HummerOfIntenseEvil

Nope - someone asks you a question (which you recently saw on Eggheads) and you tell them the answer, and they ask how you know, and you say "well, you see...", tell them the background behind it and you look very clever. Compare that to, say, seeing a question on Sudo-Q or something. You tell someone this bit of trivia and they say "how do you know?" and you say "err... I just do" or "I saw it on Sudo-Q". You don't look so clever. Personally, I just take all knowledge as input, like Johnny 5.

Of course, I forgot it's actually illegal to not like the Beatles.

Well it certainly won't be a problem NOW! I daresay I could have found that if I'd bothered googling it. Cheers anyway, though.

Haha! That programme was fantastic. In all fairness to the boy, he was the only one out of the three that didn't make a very convincing girl.

See, that's a nice concept, but it's a shame they couldn't have made it track 11 so that I could just not rip it onto my hard disk or iPod. I reckon at the moment, Rendition, Imperial Bodybags and Indian Summer are my favourite tracks. But they're all fucking phenomenal. I've even grown to completely adore Underdogs (what a fucking chorus) and YLAINE.

Let's not turn this into a "why the Beatles are actually shit" debate, eh?

Until he loses the next election, is forced to give up the leadership, and one of the so-called Ultra Blairites takes up the mantle...?

The White Album is one of the Wire's favourite albums. What is it they used to say? "We are the only band that reserves the right to contradict ourselves." It's fucking pointless though. The lowpoint on what is otherwise easily their best album since The Holy Bible. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say only The Holy Bible and Generation Terrorists beat it, and I fucking love Gold Against The Soul. Why do bands insist on putting "secret" tracks on albums? It even says in the fucking sleevenotes "Secret track: Working Class Hero by John Lennon". So now, when I listen to Winterlovers, I have to either listen to a minute of silence, or fast forward, which is a minor but annoying inconvenience. Not only that, but if i want Winterlovers on my iPod, I have to put fucking Working Class Hero on it too. AND IT'S NOT EVEN THAT GOOD A SONG!

Bulgaria's song is easily the best of this year's lot. Although Ukraine's one (written by Trey Spruance) is rather fun. YouTube - Eurovision 2007 - Ukraine Did you know Ricky Maritn was singing Greece's one? YouTube - Eurovision Greece 2007: Sarbel - Geia Sou Maria Sweden obviously watched the MacDonald Brothers' rendition of Shang A Lang a bit too much YouTube - Sweden Eurovision 2007, The Ark, The worrying kind Poland do American "r'n'b" better than the Americans Looking up Eurovision entries on youtube gets boring after a while. Bulgaria to win, though.

The best thing about CJ is that he's the second worst on the show (I don't think even Judith would try to make people believe she's a trivia heavyweight), yet he is always the most animated when other people get questions wrong, and you just think "shut the fuck up, you wouldn't have got it either". Chris is a know-it-all, and pretty smug with it. But at the same time, I think he plays it up a wee bit - the exchanges he has with Dermot about trains or whatever always seem like he is willingly having the piss ripped out of him. Also he at least realises he's shit at showbiz. Daphne is a sweet old lady who just happens to know tons. You'd have to be a knob to dislike her. Kevin is a man who just happens to know fucking everything and realises that a lot of people who watch the show are trivia fans, and would therefore LIKE to know the trivia behind questions - also it avoids the big pause which effectively say "how do you know it's that answer?" He's not smug, he just tells you the answer. He doesn't say "Oh THIS is the answer, because of this, this and this - if you don't know that you're an IDIOT!!" like CJ does. I'd say thinking otherwise smacks of jealousy a wee bit. Anyway, he had a fantastic tasche on mastermind.

With the exception of maybe a dozen songs, that's like the soundtrack of hell for me. Thought the NME would know more than 10 bands, though. Even their older bands are a bit... well "calm the beans, min". TWO Pixies songs? Whatever. Surprised one of them wasn't Debaser since everyone seems to absolutely love it for some reason. Bit random considering the rest of the list is Britpop & whatever-the-fuck-you-call-the-current-crop-of-shite-bands-pop. Obviously didn't want to put TOO many actual Pixies songs in.

