16/4/01 - alt.country looks to be going mainstream:

"...a new label, Lost Highway, was recently launched to bring a whole wave of pure American music to a wider fan base.

Lost Highway is signing artists who have already established cult followings with a brand of music variously tagged "Americana," "alt-country" or "No Depression." (That last title comes from an old Carter Family folk lyric: "There's no depression in heaven.") So far, the label has signed such critically acclaimed stars as Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Robert Earle Keen and Kim Richey."

"To help things along this time, Lost Highway has acquired some powerful allies: Island/Def Jam will provide marketing muscle and the Universal Music Group will offer distribution."

"fisselig (German): Flustered to the point of incompetence. [adjective]
aware (Japanese): The feelings engendered by ephemeral beauty. [noun]"

16/4/01 - Coming soon (tomorrow according to ResearchBuzz) get your family records from Ellis Island.

16/4/01 - Napster is getting annoying.  It is filtering out some odd words.  Elvis, Jackson and Metallica I can understand but why 'black'?  To stop people getting Black Sabbath records or Frank Black?

Last five things successfully downloaded:

The Pazant Bros & Beaufort Express - A Gritty Nitty
Melvin Sparks - Thank You
Abbey Lincoln - Ten Cents A Dance
The Ukrainians - The Queen Is Dead
The Chi-Lites - Have You Seen Her

16/4/01 - I've been trying to find the cartoon Celeb (featured in Private Eye) online.  All I have found is one converted into the Shavian alphabet:

The origins of the Shavian alphabet:

"The Roman alphabet was brought to England by monks. With only 26 letters it was suitable for writing Latin but not English, which has over 40 basic speech sounds. For example, English has twelve vowel sounds, but the Roman alphabet only five vowel letters (a,e,i,o,u).
...
So English is written in an unsuitable alphabet, using archaic spellings. George Bernard Shaw wanted to change this. In his will he stated that the royalties of his works for the first 21 years after his death should be spent on creating and promoting a phonetic alphabet."

15/4/01 - More kitsch covers.

15/4/01 - Q has the Top Ten Worst album covers.  Number one, 'Be Here Now' by Oasis:

"The runaway winner. "Just as awful as the content," wrote D La Callef. "Makes Hipgnosis's '70s sleeves look like Andy Warhol at his best." "Obviously they lost it down the art designers," quipped Andrew Clarke of Melbourne, wittily. But perhaps Paul Drinkwater spoke for us all when he simply wrote, "Terrible, just terrible.""

"My first individual Preying Mantis action against media violence was in the mid 1970s when I entered a major chain store in Dallas Texas. Originally, I intended to buy a record. But when I saw this Virgin Killer album cover by the Scorpions I was so angry that I destroyed about 20 copies of it... I looked around. The cashier was standing across the store and on the other side of the counter. I took out my buck knife and while appearing to sift through various albums, carefully carved Xes into the cover and through to the record so there was no way they could be sold or used."

"400-600 advertisements bombard us everyday in magazines, on billboards, on tv, and in newspapers (click here for more stats). One in eleven has a direct message about beauty, not even counting the indirect messages.

Here is our growing image gallery of advertisements. Take a look and see if you find anything demeaning, objectifying, demoralizing, or sexualizing about the images you see here."

15/4/01 - A piece on last weekend's All Tomorrow's Parties, but not a proper review.

15/4/01 - Bad news for anyone hoping to get the Jedi religion recognised:

""The e-mail is not true," said a spokesman for the Office of National Statistics. "Regardless of how many people put down Jedi as their religion, they cannot win. It is not up to us to
recognise or not recognise religions.""

"AMERICAN game show fans are queueing for a bruising. Audiences for the American version of the BBC's The Weakest Link, to be broadcast for the first time tomorrow, have been treated even more roughly than the contestants.
...
As the studio audiences queued to enter the Los Angeles studio last week they were handed six rules. Anybody in bright clothing that might divert attention from Robinson's £25,000 Armani black and leather dominatrix wardrobe is not even allowed in."

15/4/01 - For my records, ALT codes.

