10 THINGS THAT SHOULD NEVER (EVER) BE REBOOTED OR REMADE

The noughties may well be remembered for being the decade where the movie industry woke up in the middle of the night, realised it was peckish and, finding its fridge bare, went down into the basement of cult entertainment to feed on the cultural morsels found there. If a comic or long-dead television series looked like it could provide any kind of box office nourishment it was swiftly remade into a big-bucks event movie.

The only thing that the below list items have in common is that they were all - in their own way - successful. This in the past has proved irresistible to film studios. People loved Dukes of Hazzard in the 70s! Right? And who can get enough of Sean William Scott right now? Exactly - no one! This thing remakes itself, let's go listen to that Linkin Park CD again and clear some space for all our future money.

Here is the list of things I don't want to see Hollywood bundle into the back of a van...


Preacher
Persistent rumblings suggest this is already on the cards. Thankfully I'm too lazy to do even the most cursory of internet searches to find out whether Preacher, the hit graphic novel series, is in fact already being remade for film or television. The comics were hit and miss but stood out thanks to a consistently witty tone of voice and an original premise.

If Preacher ever ended up in the hands of Hollywood producers it might very well suffer the same fate as Watchmen. That is to say, it would be directed by a hired gun eager to slavishly follow the comic's every frame while its PR would desperately attempt to convince the mainstream that it somehow had universal appeal. It didn't work for Alan Moore's opus and it wouldn't work here.

Metroid
Good games don't necessarily make good films. What might seem like a stable premise for a Super Nintendo game ("he's a fox that flies in the stars! He's a Star Fox!") will probably not be enough to support a 90-minute feature film. Metroid, as original and significant as it was, doesn't boil down to much more than a suited-up lady shooting aliens in space. And actually, in retrospect, the eponymous monsters were basically just jellyfish with teeth.

Redwall
A long-running series of children's fantasy books revolving around the titular Redwall Abbey - a sanctuary for adventuresome woodland animals. It was a great franchise back in the day - and not only because it taught children to discriminate blindly on the basis of species (all mice, badgers and rabbits were "good", all weasals, rats and stoats were irrecoverably "evil").

In an age when 3D films about talking animals regularly rake in millions and millions of dollars it's a miracle that no one big has jumped on Redwall yet. You'd think in the wake of Lord of The Rings and Ratatoille a series about vermin fighting each other with medieval weaponry would be a no-brainer.

Friends
How bleak. How predictable. Everybody went mad over Friends in the 90s. Unlike Frasier it hasn't aged particularly well however. Watching it now, Friends seems absurd. This is probably because unlike Frasier, Friends was a pretty old-fashioned construct. The way the characters spoke and interacted with their surroundings had a lot in common with early sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, while the exaggerated mannerisms of the cast and the easily-pleased canned laughter harked back to turgid 1980s schlock like Married With Children.

But it was popular. And the entire cast - despite doing nothing of note subsequently - are still frequently in the public eye. That means that the temptation for producers would be to kick around some kind of Friends at 40 motion picture where the gang reunite as fat, middle-aged people for one last outing. Or what about an Aliens vs Predator style franchise-mash-up called something like Friends vs Sex in the City? As long as the plot necessitated some kind of mutual assured destruction visited upon all the entire cast I would probably watch it.

Visionaries
A moderately successful franchise in its time, Visionaries is - in fairness - probably quite low-down on the list of things destined to be remade. Which is of course no guarantee it won't be. Did anyone anticipate Alvin & The Chipmunks becoming a money-spewing super-title? Was there a single right-thinking human who thought they'd see the day that these guys would get their own major motion picture?

So a Visionaries film, upon reflection, isn't as unlikely as it seems. Obviously said film would be a monstrous carbuncle. The original cartoon relied on a peculiar kind of apocalyptic 1980s morosity, also found in Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Any attempt to recreate this would end in misery for everyone involved.

Robocop
Oh God, have you seen Robocop recently? It's awful. Even with Paul Verhoeven's customary, pointless nude scenes it's a real effort to watch this or the sequel and take either seriously. The action sequences stand out, even in the context of the 1980s, as being aggressively unpleasant and, unlike something like Hard Boiled, the carnage can't even be called stylish.

In fact all Robocop has going for it is the iconic design of its roboprotagonist. It's one of those cultural tropes which refuses to go away. A Robocop Returns-type thing would obviously just try and milk that shitty-looking suit for all its worth. In fact, in the wake of Iron Man's success this doesn't seem at all unlikely. Expect a teaser trailer which opens with a close up that black visor. It all goes dark. "Your move, perp." Gunshot. Yawn.

Top Gun

A film so full of tropes, memes and visual trademarks a sequel would most likely write itself. Top Gun was massively successful in its day (as well as proving very durable culturally) so it's a miracle its brand has thus far remained untarnished. I say untarnished. The truth is Top Gun - like Robocop - was highly tarnished from the offset because it's no good at all. It can just about be enjoyed ironically, but, like everything Tony Scott touches,the whole thing feels like one long, miserable advert. For the remake we can also probably look forward to a Paramore cover version of Take My Breath Away.

Akira
Another title that's been on the lips of film execs for what feels like forever. It's hard to justify a live-action Akira. Sure, it's massive and epic and thought-provoking and panoramic, but it's also willfully baffling. And if there's one thing that big-budget doesn't do well it's baffling. In fact Akira's entire plot premise is so of it's time that remaking it now would be an uncomfortable filmic exercise in trying to fit a round, cyber-punky peg into a square, post-millennial hole.

Any kind of Brit-pop cash-in
At some point someone will try and mythologize the 90s Brit-pop scene, either on television or film. They'll look at Backbeat, 24-Hour Party People and Telstar and ask why nobody has yet tried to do the same thing with the guitar-band boom which seemed to dominate music like a persistent fungal infection for so long.

What seems like a good, sure-fire money-spinning idea on paper is in fact an awful, sure-fire money-spinning idea. When the Brit-pop scene is looked back on objectively, and without the benefit of rose-tinted glasses, the pickings are decidedly slim. Sure Blur and Pulp have a couple of good albums, Oasis have the athems, but let's call a spade a spade. Brit-pop was absolute tat. It's guitar music without any guitar playing. Apart from the bands mentioned above who else is even worth mentioning? Menswear? Elastica? The fucking Boo Radleys? Exactly.

