Talking or not talking about Bad Lip Reading

This year, Bad Lip Reading is ten years old.

The spoof YouTube channel overdubs pop promos and current affairs broadcasts, getting Rebecca Black into a Gang Fight, having the Black Eyed Peas sing about poop, and giving Michael Bublé a scatological hit song about a Russian Unicorn.

This is the point where my jaw drops to the floor. Where did that ten years go? I can't be bothered to cut and paste emojis into Blogger, but if I did, you would be seeing a little yellow face with an exploding head. Ten years. Ten years!

I really liked Russian Unicorn. It turned something as bland as Bublé, who posted a good natured video reply because that somehow is ultimate Bublé, into something full of unhinged energy. Even better was Morning Dew, which mashed together Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and Jay-Z to make a peon to furry pet monkeys and broccoli pizza.

Part of me insists I shouldn't like Bad Lip Reading. It revels in the worst pop music (Bieber, BTS, James flipping Blunt) and legitimises it through affectionate parody. It's decidedly off-key in places, referring to women as "chicks" and using a slang word for cerebral palsy that is pretty much verboten in the UK. 

And it's fallen hard for Star Wars fandom, that most tiresome of fandoms, producing songs about seagulls in space, death by chicken-duck, and Yoda's stick ("it's just a stick"). That last one is pretty poor, but then again they did come out with the smooth electro banger Hostiles On The Hill in which the Skywalker guy fights the long leggy things in the Antarctic or somewhere. You can tell I'm a fan.

What's strange about the success of BLR, and channels like it, is its wonky place in popular culture. Take traditional TV as a comparison. 30 million people watched the Eastenders episode in which a vengeful Dirty Den give Angie divorce papers for Christmas. For years, that scene appeared in compilation shows and newspaper lists. It turned Christmas dark, and soaps have never looked back since.

The most successful BLR video has four times the views: their top five videos have racked up a third of a billion watches. Yet in the past ten years, I don't think I've experienced a single 'watercooler' moment about Bad Lip Reading. The same goes for other YouTube big hitters at the geekier end of culture: Tom Scott, Drew Gooden, those never-ending Vox factual videos.

This is all to do with the fractal nature of modern entertainment, where the metaphorical family sofa has been replaced by a wide scattering of deck chairs: the watercooler is now a zillion single water bottles. This more personal method of video consumption means we can spend an entire evening wasted on Fail Army clips without ever mentioning it to anyone ever. Maybe one day you'll mention it on a blog. Maybe.

And yet, I don't fully buy that. It's not fractal, is it. What we've done, in the UK at least, is swap four or five terrestrial television channels (and a wall of DVDs) with fewer providers of televisual entertainment. YouTube and Netflix dominate the market as BBC1 and ITV did in the olden days. I don't have Freeview or anything, but don't tell me that endless menu of things you don't want to watch adds up qualitatively to anything more than a single day of programming on Channel Five.

Anyway. Go and watch Bad Lip Reading videos so we can talk about it one day. A lot of it sounds like Uptown Funk but there are roses among the thorns. One of their BTS videos is childish cack, but the more recent BTS one seems to take ballad writing seriously.

What did we do without YouTube? Actually, we watched Flash videos. Badger, badger, that sort of thing. That is, oh goggle-eyed viewer, a whole different blog post.

Further Fats: Insanity Prawn Boy (2005)

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.

Glastonbury's got 99 bands, and Jay Z should be one of them

Which twizzard decided Glastonbury was all about guitars?

Noel Gallagher flicked his dummy out of the pram over Jay Z's headline spot at this year's festival.

He said anyone who wants a rapper at Glasto is a paedophile, and Michael Eavis sleeps with monkeys. Okay, he didn't say that, but he seemed to think the booking was a jolly bad idea.

Emily Eavis has gone on the PR offensive, saying the Smiths would have provoked similar ire in 1984. The year, not the book.

I don't get the comparison. The Smiths weren't already million-selling music moguls with more clout than the Cloverfield monster's boxing glove.

And the Smiths were a guitar band, with guitars and everything. I think Gallagher's original winge was about Glastonbury's guitar heritage and the inappropriateness of a (gosh) non rock 'n' roller in a high profile spot.

Noel is, of course, talking out of his eyebrows. Baroness Lady Dame Shirley Bassey sang her blinged-up boots off last year, while Carl Cox and Basement Jaxx are among bucketloads of dance acts who have rocked Glasto.

Who could forget Orbital redefining dance music forever in 1994?

Surely Noel hasn't fallen for the drip-drip tabloid headlines about rap music being a hive on the nose of humanity? You know the headlines I mean. Just between the stories that say the internet is full of evil and the screamy ads offering you a free pony.

Jay Z isn't the reason why Glasto ticket sales are down. He fills venues, he doesn't clear them. And the Grey Album was one of the best Beatles / hip hop mash-ups of 2004.

Blame it on the weather. Or the economy. Or a lack of great new bands. Or that everyone's off to Latitude instead.

Can someone please pick that dummy off the floor? Gallagher's gob needs plugging again.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: INS OUTS, BURDEN ME

Reviving my shrivelling grandma and getting out of my depth with Mahler

Just because I've been adjusting to a new job for the first time in nine years, that's no excuse to leave my blog shrivelled on the edge of the pavement like an old forgotten grandma.

Still, there's nothing better to distract you from your blogless disappointment than some nice charts. Above is a bar chart interpretation of Jay Z's 99 Problems, and you can see plenty more here. If anyone can tell me the collective noun for charts, tell me using a graph.

Because blogging is the way I speak, I've kept silent about lots of music. Not least Sun Electric's Lost & Found (1998 - 2000). The tracks were rediscovered on an old CD-R, as the title suggests, and it's a welcome reminder of a band that have been dormant for donkey's.

Sun Electric always lacked the crunch of their techno peers Orbital, and perhaps the production talent of some-time Orb dabbler Thomas Fehlmann lent their music too much whimsy.

When it's not trying to be Brian Eno's Nerve Net on a little too much horse tranquilizer, Lost & Found works wonderfully, not least in the flapping rhythm of Echelon which sounds as though the whole thing was recorded inside a pipe.

A hop over to the Leaf Label now, and Murcof have thrown a curve-ball with their new album Cosmos.

Their glitchy precision has been buried in favour of ambience sweeping from Mahler-inspired moodiness to Wagner-inspired pomposity. (All the other reviews have mentioned György Ligeti, but I don't know who he is and I'm bloody useless at classical comparisons).

It's either quiet, or it's the ambient equivalent of a guitar solo. It's certainly not worth buying it on its own, which is good because apparently it'll be fully realised as an audio-visual project.

In fact, stuff all this lot. Screw it. If you're looking for something on which to spend your hardcore pimp wage, plump for Luke Vibert's Chicago, Detroit, Redruth. Playful acid rave has never been so listenable, and it's the first album I've owned dedicated to a Cornish town.

mpSunday: Pole's Stefan Betke remastered the newly found gems on Sun Electric's Lost & Found. Pole are seriously underrated, so here's a free track. Grab it while you can, because as soon as I post another mpSunday, this mp3 will be kicked to the kerb like gran. POW! This mpSunday is no longer available - click here for the latest mpSunday

Do you know Squarepusher? You do now

Here's Squarepusher on BBC2's The Culture Show. Lauren Laverne clearly has no idea who he is, and a researcher has fed her a bogus line that he is mainly known for DJing.

Whilst I'm in BBC-slagging mood, it's interesting to see Radio 4 has just shown a documentary on Jay-Z. They've ignored him for years, but now he has serious money and business behind him, he's respectable enough to be covered by Radio 4. In fact, Jay-Z: from Brooklyn to the Boardroom seems a lot more concerned with his business acumen than the fact he knows how to punch out a great lyric or two.