Breaking kayfabe

You might have noticed there's not been a lot of zip to this bonfire of the vanities recently, which is purely and simply down to a lack of immediate reaction stuff and, well, ideas. Not that we've been lazing it out all the time - as we're off out to a gig tonight that had its door opening time changed from 7pm to 9pm yesterday (and it's a good 45 minute drive away, so if any of our proper work colleagues are reading, sorry in advance for tomorrow's input) we thought we'd drop in a few lines about stuff coming up, in a kind of blog-within-a-blog sense.

So, More Songs To Learn And Sing is going reasonably well - we had our first write-up in today and it's really good, and we've got another eight definites after that. Over the next few days a few of you reading this will be getting targeted emails, so just because you've been lazy there's no escape just yet. June 1st-20th, that will be running for, given we forgot to mention that in the last post. There'll be a new Covermount in the second half of next week, the last for a while, if we can bring everything we want together. There's a possibility of a new Friendly Chat before May is out too. There will probably be a thinkpiece before Sunday's weekly brainwrong too. Look at us trying to make this all sound exciting.

Can we just mention the editorial in the new Artrocker which made us want to headbutt a wall, given it's a polemic about how Radio 1's playlist is getting tired and lazy (fair enough) and requires the station to take more daytime chances (yeah, we've argued similarly in the past) on the likes of Good Shoes and Shitdisco (fuck right off) as apparently this is what people really want to hear. No scenesters, the suggestion is, but the populace. Yeah. Maybe round Highbury Crescent, where LDN Is A Victim actually is funny and makes sense, they talk of little else*, but we're out here among the 59 million not in London, including the people in cafes and sixth form common rooms who actually buy records/downloads. And trying to tie it into the pirates is ridiculous - there are no pirates playing what you consider Your Music, or at least certainly none that have broken through. We're all over here on the Internet forming street teams for poor new bands.

Oh yeah, and the editor of the New Musical Express doesn't call himself Conor NME, so you can cut that out too.

(* Can we point out at this juncture that there's currently a news piece on the Artrocker website that dismisses the late Larrikin Love as a 'scene band', and a couple of updates up lauds a tour that includes Metro Riots and Scouting For Girls? (And XX Teens, but we like B54 so we'll keep that one subliminal))

And while we're about, a celebration of the now defunct (again) New Order, with a typically ramshackle live take on Temptation from a Radio 1 session in 1984: