If you’ve been avoiding watching Les Misérables, the chances are, it’s for the same reasons as The Viewer.
Category: Music
Chris Brown: A Sketch In Self Awareness
Rapper, actor and convicted domestic violence enthusiast Chris Brown posted this on Instagram yesterday, with the caption “Painting the way I feel today.”
It pissed a lot of people off, but I’m bemused as to why. I looks to me like an ill-conceived, insensitive parody of a man. That fits, doesn’t it?
HMV: Thanks For The Memories
HMV Cheltenham. Without you, I’m nothing.
Call me a child of narrow horizons if you will, but when I was growing up one of my dreams was to work in a record shop. I spent my teenage years playing music, talking about it, buying it and stroking its packaging, so it was fairly obvious that music retail would be a natural fit for me.
It was, but not for the reasons that I imagined. I’m not generally prone to bouts of nostalgia, but news that HMV has gone into administration this morning has made me go all mournful for a period of employment that was supposed to be incidental but actually shaped my life.
I didn’t know that at the time, of course. But then, I was mostly drunk.
Jennifer Lopez: Tipping Point
Image: Scott Barbour/Getty Images.
Terrifying scenes at the Rod Laver Arena, as Jennifer Lopez fights to maintain vertical equilibrium after a stylist applies a squirt of hairspray to her hair during a press call.
Fortunately for the music world, JLo was able to keep her balance, despite the weight of her hair superseding that of her entire body.
She lives to sing another day.
Yoko Ono: Lost In Translation. Or Maybe There Just Aren’t Enough Words.
Looks ok on him, but… Image via facepunch.com.
In case you missed it, Yoko Ono recently unleashed a clothing collection inspired by her late husband, John Lennon, on an unsuspecting and, let’s be honest, entirely unprepared, world.
Continue reading “Yoko Ono: Lost In Translation. Or Maybe There Just Aren’t Enough Words.”
Simon Cowell vs. Martin Gore: Shooting Stars
Martin Gore. 32 years into his career, officially sanctioned “weirdo”. Image via tumblr.
Do you remember those heady days when musicians were renowned for making ill advised, controversial and frequently stupid remarks? When the whole point of joining a band was to make music that would prompt teenagers to festoon themselves in crushed velvet and cover their walls with posters of androgynous young men with unacceptable haircuts and the kind of mutinous expressions usually worn by young offenders?
Those bands, when they weren’t having near death experiences or splitting up over musical differences would write lyrics that scared the shit out of middle-class suburban parents who would become convinced that their once delightful and cheery child was on the verge of suicide and hammer on the bedroom door at frequent intervals, just to check?
We, of course, never answered. We were too busy giving birth to our existential crises.
Continue reading “Simon Cowell vs. Martin Gore: Shooting Stars”
Keith Richards: But What Would Bill Say?
Keith. Bugs not pictured. Image: Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe.
During a live show that eventually ended up on his album, ‘Dangerous’, comedian Bill Hicks was riffing on the subject of healthy living when he made the following observation:
Keith Richards outlived Jim Fixx, the runner and health-nut dude. . . . The plot thickens. . . . Keith Richards is shooting heroin into his eyeballs and still touring, all right? I’m getting mixed signals. I picture nuclear war and two things surviving: Keith and bugs.
Twenty-two years on, nuclear stalemate has prevented Hick’s theory from being proven fully, although to be fair, Keith himself has given it a good old crack – surviving a heavy fall from a coconut tree whilst on holiday in Fiji and attempting to inhale his Dad. Yesterday he was onstage celebrating the Stone’s 50th anniversary.
Somewhere in this godforsaken sphere of consciousness, Bill Hicks is laughing his ass off, y’know. Between cigarettes.
Skunk Anansie: Time Waits For No-One
Image: PacificCoastNews.com.
Apart from Skin from Skunk Anansie, that is.
The seventeen years (!) since ‘Paranoid & Sunburnt‘ provided the soundtrack to my summer look to to have had little no influence over her appearance or her attitude to life.
Can’t blame ’em. Too intimidated, probably.
Chris Brown: Situation, Critical
Rihanna might have forgiven you, Chris, but Sweden certainly hasn’t.
Whitby Goth Weekend: Going, Going, Gone Gangnam
This morning I discovered this video of Whitby Goth Weekend patrons performing a ‘Gangnam Style’ dance and it’s the first one I’ve seen that didn’t make me want to stab myself in the face.
Obviously I’m biased, as about fifteen years ago I was in a band that would have been doing this onstage, not just on a main road, but I’m glad to see that in the intervening period, commitment to timing, co-ordination, hilarious hats and snakebite consumption has not flagged at all.
I LOVE YOU, MY PEOPLE.
Kelly Welles 