THIS is the day that music died (repeat to fade)

The day that music died is 3rd February 1959, when Buddy Holly's plane crashed in bad weather, the phrase later being immortalised in Don McLean's American Pie.

That is guff, of course. The day that music actually died was an entirely different day. If you don't believe, look at my totally true and reliable Twitter feed.

Here are some days that music died, as tweeted by me.

22nd September 2009

CHAS AND DAVE HAVE SPLIT. *This* is the day that music died. http://bit.ly/173hCs

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 22, 2009

The day that Chas and Dave split. Dave had found gigging too much, with Chas, who died in 2018, explaining that Dave "has horses and he loves driving them round his grounds and painting gypsy wagons, which he's very good at, so I don't think he'll miss the gigging."

29th October 2011

*This* is the day that music died. And cigars. And jewellery. And tracksuits. And tinted glasses. And armchairs with holes in the arms.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 29, 2011

The day that Jimmy Savile died. Oh dear. In my defence, the allegations against horrendous man didn't appear for a while after his death. Everyone knew he was dodgy, but none of us took him seriously because he seemed truly ridiculous. Crumbs.

31st October 2015

*This* is the day that music died. Not all the other ones. This one. https://t.co/Q7yhMWri11

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) November 2, 2015

On Halloween 2015, frizzy saxophonist Kenny G announced his intention to play the longest sax note ever while on a flight. He'd previously played an E-flat for 45 minutes and 47 seconds, which is a lot of E-flat. Although his record was since broken, there's no evidence of Mr G succeeding in his in-flight blow job, and apparently Guinness World Records aren't bothered about it anymore.

11th September 2018

Failed reality TV singer Steve Brookstein appears to have deleted his Twitter account. THIS is the day that music died.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 11, 2018

The day that the terrible Steve Brookstein deleted his terrible Twitter feed. I think his account was restored: I don't know and I can't be bothered to check. A jazz Twitter account took my tweet at face value and invited me to a Brookstein gig in Cobham. I didn't go.

28th September 2018

Ah hold on, THIS is the day that music died. pic.twitter.com/EYfD0tBVtg

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 28, 2018

The day that a Bargain Hunt auction was artificially inflated by Bez's girlfriend sneaking in bids as a ringer. "“My girlfriend thought she was helping out," said Bez, whose plan forced the programme to be reshot. As I've told many a fellow clubber at three in the morning, if you can't trust the Happy Mondays, who can you trust?

11th December 2019

No, wait, ignore the others, THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/Jlygp7fVC1

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 11, 2019

The day Ed Sheeran was announced as artist of the decade by the Official Charts Company. This was based on record sales, which seems a narrow way of judging these things. How much banging techno did he make? How many Fat Roland dance moves did he adopt? How much effusive praise has he left in the comments section of this blog? I shall be writing to the Official Charts Company to complain.

25th June 2020

THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/jwygpZMgOL

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) June 25, 2020

The 21st anniversary of Vengaboys' Boom Boom Boom Boom!! getting to UK number one. Not the event itself, but the 21st anniversary of the event. No, not even I have figured this one out.

2nd December 2020

3% for Nathan Fake?! THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/CkefaK2hzD

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 2, 2020

My choice of Nathan Fake's Blizzards losing out in Picky B*stard's Albums Of The Year tournament. At the time of writing, its vote share has doubled, but it doesn't look hopeful. This is despite me praising its "rhythms rising from the foundations of the clubs we no longer go to" (read my article here). I think we can all agree that me not doing well in a competition is definitely the day that music died, making it comparable to the loss of legendary musicians in a devastating plane crash. Jeez. That's the worst thing I've written since Savile.

And finally... Never?

D'you know, I'm beginning to think that music's still alive. Check its pulse. If the blood's flowing at the same tempo as Chas and Dave's Rabbit, there's hope for us all.

