Every so often, a piece of music comes along which blows your mind and this for me is a "stop the world" moment. Very few of my favourite songs started out as favourites, it takes something really amazing for it to be instant for me. Then there is the other side of the coin, the "fuck me, this is terrible" moment.
At the moment, Jay-Z seems to be responsible for more airwave pollution than anybody else. The last Alicia Keys album was dreary, Beyonce hasn't done anything worthwhile since 2006 and all the while he's turning up new ever more shite artists at a rate not seen since Jonathan Rotem was doing it last year. The latest is brilliant, because she's already famous by default.
Willow Smith is the daughter of Will Smith. She's ten years old and has already been taught how to pout (see the Wikipedia picture if you don't believe me). Best of all, she's recorded a record called "Whip My Hair" on which she sings a bit between incessant blasts of an earworm so dumb that even Cher Lloyd would refuse it. Her singing isn't bad, just utterly banal. Its like having had a song written by Taylor Swift on a day when she's had writers block. She may as well be singing "tra-la-laa" all the way through.
So anyway, stop the world. I've had enough of this factory farmed American shit and i want to get off.
Monday 22 November 2010
Friday 19 November 2010
Meanwhile on the Light Programme...
Perhaps Radio 1's obsession with bland dubstep is finally getting to me or perhaps its just the sort of thing that goes in cycles, but i've been listening to Radio 2 a bit more recently.
It all started when i was trying to find something better than Fearne Cotton between the end of Chris Moyles at 10am and the start of Kisstory at 11am on Kiss 101. I rediscovered my love of obscure pop trivia with Ken Bruce's Popmaster quiz which is good fun for musical anoraks, although can be a bit cringeworthy as every caller says hello to "everyone who knows me", a la Victor Lewis-Smith's Local Radio sketch for Loose Ends.
Under normal circumstances, it would probably have ended there, but Radio 1 appear to have decided that Sara Cox is the perfect stand in for absolutely everybody on the weekday daytime schedule, the latest casualty being Scott Mills. Unfortunately the usual, almost tolerable twaddle that comes out of Mills and sidekick Becky becomes infuriating when Cox sits in. I started scanning around the radio for something else. Radio 2 is normally out because its Steve Wright and His Massive Ego with four hours of Craptoids in each three hour show. Kiss and Heart both suffer from the terrible ILR presenter syndrome.
This left me with Radio Bristol (which is intolerably bland during the afternoon), Jack (music driven and fairly varied) or Star. Now its been a very long time since i've listened to Star for anything over a few minutes and the first thing i noticed was how heavy with advertising and idents the programming is. Its a shame because the playlist is quite widely varied (unlike competitors Jack, they do actually play some new music from time to time) and the DJ (whom i believe to be Chris Criddle) was quite entertaining as opposed to the banal, opinionless cardboard that presents most ILR.
Anyway, that lasted for a few days before i discovered something important this Monday: Richard Allinson sitting in for Steve Wright all week.
There are substantial factions of people like me on t'internet who believe that Richard Allinson would have been a much better choice for the Radio 2 breakfast show than Chris Evans. I'm not sure if i entirely subscribe to this view, only for the selfish reason that it would mean he would have been on at the same time as Chris Moyles. But he should be on Radio 2 far more often, because Allinson is a friendly everyman that manages to be entertaining without being needlessly abrasive on the ears. He knows how to put a good radio show together and achieves this whenever he is given the opportunity. Before Saturday afternoons got given over to celebrities who would prefer doing TV rather than this pesky wireless stuff, Richard Allinson's show used to be a regular fixture in my listening week.
It almost goes without saying that this week, Radio 2's afternoons have been exceptionally good. Simon Mayo is also on rude form at the moment, back to his slightly spiky best that he was during his tenure as Radio 1's breakfast presenter. As long as you don't tune in before the end of the Right Wing Knee-Jerk Politics show with Jeremy Vine, its a perfectly amiable afternoon of programming. Just a shame that Steve Wright will inevitably come back. Perhaps he could do the same as That Bloody Woman* and go on holiday, never to return.
* - Sarah Kennedy, just in case you don't know.
It all started when i was trying to find something better than Fearne Cotton between the end of Chris Moyles at 10am and the start of Kisstory at 11am on Kiss 101. I rediscovered my love of obscure pop trivia with Ken Bruce's Popmaster quiz which is good fun for musical anoraks, although can be a bit cringeworthy as every caller says hello to "everyone who knows me", a la Victor Lewis-Smith's Local Radio sketch for Loose Ends.
Under normal circumstances, it would probably have ended there, but Radio 1 appear to have decided that Sara Cox is the perfect stand in for absolutely everybody on the weekday daytime schedule, the latest casualty being Scott Mills. Unfortunately the usual, almost tolerable twaddle that comes out of Mills and sidekick Becky becomes infuriating when Cox sits in. I started scanning around the radio for something else. Radio 2 is normally out because its Steve Wright and His Massive Ego with four hours of Craptoids in each three hour show. Kiss and Heart both suffer from the terrible ILR presenter syndrome.
This left me with Radio Bristol (which is intolerably bland during the afternoon), Jack (music driven and fairly varied) or Star. Now its been a very long time since i've listened to Star for anything over a few minutes and the first thing i noticed was how heavy with advertising and idents the programming is. Its a shame because the playlist is quite widely varied (unlike competitors Jack, they do actually play some new music from time to time) and the DJ (whom i believe to be Chris Criddle) was quite entertaining as opposed to the banal, opinionless cardboard that presents most ILR.
Anyway, that lasted for a few days before i discovered something important this Monday: Richard Allinson sitting in for Steve Wright all week.
There are substantial factions of people like me on t'internet who believe that Richard Allinson would have been a much better choice for the Radio 2 breakfast show than Chris Evans. I'm not sure if i entirely subscribe to this view, only for the selfish reason that it would mean he would have been on at the same time as Chris Moyles. But he should be on Radio 2 far more often, because Allinson is a friendly everyman that manages to be entertaining without being needlessly abrasive on the ears. He knows how to put a good radio show together and achieves this whenever he is given the opportunity. Before Saturday afternoons got given over to celebrities who would prefer doing TV rather than this pesky wireless stuff, Richard Allinson's show used to be a regular fixture in my listening week.
It almost goes without saying that this week, Radio 2's afternoons have been exceptionally good. Simon Mayo is also on rude form at the moment, back to his slightly spiky best that he was during his tenure as Radio 1's breakfast presenter. As long as you don't tune in before the end of the Right Wing Knee-Jerk Politics show with Jeremy Vine, its a perfectly amiable afternoon of programming. Just a shame that Steve Wright will inevitably come back. Perhaps he could do the same as That Bloody Woman* and go on holiday, never to return.
* - Sarah Kennedy, just in case you don't know.
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