The Games Workshop
Sporadically popular throughout the 80s and 90s and then extremely popular for a short while in the noughties (thanks again Lord Of The Rings!), The Games Workshop are a company that make table-top wargames designed to allow adolescent boys to forget how much they fear the real world for a few hours. Crucially - as far as Hollywood is concerned - the games (Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000) are also designed to rob said boys' parents of as much of their money as possible.

At this point in time the only tie-ins that I'm aware of are a couple of PC games, but it can't be long before an exec realises how fertile the Games Workshop would be for a series of dull, humourless films, set either in the distant future "where there is only war", or in the distant past where there is "no time for peace".

The inevitable problems connected to such a series of films stem from the fact that nothing - absolutely nothing - in the entire Games Workshop universe is either original or compelling. Dune had that Spice stuff, Battlestar Galactica had a strong post-911 message , even Conan had an anti-religious bent and a worryingly Nietzschian sub-text. The Games Workshop has this. Billions of guns firing in every conceivable direction. Forever. The Warhammer universe has about as much depth as the Micro Machines franchise. And at least girls "got" Micro Machines.

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SATAN IS REAL AND WE MUST DESTROY IT

It's easy to be cynical about refuseniks, protestors and political agiatators. After all if the government's so corrupt then why are the people so happy? Granted, their happiness is utterly dependent on having an infinite supply of processed food, gonzo pornography and video games to gorge themselves on, but they are happy. At least until the sugar high subsides and the sight of gaping asshole becomes humdrum. Then we're in trouble.

The point is, it's hard to hate The Man sometimes. You have to wait for something to come along which shakes your belief in Him. In many cases that something will be the advertising industry. Sometimes just thinking about the advertising industry is enough to make me wish I was in Discharge or something. These three ads from days gone by do the trick nicely. Sugar? It doesn't make you fat. Beer? It has vitamins! And as for cigarettes, you better start smoking them right now if you want to be an athlete.


I think you know what to do.

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VIVA NECROMUNDA

There's nothing wrong or unhealthy with obsessing over hyper-dense structures. Especially deserted hyper-dense structures. Am I right, guys? Guys?

This post was triggered by new photos of the mythical Kowloon Walled City - a kind of compacted trash city which was built on a tiny area near Hong Kong which neither Britain nor China ended up having ownership of. It's been demolished, but in its anarchic heyday it bore more than a passing resemblance to Ankh Morpork, of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

And if you wonder what the residents' of said city's houses look like you could do worse than check out photographer Michael Wolf's weirdly compelling (and beautifully presented) 100x100 photoseries.

Of course, structures don't have to be hyper-dense to be stimulating. They can also be conventionally post-apocalyptic. Check out Pripyat, a Ukrainian town, predictably not far from a place called Chernobyl. Better than that though, is the underground series of tunnels which Chairman Mao allegedly built to protect 40% of the city's population from nuclear war.

If all of this has put you in a Fallout kind of a mood then don't worry. Help is at hand. These charming, and not-at-all murderous-looking Russians are waiting for someone just like you to help explore, map and conquer the Wasteland.

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IMPOTENT SIMPSONS GESTURE

You probably know all about South Park's recent feud with their paymasters at Comedy Central. The show's creators Trey Park and Matt Stone had gone ahead with a controversial episode featuring the Prophet Muhammed despite the network's misgivings. As the programme is put together at the last minute the producers had no time to re-edit it, so they just put long beeping noises over anything that could get them into trouble with the angry beard men.

In any case, The Simpsons have given a tip of the hat to Park and Stone by way of a Bart Simpson chalk-board message. Check it out here. the message is simple - you guys rock! If we weren't old and weak we'd be right there with you!

Sad that The Simpsons has apparently accepted the fact that its now a dull show with no desire to push boundaries any more. 

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LITERARY BITCH FIGHTS

When it comes to smack talking people generally think of professional wrestlers, New York cab drivers and desperate, outgoing rappers. But there's no reason we shouldn't add great writers to that list. If the great men of letters are incapable of smack talk, what hope do the rest of us have?

Luckily The Examiner has compiled a list of the 50 greatest author-versus-author put-downs from history. In it you'll find out that J.D. Salinger is "narcissistic and sentimental", Melville was "a solemn ass" and Voltaire? "King of the nincompoops".

Read it here.

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CLOWN POSSE: NO LONGER INSANE?

I realise this has been done to death but not posting this video was never an option.

So, those Insane Clown Posse guys are pretty dunderheaded, right? They're fat. Their fans rally around a collective term that has become a byword for hopeless, ugly illiterates. They make music that Fred Durst might call "lackluster". All in all they have nothing going for them.

And then this came along. No one - least of all the Posse itself - has been able to accurately describe what might be going on in Miracles. One thing's for certain, we all need to ask ourselves: "Fuckin' magnets; how do they work?"



I would honestly, honestly love to know what you made of that.

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THE SUBJECTIVE GUIDE TO THE BLUES - SON HOUSE

Son House is the next stop in Delta Blues. Actually, if you’re interested in what Delta blues sounds like, Son House ought to be the first stop. His early work is like a beginners' guide to the Delta style: one of those really good beginners’ guides that have cartoons in them. All that stuff I was talking about before: the slide, the pumping rhythm, it’s all there in its most obvious form in Son House’s music.

His music also has a really strong rhythmic feel that I can only describe as ‘propulsive’: like he really felt it. It just keeps lurching. He likes to howl too. It’s a real manly howl, not a falsetto or anything. The howl doesn’t sound like Howling Wolf (who I love too), it’s all passionate and primal, like listening to some sort of earth elemental. The other Joe, my co-writer, gets bombarded with a lot of blues, what with knowing me, and he’s kind enough to tolerate most of it, but Son House is the only one he clearly feels in his gut.

