This blog is jenerally only bothered with blokes with the initials JB

James Blunt

Blunt is arguably Britain's greatest living vocalist, treading a fine line between sounding like Mick Hucknall from Simply Red and a home counties Jimmy Krankie. He was once unpopular, but then his mum went on radio and controlled the listening public with her mind rays. James Blunt has won Never Mind The Buzzcocks a record 27 times, beating Lee Ryan from Blue, Dappy from N Dubz and Cliff Richard from Cliff Richard.

James Blake

Blake is arguably Britain's greatest living vocalist and continues a long tradition of doo wop in the electronic music sub-genre known as dubstep. According to the 2011 Guinness World Records, he is the smallest known recording artist, but that is no surprise considering his tender age of four. James Blake plays many of his gigs during the daytime because sub-bass frequencies travel less well in the dark.

Justin Biebpipe

Biebpipe is arguably Britain's greatest living vocalist alongside fellow YouTube stars such as Chocolate Rain Guy, Keyboard Cat and Stephen Fry Sings Pantera. His babyish good looks are the result of post-accident plastic surgery following a rollerblading collision with a balloon full of hot oil being towed by a ferociously drunk David Hasselhoff. Justin Biebpipe's natural physical state is one of entropy and desolation.

Jeff Buckley & John Barrowman

Although Buckley and Barrowman are arguably Britain's greatest living vocalists, their famous cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah will be remembered as one of the worst duets of all time. Buckley's delicate soul voice and his wan physique sat fairly well with the song, but it was generally considered a mismatch with John Barrowman's show tune style and his insistence on ending every line with "well, howdaya like THAT!"

Jeff Beck & the Jonas Brothers

Beck and the Brothers were once known as arguably Britain's greatest living vocalists. It was a tragedy then that they were all killed in a landslide of emotion following the death of James Brown. Brown's tragic demise struck a strong emotional chord with the public and for weeks following his death, newspapers ran repeated headlines speculating about his Sex Machine theme park, his nine masked children and his relationship with his doctor, Mr Shipman. After he became ill, James Brown sued himself for writing I Feel Good. Jeff Beck & the Jonas Brothers were 63 and are survived by two husbands and six children.

John Barry

Barry (pictured above) is arguably Britain's greatest living vocalist and shares a passion with people called JB. In 1926, he married folk singer Joan Baez and was instrumental in her being jailed after he encouraged her to poke a police officer in the eye with a violin bow. Following their divorce, he wedded legendary r 'n' b singer Jocelyn Brown, although the marriage didn't last after he encouraged a violin bow to poke a police officer in the eye with Jocelyn Brown. The much-missed John Barry wrote music for Jason Bourne or something.

Jungle Brothers (the Jive Bunny remixes)--- okay, that's enough - ed.

A helpful pie chart to summarise Fat Roland On Electronica

Welcome to the various new bloggers I met at last night's Manchester Blogmeet (#mcrblogmeet).

Fat Roland On Electronica [June 2016 edit: the old name for this website] is a murky old water in which sardines come in their millions to die. I hope the pie chart (above) helps explain a little more about what goes on around here. Click for bigger.

I'll thrash together a blogmeet write-up in due course. Huge thanks must go to I Love To Love, who sponsored the meeting and infused the whole enterprise with the aroma of quality leather (one of my childhood-memory smells, along with bike oil), to Common Bar for being helpful and jovial hosts, and to Manchizzle for getting the whole thing up and running before being struck down with a lurgy caught from her (very cute) wee bairn.

Meanwhile, here's my new favourite band. Enjoy.

Did Kerouac have fridge magnets? NO, HE BLOODY DID NOT

I didn't get where I am today without poking things with a stick.

As I get older and bits of me fall off, it takes more effort to stop myself permanently going to seed and dribbling hopelessly in my cot all day whilst watching reruns of Hippies.

And so I poke things with a stick to see if they go squeak, to see if I have any hidden talents or unused opportunities I should be making the most of.

I tried stand-up, which was brutal and scary and strangely refreshing. It didn't go squeak: it was more of a yelp and it gave me the horrors when it came to treading the boards.

So when I did my comedy lecture Gospel According To Aphex Twin earlier this year at Bright Club, I was still recovering from the stage fright and I shook like a leaf. It did squeak quite pleasingly, though. It looked serene on the surface, but believe me, my inner swan was like a firework with tourettes.

My confidence has grown. Since I did a Titanic and garnered way more praise than I thought I deserved at the Manchester Blog Awards, giving me that useful tag of "award-winning" to wave in people's startled faces, my squeaks have increased in frequency to a sort of high-pitched jabber.

On Wednesday, this accumulated in me reading a short story at an open mic session for the first time in my life. It was for the launch of an anthology by Bad Language (I hope to nudge myself a page or two in the next one) and I read a story called Sandra Sue about teenage ultraviolence.