Exactly. But only because the VAST majority of Britpop was utter shite too. Even then, most of the "exceptions" were merely bunged into the Shitpop category for convenience, ie Manics, Suede and Pulp (the only good lyricists of that time - there's a shock...). Does anyone else find it impossible to NOT sing Brimful Of Asha whenever Same Jeans comes on the radio? Thieving little runts. They stole the verse AND the chorus. Oh yes, it's easy to "write" catchy tunes when you're just stealing them off other people.

You love it, admit it.

Perhaps Donald Trump can be convinced to build a suite of rehearsal rooms with the golf course...?

Shite sound, mind. But it was good if you got the last slot of the day and could basically stay as long as you wanted, having a laugh at the latest recordings on the PC. Lofi is a fucking paradise: CD burners, decent amps (if you can't be bothered lugging your own about), good sound, spare instruments, clean rooms, and best of all..... AIR CONDITIONING. With a remote control, at that. And all for 8 an hour. The guy that runs it is sound too. You can practise in Glasgow for as little as 3.50 an hour (depending on time of day, obviously). And none of the places we've been in thus far have been anything less than the standard of Musical Vision, So there really is no excuse for the high prices in Aberdeen, unless there's just no great demand for practise time - Glasgow practise places are always packed, but then it is a bigger city than Aberdeen with even MORE shitey bands.

I was in a similar position when a mate bought me a ticket to a gig which he (sort of correctly) assumed I would want to go to without asking me first, but I couldn't actually go. He reckoned I should pay for the ticket but there was no way I was paying for a ticket I hadn't specifically asked for. He got pissed off, but managed to sell it before the gig. He quickly got over it though, and we were still close mates. I THINK that's how it happened, anyway. There's a possibility he had very good reason to buy the ticket for me and that I COULD have been seen as being a bit of a cock about it... but I can't remember how if that's the case. ANYWAY, the point is, they bought the ticket without asking you first. They took a chance by assuming you;d be okay with it. Verily, it is their responsibility. Tell them you're sorry about the ticket, but you should hardly be expected to pay for a ticket you can't use since you didn't get asked before it was bought. It may be unfair for them to have to pay for a ticket they won't use, but it's even less fair for YOU to pay for a ticket you can;t use, since you didn't even know it was being bought. They might think you;re a knob for a while, but if they're any sort of mate they'll get over it. That's assuming you didn't tell them before going on holiday that flying on the thursday was okay. If you DID, then don't be a knob and admit you were at fault. I'm guessing it's the first one though. So don't pay. An alternative solution would be to split the costs, although in reality even that is unfair on yourself. But comprimise is usually the best solution.

There's a much easier way to make politics sexy & appealing though - straight-talking politicians, and parties bringing issues that matter to young people (eg ticket touts) into prominence, and then ACTUALLY doing something about them rather than saying "we're going to set up a phone line which no one will use, but we can't ban touting because of the 3 people per year who are stupid enough to buy tickets for gigs without checking if they're actually free that day first." A media that isn't hell-bent on (rightly or wrongly) making us all believe politicians do exactly the opposite of what we all want would help too.

He never owned a sand wedge...

Exactly. If you were to point out that Hitler was a fantastic public speaker, reactionary idiots would suddenly start calling you a Nazi, when in actual fact Hitler's prowess on the public stage was probably the main reason he got elected in the first place (I've heard his speeches were near hypnotic, because his voice reached an unignorable pitch/volume). And anyway, considering Hitler wanted culture to be one of the lasting hallmarks of the Third Reich, it'd be a pretty poor show if there wasn't some pretty good art to come out of it.

I guess that pretty much proves my point then...

