All You Dreams Are Made of Links

Michael Moore’s footnotes for Fahrenheit 9/11. I haven’t seen it yet (going on Thursday), but this looks rather impressive.

Feel smart again!

Draw pretty pictures!

The Singing Arc

Hedgehogs!

One step closer to Battle Royale

currently playing: Björk — It's Oh So Quiet

Your Daily Hate

I think that most people’s problem with Fox News is the hypocrisy. If they’d just drop their cries of ‘fair and balanced’, admitted that each anchor has a shrine to Newt Gingrich and Richard Nixon in the corner of their dressing rooms, and that they sacrifice an unsuspecting intern each month as an offering to Mammon, people would respect them more.

In other news, parts of the Bush Administration are looking to pass the Enabling Act. The Family shall rule for a thousand years! I really, really don't see why this is necessary. America elected FDR in 1944, Abraham Lincoln held elections in 1864 while the Civil War was still raging, and in 1814, midterm elections took place, even though the British had just burned the White House to the ground. He's what Lincoln had to say when advisors suggested postponing the elections:

We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.

And finally for today, it appears that the US Government is pushing for Pakistan to capture "High Value Targets" during the last few days of July (there's something going on in Boston that weekend, apparently). Some days, you think that you're being too cynical, that despite everything, there's got to be something of redeemable value hidden within. And on days like this, you realise that there isn't.

currently playing: Nina Nastasia — Oh, My Stars

Today's Dumb Lawsuit

Congratulations, Odeon! For the past three years, your web site has been a Flash-based monstrosity, crashing browsers left and right, and which currently comes up as a blank screen in the latest version of Safari. Thank goodness, then, for Matthew Somerville, who developed a site called Accessible Odeon. This site was simple HTML, viewable by even the most humble browser, and you could do everything except book tickets. Oh, and it was five times faster than the Odeon site. Hurrah! The site even got a mention in the Guardian.

Accessible Odeon is now off-line. Last year, Odeon said that they were aware of the site, but weren't planning on taking any action. This week, they changed their minds, sending Matthew a cease-and-desist order for violating Odeon's trademarks and the database rights of their movie times.

Yes, Odeon can control who prints what time they're showing films.

So I guess it's back to the paper for film times. Odeon don't seem to be in a hurry to redesign a site that is broken in about five different ways, and they've crushed somebody who was helping them get business. Bravo!

currently playing: The Clash — I Fought The Law

Long live the real and sexy Pop music

It's Never Gonna Happen To Me Charlie's Angels ORG Records Released: March 1996 Highest UK Chart Position: Did Not Chart Available on: Greatest Hits Vol. 1

You'll have to bear with me. I know almost nothing about this band. I don't know any of their names, where they come from, or what they're doing now. I didn't even know they existed until two years ago, after reading a page on the Internet that now seems to have disappeared in the meantime. All I have is the short bio on the ORG Records website, and a copy of Greatest Hits Vol. 1.

It's enough.

From looking at the liner notes, and a little detective work, I can tell you that Charlie's Angels were a five-girl and one-token-boy band, who vanished, like so many others, after meeting Malcolm McLaren. However, before they were abducted by the alien-looking being, they managed to leave behind some great songs. It's Never Gonna Happen To Me never troubled the chart, but it has all you want in a pop song: handclaps, a "la-la-la" section, and fuzzy guitars played by girls. Think Kenickie, but without the Catholic angst.

The 28-track Greatest Hits Vol. 1 sounds like a fanzine etched onto CD. Little skits intermingle with full length songs, telling jokes, providing sixties-style intermissions, and even offering a recipe (for banoffi pie, in case you're wondering). You feel as if you should check the CD tray afterwards to see if glitter has leaked into the machine. But it's not all sugary-sweet; there's plenty of bite in songs such as Your Pretty Face and I Don't Want To Love You to offset the cute sections. Mind you, you can't say too many bad things about an album that samples Gary Barlow and PJ and Duncan. Oh, there's a murdering teddy bear lurking on the record as well. And a stomping dance track as the penultimate song on the album, keeping you guessing right up to the very end. It's a box of surprises; like sending off 50p and a Stamped Address Envelope and receiving an A5, hand-stapled labour of love in return.

ORG Records is currently selling this CD for a pound. Go to their website and buy a copy now. You need to hear this record at least once. If anybody out there has a copy of Perminant Damage, their single with 16 b-sides, please get in touch, as I'm desperate to hear it.

It was an accident, an accident!

Although, possibly, the Committee to Elect George W Bush’s first action took place four years before the election itself…

currently playing: Ultrasound — Floodlit World

Speeding Motorcycle

Daniel Johnston is something of a folk hero in indie circles; bands such as Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Nirvana, and Kenickie have all cited him as an influence. But my first exposure to Johnston had nothing to do with music at all. Back in the mid-1990s, comic writer Warren Ellis used to write an occult comic called Hellstorm. He also had a column in a UK magazine where he talked about the letters he used to receive. One reader sent in drawings of Captain America to the title’s editor, Marie Jarvins, along with messages about how he would save her from Ellis’s foul influence. It was only years later that I discovered that the reader was Daniel Johnston.