I must say a massive thanks to Socrates Adams for his advice before the event (read something funny, read it slowly). That man is to literary readings what ducks are to deviant sexual practices, and I mean that in a good way.

Because of a mixture of extensive preparation, confidence in my material and sheer bloody mindedness, it went down really well. I wanted it to be a performance rather than someone just muttering into a mic (note the pretentious italics), and I was pleased with what I achieved.

I then went mad. "I know," I thought, "I can do this twice in one week." I found myself reading for a second time on Saturday at Waterstone's Deansgate branch in Manchester, this time with a weird horror tale The People Vs The Tooth Fairies and a comedy piece about Beyonce.

And that's it. I have the lit-reading bug. Hundreds, if not, millions of plans are afoot thanks to my Beatoff Generation chums. We've had a lovely mention in Bournemouth Runner's The Art Of Fiction, we've got fridge magnets thanks to Benjamin Judge and people keep calling me a scenester.

"Scenester." Arf.

Because of the prep for this week's readings and a nasty little throat / eyes / braincells gremlin that has laid me flat tonight (I can't look at this screen for much longer), this blog has suffered slightly. Less of the usual James Blunt-bashing and more new poked beasties that have little to do with the musical side of Fat Roland On Electronica.

Be patient with me, dear reader: I need to keep poking things with sticks. An arrogant bit of me feels that anything is possible right now, especially if I put the work in. This is, after all, the month in which David Lynch (THE David Lynch) released a dance track. Now, that's some brilliant poking.


David Lynch's Good Day Today by threeminutesthirtyseconds

(Slight hiatus)

I'm not being lazy. I've been on holiday.

As I get back into my blogging groove this week, please amaze yourself with these fascinating Fat Roland facts:

- Because of his recent media trawl, I am starting to find James Blunt quite entertaining. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I fear that when Aphex Twin finally produces his comeback album, it can only be a disappointment. I think that makes me a bad person.

- The last two music videos I snorted on the digital cocaine that is YouTube were Panjabi MC's Mundian To Bach Ke and Adamski's Bass Line Changed My Life. That's right. Adamski. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I *want* people to play music on their headphones too loudly on public transport. I like the distraction and I feed off other people's frustration like fat gay Dementor. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I once sneaked up behind a hedgehog and said "boo!" just to make it curl into a ball. I never asked its name. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I started a 2010 film review series in March,. Like a New Labour spending programme, I immediately mothballed it even though I see films at the flicks most weeks. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I use words like "flicks" and "LPs", yet most of the music I consume is streamed like a proper modern fella. That's called hypocrisy. I think that makes me a bad person.

- I still haven't forgiven Apple for their DRM disgustingness with iTunes. I never want to have an iPhone as a result. Whenever I see someone with an iPhone, I stamp on their head. I think that makes me a *good* person.

- Anyone that feels the need to *stress* certain words with *asterisks* clearly isn't working hard enough at sentence structure.

- Er...

- ...that's it.

My Manchester Blog Award rivals dissected

Edit: To see how well I did since writing this post, see the results here.

With the Manchester Blog Awards nearly upon us (you can still vote for me here until the end of Tuesday), it's time to look at my opposition in more detail.

The following blogs have been shortlisted, along with me, in the Best Writing On A Blog category. Let's see if they have what it takes to win the prestigious prize (to be awarded on Wednesday night).

Specimen one: 330 Words

On the positive side, this is a collaborative blog where people submit very short stories inspired by a picture. This ensures they have a wide reach and probably carry a lot of respect because of that. I must write something for them, if only to get reflected glory.

330 Words have a search function on their site. So I thought I would test their mettle by firing in some fairly obvious phrases. 'Aphex Twin' revealed no results, as did 'Venetian Snares'. However, a simpler search for the word 'banana' (pictured) returned two hits. Nothing for 'sausage', though. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Specimen two: The Pigeon Post

This is a music blog. You know what one of those is because you're reading one right now, although Mr Pigeon does a better job of it by posting audio and writing about music. It is, in other words, a proper music blog and it's made right here in Manchester.

The writing on 'Post covers nagging doubts at gigs, fruitless searches for new music, and railing against clichés in music blogs. On the negative side, he too has a search box and a scan for 'James Blunt hanging limply from the remains of his own broken career' returned precisely zero results.

Specimen three: Ribbons And Leaves

This blog is a-- oh wait, he's got a Manchester Blog Awards logo at the top of his blog and a link-through to the voting page. Why haven't I done that? Back in a moment...

...

Right then, I've done the same on my blog. Anyway, Mr Leaves types his blog posts on a 1960s German typewriter then scans them onto the page. It sounds exhausting, but the results are stunning. When I'm on his blog and I smash the side of my computer screen with the flat of my right hand, it doesn't go ding. This needs to be rectified. Ding.

