Fake news: there's a famous faux band in town

Get a load of these tribute band flyers. Korn Again. Guns Or Roses. U2-2. Bon Giovi. And the gloriously intoned Slipknowt. As you may guess, Slipknowt are from that famous Yorkshire town of, er, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

A casual observer-- no, I found these flyers in a pub, so scratch that-- A tipsy observer may think that was the bona fide U2, until you notice they're playing in Prestwich. I mean, Prestwich is an upstanding place, but I wouldn't think a world tour by the rattly hummers would stop by there.

I respect tribute bands, living in the shadow of a more famous version of themselves. I spend enough time being mistaken for Johnny Vegas. I do wonder if I should heave myself around the comedy circuit with a pottery wheel. Call myself Johnny Fake-Ass. Swap the booze for meth so I don't entirely violate his artistic copyright. I've also been likened to an actor from Human Centipede 2 (no really), although I'm happy to leave that one alone.

These are the tribute bands I'd want to set up in the world of electronic music: Faulty DL, Josh Hoodwink, Afaux Twin, Fake-0-8 State, Norbital and Dupe. That last one refers to mid-90 chart-toppers Doop. Hey, shut up, this isn't easy.

If any record company wants me to tour as a tribute act, let me know. I can make pretend keyboards from cereal boxes. I'm sure I can sellotape some spaghetti together to make some leads so, y'know, sound comes out of the speakers. Which are made from mashed potato. Let's do this. I'll even play Prestwich.

Further Fats: Suspended puppies: an absolutely genuine review of Warp20 Sheffield (2009)

Further Fats: Fake plastic CDs and eating too much cheese before writing a blog post (2010)

Do stop believing: the rock music fad is over

Thank goodness this awful guitar fad has passed. The moment the Beatles clanged out seven years worth of jangly pap, it was over before it started.

It was revealed yesterday that only three of the top 100 tracks of 2010 in the UK were rock songs, the best-selling of these being Glee's Don't Stop Believing.

If you're not aware of the Glee phenomenon, think of Miley Cyrus and Justin Biebpipe doing an ACDC covers tour. Now replace Miley and Justin with a baboon flinging its own excrement, and replace ACDC with every treasured memory you've ever had. That's Glee.

It turns out guitars were just a temporary fad. All those bedroom garage bands banging out noisy chords and committing it to four-track in a cousin's shed? It was the musical equivalent of space hoppers, Tab cola and happy slapping.

Now HMV have a golden ticket for turning their sales around. Have half their shops sell only neo-rave, breakcore and 8bit Kraftwerk classics, while have the other half contain hundreds of burning Fender Stratocasters, constantly on fire like sick Olympic flames and proffered worshipful sacrifices by a rock-hating public.

Here, god of guitar-death, have my collection of coloured Green Day vinyl I just smashed with a hammer, thanks be to Aphex.

Truth is, of course, guitars have never been popular. A quick finger through the UK's top ten best selling singles of all time shows all we really care about is Elton John, Boney M and (shudder) Robson And Jerome. The rockiest tracks are by the Beatles, Wings in Kintyre-mode and those bastians of death metal, Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

The shroud of lies perpetuating the rock myth has fallen and we can get back to good honest dance music like Black Eyes Peas, Basshunter and Doop.

All those annoying acronyms to memorise guitar strings can revert to something sensible like Every Band Goes Dance, Amen Evermore. And we can all have our hair short. And we can wash. With water and everything. We may even use soap. Imagine that.

Rock is dead. Long live Jean Michel Jarre's impending Autechre remix album.

(Please send letters of complaint to Axl Rose, A Hammock, Backstage At The O2 Arena, Londinium, 1LLU 51ON.)

Who do I hate more? Morrissey or Axl?

Regular sufferers of this blog know I like to have a public enemy number one: a Moriarty to my Jeremy Brett; a Joker to my Adam West; a seven evil exes to my Michael Cera.

Things have been plain sailing so far, whether I'm comparing Sean Paul to a malfunctioning karaoke machine, calling Chromeo faux-retro Prince-wannabe lifeless post-Mika pap, or poking Prince, or calling James Blunt a Milli Vanilli imposter or suggesting James Blunt be castrated or wishing James Blunt be hit by cluster bombs calling James Blunt the son of a dead cat and another dead cat or blaming the Beatles for James Blunt or saying Bono is more boring than James Blunt or comparing James Blunt to a vagina and Alexandra Burke.

But now I am torn between two new enemies: Morrissey calling a fifth of the world a subspecies or Guns N Roses' Axl Rose treating his fans like crap in Dublin.

One one hand, Mozza's flirtation with racism is a well-trodden groove he should have stepped out of more quickly. On the other hand, Rose is demonstrating a basic failure to do his job: turn up on stage and sing.

First, the flower-fondling fop. Morrissey seems to think himself untouchable, ignoring the press and replying to everything everyone ever says to him with a swooned "well, aren't we all?" He once draped himself in a flag and the liberal media has drawn daggers against him ever since. It was okay, however, for Geri Halliwell to dress in the same flag a few years later because, I s'ppose, she was well fit and that.

It's hard to know whether Simon Armitage took his quote out of context in the recent Grauniad article, but Mozza certainly seems to treat issues of nationalism with a clunk-handed carelessness that compromises his integrity and makes it difficult for his fans to love him. I think history will judge Morrissey fairly though: in the words of Armitage's poem Poem:

Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

And now to the cat-squeezed voice and the kilt and the hair. Axl Rose is in such a stratosphere of rock glory, he will have no idea what it's like to live on beans and dust for a year to save up enough money for a gig. He disappeared for forty days and forty nights before turning in an album called Chinese Democracy (are you reading, Morrissey?) which sounded turgid and confused and, even worse, boring.

Whatever went wrong with the Guns N Roses shows, who didn't wake up who and who was supposed to play until when, Rose's protestations at the organisation of the Reading and Leeds festival seemed shallow in the light of the later shambles in Dublin. But when you're in awe of bands like this, don't you expect a bit of diva nonsense, for them to over-use the illusion of the emperor's new clothes?

Both artists are living off former glories - try and find any of their fans that *don't* like their older work - and the bolt-gun of retirement hangs heavily over the old heffers. At least the Smiths frontman can still turn in a tune or two. Which brings me to my conclusion.

Axl Rose makes substandard music and presents it by snoozing in a hammock made out of his massively big head's bandana instead of hitting the stage on time. Although Morrissey can't match his past brilliance, Davyhulme's most famous quiff knows how to perform, how to write a song and how to do his flipping job.

If, instead of writing this blog, I just did a giant poo on your computer screen, although I'd be improving the quality of your user experience, I wouldn't be fulfulling the most basic element of my job description: tapping on my keyboard while hoovering a quart of Talisker then smashing 'Publish' with my forehead.

If Axl Rose can't do what he's meant to do, then he's nothing more than the anorexic bastard child of Mick Hucknall and Mickey Rourke squealing like a cat kazoo at a barrage of drunkenly-hurled bottles of piss.

Yes, Morrissey, shut up, please, just shut up, but Axl is my new public enemy number one and James Blunt can rest easy.