Forgive the subject line; or, rather, its author. Mediocrity: the glue that binds us all or the wall that serves to highlight how fast the wind blows? I guess this would be a fitting time for THAT Woody Guthrie quote: "The world is filled with people who are no longer needed - and who try to make slaves of all of us - and they have their music and we have ours - Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare - and without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our Song of Freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with - and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never knows it's (sic) speed, it's (sic) power." Well, that about sums it up. No need for me to prattle on at inordinate length. So, mediocrity: not such a bad thing after all. As for Shed Seven: they shoot horse, don't they? Well, I wish they'd hurry up. I'm not sure that Panic is actually an anti-disco song (despite the lyric "burn down the disco"). I always listened to it as an "explicit denunciation of black pop". In tandem with a handful of provocative Moz quotes, the brouhaha laid the track that led to the 'racist' accusations around 1992's Your Arsenal (culminating in Tjinder Singh burning a Moz poster: bastard). It's just a great decrying of the banality of the '80's mainstream. According to legend it was inspired by the rather surreal juxtaposition, on Radio 1, of news of the meltdown at Chernobyl followed by Wham!'s I'm Your Man. Marr: "I do remember being in the kitchen with Morrisey [great how he doesn't call him Stephen] and Wham! coming on the radio and then just completely dissing it - and within a week we had that song." Mediocrity = popularity. To buttress this assertion by way of example: Gray David, Toploader, Starsailor, Bridgett Jones' Diary [film and book], Captain Correlli's Mandolin, Stereophonics. The fact that "Mediocrity = popularity" has a little to do with the concept "lowest common denominator". Take the recent example at Glasgow University where a distinguished intellectual [some might say Scotland's leading author; I wouldn't] was beaten by a two-bit comic with the catchphrase "Gonnae no' dae that". The case for the prosecution rests. The Heller/Shed 7 comparison is apt. I know I'd like to thrustÂ… Er, ahem. I'd rather cut open my scrotum and rub live bees into the wound than go and see Feeder. Your description of Feeder was nothing short of altruistic. (Hefner are pretty good live, though. Pretty hard to beat: though Neal Casal gave them a good fight. Oh yeh, and so did Belle & Sebastian. :-) On a scale of 1 to pish-poor-awful. 1 being the least pish-poor-awful and pish-poor-awful being the most pish-poor-awful. I reckon I'd have to say Feeder are about 9. Y'know. Pretty high. And in conclusion to echo Danny: "Anyway, is there going to be some sort of meet before the B&S gigs at Glasgow, I remember the idea of a Kelvingrove picnic being banded about, so what was eventually decided?" And, the same applies for me "Sorry for annoying people with my rant" :-( David. PS Just a little note on Disco; it's an unfairly maligned genre of music, y'know. Donna Summer's I Feel Love. Ah mean, c'mon. "It was unprecedented. No verse, no chorus, just Summer's purring mantra set over endless, oscillating, undulating, repetitive sequencer-driven beats." PPS That's my fifteen minutes. Anybody care to debate? Go on, you know you want to. I've never actually had an argument/convo with anyone on Sinister. I always shy away from real discussion. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+