Further Fats: The day Tyondai 'TyBo' Braxton retreated from Battles (2010)

Further Fats: The day Engeljames Blunterdinck representing us in the European debt crisis (2012)

Further Fats: The day Maroon 5 finally got a UK number one single after eight years of trying (2015)

Creative Tourist is the bezt website ever

Creative Tourist, the leading cultural guide to God's chosen city, has splurged a feature about me all over its pages.

It's part of a new feature about the best arts and culture blogs in Manch-- no, Bez, get back under your table, you can have your food when I'm ready. Where was I? Oh yes, it looks like I'm the inaugural victim of a new series.

They say "this is a blogger who writes passionately and in informed detail about electronica, without straying into hyperbole or hype." They're absolutely right, of course. I never hype anything.

(Wavy lines, fade to dream sequence.)

"The album is officially dead. Kaput. Extinct. Its tongue is lolling. It has crosses for eyes. The album is exactly six feet lower than the soles of your shoes. It is dead." January 2010

"Magnetic Man's impending chart success is more exciting than electrocuted nipples." July 2010

"The Mercury Music Prize is the best prize in the history of EVER." September 2010

"All we can humbly offer is this manifesto for our future massive greatness... All literary movements are over" November 2010.

(And we're back in the room.)

You ain't never gonna fookin' find me you rozzer scumGET OFF my keyboard, Bez, and carry on with the grouting. I want that finished by dinnertime.

The Creative Tourist feature blows any anonymity I may have left, but I wanted open and transparent with them. Also, I like the name I was born with because it's an anagram of "narrating icon"

Speaking of narrating, a selection of my other writings across the internet can be unearthed by clicking on the big "fat fiction and other writings" logo on the right of this post, or by clicking here. I've had an immense amount of fun scrawling for other sites recently and long may it continue.

You can also catch me reading one of my stories as part of the open mic slot at Bad Language's Scattered Reds book launch at the Castle pub, Oldham Street, Manchester this Wednesday night.

And I'm one of the speakers at Bright Club at Nexus Art Cafe on December 16th, where I'll be presenting my new talk, Boy Band Family Tree.

Right, there was something I'd forgotten. I hate it when that happens-- oh, of course. Bez.

Bez? Hello? Where have you gone?

There you are. Hey, get down from that chimney, the police will see you. No, you are NOT Father Christmas. Yes, you do look like him, but just because you're covered in red paint, that still means you're naked. Oh Bez, not down the chimney, use the toilet like everyone else. Do you want me get Shaun again? Do you? What do you mean he's on holiday?

Sorry about this, I need to see to Bez. Are you okay letting yourself out?

How do you solve a problem like Madchester (and Fac251)?

I am Mancunian from toe to quiff. I am chuffed with my city's history, from the bravery of the suffragettes and the labour movement, to the creation of the computer, to the literal rise of the Beetham tower.

But then, there are the pills, the thrills and, most of all, the bellyaches from a severe case of Madchester indigestion.

I am not about to rail against the Madchester legacy. I will never forget the sense of pride I felt simply being in the city centre at the turn of the 90s knowing that this great city was ruling the cultural world.

For someone who spent most of the day with his breakfast dribbled down his T-shirt and his evenings trying to smoke banana skins, I didn't have much to be proud about. So I bought it: I wore the T-shirts; I bought the records; I watched the Hacienda bouncers beating people up. Sweet memories.

That nostalgia still feeds this blog to some extent, and I can find myself wallowing in musics past. And so you'd think I would have been at the launch of Madchester-themed club FAC25: Factory Manchester last night, right?

Man boobs

Not right. Quite the opposite of right, in fact.

This whole Madchester revival really gets on my man boobs. Peters Hook and Saville seem determined to keep Manchester in some kind of memory-fogged haze, rewriting the Stone Roses era into a story that needs to be told again and again. This story they're weaving is dragging us into the past: we're caught in the loom and we can't tug free. The Manchester Passion didn't help, and neither did 1960s tribute band Oasis.