And whereas almost every bluesman nods every so often, there’s not a single weak early Son House track. That said, there are only six early Son House tracks. One of the greatest bluesmen ever had only six tracks to his name. Oh yeah, and of those six, three of them are just continuations of the first: pt 2s (a 78 only allowed you about 3 minutes per track, so having continuing sides is really common). So really, if you want the blues at its most primal, just hit up his three songs, in this order: ‘My Black Mama, pt 1’, ‘Preaching the Blues, pt 1’ and ‘Dry Spell Blues, pt 1’. Actually, when you hear the recordings he made after he was rediscovered, when he could play as long as he liked, you realise that he only really had the one song. It was just him pumping away at his guitar and shouting whatever lyric popped into his head at the time for as long as you gave him.

House toured with Patton, which was an interesting combo. Like I said before, Charley was a coked up midget loud mouth who’d do anything for attention. Son House was a different kettle of chitlins. He was tall and scraggly, and pretty gloomy when not in drunk. Legend states that he had been a preacher in his early life, before taking up the blues. Could be true, after all, this was before XBoxs and internet memes, so there wasn’t much to do except for play blues and testify to God. Anyway, at a certain point, he gave up preaching and took up blues, which at this point was considered sinners’ music. He doesn’t sound too torn up about it though (check ‘Preaching the Blues’ for some genuine cynicism). In fact, he gives almost no musical time to God, unlike Patton, who liked to play at being the sinner.

Shortly after taking up the blues full time, he killed a man in some juke joint. ‘Killed a man’ is bad blues journalism for murdered, by the way. Loads of the blues greats were murderers, but it doesn’t do to dwell on it. For some reason in the 60s people felt that bluesmen had valuable life experiences that we could all learn from: that’s why they always dwell on the poverty and the racism that they suffered – it makes it look like these musicians overcame their surroundings to become great souls or some such fuckshit, beatnik nonsense. That’s why no bluesmen ever ‘murdered’ anyone, they all just ‘killed a man’. For some reason, that's okay. Anyway, Son House killed his man and served time, and when he got out he hoboed round Mississippi, teaming up with Charley Patton and Willie Brown. This was probably pretty lucrative for House, because Patton was a big enough draw to actually sell gig tickets, unlike practically every other Delta bluesman whose function was providing background music in dive bars.

They played together for a while, bickering the whole time. Son House got to record his absolutely demonic music off the back of the Patton connection, but the music didn’t really sell. It was too much even for blues fans at the height of the rural boom, back when the blues fans still liked it really raw. Then the depression hit and, if no one was recording Patton, no one would touch House. After Patton’s death, Son House packed it in and disappeared.

In 1964, Son House was unearthed by researchers as part of the blues revival. He was working in New York, and had no idea that anyone was still listening to country blues. He certainly wasn’t at this point. He claimed to have not touched a guitar in years, but Son House liked to tell stories. When given a guitar, he played a little jump blues, which didn’t impress the researchers. So Alan Wilson from 60s white boy blues band Canned Heat was brought in to teach Son House how Son House really played. Pretty cynical stuff, but unlike every other blues cadaver unearthed in the 60s, Son House’s later work is really good. Death Letter Blues, recorded in 1965, is just about my favourite blues track ever. It’s really a rehash of his earlier three songs, but with actual production and the sort of blundering raggedness that only an elderly alcoholic can really pull off. By this point, he’d really learnt how raw slide guitar can sound. Late-period House is perfect if you’re a John Lee Hooker fan or if you like your blues to sound African.

House lived for another ten years, during which he had plenty of time to fill researchers’ heads with all kinds of made up nonsense, chiefly about Robert Johnson, whom he’d met once or twice when Johnson was very young. In fact, Son House is the source for the famous myth that Robert Johnson sold his soul at the crossroad in exchange for musical genius.

Where did House get the Johnson/Devil myth? From another Johnson. Tommy Johnson, the third person of the holy trinity of Mississippi Delta blues. Stay put.

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WHAT'S WORSE: PEOPLE WHO LOVE THE BEATLES OR PEOPLE WHO HATE THE BEATLES?

Picture the scene. You're at a party. The organisers didn't order enough beer and you forgot to bring your whiskey flask. The iPod Shuffle that has about 20 songs on it keeps playing All These Things I've Done by the Killers.

The only attractive person in the room is about to go home because there are no other attractive people (including you, you ugly person). Then suddenly the iPod Shuffle stops playing the Killers and Think for Yourself by the Beatles comes on.

Now the universe splits in half. Let's explore both of these sub-universes. In the first instance when Think for Yourself comes on, you smile. You like this song. You like the fuzz bass and the way it goes "doop, boom-bom". A balding, late-twenty-something you hadn't noticed sat next to you sees you smile.

Let's have a peek at universe number two. Think for Yourself has just come on. You don't like this song. The chorus sounds cheesily, overtly sixties-ish. And George Harrison can't really sing. A hirsuite, late-twenty-something you hadn't noticed sat next to you tuts.

Back to the first universe. "You know George Harrison said this song was about the government?" he says. "And most people think that the fuzz bass is the bassline. But it's not. There's another bass. A normal one. And that's playing the bass line. You can't really hear it though."

Even though you like the Beatles you don't really feel like talking about the Beatles. But you nod politely. The man continues.

"Rubber Soul is probably their most experimental album in some ways," he says flatly. "Sure, Revolver has all the backward masking but when did the sitar first appear on a pop record?"

You shrug.

"Exactly. Norwegian Wood."

In the second universe the hirsuite twenty-something has started talking to you. He's wearing a band t-shirt. It's some guitar group who sing in a regional accent. "Fucking Beatles," he says. "This is the biggest overrated pile of shit in the world."

You nod.

"All that Sgt Pepper bollocks," he continues. "Can't stand it." He then makes a mime of playing an acoustic guitar in a fey manner.

Then, in both universes, the house catches fire and everyone in it dies. Including you.

So which of these parallel universes represents a worse way to spend the last minutes of your life? Chatting to a Beatles-bore or a Beatles-phobe? I can't decide.

On one hand the Beatles are without question the best band that ever came out of Britain. Maybe the best band from any country ever. Every (proper) album they released would be any other band's "masterpiece". The Beatles released an album or two of that standard every year they were around. A bit like Cannibal Corpse's first ten years.