Specimen four: Who The Fudge Is Benjamin Judge? 

I nominated this blog in two categories and it ended up getting shortlisted in both of them. Here we have a personal blog that has an imaginative edge, such as a list of things to do this decade that includes "live like a Moomin for a while".

He spends his time calling me a North Korea sympathiser stroke planet killer, which only leads me to scream out very much in the style of Matthew Bionic's query on Judge's sister blog Ask Ben And Clare. When I change my name to Kim Jong Roland, I'm going to nuke his blog.

So there are the fellow shortlistees. It's amazing to be in the same category as the blogs above. There are other categories in the Blog Awards too, but I don't want this post to go on forever so I must leave it there.

If you're going on Wednesday (anyone is welcome), you'll spot me being confused and drunk in the corner. I have no idea what happens at these things, whether I get to read anything at the front, or how many fist fights there will be.

See you after the Awards, dearest reader.

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.

Chosen Words: X is for Xylem Tube

Xylem Tube was an EP by Aphex Twin and was the first single on which he used his distinctive logo.

The Cornish ambient electronic musican is arguably the most influential of his kind. Other Cornwall musicians include Tori Amos, Mick Fleetwood, Luke Vibert and Norwegian rock band Lordi (assuming Norway is in Cornwall; I'm pretty sure it is).

His music has been described as 'Cornish Acid', and several track titles on his Drukqs album are in the native language. Jynweythek Ylow means Electronic Machine Music, while Hy A Scullyas Lyf A Dhagrow is a reference to spilling a pint. I once spilled MC Tunes' pint, and I wish I'd known Cornish at the time.

The success of Aphex Twin begat a generation of bleep-heads. Boards of Canada reflect Aphex's ambience, Plaid have the melody, while the spikey beats have been developed by Venetian Snares, μ-Ziq and jazzy drum-mangler Squarepusher.

There has been much speculation as to the release of a new Aphex Twin album. Many suspect he has been busy secretly posing as James Blunt in a musical experiment on the shocking scale of Milli Vanilli.

Top five recommended Aphex Twin aliases:

- Polygon Window
- AFX
- The Tuss
- Caustic Window
- Bradley Strider

Chosen Words: F is for Folktronica

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

When electronic music becomes boring, it gets squished together like old soap.

Results have included folktronica, dubstep and Truesteppers Featuring Dane Bowers And Victoria Beckham. Music has to do this to survive.

Folktronica is an attempt by bearded hippies to make an ancient form of music bend to the winds of modern taste. Even now, they are replacing Stonehenge with giant pixels. Dubstep is a variation of 2-step which is a variation of a pair of step ladders Burial kept in the back of his shed.

All music is the bastard child of something else. House music rose from disco and techno. Jungle came from various forms of ragga and rave, and later incorporated ambient. Meanwhile, James Blunt is the son of a dead cat and another dead cat.

Country and western has retained its musical and racial purity. It has no friends, and that's why it sounds so sad.

Top five music genres:

- 8 bit
- Aciieeeeed
- EBM
- IDM / braindance
- Hey, macarena

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

The Gospel According To Aphex Twin

> See a video of this talk here

Bright Club Manchester invited me to give a talk at their debut event at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. So I decided to set up a new religion and present it to the unsuspecting masses.

My brief from Bright Club was to talk about something I'm passionate about and to make it entertaining. My brief to myself was to make it sound convincing whilst making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It also had to be utterly un-fanboy, so there are no details. Just silliness.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here. Meanwhile, here is the full text.

Gospel According To Aphex Twin

I'm here to present to you tonight a new religion based on modern electronic music, and by the end of this you will be converted. It's based on the holy trinity of the analogue drum pad, squelchy bass line and bearded geeks in bedroom studios. This is the gospel according to Aphex Twin.

To understand this gospel, you need to go back to the prophets. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who were working with George Martin before he became that bloke to do with the Beatles. Who knows what the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is most well known for? (Audience response: "Dr Who!") Doctor Who theme tune, absolutely right. Ron Grainger's notes to them contained annotations like 'swoops' and 'wind bubbles', it really was a fantastic new sound.

In the beginning also, there were hippy-haired men in sandals. Some of Pink Floyd's more experimental was as close to techno as you're ever going to get. I've not got time to go into this now, but the Beatles really do provide the missing link between skiffle and the Chemical Brothers (come and ask me afterwards!).

In the beginning, also, you had the puritans. Kraftwerk, who were clean and clinical, who stood there on their podiums giving sermons about wild ideas like pocket calculators and autobahns.

