Tag Archives: The Guardian

The Cure’s Robert Smith Shreds One British Rock Critic

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Following The Cure’s two-night run in London benefiting the Teenage Cancer Trust, The Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan wrote a review complaining that the band played two many songs.”

Responding to a comment from a fan who disagreed, she responded:

“I have it on good authority that the band have read the review and liked it.”

On The Cure’s Facebook page Robert Smith responded:

“I have it on good authority that the band have read the review and liked it.” Caroline Sullivan… WHAAAT?!!

SHE WAS COMMENTING ON HER OWN GUARDIAN ‘REVIEW’ OF OUR EPIC 45 SONG 213 MINUTE FRIDAY RAH TEENAGE CANCER TRUST SHOW

TO BE CLEAR – AND ON THE BEST AUTHORITY – THE BAND HAVE INDEED READ THE REVIEW – BUT DID NOT LIKE IT!

THE REVIEW WAS – TO PUT IT POLITELY – LAZY NONSENSE… swampy… numbing… yet to work out how to build up a show… GULP!!!

BUT WE NOW KNOW WHERE WE HAVE BEEN GOING WRONG ALL THIS TIME: Condensed into 90 minutes, this would have been one of the gigs of the year

WE PLAY TOO MANY SONGS! DOH! BUT… IS IT NOT VERY OBVIOUS THAT WE PLAY OUR OWN SHOWS (AS OPPOSED TO FESTIVAL HEADLINES) FOR FANS OF THE BAND?

THAT IS WHY WE PLAY A MIX OF SONGS, AND WHY WE PLAY FOR AS LONG AS WE DO…

WHEN WE GO TO SEE AN ARTIST WE ARE FANS OF, WE DON’T WANT THE PERFORMANCE TO END… THAT’S WHAT BEING A FAN MEANS… ISN’T IT?

WE HAD TWO FANTASTIC NIGHTS, PLAYING TO GREAT CROWDS FOR A WONDERFUL CHARITY… THE GUARDIAN ‘REVIEW’ WAS SAD BITTER JUNK

PS. AS FOR THE TORYGRAPH HACK… sigh… ONWARDS

That wasn’t enough for Sullivan, so she wrote another piece in The Guardian, ending:

“OK, Robert. Buy you a drink?”

And got this in return on Facebook from Smith:

LAZY NONSENSICAL CONTENT ASIDE; WE WERE DRIVEN TO REACT TO CAROLINE SULLIVAN’S ‘REVIEW’ BY THE BLATANT DISHONESTY OF HER ACCOMPANYING COMMENT

“I have it on good authority that the band have read the review and liked it.” IT WAS SIMPLY TOO MUCH TO IGNORE…

HAVING EXPOSED THE LIE, WE FIGURED WE WOULD AT THE VERY LEAST GET SOME KIND OF A HANDS IN THE AIR “IT’S A FAIR COP GUV” FROM HER FOR ATTEMPTING SUCH A BANAL SELF SERVING DECEPTION… WE THOUGHT THERE MIGHT EVEN BE A FAINT CHANCE THAT SHE WOULD BE MOVED TO APOLOGISE TO HER READERS FOR MAKING STUFF UP!

BUT AS COMMENT BY COMMENT SHE DIGS HER EVASIVE HOLE A LITTLE DEEPER, IT WOULD SEEM WE HOPED FOR TOO MUCH…

A SHAME. WE ALWAYS THOUGHT THE GUARDIAN AND ITS JOURNALISTS VALUED TRUTH?

“OK, Robert. Buy you a drink?”… gulp!!!

HONESTLY? ummm… WE WOULD PREFER YOU JUST REVIEWED WITH A TAD MORE UNDERSTANDING AND HONESTY AND CONSIDERING LINES LIKE “Not as scary […] as Robert Smith in full fig” MAYBE THREW A FEW LESS STONES? OR MOVED OUT OF YOUR GLASS HOUSE?!!

“Rock is about grabbing people’s attention.” REALLY? THAT’S WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO ‘BE ABOUT’? YOU THINK THAT’S IT? IT WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT

WE WILL NOW DRAW A LINE UNDER THE ‘SAD BITTER JUNK REVIEW’ EPISODE, AND SLIP BACK OUT INTO THE WORLD WITH A SHAKE OF THE HEAD AND A SMILE…

PREFERRING THE OLD GOTH DISNEY DICTUM TO ROCKER SIMMONS’;

“WE ARE NOT TRYING TO ENTERTAIN THE CRITICS; WE’LL TAKE OUR CHANCES WITH THE PUBLIC”

I love the English rock scene.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –

Destroy the Mood: Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Reduced to a Google Maps Trip

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Photo of Jack Kerouac via Flavorwire.

And so it has come to this.

The mythic travels of Sal Paradise reduced to a Google Maps trip.

Gregor Weichbrodt’s “On the Road for 17527 Miles” removes all the poetry from Kerouac’s journey.

The Guardian says of the book:

Going through On the Road with a fine toothcomb, Weichbrodt took the “exact and approximate” spots to which the author – via his alter ego Sal Paradise – travelled, and entered them into Google’s Direction Service. “The result is a huge direction instruction of 55 pages,” says the German student. “All in all, as Google shows, the journey takes 272.26 hours (for 17,527 miles).”

Weichbrodt’s chapters match those of Kerouac’s original. He has now self-published the book, which is also part of the current exhibition Poetry Will Be Made By All! in Zurich, and has, he says, sold six copies so far.