Unlike Cannibal Corpse however, the Beatles wrote songs that everyone could enjoy. The defining feature of pop music is that it taps into something which people recognise and understand. It shouldn't be an effort to "get" pop music because the music itself should be a reflection of everything that surrounds the consumer. That does not mean pop songs should be simple, or focused on the lowest common-denominator. A pop song can contain diminished chords, tempo changes and ten-minute instrumental outros as long as the songwriter is canny enough. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were clearly capable of doing this. And unlike everyone else they did it over and over and over again.

However when somebody asks you "do you like the Beatles?" it's not a question in the traditional sense of the word. When somebody asks you "do you like the Beatles" they are in fact inviting you to a private, two-person party. The only other two questions like this in the English language are:

(1) Do you watch football?
or
(2) Have you seen The Wire?

If you are ever asked one of these three questions be aware that by answering "yes" you are entering into a contract with the conversation's initiator. The contract states that you are required to sit and converse for possibly hours - sometimes days - about the topic. Did you know that McNulty was British? Who will get the fourth spot in the Champions League this year? Why do you think John Lennon played a Rickenbacker instead of a Fender? Fascinating.

What makes these particular questions special is the fact that they never needed to be asked in the first place. When one Beatles fan asks another about John's guitar they both already know the answer. The question is asked simply to keep the insular, blue flame of conversation alive. Outside of our tiny, inward-looking world there may be war, rape and famine, but as long as we can talk endlessly in circles about the Leslie speakers at Abby Road and the stereo mastering of Please Please Me everything seems just fine.

It would be nice to imagine that somewhere there is a conversation about the Beatles which has yet to take place. Sadly, I do not believe this could be the case. Revolution in the Head, Ian Macdonald's well-written, exhaustive reference guide to the band's work, systematically goes through every song the band ever recorded, faithfully pulling together trivia about broken guitar strings, accidental harmonies and inter-band rivalries. It is an amazing book, but it is also the full-stop at the end of the Beatles' legacy. The liner notes to the liner notes.

Lennon, like a lot of worthwhile musicians, hated complacency, nostalgia and above all the mythologising of pop artists. To continue to write books, television programmes and films about the Beatles is to repeatedly dig up Lennon's corpse and attempt to felate its decaying member.

However, to stomp and squeal about how bad the Beatles are is worse. It is worse because anybody who makes a point of telling you they dislike the Beatles is not talking about music. They are simply boasting. They are boasting about how they refuse to get on the same bus as everyone else. They are boasting about their critical faculties. They are boasting about their individuality.

What a despicable, perverse contrivance.

The next time somebody makes a point of rubbishing the Beatles in front of you, make a point of setting fire to their balls (or vagina). Then, while their genitals are ablaze, stand over them and tell them this in a level voice:

"Is it not enough for you that every facet of popular culture is dumb? When I walk down the street I am attacked on all sides by dumbness. I have to make a concerted effort to phase it all out. But Ant and Dec are always there. Dan Brown is always there. The Black Eyed fucking Peas are always there, laughing and spitting at me. This will never stop. But I can endure it because once in a blue moon something like the Beatles happens. And now you want to take the Beatles away from me? You want to create a consensus that they were crap, just so people take notice of you? What have you done recently that is worthwhile? Where are your albums?"

I'm not suggesting that the Beatles' music is above criticism. It's not. However, when was the last time you heard someone who disliked the Beatles accurately criticise their music? It's never about the music. It's invariably about someone's vague, misguided notion of what the Beatles stand for (peace/love/moptops/Yellow Submarine).

I hope I have answered the original question. In case there's any doubt just remember that I'm not alone in any of this. The Big Gay Boss Man himself, Rob Halford agrees with me. And what he says goes around these parts.

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WHAT NOT TO CALL YOUR BOOK

Hey you know that book you're writing? Well two things. Firstly: it's shit. No one's going to buy the notion of a cat that can travel through time backwards only assassinating world leaders she deems to be evil. Secondly: you've given it a terrible title. Quantum Kitty violates rules eight and ten of Eric Puchner's list of laws decreeing what you may and may not call your story. Below is his list:

The Faux Poetic but Authentically Meaningless (“Hunt the Mist Slowly”)

The Purely Descriptive (“One Early Morning in Topeka at Dawn”)

The Lofty Abstraction, a.k.a. the Bad Kundera (“The Lonely Shackles of Mortality”)

The Hardy Boys Special (“The Hike from Hell”)

The Grammatically Complete Sentence (“Gladys Pemberton Strikes It Rich”)

The Inspirational Cliché (“Dreams of Rebirth”)

The Uninspirational Cliché (“Losing My Marbles”)

The Alliterative Tongue Twister (“Peripatetic Papa”)

The Allusion to Another, Much More Famous Work of Literature (“The Story of Christ”)

The It-Doesn’t-Get-Any-Cuter-Than-This (“Runaway Grandma”)

The Melodramatic Image (“Blood Dries Brown”)

The My-Life-Changed-Unexpectedly-and-I’m-Going-to-Tell-You-About-It (“Epiphany in a Tattoo Parlor”)

The Bad McSweeney (“How We Lie to the Moon, and How the Moon Lies to Us”)

The Scratch ‘n Sniff, a.k.a. But-It-Will-Make-Such-a-Lovely-Cover-Someday (“In the Valley of the Gardenia Blossoms”)

Read the accompanying article here.

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GREAT SONGS ON FORGETTABLE ALBUMS #3

Amorphis | The Way
If you listen to this song you should be able to: fly a MIG fighter jet into Waziristan to hunt down Osama; win a bare-knuckle Muay Thai tournament; race a dragster through rush hour traffic; elude the police in a roof-top chase. That's right, it's a song which gives you amazing powers. It has a Moog solo. And a wall-of-mirrors 80s-sounding guitar intro. It even has some fast kick drums. It's the kind of song that - had you produced it (and unless your name is Simon Efemey, you didn't) - it would be front and centre on your CV.

The album which The Way is taken from - Tuonela - is bad and under no circumstances should you listen to it. Previously Amorphis were a hairy metal band from Helsinki. This album marked their attempted transition into weird-but-bland AOR. The whole thing kind of washes over you, leaving absolutely no impression. And that's a hell of a feat for an album with this many terrible saxophone solos. The only thing the album has going for it is this: a Finish doom metal band is attempting to expand their style to include smooth jazz. On paper its hilarious. In reality it sounds like a studio full of European session-musicians "cutting loose".

