Bobby McGee's promote Channel 4

The Bobby McGee's are another perrenial favourite of the Egodeity, and he rejoices at any indication that they are getting more exposure. Today is one such day. You know Channel 4, the channel who once was the bain of middle England because of the risque nature of its output, but has sinced mellowed so that it is now considered mainstream, yet still tries to convince people that its edgy and and uses racists on Big Brother to try to prove it? Well, they have produced a trailer for their film channel, Film4, and guess whose music provides the background?



Now it is up to you, the legions of Egodeists to pester Radio 1 and other such outlets of popular music with emails and texts asking, "what's that song in the new Film 4 ad?" You are free to ask other questions related to this subject, such as, "What film is Steve Martin in?" "Why does Steve Martic still insist on pursuing a career?" "Is there any form of appropriate retribution for Cheaper by the Dozen, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, or The Pink Panther? Public hanging seems to tame."

iTunes 8: the tunes are the lowest priority

I recently downloaded iTunes 8, when it was released, in fact, and it's becoming increasingly clear that the music is the lowest priority for iTunes nowadays. In the last few major releases (from about version 6 onwards), iTunes has merely been a vehicle for the software improvements in the iPod and iPhone, to the point where playing music is being sacrificed.
Now my Apple iBook G4 isn't exactly top of the line - it was the most basic model when I bought it in Autumn 2005 - but iTunes 8 is crippling it. Simply scrolling through my (admittedly large - 9000+ and counting) selection of songs causes iTunes to freeze for up to 40 seconds at a time. I tried to counteract this by downloading an older version of iTunes, that doesn't have all the useless add-ons that I won't need, since I don't have an iPhone (and have no particular intention of getting one), but this was scuppered by the fact that I can't find one on the internet that will actually install onto my machine.
This can easily be fixed by Apple - all they have to do is release an iTunes Lite, that simply plays songs and syncs iPods - as was the intention of the software when it was created. I like iTunes, but the increasing excess baggage the updates are loaded with is wearing my patience thin. I may have to switch allegiences to another media player, but frankly, I don't want to - I just want my iTunes to function.

Iggy Pop sells insurance - the final insult to music and its fans

Music lovers have often had to suffer the cuntishness of Adland hijacking their favourite artists, in order to plug their crap, often without the artists' consent - where was Jimi Hendrix when Audi decided he would endorse their latest mid-life crisis mobile? Or Nick Drake when Volkswagon used his Pink Moon to flog their new line of City-boy smug-mobiles?

Then there was Muse having to sue Nescafe to stop them using Feeling Good in one of their ads, only for Nescafe to hire a sound-a-like to finish the job.

Of course, all the above examples (and countless more) are usually down to record company pricks (the same ones that are determined to stop music fans enjoying music) seeing an opportunity for quick financial gain, as well as easy exposure for the track to the masses, and thus licensing the soul of a song to an advertising wonk.

Now though, a new trend has emerged - rock stars appearing in the ads. Usually this cardinal sin is committed by prats to whom the music is a distant last on the priority list of groupies, drugs, alcohol, general vice, money, egotistical posturing, music - Ozzy can't believe it's not butter, Alice Cooper likes high-end golf clubs, and Madonna and Missy Elliot plug that Gap (pun was accidental, but I'm keeping it).
But when punk icons start selling out, you know the world is doomed to capitalist mundanity. John Lydon (aka, Daily Mail-bothering Johnny Rotten of the day) poses as an upper class twit for Country Life, and now the man who invented punk as far back as the 60s, whose band was responsible for some of the dirtiest guitar riffs known to man, is selling car insurance... Car insurance... car insurance. And not a particular brand that is particularly known for being industrious towards their customers either, it's one of those scummy exploitative ones that advertise on daytime TV. The Egodeity is not going to link to a video of the ad, or even mention the name of the company, because they surely have enough publicity amid the blogosphere for the ad, he's simply registering his disgust, and building up supplies for the forthcoming apocalypse. Although it does remind the egodeist of a line from the Dark Knight. "You either die a hero (Hendrix, Cobain, Drake, Morrison, Joplin), or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Google mail offering SMS Text Messaging

Official Gmail Blog: SMS Text Messaging for chat

The Egodeity has laboured long and hard to get his casual computer using accomplices to defer to his enlightened technological advances. 'Switch to Apple', 'use Firefox', 'everybody uses Facebook now', and for a long time 'get a Gmail account'. Sometimes financial issues would halt his conversions, other times it would be fear of the unknown. Most often it was just laziness, with most people just content with struggling with what they've got.

Now though, Gmail is offering a truly spectular update - one that is surely newsworthy (in the youth-orientated radio stations' "...and finally" sort of way) - free SMS from within webmail. At GBP0.10 per text message the best offer in Britain, and more and more people getting web-based phones, this update gives the consumer a nice little pin to prick at the cell phone companies with, given their unchallenged oligopical extortion over the last decade or so.

Unfortunately, Google retains it's almost self-defeating Amero-centricity, and is only rolling the service out in the United States. They have a few little in-jokes, such as all texts eminate from the l33tish 406 area code (Goo if you look at it right), but once a number is assigned to a particular address, it is assigned permanently and indivually to that address, so it can be saved as a phone number on a friend's phone. Particularly nifty. However, it does raise the spectre that they will run out of numbers to assign very quickly.

Anyway, the egodeity looks forward to this rolling out to these shores, and will plug it like a fiend until he converts SOMEone to the magesty that is Google's web-based mail service.

Of Montreal - Koko. 16 October, 2008

First off, I want to express my disgust at the venue itself, Koko. The building itself is beautiful, and maintains an intimacy that some venues lose, but the running of it was incredibly frustrating.
A tin of beer was £3.60, and was still warm and flat, and barely filled half the disposable pint tumbler it was served in.

Now to the music. The remaining support band, Eugene McGuinness (the other band pulled out because the singer had pneumonia), were sub-Kooks indie, and didn't really compliment the originality of the headliners. In fact they were boring. In between the band's sets, the in house DJ was more interested in showing off how eclectic his record collection was than trying to embrace the mood of the audience.

So it was with great relief that of Montreal took to the stage, carrying on Alice Cooper's philosophy that the performer must entertain the audience. A motley collection of be-costumed dancers paraded the stage throughout the show, involving tigers fighting birds, Kevin Barnes being stripped and doused in red paint, as if being prepared for a human sacrifice by bald, silver-headed cultists.

The set involved two half hour segments of uninterrupted music, with not even intervals to check the setlist, although most of the songs were from the as-yet-unreleased Skeletal Lamping, and thus were unfamiliar to most of the crowd (myself included). The crowd was fully into the gig though, as evidenced by the mosh-lite pits forming during Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse.

Very little dialogue was entered into by the band, but when it was, the guitarist tongue-in-cheek admitted to wanking off to the image of own sister. It's these little moments that made the gig so unique (for me anyway).

The encore was a triumph as well, finishing off with a surprise inclusion (although I personally was in on the secret, having read this) of Smells Like Teen Spirit. That went down a storm and rounded off one of the best gigs I have ever been to. I'm just pissed off I forgot to bring my camera.