But I'm talking about modern electronic music. In the 80s, a lot of electronic music was about going out, getting dressed up and going dancing, so you had new wave, hip hop, rave. But this is about what happened after that. When the musical missionaries brought Detroit house music over to Europe, it became something different. We know it as electronica, intelligent dance music, armchair techno or, my favourite, braindance.

You had people like LFO who did this really ordered warehouse techno, which made Kraftwerk look like a free jazz band: they were cold and ordered  - and looming (you know when you get that feeling when the One Show's about to come on?). It brought techno kicking and screaming from the dance floor into the pizza-box strewn living room of the ravers.

This whole group of bands gave us the new scriptures to follow. The Artificial Intelligence series of CDs was brilliant stuff. Their record label described it as: "You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album.” This was radical for that time, it really hadn't been done before. Although that manifesto was later used to excuse trip hop, which is wrong.

You had Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, our bedraggled poster boy tonight. On that album - it's a beautiful album - there was a sample from the Charlie And The Chocolate Factory film, the one with Gene Wilder, “we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” – for me that was inspiration, it was like the Martin Luther King of electronic music.

And Orbital's brown album, so-called because it didn't have a title. It was their second album and it was so unifying and so uplifting that if you go to an Orbital gig now, it's like they're the early hymn writers and people are raising their arms in unity and in worship. The NME called Orbital's second album “as warm as plasma and as eerie as ectoplasm”. And incidentally,I wasn't sure how to fit this in: Orbital are named after the M25, and I wanted to do a section based on bands named after roadways. I've only got The Streets, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and Muse...

So what are the beliefs of the Gospel According To Aphex Twin? Salvation can be found experimentation. We will encourage you to question and to challenge. So we've got Flying Lotus paying tribute to Alice Coltrane on his new album and Bjork has been working with techno pioneers for most of her career.

Salvation can be found in repetition, that Hot Chip refrain of "the joy of repetition is within you". Repetition in this religion is not essential, but it helps you reach a new, higher state of consciousness (something falls down at the back) or make people collapse. Repetition is a political thing also: a previous government tried to make repetitive beats illegal. Some of you might remember the Criminal Justice Bill was a big thing. Repetitive beats technically became illegal, but it became law. Fighting it was a bit like like banging your head against a brick wall continuously and ironically.

Salvation can also be found in staying underground. It's easier for me to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for electronica to get into the singles chart; it just doesn't happen. Autechre, who are the Mancunian purists of techno music, are wilfully obscure. I run a website on electronic music and for a while I ran a thing called Chartwatch where I would track the progress week-by-week of electronic acts in the singles chart. It wasn't very successful, and I've got a few of the entries here:

- No new electronica in the singles chart.
- Still no new electronica in the singles chart.
- Simply Red are in the top 40, I'm off for a cry.

So it didn't really work. Speaking of Simply Red, it brings me to the one unforgiveable sin, which all religions must have. The unforgiveable sin in this new religion is mediocracy. If you are, for example, The Orb and you record a 40-minute single Blue Room and it accidentally rockets up the charts and so you go on Top Of The Pops on prime-time TV and you're not sure what to do so you play chess, that is brilliant. If however, your album ends up on coffee tables, you start hanging out with celebrities and you've got lyrics like "there was snow, white snow", then you're Coldplay.

Extremism is encouraged in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Like all good religions, extremism is encouraged. So Venetian Snares, one of my favourite bands, he sounds very much like a barrell of nails being rolled down a cobbled hill. I'd particularly recommend the albums Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, Filth and Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole.

I'm here to increase my religion, I'm here to grow my religion because I had to fit it into the theme of tonight. So will the Gospel According To Aphex Twin work? We will get organised, we will make Brian Eno pope. Electronica is dominated by a lot of the hallmarks of religion. So you'vbe got worshippers in communal ecstacy, you've got white middle-class, socially-inadequate men all over the place and also electronica's very good at looking down its nose at other people not quite doing it right.

I'd like to end with a bit of involvement, if you'd like. This is where you become part of the new religion. I'd like to end with a call-and-response, a piece of liturgy. This comes from when Lady Gaga and La Roux and Ladyhawke were first getting successful and the Guardian ran a piece about "chicks with synths", that was the new thing. So I wrote a letter to James Blunt suggesting that perhaps he get on the bandwagon and... you'll see.

If you can say the bits in bold, but please can you say it loudly and clearly and with conviction:

We join together in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin is the daddy.

This is the First Letter To James Blunt, chapter one.  

Thanks be to Aphex.

Dear James Blunt. You should become a chick with a synth.

Amen to that.

You need to buy a nice shiny silver synthesiser and get it into every publicity shot you can.

Praise be the synthesiser.

You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers... I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

Get to the point.

I pledge my all to the Gospel According To Aphex Twin and his holiness, Brian Eno.

I will experiment.

Yes I will.  

I will embrace repetition.  