Great songs on forgettable albums #2

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PARABLE OF EXILED R'N'B MESSIAH

Today an anonymous GUEST BLOGGER and music industry insider shares with us his forbidden passion for one of music's thwarted geniuses

I don't like R Kelly. I don't like Ne-Yo. I don't like Jaheim. I don't like Musiq Soulchild. I quite like Erykah Badu, but I don't really like the people that listen to her. However, I do LOVE D'Angelo.

What's the difference between him and other neo-soul / R'n'B artists? I could start ranting about how the term R'n'B has been misappropriated, and no longer really stands for Rhythm and Blues. It is very true that D'angelo is a R'n'B artist in the truest sense of the term, but I'll leave these types of rants to the Erykah fans. Then why do I like him so much, you ask?

The honest answer... He created a perfect sex album for my formative years. One of two.

You've got a girl back in your room, you offer to give her a massage because she looks pretty tired / tense / stressed / female... what album are you going to play to set the mood just before you go for the well-timed reach-around?

If she has a leaning towards white music (bands, guitars, and student-friendly interpretations of black music - you know like trip-hop and stuff), then Portishead - Dummy is what you pull out. If she has more of a leaning towards black music (you know, rap and stuff), then D'Angelo - Voodoo is the only choice. I have to love an album that has helped my penis enter vaginas, even purely out of a sense of indebtedness.

Ultimately though, it was the sexuality of the album that led to D'Angelo's demise. It did not help that he was signed to Virgin - a major label who was looking to launch D'Angelo as a household name. This brilliant sophomore album to their credit was marketed as a serious soul album. However, apparently D'Angelo had to have his shirt off to really show just how serious and soulful an album this actually was.

Most MTV fans will know D'Angelo for this absolutely ridiculous music video where he appears to be naked. It was his manager's idea. The video did what it aimed to achieve, which was to sell records. But it was a very, very bad move...

D'Angelo himself and many of those around him has stated this music video and hit song is what ruined him . He attracted a huge new audience, and not the audience he wanted. He embarked on a tour for the album where as soon as he got on stage, thousands of screaming female fans were chanting and commanding him to take off his clothes. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the tour director and drummer in the live show states the reason why he cancelled and abandoned many of his shows and tour dates: "He'd get angry and start breaking shit. The audience thinking, 'Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!'"

He ended up becoming an alcoholic, he put on weight, he was arrested for a car crash where he was high on marijuana, been and done rehab. Most importantly, he hasn't made an album since. Virgin dropped funding for his third album because he became controlling, slow and possessive of the music. He insisted on playing every part on every instrument himself (like his musical idol Prince). He is more than a capable musician to do this and had done it a lot on previous recordings, but I can only assume he was too drunk to do it quickly or proficiently enough for Virgin's liking.

A new album is meant to surface at some point in 2010, but I hear this same rumour every year...

Despite the albums aftermath, Voodoo geniunely is one of the most soulful albums in recent recorded history and can sit well amongst the multiple influences that he studied when making this album - Sly and the Family Stone, Prince, Fela Kuti, Syl Johnson, Al Green, James Brown, Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder et al. If you don't believe me, check out this promo EPK video below.

This EPK was produced shortly before the release of the album and explains his stance on the creation of Voodoo. He recorded it in Electric Lady Studio (Jimi Hendrix's studio and spiritual home) and played the same Rhodes that Stevie Wonder used. Interestingly, check out Eric Clapton losing his mind over the music. D'Angelo clevery immersed himself in the sounds of the artists he aspired to emulate and pay homage to. The results speak for themselves. The album deeply resonates with the soul of his musical forefathers rather than the tinny aural spectrum that his modern-day contemporaries display.

The only problem with this EPK, D'angelo spends most of this video topless...

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MAINLINING SCI FI GOODNESS

Some charitable soul decided to scan and upload every cover of every Philip K Dick novel ever published. There are the expected forays into both generic sci-fi fayre, and shrieking acid nightmare territory. However in among the hundreds of covers you can also find the surprisingly awesome, the unintentionally homoerotic, the brazenly psychadelic, the incredibly dated and a great many which you would not be seen dead reading under any circumstances.

Some of the best, and oddest, are as you'd expect from Japan. They seem to do things on their own terms over there. This one is slightly nauseating in a good way. And this one is just great. Oddly enough some of the Italian editions have cool covers too. No disrespect to any Italians. But... y'know.

Worst cover, as far as I can tell, might be this from Portugal.

All of them can be found here.

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MONSTROUS HEART OF ADVERTISING LAID BARE

Never before has a single four-minute film done so much to illustrate exactly why the advertising industry needs to be subject to a purge of such severity that the corpses of former creative directors and account planners will be clogging our sewage system for years to come. This video - a 'making of' documentary for an ad - confirms every stereotype you only half believed to be true about the dead-eyed, corporate phallus-worshipping whores at work in the advertising industry today.



So, Matt Kirkyby, Duffy was great for the ad because "she's real"? By saying such a weird thing you're only fuelling speculation that she's a cyborg. And you say you think it works because "real" is also "how people see the product". As opposed to what? All the people who think that Diet Coke is a hoax?

And full points to everyone involved for including the maximum amount of empty buzzwords that time would allow. For a minute I thought maybe you wouldn't be able to squeeze in "female zeitgeist" but you found a way. Kudos also to Duffy who, just before the three-minute-mark, apparantly goes into conversational freefall - babbling about how "going back to the sort of ad direction" helps "ecourage women to say no". Say no to what? Appearing in ads?

The 'plot', by the way, which Sara Tate seems so proud of is an unashamed rip-off of the end of A Mighty Wind where Eugene Levy's character goes AWOL before a big concert so he can take a walk around the city and buy a rose. So fuck you all.

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THE DISSECTION OF A MOSQUITO FOR MALARIA PARASITE

You probably know that Channel 4 are axing Big Brother and its spin-off celebrity version this year. As a result the programme-makers will have a substantial hole in their schedule. Millions of floating Channel 4 viewers may very well switch over to ITV.

Could I suggest that they run this instead? It's a surefire ratings success:


This is actually a plug for the Wellcome Foundation's new online archive of film clips, now available on Youtube.

