Addendum to New Year Same Old Shit
Topic: Pop
The bits they just didn't have time for. Or more likely, the bits they'd only just thought of.

Wendy James, of Transvision Vamp fame, had a comeback in 2005, lasting the duration of a 10 minute slot on Jonathan Ross's Radio 2 show. Never having been the most musically talented in her day, Wendy dear love her, had gone to the trouble of writing and performing a brand new song especially for the show, all by herself. The general consensus being, that it was absolutely awful.

We also forgot to mention Peter Andre, and Jordan's breasts.

Meanwhile, despite dissing Shakey for his ITV talent show shenanegans, i felt compelled to buy his best of compilation album for the pricely sum of ??3.99 in HMV of which i expect he'll see all of 2p. And no. The cover version of the hit single by Pink!, Trouble, was not included. Still, it was worth it to finally own a copy of this This old house! And, hey, they even included a DVD of his music videos, but not the clip of him decking Richard Madeley, after refering to him as the "Welsh Elvis". Nor were we treated to the clip of him rather tipsly performing "Green Door" on a live kids entertainment show, where he succeeded in decking his bassist with the mike stand. I feel this is a shame...

Really DON'T Want It Now Or EVER
Topic: TV
Note on celeb big brother's facsimile of a celebrity, member of the public, Chantelle. You just know that within days of her leaving the big brother house, there will be a five piece band called kandyfloss, fronted by said MOTP, who will in on to release fake record I want it right now. Something that just makes me weep with despair.

Fortunately like all BB musical spin offs, we can expect it to do nothing more than bomb in the charts, thus proving there is indeed some semblance of a higher being up there.

I thank you

New Year - Same Old Shit
Now Playing: Amarilo, probably - read on, you'll see why...
Topic: Pop
It’s Friday morning, and I’m in a field watching four rather overweight, middle-aged men, attempting to recapture the former glory of the early nineties, when they set the lives of many a rebellious teenager alight, with such hits as ‘Saturn 5’, and ‘I Want You’, and had a certain Mr Noel Gallagher for a roadie. These are Inspiral Carpets (as opposed to The Inspiral Carpets, but notice how much easier it is to say ‘The Inspiral Carpets’ as opposed to their preferred ‘Inspiral Carpets’?), and any minute now, they’re going to play that song that was used at the start of Saturday morning kids show from the 1990s ‘The 8:15 From Manchester’ (hosted by Ross ‘I so loved myself so much when I was on the telly’ King, Charlotte ‘Last heard of lecturing at Salford University – fact fans!’ Hindle, and occasionally Sonia ‘the one-time ‘80s - not selling as well as Kylie and Jason – Stock Aitken and Waterman whipping-girl’ erm, Sonia), except they’re singing the original lyrics and not singing ‘The 8.15 From Manchester’ in the chorus, and it’s all very disappointing, and my word, they have been eating the pies, haven’t they (incidentally, for those of you out there unaware of who ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets are, they’re a little like The Pussy Cat Dolls, but without the Tits). Up next, it’s Echo and the Bunnymen, whereby the heavens will open, and I’ll end up trudging back to the tent in search of my raincoat, as everyone else has got these waterproof poncho things, and I haven’t, and I’ll end up getting lost along the way. Still, worse was endured earlier in the day, when the Darkness played their debut set, but that’s a different story.

Yes, this is The Glastonbury Festival in 2003, and not 1992, as you might expect (or even the early 1980s, as The Darkness would have no doubt loved). As 1992 was the year when the two former bands described were at the height of their fame, and not dishing out half remembered tunes played in bedrooms years earlier on crackly 45s, or if you were lucky enough, cassettes!*

*I didn’t have a CD Player until 1995, that’s how working class I am

But, why this flashback to a music festival that took place over two years ago, I hear you cry? Why else but to bang on about bloody pop revivals

Yes, 2005 is now as much history as 2003, or even 1992. But, more so than ever before, 2005 was the year of the come-back, whereby pop acts once consigned to the charity shop of time, are mercilessly resurrected by lazy record companies in search of a quick buck. Be it the Backstreet Boys, Tony Christie, or (dare I say it), Take That.