15/4/01 - Must See TV this week, Faking It:

"...can an introverted, eek-a-mouse music student be transformed into a strutting, dancefloor-pleasing club DJ?"

"When I discovered that she knew next to nothing - I mean, she hadn't even heard of the Chemical Brothers, and my mum knows who they are - I did start thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this."

"Their choice of name was intended to reflect the portability of their ultra-convenient, have-guitar-will-travel set-up. It was only later that its other association hit them. "We didn't realise that 'convenience' meant toilet in English until someone told us," Erlend smiles ruefully, "but it was too late! Oh dear.""

14/4/01 - A review of the new science park, Magna.

14/4/01 - A guide to some infamous London pubs.

14/4/01 - The other Pulp.

14/4/01 - A gallery of pulp magazines.

More pulp, Modesty Blaise.

14/4/01 - The Dictionary of Algorithms, Data Structures, and Problems has to be useful for something.

13/4/01 - The Need To Know caption competition:

13/4/01 - From the Chipworld pages (read, crisps) come the Top Ten Worst Chips Ever:

"...
8. Humpty Dumpty Sour Cream & Clam Artificially Flavored Ripple Chips
..."

13/4/01 - Have-a-go hero gets it wrong:

"Gutsy barmaid Nicola Hughes didn't think twice when she spotted a mugger snatching the handbag of an elderly lady... As the thief ran past she let fly, clobbering him over the head with her handbag so hard the handles snapped.

But unfortunately the man left sprawled on the pavement with a bloodied nose and dazed expression by her handbagging wasn't the crook he first appeared, rather an actor taking part in a reconstruction."

13/4/01 - Great name for a fish, the Sarcastic Fringehead:

"These beauties (?!) hang out in holes in the mud on the bottom -- or anything else they can find that has a nook, cranny or hole -- looking out as the world passes by. Aggressive and fearless, they will charge at -- and bite -- any intruder, including divers. Most, however, just sit there watching you watching them.  For fun, try placing a mirror in front of one..."

13/4/01 - Dance along to 'She's a Bad Mama Jama' by Carl Carlton, with the Bad Mama Jama line dance.

13/4/01 - The Ten Baddest Asians Who Ever Lived. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

In sixth place is Chop Chop Master Onion:

13/4/01 - An article on Low and where they fit in the current scene: (via agenbyte)

"Moreover, a so-called slowcore movement -- epitomized by Codeine, Red House Painters, Ida and others -- gained enough dawdling momentum over the past decade that the Norwegian band Kings of Convenience could confidently title its latest CD Quiet Is The New Loud."

There are even videos!  Watch him 'Dance to the Rock'.

13/4/01 - Appropriately for Good Friday, the Oren Bloedow album cover features this detail from 'The Fight Between Carnival and Lent' by Peter Bruegel:

13/4/01 - Just splashed out at Record Collector.  They have far too much good stuff.  I got:

Precious Lord - 16 Gospel Classics (classic Sixties gospel from the likes of the Swan Silvertones)
Paul Robeson - Ol' Man River (makes Barry White sound like a castrato)
The Beta Band - self-titled (N.B. that's pronounced 'beater')
Syd Barrett - Opel (it seems there's a new Syd Barrett compilation coming out Tuesday)
Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief (getting prepared for Cropredy)
Steve Earle - El Corazon (rejected by the country music establishment, another reason to like the guy)
Joy Division - Preston 28 February 1980 (my JD collection is complete, bootlegs next)
The dB's - Ride The Wild TomTom (hey, it was only four quid)
Billy Bragg & Wilco - Mermaid Avenue (they had part two as well, maybe next time)
Oren Bloedow - The Luckiest Boy in the World (with Medeski, Martin and Wood as a backing band)

13/4/01 - An instruction to observe:

"Playing nice with the cow, as the sign suggests...
While you're at it, stay off of the pig, too!"

"WHEN musician Richard Hawley toured the world there was one thing he always yearned for – a pie drizzled in Henderson’s... Richard’s manager Graham Wrench said it is the first time Jarvis Cocker – singer of Sheffield band Pulp and Richard’s pal – has been left green with envy."