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GOD-KING OF CELLULOID MADNESS RETURNS

This morning, as I stood on Yarmouth Bay looking out at the sea, an awful chill went through my bones. I felt the harrowing presence of an approaching catastrophe deep in my heart, and saw myriad omens suggesting a lamentable fate for the peoples of this land was at hand.

I hurried home, desperate to somehow waylay the godless havoc that was drawing closer. Hoping to be disproved, I threw open the day's edition of the local chronicle and saw this headline:

MEL GIBSON TO RECREATE THE VIKING INVASION OF BRITAIN FOR LATEST MOVIE

This is great news obviously. Did you see his last one? Gibson directing a film about the ruthless pillaging and indiscriminate slaughter of the Viking Age is a match made in heaven. He's shown us time and time again that when it comes to historical recreation, nothing and that includes factual accuracy - should get in the way of relentless, unflinching gore. In keeping with the last two films of what I hope will one day be called his Trilogy of Pain, the forthcoming Viking film will be scripted in a language that no one speaks: Old Norse.

Is there a genre name for Gibson's oeuvre? The brutal epic? Horror history? Whatever future film critics settle on, they better recognise the genius of the man soon. "I want a Viking to scare you," he said of his latest venture recently. "I want to see somebody who I have never seen before speaking low, guttural German who scares the living shit out of me coming up to my house."

Who knows what he's talking about there, but it's encouraging stuff. This film will also let Mel indulge in another of his trademarks: the persecution of Christians in slow motion. Expect plenty of men with filthy, braided beards cleaving babies in two, while white-clad women clutch crucifixes and weep.

My only suggestion's an obvious one. Mel should push producers to cast internet hero Techno Viking in a walk-on (or dance-on) role. Actually, I have a feeling Mel's producers are bed-ridden nonagenarians. He just pops in every few years and shouts "HEY I'M JUST GONNA GO MAKE A FILM ABOUT MAYANS OR INCANS OR SOMETHING. DID YOU KNOW THEY ATE HEARTS!?" Then they sign off on it and go back to sleep. Go Mel.

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26 GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE NOUGHTIES

What? The noughties? What? But... what? Top albums of the decade? If you insist.

You know now you come to mention it the noughties were a pretty important decade. The human race became more powerful than ever - thereby solidifying its position as the greatest of all races currently available. If you compare the progress we as a species made compared to the progress made by the rabbits or the catfish say, we - the human race - clearly emerged from the last 10 years as the world's number one species. The only competition came from the totemic dragon-fish-god which was dredged up by Japanese fishermen in 2007. As it happened the dragon-fish-god suffocated after three minutes of exposure to our atmosphere. We on the other hand created iPods, comprehensive and convenient archives of online pornography, a new type of hand dryer, an energy drink called Relentless and the film career of Shia La Beouf.

With that in mind it seems inevitable that we at the The Great Atomic Power would turn our attention to musical endeavor. A lot of music has been created in the last 10 years. I don't think many people would argue with the fact that all of it - from Bob Sapp's Sapp Time to Grand Belial Key's Judeobeast Assassination was uniformly excellent. However, it falls to us to sort the wheat from the chaff. When all's said and done what albums have we - the human race - now got to hold up to Japanese dragon-fish-gods and say: "Look! We are better than you! Where are your albums?"

The albums which we must now present to the terrifying aqua-deities are below. But first a disclaimer. This top 26 list does not claim to reflect which albums have made the biggest impact on music in the last 10 years. It does not purport to give credence to the artists who have affected the 'scene' or altered the zeitgeist. Instead it is simply an honest reflection of which albums - whole albums - we at TGAP have listened to and enjoyed the most in the last 10 years. Fashion be damned, here is our list:

26. THORNS THORNS (2001)
The point at which black metal looked down at its pasty, musky frame and sneered at itself in disgust. Thorns was much more than just an album made by a creepy man who had been in prison for 10 years. It was a weird, leap forward into a flickering, shrieking unknown. Gone were the preoccupations with castles and forests - replaced instead by an unfriendly post-millennial anguish and a bit where all the music stops and someone says "Back to my eternal starfield domain."

25. DEVENDRA BANHART CRIPPLE CROW (2005)
Listening to this album now makes me sad – it’s the point that Banhart took his first steps into stadium rock irrelevance, following three beautiful lo-fi albums. But this album is perfectly poised in between, and the end result is like a deliciously assorted bag of sweets. There’s the barely recorded folk that made Devendra the leading light of the New Weird America movements (Hey Mama Wolf), there’s barely reconstructed 70s rock (Long Haired Child), and smatterings of Spanish language tracks (Luna de Margarita). The album holds up to its length (22 tracks) through the sheer strength and variety of its material. Plus it’s got the best album cover of any record here. Guaranteed.

24. BAND OF HORSES CEASE TO BEGIN (2007)
This is a tough one to justify. It's basically a guy with a high, whiny voice singing over Southern-fried, folky alt-rock. Nothing too amazing. But if I left it off this list I would be a fundamentally dishonest person as I listen to it regularly still. It runs out of ideas in the second half, but albums with two complete sides are for slackers. Twenty-five minutes into an album I'm usually called upon to finalise a deal or referee an Afghan horse fight. Bottom line is that this album's lovely and it's the only album on here with a heartbreaking song about a regional newspaper.

23. ELECTRIC WIZARD DOPETHRONE (2000)
In the late nineties, doom was still not considered a proper genre of metal. If anything, it was the freaky elder brother of the (now pleasingly defunct) stoner genre. In the late noughties, doom was common currency among metal fans and beyond. This album is the reason. Adding a dollop of sludge to modernise the sound but otherwise keeping close to a classic doom template throughout, Electric Wizard managed to bludgeon their way into metal’s mass consciousness with juddering doom classics like Vinum Sabbathi and I, The Witchfinder.

22. VITAL REMAINS DECHRISTIANIZE (2003)
Raaaaargh! Death metal! Raaaargh! This album was sent by Satan to sodomise you. Glenn Benton - who on the first track declares himself to be an "unstoppable force of demonic supremacy" - claims that making this album made him realise how hum-drum his day job in Deicide had become. That's how good this album is. It made a man with an inverted crucifix actually burned into his forehead realise his life was boring. It's probably the most blasphemous record I own too. Which is saying something.

