Two interesting articles in the Guardian today. That Mecca of Music. The first one is about how the BBC gave the entire corporation over to U2 so they could publicize the record that came out last year. Remember? The not very good one.

Now it appears that even the Beeb admit that they probably went too far in fawning over the band. Reminds me of a conversation at Musexpo last summer where Zane Lowe was laughed out of the room when he defended his choice of a U2 single as the Hottest Track In The World. No one believed his assertion that corporate pressure had nothing to do with it. Everyone in the room was on the side of Nick Detnon, Dizzie Rascal’s manager, who said that the record was crap and that’s why it wasn’t successful, no matter who plugged it.

The second interesting article is about the, apparently, eternal argument about Pink Floyd. Received wisdom states that Floyd with Syd Barrett was cool. Anything after his departure is shit. I think that the exact opposite is true. Go figure. Maybe because I wasn’t there at the time I can listen to the music with a degree of objectivity and decide to like what sounds good.

The author of the Guardian article is Alan McGee. He belongs to that demographic of men who think that punk rock was the zenith of western popular culture. Guys like that think that because John Lydon had a Pink Floyd t-shirt with “I HATE” scrawled over the logo, Floyd is degenerate balls while punk is the best thing ever.

Again, I was not there – of course, I was there in body, but not in spirit, yet, if you know what I mean – so I can, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and perfect objectivity unobstructed by notions of what was cool 30 years ago, declare with confidence that the near exact opposite is true.

Go figure.  

Now then, I was writing this song the other day, a pop ditty for someone, and came up with the phrase “covered in bliss”. It felt really familiar, so I Googled to see if it was in the song Must Be Talking To An Angel by the Eurythmics. It wasn’t. They’re “overblown with bliss” or something like that. Then I found the source. It was Pearl Jam and their song Satan’s Bed.

It fucking rules!

We did a bit of a revamp of our mix room. Got some new toys to play with and a new set of speakers that cost us an arm and a leg. And boy do they sound good. Good news to those whose tracks end up at the ‘farm.

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