Yes I will.

I will embrace repetition.  

That’s not funny.

I will follow the holy order of the analogue drum pad

Thum!

and the squelchy bassline.

Pyow!

Lead us not into Maroon 5 for ever and ever.

Amen.

This was the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Thank you very much.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here.

While my guitar gently sods off

The recent news that pop music is outselling rock music is as an important a cultural change as the renaissance, the industrial revolution and processed cheese.

For too long now, the tyranny of the guitar has ruled over us. We have bowed and scraped to our six string masters, as if rebelling against the jangly bastards was as bad as strangling Bill Wyman to death with a jack lead.

The indoctrination starts early. Pony-tailed parents soundbomb their Smiths collection at pregnant tummies to 'train' their newborn into having good taste. Any gawky teenager showing a creative bent has a guitar and a Nirvana chord book shoved into their hands.

Turgid

And what has it given us? The Beatles, who were responsible for the worst haircuts ever and fixed Liverpool into the '60s for all eternity. Turgid rock behemoths like the Rolling Stones and Status Quo, who somehow made stadium rock acceptable and are therefore responsible for Coldplay. And James Blunt. James Blunt.

Official Charts Company figures show a third of sales in the UK are now pop, compared to rock's tawdry one-quarter share. We have rendered our Fenders to the dustbin. Given ebows the heave-ho. Turned rage against the machine into a polite letter of complaint.

Because pop music is more enamoured with the keyboard as opposed to the guitar, this means electronic music fans win. The keyboard wizard is supreme: Adamski can finally rest in the grave of his forgotten career.

Breakcore

Okay, it's only pop music and not, say, ambient or dubstep or breakcore. Having Lady Gaga and JLS at number one is not great - we'd obviously prefer it if Aphex Twin went platinum, and I'm not talking about his hair. But an unpopular, painful compromise is the step in the right direction. It's true. Just ask a Liberal Democrat.

There are dangers in this brave new world. If rock bands start ditching their guitars, we could be saddled with more Ben Folds Fives and Keanes. They need identifying early. I would suggest border police at the door of every recording studio, with faceless but sinister staff asking everyone "are you now or ever have been a guitar player?"

They would lie of course. But then the cunning officer, feigning informality, would mutter a comment about E flat minor seventh not being the sexiest chord. The secret guitarists' instant and obvious revulsion would see them dragged out the back, cut to pieces with an overly-sharp plectrum and buried in their own guitar case with the word "IRONY" emblazoned across the top in glam lettering.

Windmilling

Having said all that, The Who were quite impressive weren't they? All that windmilling and smashing stuff up. And I quite liked Madchester. The XX and Lonelady have a kind of amazing energy, y'know? In fact, guitar bands are fantastic. Who wrote this crap?

Vive la rock music! Guitar bands are brilliant. If I find you buying pop music, I will slice you. I will smother you with Lady Gaga's hat until you are nothing but a vegetable blithering "ro mah ro-mah-mah" in the corner of an institution.

No, seriously. For too long now, the tyranny of the keyboard has reigned over-- (nurse's note - Fat Roland has gone to sleep now. You can visit him again when he's rested.)

Boring Pauls

In my ongoing quest to uncover the musical Pauls (see my Awful Pauls and my Gorgeous Pauls), you don't have to scrape off too much froth to discover a steaming pile of terminal dullness. Here are the boring Pauls.

Paul Stanley

Stanley Eisen was so dull, he changed his name to Paul. He then joined Kiss. If you're not sure which one he was, he had a single black star over his eye which made him look like glam-era Elton John after a hefty punch in the face. Stanley was never rock and roll, despite the Kiss persona. He hardly ever missed a show, he's had a hip replacement or two, he talked more than he played on stage, and he perfomed a duet with Sarah Brightman of all people. Crazy, crazy nights, huh?

Paul Weller

Don't get me started on the Pantene-haired Britpop-leeching plodfather of mod, Paul Weller. How he can bottle something like the Jam and let it turn into runny, tasteless like the snoozesome Wild Wood MOR dross, I'll never know. I blame Weller entirely for Ocean Colour Scene and The Enemy, two bands that cancel out anything good he ever recorded. If he was a colour, he'd be brown. And not even a good brown.

Paul Anka

You may not have noticed, but Anka's back in fashion after jumping on the Glee and American Idol bandwagons. This is very bad news indeed. He represents everything I hate about the 1950s: slick hair, white teeth, Elvis warbling and uncontrolled use of rhyming couplets (Diana alone has rhymes as tedious as 'me / see', 'say / play' and 'lover / other'). For a man called Paul Anka, rhyming couplets is a dangerous game. Except it's not dangerous: it's just dull.