21. CANNIBAL OX THE COLD VEIN (2001)
El-P did something special with the production on this one – the organ-heavy beats manage to sound simultaneously claustrophobically urban and yet open and psychedelic. The tracks are matched to the two ideal MCs, Vast Aire and Vordul Megallah, providing skittery raps filled with abstract met-a-phors and non sequitors. Somehow, the album manages to never retreat into a backpack cul-de-sac, instead the whole thing stays healthily on Wu-Tang Battle-Rap Boulevard. My only complaint is that it’s a little over-long.

20. THE SHINS WINCING THE NIGHT AWAY (2007)
The Shins might have broken up by the time you've read this so Wincing would go down as their final record and that's fine by me. Compared to the preceeding two albums this one is far more varied, a lot more interesting musically and just way more fun. James Mercer finally got the hang of tying a complicated (and bitter sounding) vocal melody around a shuffly, sweet accompaniment and the result is an album of deceptively difficult pop songs. How can an album about "crippling insomnia" be so life-affirming? I dunno but Phantom Limb and Australia are clearly two works of mind-bending pocket-sized genius.

19. V/A MOLAM: THAI COUNTRY GROOVE FROM ISAN (2004)
Sublime Frequencies releases are always a joy, and this is my favourite of a great bunch. Thai Country Groove is a compilation of Mow Lam from the 70s and 80s, full of warp-speed cat-person vocals, enormous bamboo mouth organs and psychotic-sounding comedy skits. For the uninitiated, Mow Lam and its cousins is a style of Lao/Thai folk music that no self-respecting Thai urbanite would ever listen to. Prostitutes flee to Bangkok purely to avoid this kind of music. The bizarre-punk craziness on this disc is a billion miles away from the usual tasteful contents of world music compilations. The whole thing sounds like the lost disc of Nuggets.

18. ISIS OCEANIC (2002)
An enormous record that fully lives up to its moniker, Oceanic met with universal acclaim upon its release, although now no one seems to really ever talk about it. That's their loss. Using Neurosis' Through Silver in Blood as a kick-off point, Isis managed to render a charismatic blend of dark-age fury and modern angst upon their mighty canvas. 'Dense' does not adequately describe these song. Pinned down by tight, sparse drumming and recurring bass loops that wouldn't sound out of place on a Cure record, Oceanic's crushing ebb and flow would be much imitated but never bettered in the ensuing decade.

17. WHITE STRIPES WHITE BLOOD CELLS (2001)
The White Stripes’ first two albums were rootsy and under-produced. Their later albums were studio workouts. Their third album was the one where they achieved perfect balance, somehow managing to create a new primitivist stadium rock. It’s a great album, full of great songs. Admittedly, the whole thing does sound a little too close to classic Creedence, but that’s not a bad thing, right? Just like CCR, this is great American music that sets out very knowingly to position itself as part of everything that has gone before. I’m ashamed to say that when this album came out I hated it implicitly. I don’t think I’d even heard it. I’m going to blame hype and then just wash my hands of my younger self in disgust. Shithead.

16. TV ON THE RADIO RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN (2006)
I love cookies (biscuits) so it stands to reason that I... I'm going to abort that "idea for an hilarious intro" there if you don't mind. This album has two things going for it. Firstly it has actual real songs, that you can touch and smell and stuff. If every band that tried to be this clever also wrote songs as dynamic and memorable as this then I wouldn't become flush with choler every time I buy an album on Pitchfork's recommendation. Secondly, RTCM has the most superfluous David Bowie cameo of all time. A great album - and one which could be accurately described as the first valuable contribution to rock music made by black people.

15. PANDA BEAR PERSON PITCH (2007)
This was a bit of a revelation to me when I first heard it. It was less the beautiful Beach Boys style vocal melodies than the very un-Beach Boys harmonies which made this album such an eye opener. Person Pitch’s secret is the sense of enormous architectural space which it is able to convey through these harmonies. It’s only on later listens that you can even start to pick out the child-like percussion and strange samples that pound out the rhythm behind the vocals. There have been quite a few albums since that have given me the same sense of space, not least Animal Collective’s last two albums, but this is the one that hit me harder and stronger.
JGZM ADDS: Fuck you and Devendra Banhart. This has the best cover of all the albums here.

14. WEEN QUEBEC (2003)
The sad thing about Quebec (2003) is that theme which binds the album together is the fading friendship of the two guys that wrote it - Dean and Gene Ween. If you like Ween as much as me you'll know that's a very sad thing. In any case Quebec is a kick-ass, prog-rock, psychedelic joyride that takes in everything from Motorhead-style face-in-the-exhaust (It's Gonna Be A Long Night) to weird low-fi paranoia (So Many People In The Neighbourhood). Naming all the great tracks on it would take forever so just trust me when I say that most bands would plot an entire career around the amazing songs crammed on here. Viva Ween.

13. JUSTICE † (2007)
This album was definitely the high-point of electro for me. What set it apart from all the other electro-poseurs was the sense of cheesy fun and the ability to find the common song writing ground shared by classic heavy metal and disco and then to repackage it in a tasty dance coating. This was another one of those albums that came out in the second half of the noughties and managed to appeal to everyone, regardless of what genre they thought they preferred they liked. An album so good that it even managed to make Uffie’s tiresome hipster rap sound part of the fun.

12. ABORYM FIRE WALK WITH US (2000)
Who knows how they accomplished this. Using nothing more than a drum machine and some buzzy guitars a tiny cabal of Italians somehow conjured up a future nightmare consisting of hundred-mile high columns of blue flame and raging torrents of electrified blood. It didn't hurt that they drafted in the elusive magikal monument that is Attila Csihar to provide vocals. His rasping, shrieking, diabolic croak sits atop the frenzied guitars and dystopian synths like a perfectly-made hat on a lovely snowman.

11. CONVERGE JANE DOE (2001)
Metal and punk both underachieved in the noughties, starting with the lame farts of nu-metal and pop-punk and squelching to a runny finish with the mulch of metalcore. Converge’s Jane Doe was one husk of golden corn in the midst of all the shit. Not so much an album of good songs as an album explaining to you exactly how thrilling it can be to have a grown man scream at you for twelve tracks straight. It basically summed up everything special about metal and punk in the nineties into one tight, screamy mathematical package.

