Totally gay for Scouting For Girls

The apparent theft of Scouting For Girls' official Twitter site has had one unforeseen consequence that raises serious questions about the role of social media and pop music.

Here's what happened. For several hours yesterday, the official Twitter feed on scoutingforgirls.com displayed some remarkably odd tweets:

- working on some more shit tunes.

- Oops... turns out Elvis IS dead. Let us know of factual innacuracies in our other songs and we'll write (irritating) corrected versions.

- Robbie WIlliams showed that anyone can rap well. We'e thinking of giving it a bash for our next single. Rap-a-rap-rap! Word!

- she' so loverlee UH! she's so loverlee YEAH! she's so loverlee HAHA-HAHA! #ThatsHowWillSmithDoesIt

- just off to the toilet. One of us is going for a wee - the other 2 are going poo-poos. See if you can guess who!

- time UP! the one in the hat went for the wee, whatever his name is.

- just to let you know, Danny Dyer will be the warm up DJ for our next tour. pwopa nawtee!

A quick, um, scout of the internet shows @SFGOfficial being pimped by the funk-dribbling piano fops for some time, but it seems they never got round to registering the Twitter account.

And so a wag by the name of Chappers took up the name and started tweeting as Scouting For Girls. The tweets fed automatically to the group's website. They were funny. A (very) small segment of pop history was made.

Chappers, a web-head and occasional DJ based quite near me in Stockport, was quick to offer the account back to the group's management. They grumpily referred the matter to Sony, while the band themselves seemed to take it on the chin.

The 'Girls said on their own Twitter account: "Thank you to everyone who complained when out twitter account got hacked into! Just seen it. Quite funny - fairplay!"  Although it should be pointed out, the account wasn't hacked and was simply the result of a slip in web design by their record company.

All very well and fluffy. No harm done. Everyone had a giggle at the expense of an awful band. Except this whole fandango has had a much more dire consequence that anyone had imagined. This will have repercussions way beyond what happened over five hours yesterday.
 
It means I am now following Scouting For Girls on Twitter.
 
The moment Chappers handed SFGOfficial back to the band's management, I suddenly found myself as an official fanboy of Scouting For Girls.
 
I have never followed an awful band on Twitter. 7,000 tweets and two years into my Twitter career, and this has ruined me. I am following Scouting For Girls.

This fact cannot be denied.

I've had to buy into the 'Girls. I am their follower, after all. I've bought t-shirts. I've bought all the singles. I've listened to far too much Ben Folds Five. I am now TGFSFG: Totally Gay For Scouting For Girls.

It has left me in a world of Topman jackets, sensible fonts and Jamiroquai posters. I now like to hear the lyrics in a pop song. A good melody. I don't even like Aphex Twin any more. I mean, it's just noise, isn't it?

Everything's changing, as Keane would say. Chappers is pop music's evil nemesis, while I am a brain-dead fanboy. The whole balance of music has tilted, and all because Scouting For Girls had the indecency to be crap in the first place.

After all, if they didn't make the kind of music that is probably liked by Liberal Democrats, this whole saga would never have happened. Yeah. You heard. Liberal Democrats.

Harrumph. Scouting For bloody Girls. Happy now?

Seams burns tunes and Blood Looms and Blooms looms in June

Leila is working on her third studio album, Blood, Looms and Blooms, and like Portishead her last album was released before Rice Krispies were invented* (last album cover is pictured, with the words edited out in a pathetic nod to minimalism).

Taster single Mettle is a dense, trippy paean to the likes of My Bloody Valentine, so I'm expecting a full-lipped snog of post-trip hop, post-post-rock, and post-post-post-everything from her new long player. Expect it in June.

Incidentally, I only stumbled across Leila by accident.

In these new-fangled days of "burning" and "ripping" and other overly dramatic words for data transfer, it's easy to top and tail a copied album with some of your old faves. When my chum Seams gave me some of her tunes on a compact diskette, she sneaked in some late-90s Leila goodness and I was a convert.

While we're talking about sticking tracks onto the end of albums, you'll discover a treat if you rifle through my CD collection. On the end of my copy of Radiohead's In Rainbows (paid £0.00 and now I feel guilty) , you will find the Rainbow theme tune, Rainbow's classic 70s hit Since You've Been Gone, and two tracks from Mariah Carey's platinum-selling LP Rainbow.**

Back to the recommendations. Also look out for Boredom's Super Roots 9 on Thrill Jockey Records. The disc consists of one track, LIVWE, which is a grand symphony of rolling drums, stormy harmonies and wailing choirs. It doesn't change much over its 40 minute duration, but it's worth it for the opening jingle bells. I think it's Japanese but I may be wrong.***

And finally, a gripe. There is no excuse for Jamiroquai: he makes me want to smash in my eyeballs with guns. So there is definitely no excuse for Jamie Lidell's new offering Jim. Luke Vibert's remix of A Little Bit More rocked my world, but this Michael Buble toss rocks me to sleep.

*not true, but it's been a while.

**quite obviously a lie

***not a lie. I'm quite right. *puffs chest*

DEEPER FRIED FAT: TORN UP, JAMIE LIDELL

It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, Fatboy's coming home

I am a lying philandering whore.

Okay, I take back the 'philandering' bit. And 'whore' may be overstating my case.

But you may tattoo my bonce with the word 'liar', for that is what I am. My Blogger profile details pin me down as a "Manchester writer, DJ and man about town". This is disingenuous.

The 'town' I was referring to was Macclesfield. It has been my place of work for the past three years. It's a strange place, inward-looking and not really sure what it is. But it's picturesque in some places, and the charity shops offer treasures for which Gollum would kill.

However, Macclesfield is not Manchester (photo of Oklahoma Cafe door by Dullhunk). I am a proud Mancunian. I have been risking life, limb and lobes on long public transport journeys into the Cheshire town, often feeling I should be working back home, in the holy city that gave the world Shameless, the Hacienda and, er, Jay Kay from Jamiroquai.

So... I'm proud to announce the birth of my new-- oops, sorry-- I'm proud to announce I will be working back in Manchester from tomorrow. I have a new job with Blackwell's university bookshop. It should afford me more time for blogging, writing, shopping lists, scratching, stabbing and anything else that can be done with a pen.

It's nice to be back home. I see you've kept the place tidy.