Legendary album cover designer Peter Saville is some kind of adviser to the city council on a billion squillion plopillion pounds a year. As for Hooky, the picture above* from last night's launch does not fill me with pride. It's classic Hook with his low-slung bass guitar, but it seems strangely dated like a scouser with a bowl haircut. Or anything new by Coldplay.

But this is not a rant against Peter Hook and his mates, either. Can you blame them? What else are they going to do? This isn't some weird utopia when we can leave old rock stars to die in the woods out of the sight of the youngsters.  Let them play: they made it. The Fuc51 blog is amusing, but we should celebrate Madchester in the right place at the right time.

No, FAC251 isn't the problem. Peter Hook isn't the problem. Madchester per se is not the problem. The problem, dear reader, is you**.

Right arm

You've googled FAC251 because you ripped off your right arm to attend the launch night and you landed on this blog looking for reviews, reactions, piccies and videos. 

The problem is you. You buy into Madchester as an icon of history. You trade off the city's heritage like it's some kind of museum. Yeah, it's cool, you got "mad for it" and now you can wear hoodies without looking like a tosspot and say "Y'alright, our kid?" in your Hastings accent.

You're probably not old enough to remember the halcyon days of crap Northside singles and cheaply-produced cow t-shirts. You do know the Hacienda became seriously crap, right?

If you recognise yourself in my description, you must leave the city now. I will come for you. I will beat you to a pulp with my smiley face cannabis tin. I am Mancunian, which automatically makes me think you can come and have a go if you consider yourself to possess an adequate level of hardness.

Zit craters

You are a fair-weather, nostalgia-leeching cultural blank page. You are a Boddingtons Mancunian. You pretend and pretend and pretend and then you move on, looking for the next nostalgia-trough in which to nuzzle your snivelling, zit-cratered face.

You are the problem. You must leave the city immediately and stop attending Madchester club nights.

Madchester. Right place, right time. Let's build a massive statue of Shaun Ryder's head. We'll bow down before it once a year, smearing it in liquid ecstacy, paint and exploded pigeons***. But otherwise, we will get our fix from the Warehouse Project / Sankey's Soap / Islington Mill / Sacred Trinity / whatever floats your musical boat.

Like The Guardian, like Manchizzle, like Words Dept, I believe we need new spectacles when we look at Manchester culture.

That rose tint clashes with your Afflecks hoody anyway.

* photo: Tim Dobson. See his twittering of FAC251 here.

** this will not apply to most readers of this blog, so it is a tad unfair. You're lovely, thank you for reading, etc etc.

*** references to the Stone Roses paint attack and the exploding pigeons in 24 Hour Party People (book and film)

Five vocalists I definitely want to work with if I was a music producer who was definitely wanting to work with any one of five vocalists

Wesley Willis

Epically prolific Chicaco-born schizophrenic who reached Shaun Ryder-like heights with Rock N Roll McDonald's. Try this rhyming couplet for size: "A Big Mac has 26 grams of fat, a Quarter-Pounder has 28 grams of fat." Although his vocals were like a drunk hyena being attacked by a cabal of badgers, he brought a warm humanity that would have provided rich material for an overwrought X Factor biography piece - if he hadn't died before X Factor was invented, that is.

Dizzee Rascal

He sounds like he wants to sound like Scooby Doo. Enough said.

The scary woman from Human Nature

Let the carnival begin. Every pleasure every sin. Gary Clail's Human Nature was a strange old beast from the early 90s: a fairly standard dance track with the kind of choppy pianos that were de rigeur at the time, but with added Scary Transvestite who seemed to be dressed in the contents of 20 thousand grandma's jewellery boxes. At least, I think she was a transvestite - or, to be more accurate, drag artist. She sounded like a heroin-hit Boy George. Wait. It's Boy George, isn't it?

