what the holy living fuck?
Presspop in Japan have made vinyl figurines of Charlie Kaufman and his non-existent brother Donald from Adaptation. And they come in this box, handsomely designed by Archer (Sof'Boy, The Sea And Cake, etc.) Prewitt. Hundred bucks a pop and they're yours!
Robbie Williams, ****** Stadium 14/12/2004
I've never been to a stadium gig in my life before - hell, I've only been to the Ent Cent twice, and one of those was for free, on three hours notice, and at the age of 14 - and apparently I don't know the procedure. Aussie Stadium, an abortion of a name based not even on crass patriotism but the sponsorship of a home loans company, appears to have no permanent signage as to the location of its various gates, and Chugg hadn't gone out of their way to make things clearer. The resulting wander for half a kilometre in the wrong direction round the wrong side of the building, combined with tickets declaring that the show started half an hour later than the first band went on stage, meant that we missed all abut the last song and a half of Machine Gun Fellatio's set. If I hadn't been on comps, I'd ask for my money back. Having been massively underwelmed by their second album proper (a mish-mash of too much previously released material, too shit deliberate pop hits, and a few pretty good songs that got no radio play) but always admiring their dedication to showmanship, I was looking forward to seeing what they'd do on such a large stage, and presumably with a decent budget from FMR tour support coffers. Gratutious onstage humping of large inflatable objects, from what I got to see.The TV ads for this tour loudly and excitedly blared that support was coming from "the original line-up" of Duran Duran. Here's another reason I'd be justified in asking for my money back, because as far as I could see the singer was a fat old bifter honking breathlessly, not someone slim and beautiful with a lovely, well-modulated voice. I'd always assumed that Duran were better than I was aware of, given their lasting, affectionate popularity and the fact that I just don't know their material that well. Tonight, it became apparent that they're actually much worse than I thought. They were having fun, and large chunks of the audience were pleased to be seeing them, but: what a stream of mediocre nonsense their songs are. It was hard to tell whether they were having sound problems or they just can't play that well, but the sound was fine for the other two acts, and there's no politeness that can cover for Simon Bono's voice. He was frequently augmented by invisible backing vocals (presumably emanating from Zandra Rhodes' keyboards), and on one song (it might have been Ordinary World, or not), he merely accompanied an autotuned recording of his own voice! The Taylor brothers (Derek, Steve and Courtney) generally seemed more preoccipied with preening like showponies, but then, isn't that the point? Bonus points to the bloke who came out and mimed axeriffing on an alto sax (he played it later).
More on assumptions: I am a big fan of Robbie Williams, but I don't know much of his music. Love Let Me Entertain You and Kids, like Rock DJ, tolerate most of the other MOR stuff I hear him warble through on the radio - but I figured he must have another three or four killer big-gigantic-cockshow tracks like the aforementioned three. Nope, that's it. Of course it doesn't matter, because just seeing him prance about and wink at the cameras is the whole point, but by the time he played a song for his dead granny, solo on acoustic guitar...with only two chords throughout, and only one finger changing for those, I was thinking "LESS SINGIN' MORE TALKIN'". Seriously, he's more fun walking around dissing audience members haircuts, insisting that no-one sit on their boyfriends' shoulder if they're not going to flash their tits, and freely acknowledging that all his emotional protestations of love for us are artifice. If the songwriting well dries up with Guy Chambers gone, he should just save money and leave the band at home. The initial outfit for the evening, with a bouffy mullet above jacket and white scarf combo, even had him looking oddly like a cross between early 70s Dudley Moore and early 70s Peter Cook. Hmm.
Oddest moment of the night came slightly before he went on stage, though, when the giant screens dotted around the stadium began playing a PSA about UNICEF, including testimony from Rob. A girl near me, who had happily been enduring hours of car commericals, Nando's chicken promotional quizzes, fashion show clips and other offensive advertising intrusions (again, if people are paying $120 a ticket, do they deserve to be force-fed ads?) turned from her friends in outrage and started shouting at the screen. "Shut up! Shut up! Get OOOOver it!" she raged at the image of Robbie holding a starving child in Mozambique. "That's SO self-indulgent," she fumed on turning back to her pals.
This made me wonder - is it just that a brief glimpse of sincerity from Robbie is an unexpected shock for his main audience? And most particularly - if you don't want to see self-indulgence, then what are you doing at a Robbie Williams show?
two x too pissed to go out
so I'm eating a pide and watching the Shane MacGowan doco on SBS. And all I can think is "how can someone care enough about him as a person and an artist to make this film, and then allow this footage to be broadcast?" The contrast between the mumbly and slurry but vivacious and bright young Shane and the toothless, incoherent nutbag of the current footage is heartbreaking. Even as recently as That Woman's Got Me Drinking, he might take a couple of days to turn up for an interview, and then only with Johnny Depp holding him up, but he'd still have insightful or at least clever things to say when he got there. Now in an hour of heavily edited footage, the most he can come up with is to hiss horribly through his rotten pegs...COME BACK SINEAD ALL IS FORGIVEN
AAARRGGH
and now he's on a talk show trying to say she only did it for publicity, and he can't even look in the interviewers eyes while he says itand then they cut to a TOTP (or something) performance of Haunted, and oh my god is it possibly the greatest duet ever in the history of everything, with himself and Kirsty the only competition...