“To me it’s a concept, an idea. It’s odd in which rational ways we discover, travel the world,” he said. “If Kerouac had a GPS system, he would have probably felt less free. I find it rather discouraging to go on self-discovery with a bunch of route directions.” On the Road, he added, “fitted the idea of the concept I had in mind, but I’m not a beatnik groupie”.

Read the full review here.

The book is self-published and thus far Weichbrodt says he’s sold six copies.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Best Of 2013 Dept.: The Guardian Picks Year’s Best Albums

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My Bloody Valentine make the cut.

The Guardian has finished rolling out it’s best albums of 2013 list. Brooklyn Vegan has been keeping taps and today makes it easy to check out the entire list in one quick read.

There are 40 albums in the list. Here are the Top 20. For the rest, go here.

The Guardian’s 20 Best Albums of 2013

20. David Bowie – The Next Day

19. Arctic Monkeys – AM
18. These New Puritans – Fields of Reeds
17. Laura Marling – Once I Was an Eagle

16. Kacey Musgraves – Same Trailer, Different Park
15. Earl Sweatshirt – Doris
14. Chance the Rapper – Acid Rap
13. Lorde – Pure Heroine
12. Haim – Days Are Gone

11. The National – Trouble Will Find Me
10. My Bloody Valentine – m b v

9. Janelle Monae – The Electric Lady

8. John Wizards – John Wizards
7. Kelela – Cut 4 Me
6. Disclosure – Settle

5. James Blake – Overgrown
4. Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires of the CIty
3. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories
2. John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts
1. Kanye West – Yeezus

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –

Black Flag: Damaged Beyond Repair?

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One of the great versions of Black Flag in the band’s heyday.

Geeta Dayal is very disappointed by the new Black Flag album and explains why in an essay that was posted at The Guardian today.

The piece begins:

In the early 1980s, Black Flag were one of the best bands in the world. Black Flag weren’t just a band – they were an art project, a movement, an ethos, a way of being. But Black Flag are no longer Black Flag. The storied hardcore punk group are now just a bitter parody. What the … is its first full-length album since the band’s break-up in 1986. Everything about it, from the lame album cover art to the pro forma lyrics to the generic riffs, screams of desperation.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

“Rise Above” from back in the day.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Graphic Novel Publisher Fantagraphics Gets Kickstarter Funding

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Graphic novel publisher Fantagraphics, facing a cash flow problem, turned to crowd-funding website Kickstarter and has raised $100,000 in two days, The Guardian reports. Cool.

Among Fantagraphics’ catalog are graphic novels by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Joe Sacco, and Daniel Clowes.

“Using the catchline ‘We won’t sell out, so we need YOU to buy in’, the publisher called on readers and fans to help finance 39 graphic novels and books in its spring summer 2014 catalogue,” The Guardian reports.

For more of the story, head to The Guardian.

Alternative Covers For Morrissey’s Book

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Morrissey autobiography design by KIERONDF

The Guardian asked its readers to submit alternative covers for Morrissey’s much anticipated (at least in England) autobiography, which is called “Autobiography.”

Here are a couple of the submissions:

Morrissey autobiography design by Paul Whitehead

Morrissey autobiography design by DavidWickes

To see the others, head to The Guardian.

And while you’re at it, check out this essay about Morrissey and The Smiths by Jon Savage.

And if you’re in the mood, “How Soon Is Now” by The Smiths.

 

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: “If you think I will go back on [my] views you are horribly mistaken”

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Pussy Riot’s  Nadezhda Tolokonnikova says Russian authorities imposed an “information blockade” on her, according to a report in the Guardian.

For the past two weeks the Pussy Riot member, who is at a Russian prison, has not been able to see lawyers or her relatives, the Guardian reports.

“I want to make a declaration to everyone who has a role in making the decision to put me in isolation,” Tolokonnikova wrote in a statement seen by the Guardian. “If you think that without contact with my friends I will become amenable and open to compromise, and go back on the views I have formed about Mordovia’s camps during my time in jail, then you are horribly mistaken.”

Tolokonnikova is currently serving a two-year sentence at Penal Colony No. 14 in the region of Mordovia.

Tolokonnikova’s husband, Petya Verzilov, told the Guardian today (Friday, Oct. 11, 2013) that she has recovered from the medical complications brought about by her hunger strike.

“She’s OK now,” Verzilov told the Guardian. “She has been moved from confinement to the more general prison hospital area, where she is with other inmates. The lawyer was finally able to see her yesterday.”

For the full story go to the Guardian.

David Byrne Attacks Streaming Music Services

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david-byrne

David Byrne is not happy about streaming music services such as Spotify.

In a long essay in The Guardian, he thoughtfully discusses the impact these services are having on musicians.

“In future, if artists have to rely almost exclusively on the income from these services, they’ll be out of work within a year,” Byrne writes.

Later in the piece he says: “I also don’t understand the claim of discovery that Spotify makes; the actual moment of discovery in most cases happens at the moment when someone else tells you about an artist or you read about them – not when you’re on the streaming service listening to what you have read about (though Spotify does indeed have a “discovery” page that, like Pandora’s algorithm, suggests artists you might like). There is also, I’m told, a way to see what your “friends” have on their playlists, though I’d be curious to know whether a significant number of people find new music in this way. I’d be even more curious if the folks who “discover” music on these services then go on to purchase it. Why would you click and go elsewhere and pay when the free version is sitting right in front of you? Am I crazy?”

Disclaimer: I once worked at Mog, which is now a streaming music service owned by Beats.

Read Byrne’s essay at The Guardian.