50 Cent (pictured)

The second most famous Jackson of all time (yes, that's his real name) decided to Get Rich instead of Die Trying, which must have taken a lot of courage. His rapping is singularly the most awful style since Robbie Williams tried to toast all over his middle eights. I think it's meant to sound lazy, but it just comes across as... well, lazy. He is the Barney The Dinosaur of rap, although in honour of that, his vocal chords should be declared the fifth element of hip hop. Despite my mockery, I would love to hear his version of Squarepusher's Red Hot Car.

Polly Harvey

The Mercury Music Prize got it right in 2001. Potato-gizzling -guzzling* sculptress Harvey is a folk singer from the depths of hell and she is wonderful. She is the most famous saxophonist not primarily known for playing the saxomophone. Her vocals are like felt drizzled in acid. She is definitely not to be confused with the depressive member of East 17, nor with the failed footballer and So Solid Crew MC, nor with the rabbit from Donnie Darko that tormented Jimmy Stewart as he jumped off that bridge (I think I got that right).

* Edit: I preferred 'gizzling'.

RIP Tony Wilson aka "Mr Manchester" 33AD to 2007AD inclusive

BBC News website: "Anthony Wilson, the music mogul behind some of Manchester's most successful bands, has died of cancer. The Salford-born entrepreneur, who founded Factory records, the label behind New Order and the Happy Mondays, was diagnosed last year. He died on Friday evening at the Christie Hospital surrounded by family."

I only managed a third of Anthony H Wilson's egobiography 24 Hour Party People before I flung it across the room. That'll learn that self-obsessed narcissist, I thought. You can only go so far when someone constantly refers to themself in the third person, as though they were some separate entity, like a god or an ancient spirit.

Fat Roland was not impressed.

But Wilson has a right to be arrogant. Today, the netosphere will be full of talk of his greatest achievements, including working with Richard and Judy, starring in the hilarious Cock And Bull Story and, of course, living with a former beauty queen.

Apparently, he also set up a club and a record label or something. I might have to google that one.

My iconic image of Wilson will be his early television career, hacking for Granada Reports then fronting the punktastic So It Goes.

My radio co-presenter (and now producer) Lee insists the role of a "mike jockey" is simply to be a talking box for the producers' genius ideas. He's right, of course. But Wilson held his own (oo-er) and you knew he was never an autocue slave.

I'm not sure of my Manchester credentials. I am a Mancunian, but I live in the posh bit. I was into Madchester, but at that time was just as likely to rave on to Candy Flip. I never loved the Hacienda; I only really hooked onto the place in its dying days.

That said, Wilson's passion created the Manchester I know, with its minimalist record covers, ill-fitting clothes and awkwardly placed pillars in clubs.

Rest in peace, Anthony H Wilson, Manchester's modern-day Jesus H Christ. Generous blog readers can give money to the Christie hospital by clicking here.

Crouching at the base of a cardboard themometer muttering something about there being too many guitars

Manc convention insists I be excited about the Manchester International Festival. If I had an oversize cardboard thermometer with 'not much electronica' written at the bottom in black marker pen and 'lots of lovely electronica' written on a piece of star-shaped yellow card blue-tacced to the top, I would hum and haw and then stick my strip of (Top Gear style) card saying MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL quite low on the chart, perhaps very near the bottom.

So no trendy experimental music for my tastes. I will have to make do. arms crossed, lip curled, with Lou Reed (old man's music), Kanye West (hmm, maybe not) and PJ Harvey (oh yes yes and thrice yes).

Or I could save up my pennies for the holy Mancunian marriage of the Fall and the Happy Mondays (record cover pictured) shambling through a joint gig. There'll be nothing civil about that partnership, I can assure thee.

All the events can be seen on the events calendar, as quite rightly they should be.

Oh, incidentally, one of the debates featured in the line-up is called 'Is TV good for society?'. Well, let me just start the debate by giving an in depth opinion on the subject:

Yes.

Does any of the Festival take your fancy? And shall we go together? I've got a megarider, so we'll have to get the bus in.