These, and more all made a somewhat unwelcome reappearance in 2005.

Hanson were suddenly no longer merely boys, and yet strangely enough, still weren’t shaving, how fortunate we were that their revival lasted little longer than 5 minute tongue in cheek segment on Popworld. The Backstreet Boys turned to the ‘Redneck’ market when they realised that they were getting too old for their previously pre-teen audience. Shaken Stevens won an ITV talent show for dead pop stars, and then promptly released a cover of a Pink record. Busted reformed as Son of Dork. Then, thank our lucky stars, Peter Kay resurrected the career of Tony Christie. Okay, so it was for charity, Comic Relief no less, but just remember that this was the same charity that had unleashed the Cher/Chrissie Hind/Neneh Cherry coloured Hell that was ‘Love Will Build A Bridge’. Thanks Pete, what did the rest of us ever do to you?

And to round it all off, Take That got back together, albeit without their fat dancer (Copyright – Noel Gallagher 1995), a mere ten years after Gary Barlow was sent plummeting into the abyss below at the close of their Bee Gees cover ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ (the one with the video where that crazed woman kidnapped the four remaining members of Take That, having probably already bludgeoned Williams to death with a kitchen knife, and then ‘accidentally’ on purpose pushed Barlow off a cliff, something many a man would have happily done after seeing him act in an episode of Heart Beat). All thanks to an hour long prime-time ITV show, they’ve re-entered the hearts of many a woman who should really know better, prompting them to rush out and buy yet another greatest hits album containing the same version of every song they already own (unless you count a poorly ‘danced-up’ version of Relight My Fire), and buying up all the tickets for their reunion tour in five-seconds flat (although, in this day and age it’s more likely to have been the touts buying up all the tickets, and then flooding them onto e-bay and slapping a 500% mark-up on the cover charge).

On the other hand, I’d be nothing more than a compulsive liar, if I were to say that it was only the above suspects that made my blood run cold. Be it any two bit pop and rock combo who think they can come back and swindle more money out of the unlucky punter, just because they lost it all on some dodgy timeshare scheme, or business deal, or flitted it all away on women, or flushed it all down the loo, or shoved it all up their nose.

Admittedly, I did get slightly excited, for maybe all of two seconds, when The Wonder Stuff announced they were going to reform and stage a comeback tour. The Wonder Stuff were probably one of the first bands I could say that I ‘got into’, around 1992, when I blagged a copy of their debut album, ‘The Eight Legged Groove Machine’, from my sister. Having come to them late, I was only able to catch their last hoorah in the form of their final album ‘Construction For The Modern Idiot’ (again copied off my sister), but was lucky enough to catch them on their final tour when they set down in Bristol at the Colston Hall. Being a theatre house, this was an all seater affair, and so not how proper bands should be seen at all, but this didn’t detract from the spectacle created by Miles Hunt and Co.

I was hooked.

Just a shame that a few months later they announced they were splitting up. To put it mildly, I was slightly gutted, not least because I was in the middle of my mock-GCSEs at the time. Thanks a lot guys.

However, the nostalgia trip lasted about as long as it took me to turn to the back of the weeks NME, and go ‘Oh’ when I saw the tour dates for their comeback tour.

Similarly, I was mildly interested in revisiting, the aforementioned, Inspiral Carpets (sounding slightly easier to say without the ‘The’ in this case – strange), until I discovered they were demanding a #15 ticket price for the privilege. Why I ask you you, is nostalgia so damn expensive?

Strictly speaking, this whole rock ‘n’ roll revival trend was started (slightly ironically) by the momentary reunion of The Sex Pistols in 1997, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of ‘God Saved The Queen’, a record deemed so controversial at the time, that, as folklore would have it, the Pistols were mysteriously bumped into second place in the weeks record charts. And so it seemed, Anarchy was not allowed to rule the airwaves in the week of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Anyway, in 1997, freely admitting that they were only in it for the money, Johnny Rotten et al, trotted onto Top of the Pops, played the doomed Phoenix Festival, and then promptly buggered off again.