Johnston rose to fame after an appearance in a mid-1980s MTV documentary about the Austin music scene. His first albums (made and released by himself on cassette) started showing up around America. Songs of Pain and More Songs of Pain were painfully honest and emotional albums, with Johnston's songwriting skills shining through the ramshackle production and his, well, almost unique voice. This is from the first album, a song that was later covered by Kathy McCarty and used in the film Before Sunrise:

Daniel JohnstonLiving Life

Daniel's mental instability led to him being institutionalised several times towards the end of the decade, but the 1990s were kinder. There were several episodes, like the letters to Ellis, but nothing too serious. He even managed to get signed to a major label, Atlantic Records. a feat which surprised many people. One of the songs from this period can be found on the My So-Called Life Soundtrack:

Daniel JohnstonCome See Me Tonight

He was inevitably dropped by Atlantic, but he's still making records, still singing about loss, pain, and a slightly askew view of the world which often seems much friendlier and colourful than the one outside our window.

Daniel JohnstonFavorite Darling Girl

currently playing: Scissor Sisters — Laura

BORIS! BORIS! BORIS!

Last night’s Question Time, featuring a bunch of Conservative teenagers and Boris Johnston.

currently playing: Rachel Stevens — Some Girls

Quickly she came, dressed up for fame

The It Girl album cover Lie Detector Sleeper Indolent Records Released: May 1996 Highest UK Chart Position: Album Track Available on: The It Girl

At last it can be revealed. The other members of Sleeper were: Andy Maclure (drums), Jon Stewart (guitar, keyboards), and Diid Osman (bass).

Every band seems to have a lightning rod; a member who becomes the focus for all the press and PR attention. Pulp had Jarvis, the Pet Shop Boys had Neil Tennant, Oasis, always going a little bit too far, had two in the shape of the Gallagher brothers, but it was Liam who took most of the headlines. Even the relaitively anonymous New Order had Peter Hook. But Sleeper seemed to take it to another level, with the term 'Sleeperblokes' coined by the music press to describe the members of the band who weren't Louise Wener, lead singer and guitarist.

Wener was something of a gift to a music press infused with a new sense of laddism from "ironic" men's magazines such as FHM and Loaded. Opinionated, always willing to give a good quote, an avid fan of Margaret Thatcher and eager to speak out against the bands cosying up to New Labour, she was the NME's dream. Pure poison, though, for many readers and some journalists, many of whom seemed just as shocked that a girl could play guitar as they were of her opinions on sex and gender roles. A man would have been allowed to say these things without much comment being passed, but a woman? Not a chance.

Their music didn't help matters, either. There was always a sense that the band was trying to be clever; aiming for the lyrical heights of The Smiths, but never quite managing to reach them, and as a result coming across a little silly. Lie Detector, the first track from their second album, The It Girl, is a typical example of this failing, name-checking Bergman, Einstein, and the Stepford wives, While this:

she's got green eyes and she's lovely
reminds me of the 'it' girl with her lips
got an automatic license
reads all Dostoyevsky's household tips

is light-years beyond anything Noel Gallagher could ever dream of writing, it's as subtle as a bag of anvils. The sound is almost generic Britpop - two guitars, drums, and a bass, with a tiny bit of keyboard to provide spice. And yet, despite all the problems, the record somehow works; while it's not subtle, lines such as "attach her to a lie detector / watch a thousand housewives fizz and burn" and "And it took a thousand clichés just to scold her" crackle and pop in your ears as the song rattles by. It's over in a little over two minutes, making sure that it doesn't wear out its welcome. It's not the feminist statement that it sets out to be, but it's a fun pop song regardless.

My memory of Louise Wener will be forever centred on an August day in 1995. Sleeper were playing at the R.E.M. concert at the Milton Keynes Bowl, on the bill below The Cranberries and Radiohead. It was her birthday. During the R.E.M. set (being broadcast around the world), Michael Stipe called her onstage and sang happy birthday to her. The lucky girl…

Another year…

…another Grant Morrison interview. Warning: contains ideas.

A choice quote:

I still think the manga format is going to be where the big action is and that Tokyopop is currently setting the pace as far as remaking comics into something attractive to the mainstream goes - they've already got Courtney Love writing for them, haven't they, and surely she knows a bandwagon when she sees one trundling around the corner?

currently playing: Modest Mouse — Float On

Grrr...

If you saw Jeremy Clarkson’s documentary on the computer tonight, then please ignore his tirade on how the secrecy of Colossus let the Americans overtake us in the computer industry. His researchers failed to uncover the Manchester Baby, the first von Neuman architecture machine, and the very successful commercial computers that Ferranti sold based on that design. Or how Manchester invented virtual memory with the ATLAS computer, which was the fastest in the world during the early 1960s. Or how Britain still had an active independent computer industry into the 1990s. It’s fun to blame the government for its destruction and the eventual American take-over, but it’s just not true.

(I was also incensed at his side-lining of Turing, but that's another story. Yes, the engineer should have got more recognition. But Colossus would not have been made without Turing, and his work defined the limits of computability. Everything we have today stems from his theoretical work. That's why he's celebrated today; not just for his WWII effort, but for everything else he gave us, before our government chemically castrated him for the offence of liking men)

currently playing: The Beat — Save It For Later