This programme is absolutely dreadful. The guests always include one dizzy little tart whose dad is an old musician (recent guests: Rod Stewart's daughter, Peaches Geldof, Kelly Osbourne) and one actor from a British film, telling us how cool he is, with Steve "Oooh I get to SWEAR on this programme!!!" Jones asking questions about sex and drugs (but not rock n' roll... which fits in nicely with the programme's approach to music). Just now we've got someone who shagged Keith Moon telling us about the experience... what is this, the News Of The fucking World? The bands they have on are just AWFUL too. The fact Shitdisco were on it speaks volumes. They've had two decent bands on in two series - Bloc Party and The Long Blondes. Their attempts at comedy skits are just appalling too. No humour whatsoever. "Oooh, they've got a SWEAR WORD in their name!!!!!" Why must Channel 4 continue to bombard us with music from bands that play in the opening scenes of Hollyoaks? And is it just me, or does the inclusion of T-Mobile in the title leave a bad taste in the mouth? This programme was invented purely for the sort of twat who only likes bands who sound like that other band that he likes, and who considers Liam Galllagher and Carl Barat to be musical geniuses.

Probably because sub-standard Manics output shits on the vast majority of music released by anyone else. Lifeblood is brilliant. It's such a shame it did so badly in the charts, and that even Manics fans wrongly deride it. If you expect a band to repeat themselves over and over again, then a band like Manic Street Preachers is always going to disappoint. It's a shame there are still fans who expect them to "go back to being the Manics" as it were - whenever they try to do this, they fail. KYE was a mess (albeit an interesting one), then they stopped trying to force it and they came out with There By The Grace Of God, which is an utterly fantastic song (listen to it closely with earphones - they keyboards are fantastic). As soon as I heard Underdogs I thought "oh fuck, not again..." I've heard this album will contain JDB's equivalent of Sweet Child O' Mine - I thought his version was called Motorcycle Emptiness, and it had already surpassed SCOM? 1985, To Repel Ghosts and A Song For Departure - all from Lifeblood - are the best things they've done without Richey. 1985 is definitely in their top 20 songs of all time, too (ie it's one of the best 7 songs they've done that isn't on The Holy Bible). I'd also agree that EMG has aged TERRIBLY. I even listen to Know Your Enemy more than that load of Britpopper-baiting nonsense. And yet, it's still better than anything Kasabian, Razorlight or Arctic Monkeys can come up with. Let's see the fucking Klaxons come out with something as brilliant as Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky.

Can't say I'm a fan of "The Cure" - Labyrinth and The Promise are two of their best songs in years, and Lost and Anniversary are more than decent, but with the exception of a couple of the other tracks, I think it's mostly a bit pooh. Well, for a Cure album anyway. Pornography and Faith are two of the greatest albums ever, The Head On The Door is one of the best pure pop albums ever, and Kiss Me x3 is just fucking brilliant - if it'd been stripped down to something like The Kiss, Torture, Why Can't I Be You, Just Like Heaven, All I Want, Icing Sugar, Like Cockatoos, One More Time, Hey You!!!, Shiver And Shake, Fight and The Snakepit, it'd probably be in my top 5 albums ever. Actually, why Hey You!!! was chosen to be left off the CD when A Thousand Hours was kept is beyond me. Surely not just because it was the shortest? And then there's Charlotte Sometimes, and the vast majority of the b-sides on the first two discs of Join The Dots, and Disintegration and Wish (both of which I never listen to as much as I should)... Definitely one of the top 5 bands Britain's ever produced. Every album has at least a few brilliant tracks, and Simon Gallup has some of the best basslines ever.

I've pretty much become immune to the megabus lately, although I dunno if there's one from Glasgow to Liverpool (presumably there is). I'm almost definitely going to do it though. Seeing Your Neighbourhood Spaceman live would be absolutely immense. Pity they're not doing Scotland though, since he usually does with Fantomas and Tomahawk.

I wouldn't really say they produced it, since it's not them that writes the songs. But that's besides the point really. "Biology" was musically light years ahead of anything Doherty could even dream of creating. In fact, it's like a Mr Bungle song in comparison to toss like "Fuck Forever".