At the time I remember having a discussion in the pub (I think it might have been with Cath), that it was all a bit sad really, these old punks acting as if they were twenty years younger.

And maybe that’s the crux of the matter. Maybe it’s an ageist thing (bringing us back to the four slightly overweight, middle aged members of – oh sod it – ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets again). Maybe I can’t bear to see people in a band once they hit the wrong side of forty, or dare I say it, thirty? When I last saw Blur play The Reading Festival, one of the first things I thought was, “my God, they’re looking old.”

Take The Rolling Stones as an example. Mick Jagger has been nothing but an embarrassment since the dawn of the 1980s, peaking with his collaborative effort with Mr David Bowie on ‘Dancing In The Streets’. Then again, Bowie himself still seems to have an air of grace about him, as do the resurrected New Order, possibly in this case because they’re still intent on producing records of worth and not merely trumping out their back catalogue (What? New Order have released another Greatest Hits record? Really?).

Then again, if there’s anything worse than an old rocker, it’s a dead rocker. Yet another Nirvana ‘rarities’ album? Kurt Cobain to do the commentary in a new documentary on his life? Yet, another new record from the very dead Tupac and Notorious BIG? Can we not let these people rest in peace?

On the age theme, it’s suddenly become a scary reality that all then new bands out there are probably all younger than my good self. Where did my youth go to? Take the Subways, as an example. Barely out of hot pants.

Where did all my contemporaries go to? When I first started listening to indie music, the likes of Blur, Oasis, Elastica and Sleeper, were all in their mid-twenties, and I was only 15. I remember feeling quite proud that the members of Ash would have only been in the year above me at school (there young enterprise project was to form a band and release an album, mine was to make candles). And then my life seemed complete when I learnt that Kenickie front-woman Lauren Laverne was just a few months younger than myself. Sheer bliss!

Nowadays everyone in a new band’s so flippin’ young. A band called Transition headlined the Carling Academy a few weeks ago. A band made up of people who’d gone to my school a full ten years after me! That could have been me, if I’d ever bothered to learn to play the guitar, or play the drums, or been able to sing (never stopped Ian Brown), or actually taken an interest in forming a band!

Have I passed my peak? Only the other week, I met Annie’s sister ‘Deedus’ and she thought I was 35. Now what’s going on there? I could’ve passed for someone in their early twenties a couple of years ago!

Am I getting to that age where I’ll start hankering over the bands of ‘my generation’, praying for that elusive comeback tour? The thrill of a Sleeper revival? The trepidation of seeing Lush clamber out onto the stage again, even though one of them’s dead? Would I fall in love with Kenickie all over again if they adorned Top of the Pops once more?

Maybe I’m not at that stage quite yet, but God I wish Lauren Laverne would record some more solo material.

Anyway, we can but hope that the revival bandwagon will eventually skid to a halt in 2006. Still, I fear that Lolly revival is looming ever closer….

Double-0 Potty Mouth
Happy new year people. Just thought i'd share this gem from former Bond, Pierce Brosnan, who's been cast in forthcoming film the Matador, just to show he has no ill feelings towards his former employers.

"When the f**kers try and hem you in with Bond, it's great to come back with the Matador. It's great to say f**k you arsehole. F**k you who wouldn't give me a job. F**k you who thought i was some wuss. Fuck you who thought i was a pretty boy. F**k you who thought anything of me without even knowing me or giving me the chance. F**k you."

The Case of the Missing Cellar
Topic: levers
I'm doing New Years Eve at mine again. This wouldn't be a problem, except I'm expecting around 13 people to come, of which at least 12 will be in need of sleeping over. A similar number bedded down in my place last year. Only, this year, the house I'm in is about half the size.