Peter Paul and Mary

This trio was drippier than a leaking tap on a drizzly Sunday. They gave rise, unashamedly, to the dubious notion that the 1960s were all about smoking pot and picking flowers. In fact, the Magic Dragon they sang about really was a crappy children's song about a dragon, while Leaving On A Jet Plane led to New Order being sued in a nasty bit of solicitor spitefulness. Drip, drip, drip, the 60s are dead and so is your childhood, get over it.

Paul Hewson

Paul Hewson, otherwise known as Bono Out Of U2, is a Pope-badgering, vocal-straining, swollen-eyed, God-complexing, post-unmodern, microphone-chewing, charity-mugging, tax-dodging philanthropist with a neat line in mid-life crisis trousers and an ability to keep shouting "EDGE!" in live shows like he's got some kind of Pizza Hut tourettes whilst simultaneously making every song sound like it was recorded for an advert for life insurance for the over 70s. He is now possibly the most boring musician on earth, and James Blunt isn't dead yet, so that's saying something.

More Pauls

Surely some Pauls are redeemable? This can't be all the Pauls? What about the good Pauls? Can you have a good Paul? Jump to the Gorgeous Pauls, or click here for some Awful Pauls.

Brits 2010: a prejudiced review from someone who doesn't give a damn

I don't need to tell you, dear reader, that the Brit Awards are the saggy scrotum of the music industry needlessly scratched once a year by panting, sweat-sodden record industry moguls.

Did you cry at the telly screen wondering what had happened to music? You missed the point: it has no relevance to music of any kind. That's a bit like looking at a cat going to the toilet and wondering which Shakespeare play is the funniest.

Last year, I ran a live tweet of the Brits. No such fun this year, I'm afraid, but close observers of this blog will already know what I think of this year's winners.

(Yes, this post is just an excuse to link to other bits of my blog, but there is some fun readings to be had if you get clicky. Here goes... )

Forced castration

Lady Gaga swept up the trophy cabinet in the 2010 Brit awards. I did once recommend that James Blunt become more like Lady Gaga with the help of forced castration using nose hair clippers. She's got a good turn in pop pap, but really, she's a load of old nonsense. I do detect, however, begrudging respect from when I live-blogged the Christmas Number One.

JLS inexplicably won a gong or two. There were literally a billion better singles these past 12 months, although their award-winning track Beat Again did give me something to rake over on this very blog last month ("I need love CPR," isn't the best advice, I mused.) JLS? Really?

Florence And The Machine scooped the best album prize for Lungs, which I don't mind too much despite me claiming last month that "The Source are probably rolling in their grave at her treatment of You Got The Love." In fact, I do mind. I do mind very much. If you own her album, you are crusty and merely six inches from death by old age.

And Kasabian didn't do too badly from the Brits either. Kasabian are a bit like that friend you knew from school who's turned into a bit of a knob but you're still friends and anyway he keeps poking you on Facebook. I like to think my Kasabian tip for the 2009 Mercury actually applied to the 2010 Brits instead.

Jizzle Zizzle

Jay Z has had 99 awards and now the 2010 Brits are one too. I want to slag off the Jizzle Zizzle, but I can't. I loved The Grey Album and I've thrown him at least a couple of bones on this blog before (defending him against Radio 4 in 2006 and the wonderful Jay Z bar chart in 2007). Jay, if you ever fancy writing a guest post on this blog, I'm willing to talk money.

I'm also quite a fan of Dizzee Rascal, the cheeky-faced hip hop Tigger who somehow straddles blantant commercialism and the urban underground without breaking a sweat. As far as this blog goes, I fell in love with Dizzeee Raaaaarskuw's name, I slagged off his Band Aid appearance, I compared Bonkers to Ace Of Bass, and I wanted to work with him because he sounded like Scooby Doo.

Where the Brits really lost their way, of course, was when they declared that (What's The Story) Morning Glory was the best album of the past 30 years. Morning Glory is not even in the top 200. Peter Kay's now infamous comment was right (google it) - I've said before that Liam Noel Gallagher's gob needs plugging.

Net of narkiness

And this is where my crass self-promoting linkage almost ends. Sadly for this blog, there are two winners who have warranted many a mention but somehow seem to have escaped my net of narkiness.

I'm amazed that Lily Bloody Allen has only had a couple of mentions on this website (once in an end-of-year review called Knobs, Cocks and Boils, and a quick namecheck in my Number One Album Chart Death Rant). I'd like to go officially on record to say that if clever lyrics were all that it needed, then people would have liked the Smiths. Oh... wait... I need to formulate a better argument, there.

And the Spice Girls, gawd bless their union-flagged PVC trousers, have never had even the slightest mention on Fat Roland On Electronica, until now. I can't think why.

So, there it is. Cry all you want, cringe to your heart's desire, but when you've already made up your mind about certain artists, as I most evidently have,  the Brits aren't worth the record company PR clause they're written in.

