis Hamilton won the title at the last race. Imagine the devastation at learning you didn’t win after all, the crushing disappointment of losing the Championship on the last corner of the last race of the season. Not only that, but at his home race in front of those adoring Brazilian fans.

Wowsers.

This year he has been out-qualified by Fernando 10-0. There is something fundamentally wrong with Felipe. Hell, even Webber and Button have beaten their team mates on occasion! There is no question that Alonso is a dominating team mate and only Lewis has come close to beating him in the same team. There was that moment already mentioned at Hockenheim last year and then in China in 2010 when Alonso stuck his Ferrari in front of Massa’s car as they both came into the pits at the same time. Brutal. Damaging.

Felipe gave up.

I don’t see the improvement that people seem to mention from time to time of Massa’s form. At least in parts of 2010 Felipe was close to Fernando; he beat him in qualifying a couple of times and even finished in front of him on occasion. This year Alonso has crushed him and has beaten him in qualifying by an average of 0.6 seconds – in the same car!

Massa had 97 points this time last year, now he has 62.

There’s something not quite right with Felipe.

Disagree? Read The Return of Massa?

One Death Is A Tragedy…

While I realise the sensitivity relating to the issue, I feel compelled to write about the death of Amy Winehouse. Let me start by offering my condolences to her family, who have, after all, lost a loved one and will be suffering at this time. No death is more or less important than any other, and Amy’s family should receive the respect that they deserve.

However, that whole ‘no death is more or less important than any other’ is something that grates with me right now. In Norway, scores of youths have been brutally massacred through no fault of their own, but their story is playing second-fiddle to the death of an individual.

It truly encapsulates the celebrity-obsessed world we live in that such horrific news gets completely ignored by the majority of people in favour of mourning the loss of someone who was – at the end of the day – a drug addict.

Of course, it is undeniable that Amy Winehouse had talent, and consequently such a loss is quite rightly deemed a ‘waste’. Who is to say, however, that any of the 92 people currently believed to have been murdered in Norway were not equally talented in their own individual way? Why is their loss not deemed as significant to the world as that of someone who acted with such disregard for life so frequently?

Equally, the simple fact is that many of those bandwagon-jumpers bemoaning the loss of a ‘great talent’ are among those who mocked and berated her lifestyle as recently as a matter of weeks ago.

Why is there a peculiar obsession with criticising or even hating people for what they do when they are alive, only for them to almost immediately be catapulted to a standing far beyond their genuine character once they have passed? It may seem utterly insensitive, but why does the death of someone transform opinions so significantly? It not only shows a lack of conviction in personal thought, yet also dishonours the deceased. If you don’t like them when they’re actually living on this earth, don’t patronise their memory by attaching yourselves to them in death please…

It is, in many ways, not dissimilar to the passing of Jade Goody. Initially vilified in the press and public spaces as a ‘brainless racist’, the game changed when she was no longer with us. The media and society as a whole began to hold her up as something of a role model after her sad – and yes, it is sad, because every death is tragic in its own way – death in 2009. I truly do not understand why this was the case with Jade Goody, nor why it will be eventually be the case with Amy Winehouse. If you have an opinion on someone, at least have the bottle to stand by it.

I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, and will freely admit to being much more touched by the passing of Jade Goody than I ever will be by the early departure of Amy Winehouse. This is for one incredibly simple reason. Despite being far from a fan of Miss Goody myself, she was essentially a young woman cruelly struck down by a beast that has ravaged the world and devastated lives without offering any real explanation. Perfectly healthy human beings have suffered at its hands, and any death from cancer must therefore be seen an utter tragedy – including that of Jade Goody – regardless of my personal feelings towards her.

The thing is, with Winehouse, it was different. We don’t know the ins-and-outs at present, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the death was almost certainly linked to a series of alcohol and drug-related problems. That is why I struggle to have any sympathy for her, and indeed find myself deploring those who treat her as if she deserved any. It was, ultimately, her choice of lifestyle, and if you play with fire, every now and then you’re going to get burnt.

Of course, there will be many an argument that Amy was a ‘troubled soul’ who had ‘issues’ and ‘needed help’. That is fair enough, but there are still problems with this belief. Firstly, many among us have difficulties in our life, but are intelligent enough to seek the relevant help when required, and do not become dependent on the deadly cocktail of drugs and alcohol. Why, just because she was famous, was Winehouse excused from such activities with a shrug of the shoulders and a declaration that it was ‘part of her image’? It is possible to see why Winehouse fell for such temptations, but the fact remains it was her responsibility. She was a grown woman, and needed to take control of her life. Sadly, she did not, and paid the maximum price.

What I also find incredible is how many ‘celebrity-type’ people noticed she was ‘in trouble’, but how few seemed to make any genuine attempt to help her. To be frank, where were they all when she needed saving? It’s all well and good wittering and twittering about it now, but, ultimately, these supposed friends were nowhere to be seen when it truly mattered.

Again, I don’t wish to belittle the memory of Amy Winehouse, and do accept the many ways in which this can be construed as a tragedy.

However, I would urge people to look at the bigger picture, the bigger issues, and instead spare a thought for those who are more perhaps more deserving. Unlike Winehouse, those involved in the Norway massacre had little or no control over their destiny, and yet it appears many people aren’t all that bothered by it.

It is a very sad demonstration of how immune people have become to ‘bad news’, while celebrity culture dominates in every aspect of life.

His context may have been extremely wrong, but days like this make it hard to look past Joseph Stalin’s claim that “One death is a tragedy; One million is a statistic”.

As these two very separate events show, it is pretty much spot on in terms of how the public view the world…

The Return of Felipe?

He’s had an eventful career, has Felipe Baby Massa. Brazil 2008, the accident, the constant burden of being number two and the controversy that comes with that, let alone his inability to drive in any sort of moisture. It’s far to say I’ve never really rated him.

But this year,

Naught On Your Nelly, Paul

Oh Paul, you really don’t know us at all.

Rumour has it that England U21 international Kyle Naughton has been subject to a bid from McNally and co at every journo’s favourite time, that trusty-old eleventh-hour

There’s only one Tree Hill – embrace the cheese

Otherwise known as: “The world according to fictional beautiful people.”

Let me get this clear right away, One Tree Hill is NOT shit TV. One Tree Hill is THE shit.

I thank-yoww.

For the last 8 years One Tree Hill has been somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me.

GOLF (Going On, Lasting Forever)

Sitting at home on Thursday, with any potential plans for the day once again scuppered by torrential rain, I decided I would pass the time by watching a spot of television. Not very original, granted, but given all the DVD’s I own are some several hundred miles away and I live in an extremely quiet Norfolk village, there really is not a great deal to do sometimes.

Not Quite A Question Of Sport

Back in the not so distant past, ‘A Question of Sport’ was a fantastically entertaining sports programme, which didn’t rely on ‘cheap laughs’ for ratings.

Now, however, the entire approach of the show has changed completely. Gone are the days when guests were always stars of the sporting world, as a whole host of people with increasingly tenuous links to the profession are wheeled out to take part.