I did have something of a brain wave in order to maximize the amount of floor space available, as there is only my room, the front room and the box room as realistic places of rest. For some apparent reason, I became convinced that we had a cellar, and I had planned to move all the crap out of the box room and the lounge, etc and place it in the lower ground floor. This belief continued, until I had actually popped back to the house to drop off alcohol, etc, ably assisted by Manny, and went as far as actually opening the door under the stairs to find that there were no steps leading down to the cellar, and in fact no cellar at all, but just a rather cramped cupboard under the stairs. I even went as far as phoning my house mate, who was currently residing in her home town of Newquay, to ask her "if we did in fact have a cellar and if so, where the hell was it"?

Only later did I realise that the cellar I was thinking of was in fact the cellar in Jen's house, 120 miles away in Nottingham.

Not much help, there then.

I must be getting old.

Some Americans are apparently nuts
American talkshow host David Letterman is fighting a restraining order brought by a viewer claiming Letterman regularly sent her coded messages via her television. The woman claims he sent her messages to marry him and train as his cohost. If successful, Letterman will be forbidden to come within 3ft of her.

Alright then. Does this include when he's actually on the telly and she's sat at home watching him? America's a pretty big place and i can't see him actually going to the trouble of physically hanging out with this kook. Otherwise, why's he wasting his time fighting this case? What's wrong with this world?

The REAL Queen's Speech
Topic: TV
Remember kids, if you do one good thing on Xmas Day, make sure it's watching Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion on BBC ONE at 7pm, and not bloody Millionaire on the other channel, as Phillip will be very, very angry (and you won't like him one bit, when he's angry). And I'll be forced to set the Corgies on ya!

Now, pass us the bloody gin!

Arsenal scrape into the semi finals.....
Topic: Football
...Not that we'd know it.

Well that'll teach me to leave the pub before the final whistle. On the face of it, it looked like Arsenal were headed for a fourth consecutive defeat, falling 2~1 behind to Donacster Rovers in the quarter finals of the Carling Cup. Arsenal eventually won on penalties after an injury time equaliser. Still at least i lasted longer than the flippin' metro reporter, who'd obviously buggered off home after the first ninety minutes, seeming fit to print in this morning's paper that it was in fact still 1~1 between the two sides.

They just don't like working late, these hacks.

Shoddy work guys, shoddy work.

NEWSFLASH - Popworld Genius - Mutya Quits!
Topic: Pop
"Hello. I'm Simon Amstell, and this week on Popworld I'm joined by my two guest presenters, Heidi and Keisha from The Sugababes. And before anyone asks, MUTYA'S ILL!"

"LOOK SHE'S ILL. I WISH PEOPLE WOULD STOP GOING ON ABOUT IT!"

-Simon Amstell on the last regular edition of Popworld for 2005, dated Saturday December 10th

Yes, how perceptive are we? As a mere 12 days later, the nations youth woke up to the news that Mutya was 'ill', in so far as Geri was 'ill' when she had a no show on the National Lottery, and then promptly quit ths Spice Girls.

But don't think that people like Mutya can be replaced just willy nilly. Oh no. As the Sugababes Management revealed, it would take at least 24 hours before they could reveal her successor.

But it would seem that Mutya has quit for the noblest of causes, to spend more time with her family. Then again, all the the world needs is another Kerry McFadden.

Hair
Topic: levers
I’ve started to grow my hair long again, having had enough of the Dermot O’Leary/Grant Mitchell “I’m hard as f###” look, which wasn’t really taken seriously, or appreciated by anyone, apart from former one-time work colleague, and all round office ‘hottie’, Nadia, or Naddie as I’d somewhat touchingly Christened her (in the strictly secular, non-Christian sense of the word. Nope, to tell the truth, there was no holding her head under water until she turned blue, while I recited the lyrics to Jesus’s last supper, or whatever it is the Catholics of the world do. Well this would’ve been difficult to do anyhow, what with not being a vicar, and also being Jewish to boot. I suppose the Jewish equivalent would have been the circumcision, an operation that you’d find quite impossible to perform on a girl, unless she had an Adams apple, and lived in Bangkok). She thought I was ‘sweet’. She probably doesn’t now.