Next year: Flying Lotus sweeps the board at the Brits and I completely change my tone.

Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant

This year, the pop chart will deposit its territorial wastage on another milestone: the thousandth UK number one album.

But before we get all rose-tinted about the South Pacific spending sixteen months at number one, Simpsons-ified versions of Beatles album covers and Orbital showing everyone how a dance music album should be done, let me first spray a phialful of caution in your face.

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.

Simon Cowell's bungalow

This is nothing to do with the much-fondled arguments about unbundled mp3s and the like. Everyone knows great albums are still being made and it will be a cold day in Simon Cowell's bungalow before the general public gives up on the idea of the pop album.

No, this is because the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

They have made me want to squeeze out my eyeballs with my buttocks before repeatedly eating and then regurgitating them until I puke out every last one of my internal organs only to use the resulting colon-mush to smother my ears in damp, decaying human insides because, and I repeat, the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

Let's look at the evidence. In October, we had yet another number one album from a woman who has the most appropriate surname since James Blunt: Alexandra Burke. This was quickly followed by an emaciated megamouth in red PVC, Cheryl Cole. She may have called Lily Allen a "chick with a dick", but that doesn't make her 3 Words album any less noisome.

If only she had some tunes, it would smell better.

Poor death metaphors

Then in November came the idiocy that was JLS by JLS, in which a doctor tells them they are about to die because of an embarrassing abundance of poor death metaphors in Beat Again ("I need love CPR," they waffle, although performing chest-pumps on a healthy adult can lead to broken ribs and internal damage… let's hope, anyway).

When JLS lost the top spot after one week, there was even more X Factor nonsense with consecutive number one albums from the franchise's out-and-out stars, Leona "Does Anyone Remember Me" Lewis and Susan "Same Nickname As Leona" Boyle. Between them, there's more screech than a box set of Saved By The Bell.

And so, as 2009 reached its disgusting climax to make way for the post-coital cigarette of 2010, who saved us from such X Factor nonsense? Who, dear reader, who?

Sinatra-defiling cheese-monger

Only award-hoovering, Timberlake-mimicking, Sinatra-defiling, Santa-impersonating, cheese-mongering muzak-churning ice hockey bore Michael Bublé. There is nothing crazy about his Crazy Love album. He provokes fan comments such as "thats ridiculace, michael bublé is amaing" (sic). In this Darwinian world, he should not exist: he is rubella / Betamax / Nightmares On Wax's cutting edge.

And yes, Bublé appeared on X Factor.

The next number one album was Sunny Side Up by Paolo Nutini, a six-month-old album of beigeness that makes Travis' The Man Who look like death metal. And if you think his music exists solely to soundtrack montages in Scrubs and One Tree Hill, you're right, it does.

The current number one is by Florence And The Machine and, sweet sweet reader, I don't need to tell you that she's seventeen levels of wrong. The Source are probably rolling in their grave at her treatment of You Got The Love. It least, though, it's a proper album by someone slightly more contemporary than Cliff Richard.

We'll probably get our thousandth UK number one album in May, and it will warrant some column inches from geeky Guardian journalists.

I can guarantee you, though, it won't be as influential as the 100th number one (John Lennon's Imagine) nor as stylish as the first (Sinatra's Songs For Swingin' Lovers). It will simply be a little poot of air in a vast chasm of nothingness because, on the basis of quality number ones, the album is well and truly deceased.

Monthly mop-up: narcissistic bloggery, fake plastic Moog, and Portishead badminton

February is so hard to pronounce, yet it has been such a wonderful month that I demand that all my dear readers gallop to the nearest roof and scream February's name to all the animals of the earth.

Here is my once-monthly mopping of all festering detritus I couldn't smear into any of my other blog posts this month.

What's everyone reading right now?

This blog, of course. I feel humbled yet again because I have more readers than ever. It may be narcissistic to prattle on about my own writing, but I don't get a chance to do it much. Unless you're unlucky enough to work with me. So...

Oodles of people ogled in when I wrote a letter to James Blunt. If I get run over by a lawnmower tomorrow, my most-read article in four years of bloggery will be about bloody Blunt.

My strenuous denial of the existence of Aphex Twin's new album turned a few heads, while my most read review in February was of Massive Attack's Massive Samples. I say 'review' - I usually end up talking about anything but the album (in this case, sampling the Open University).

I love the Moog synth, but I also love Barbie. Can I combine the two?

I'm glad you asked that.  Why not get yourself this uber-attractive Moog Doll, featuring the coolest synthesiser maker ever?

"Accessories: jacket, eyeglasses, mini-moog," but no Ken. Which reminds me, I have a Money Mark doll in its original box somewhere. I must dig it out and have it valued.