10. V/A OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? OST (2000)
I realise that to bluegrass, blues and roots purists this probably represents some kind of sacrilege, but this soundtrack introduced a massive number of people to styles of music they would never have come across ordinarily. Despite the fact that nearly all the tracks on the album are contemporary recordings, a tangible sense of affection lingers over it. I know for a fact there are people in Beijing who got into the Stanley Brothers, Harry McClintock and latterly Ralph Stanley as a result of hearing Oh Brother played on jukeboxes and that's no bad thing.

9. FUGAZI THE ARGUMENT (2001)
Fugazi’s quietest, cleverest album. The Argument makes its point through shifts in dynamics, strange angular guitars and melodies. In the best way possible, it’s Fugazi’s most grown up album, and their most conventionally ‘indie’. By the point that they made this, MacKaye, Picciotto and pals knew so much about song craft that they were well past the conventional pop song stage, and the Argument shows it: songs twist and turn, hooks are buried in codas and the whole is designed so that it slowly burrows its way into your mind over repeated listens. The album is slow-release, and ten years on it’s still growing on me.

8. DRIVE BY TRUCKERS BRIGHTER THAN CREATION'S DARK (2008)
An epic country album, with three very different song-writers contributing their brains and their voices to proceedings. BTCD - like most albums by this prolific band - explores the depressed, nothing-on-TV-so-I'll-beat-my-wife side to the American South. Although Patterson Hood's rough yelp and Mike Cooley's bourbon-smooth baritone have never sounded so sharp, it's the story telling within the song's that really makes the album a fascinating experience. Kicking off with a song about the brutal murder of a man, his wife and their children, the rest of the record deals with crystal meth, suppressed homosexuality, war flashbacks and alcoholism. Enjoy!

7. 2 MANY DJS AS HEARD ON RADIO SOULWAX PT.2 (2002)
Mix-tapes were a bit of a growth industry in the noughties – a necessity at a time when the volume of music recorded was soaring while the traditional methods of discovering it were crumbling. But the first 2 Many DJs record to become available worldwide was a bit different. It nicely summed up the way that the end of the noughties saw genres crumble into irrelevance as a basis for listening taste. Check out the combination of Salt’n’Pepa’s Push It with The Stooges’ No Fun: here you have two songs which are almost retardedly obvious in every way except in their combination. Oh yeah, and the album is fun, really really fun. It’s pretty much a night out in itself.

6. BON IVER FOR EMMA, FOREVER AGO (2008)
Justin Vernon...blah blah blah... winter... tiny hut. Yes, we've heard the story many, many times. While the romantic backplot obviously gives this supremely-badly-named album a hook, it doesn't mean it has to be any good. Luckily it is good - really good. The first thing that grabs you is the multi-tracked falsetto vocals which sound like someone singing to you from the other side of a tiny, frosty window as a blizzard picks up speed. What keeps you coming back to it however, is the ethereal songwriting that manages to fashion memorable, solid - even hummable - tunes out of melodies that sound like they barely made it out of Justin's mouth. Not even in his most lurid, fanciful wet dreams does Coldplay's Chris Martin even come close to this.

5. MGMT ORACULAR SPECTACULAR (2008)
Something we can all agree on. This was a feature of practically every party I went to in the last two years, and it’s probably the music I’ll most associate with the second half of the noughties. The fun half. Okay, so it’s really a producer’s album, and the second half of the album is just phoned in, but the five songs that kick off Oracular Spectacular are such a perfect marriage of shimmering Bowie-esque style with curiously progged out substance that it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that this glorified ep is still one of the best albums of the decade.

4. REVEREND BIZARRE IN THE RECTORY OF THE BIZARRE REVEREND (2002)
Even though it hasn't dated especially well, it's hard to explain what a massive impact this album had on me. A funeral-doom power-trio led by the magisterial Albert Witchfinder, Reverend Bizarre never bettered this, their debut. With nary a prop or fancy effect in sight these three Finish guys laid down no-nonsense, slow-as-molasses riffs for the true believers. Over the top of it all was Albert's frankly inimitable voice, which I refuse to believe wasn't manufactured in a test tube, so perfectly suited is it to the music. What's more, not only do the songs actually go places, the band also inject everything with a winsome sense of humour and irony - not often seen in music of any kind. You'd be an asshole not to like this album.

3. MADVILLAIN MADVILLAINY (2004)
The noughties were the decade that hip-hop conquered the world and, in conquering, lost everything that made it great. But despite the amount of shit that the genre threw up in its dying days as bloated leper king of the airwaves, there were a small number of classic albums and Madvillainy was my favourite of them. The album was founded on the two reasons fans originally loved hip-hop at a time when everyone else in the genre was just ignoring them: verses and sampling. The marriage of MF Doom’s MCing, with his buttersoft pop-culture literate flow, and Madlib’s samples (ranging from the Mothers of Invention to Sun Ra) made this my favourite hip-hop album of the decade.

2. MEW AND THE GLASS HANDED KITES (2005)
Am I the only person who realises how fucking amazing this album is? It's more technical than most math-rock bands, more bombastic than anything Muse could ever do, prettier than pop and far more compelling than the drivel put out by any number of over-hyped indie bands from the last decade. Although 2009's follow-up is arguably superior, Kites is the album which got me on the fanboy bandwagon and demonstrated how far out Mew were willing to go. It boggles the mind that a record which represents such a quantum leap forward for rock music didn't instantly make the band megstars the world over.

1. JOANNA NEWSOM MILK-EYED MENDER (2004)
This album was the quiet hero of the decade for me, and definitely the best thing to come out of the New Weird America stable. Bizarre high pitched voice, unusual main instrument, curious influences (Kora, Indie Folk, Texas Gladden) and songs that catch you at first go. It was one of the strangest but most universal albums I’ve ever heard, like a breath of fresh air at a time when I thought music really wasn’t going anywhere. Milk-Eyed Mender is the sort of album which makes you feel simultaneously proud and protective, like a happy parent.

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