Anyway, rather than go for the Afro look I’d mastered during the 1990s (a mere twenty years after it had gone out of fashion), my head is currently resembling something like Morrissey crossed with ex-Spandau Ballett, ex-Eastenders Hard-Man, ex-ITV Golden Handcuffs recipient/current face of (snigger) furniture showroom DFS – Martin Kemp. Oh, what a na?ve fool we were Mr Kemp. Thought we’d take the same route as our namesake Ross ‘Grant Mitchell’ Kemp, and get a role as an SAS Commando, in an ITV Handcuffs deal that would last for a hundred years, and then if it didn’t work out, get our old job back again, did we? Only, our character got killed-off when we left Eastenders, didn’t he! So, we can’t go back there now. Never mind, Kempy. I’m sure you can convince your brother and the other bloke that the world needs yet another band from the 1980s reforming and going on a reunion tour. Still, it’s gotta be better than Take That.

I mean, honestly! I know half of you reading this have probably been creaming yourselves since Barlow, Orange, Passion Fruit et al announced they were going to trundle out in their little tour bus again, but what’s next? A Lolly revival?!

Anyway, Annie thought I looked something like a ‘King’ with my new hairstyle, although her exact words were along the lines of “Oh Mark. Your hair! It’s so funny! You look like Elvis!”

I’m kinda thinking she must mean the young Elvis, as opposed to the fat ‘Vegas’ Elvis, who died eating burgers on the toilet.

The so-called ‘Afro’ cut I had in the ‘90s (so-called by Mr Cowler and Mr Hill), came to a sudden and abrupt end after I’d been traumatised during history at school, when on a particularly hot Summer’s day, a wasp seeking shelter from the sun’s harsh rays, decided to try and set-up home in my ‘barnet’, and so determined was the brown and yellow stripped servant of Satan, I was forced to flee the classroom in a fit of terror.

I wonder if famous purveyor of the Afro, Richard Pryor, ever experienced a similar trauma, God bless his soul?

Wasps and myself have never been the best of friends, something I had come to terms with, while holidaying in Paris one year. Stood on a bridge over looking the river Seine, taking in the ambiance of French Parisian life in a way that only a thirteen year old boy from Bristol can, a wasp decided he was going to take up residence, not in my hair you understand, but up my left nostril. And so yours truly found himself rooted to the spot for what seemed like the longest thirty seconds a boy this age had ever experienced, beads of sweat dripping from his brow, until the wasp finally decided it didn’t fancy crawling all the way through the boys nostril, tunnelling through layers of mucus, and eventually up to his brain, and promptly flew out. Could’ve been worse, I could’ve sneezed. Well, I couldn’t very well lop off a nostril, or ‘cut off ones nose to spite ones face’, but I could certainly shave off ones Afro, when it happened in history, five years later.

Anyway, the ‘Thierry Henry/occasionally Beckham’ look also had to go, partly for the reasons described at the top of the article, but also for the repeated bashing of head on tables/walls/low ceilings and beams, reaching a pinnacle of potential concussion and brain damage while on a canal boating holiday during the Summer of 2004, when my head would repeatedly impact with the low ceiling at the stern of the boat, every time and I mean every time I attempted to come up on deck. This combined with prolonged motion sickness (the swaying, God the swaying), and having to repeatedly do impressions of Lord Melchard for Pully & Gail’s amusement (Baaaaaaarrrrrrpppp), would make me seriously question the state of my mental health when I was struck down with the feeling I was still travelling on the water for a full month after the holiday, when most people would be cured of this affliction after no more than a day. .

How long my current ‘look’ will last is anyone’s guess, but at my hair’s current rate of vertical growth, I’ve got a feeling that it’ll be doing a ‘Gary Rhodes’ before the year is out.