There was a wonderful Grauniad article about the development of the synthesizer a few weeks ago. The comments rip the article to glorious shreds, and in themselves make interesting reading for any synth-junkie.

What is the future of Portishead?

Little birds can be gobby buggers, but sometimes they tell me fascinating things. One of those was that Portishead didn't have a record contract any more. This was borne out by a MySpace blog post asking their fans about what to do now they have left Island Records.

They have, incidentally, ruled out 'doing a Radiohead':

"i dont think that were into giving out music away for free to be honest...it fukin takes ages to write and we have to heat our swimming pools.....!!!"

You know we're in recession when bands go blue from paddling in the cold.

What is the future of Portishead?

Oh sorry.

The marina area is getting new housing. On the down side, the planned rail link from Portishead to Bristol has been scrapped even though there is an old line in place that could be redeveloped.

And Uphill D's fortunes continue to shine, having just beaten Winscombe B by eight rubbers to one.

For more utter crap like this, why not follow me on Twitter?

Dear James Blunt: a reply

I wrote a letter to James Blunt proffering my expert advice on how he could improve his career prospects.

I got a reply.  And honestly, I feel like I've waited for my hero, autograph pad in hand, through rain and cold, and upon arrival he's just swished past into the stage entrance without a by or leave.

Dear Fat Roland,

Unfortunately due to James busy touring schedule he is unable to reply personally, however all messages will be passed on to his house for him to read on his return.

Kind regards,

Twenty-First Artists.

So he has my advice. His cleaner is probably reading it. Apparently he's travelling across Mexico on a horse at the moment, but I see he's due to play Moscow, so I hope he'll stop by his Ibizan pad to pick up his messages some time next week.

Read my Dear James Blunt letter.  Any ideas on what he'll say?  Personally, I think he'll be delighted.  Post your thoughts in the comments.

Dear James Blunt

To: Twenty-First Artists Ltd,

1 Blythe Road,

London

W14 OHG

Dear James Blunt,

I couldn't help noticing that you aren't quite the chart presence you once were. Your last three singles, which the BBC lovingly described as "catchy and uplifting, in a Chris-Martin-on-an-off-day kinda way", have reached numbers four, 57 and 20 respectively. I would have thought if these chart positions befell Girls Aloud, KitKat's sponsorship moguls would be spluttering into their sugary tea.

May I offer a suggestion that would help return you back up the greasy pole of fame?

These days, it's all about chicks with synths. Trust me on this: I have my finger on the pulse of modern whims. Lady Gaga is a chick with a synth. La Roux is a chick with a synth. Britney Spears is a chick with a synth (that is, assuming "synth" is rural states slang for a snaffled bag of Bic razors).

You need to have a synth. You need to buy a nice shiny silver synthesiser and get it into every publicity shot you can.

You don't have to play it yourself:. Maybe smuggle in a synth pop legend such as Gary Numan, Adamski or Richard Clayderman to tinkle the electronic ivories for you. Then mime playing, as though it's your big new thing. "Look, there's James Blunt, and he's a keyboard wizard," people would say, and they would point. People would point at you, although this time it would be in admiration.

You should do this. Become a chick with a synth. Every single would go to number one.

Which leads me to one last thing. You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I am quite happy to offer my services. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers, and I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

I still have the nosehair clippers.

It wouldn't be pervy or anything. I have no desire to see you naked; I think we had quite enough of that in your 2005 smash hit video I'm Quite Beautiful. One quick snip, maybe a bit of a push-in with a sink plunger, and we can leave matron to mop up the blood.

Just let me know.

Yours sincerely,

Fat Roland

Gardener's fingernails, tubed Somerville, and James at war

My recent post about unearthed goodies from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop brought to mind an album by Black Devil which was lost for over 25 years before having the dust blown off by Rephlex.

That album was Disco Club (in 2004 I think), and since then the duo have renamed themselves Black Devil Disco Club and released several more albums. The latest, Eight Oh Eight (pictured), has just come out so I thought I'd write up a little review, bury it, and have it dug up in two decades by a trenchcoated man with cruddy fingernails.

Eight Oh Eight is a touch disappointing. Opening track With Honey Cream sounds like Jimmy Somerville in a tube. But then it all begins to sound like Jimmy Somerville in a tube, with pure high energy disco funnelled through an increasingly wacky range of effects like flanged beats and robotic vocals.

I'm a sucker for the Air-esque cheesiness that Black Devil have plumped for, but I can see how the cheese could grate. The bongos and whistles on at least a couple of the tracks (Open The Night and Never No Dollars) are my least favourite sounds since the noise of cluster bombs missing army officer James Blunt.

Black Devil Disco Club's Eight Oh Eight is closer to 'oh' than 'eight', but only just. If you want forced disco glam, Mika's your man.