Mercury Rising
Forty plus pages open in my browser - I think that's a record. I wouldn't have thought that Firefox on a iBook could keep that many pages open at once. Somewhere towards the back of that stack I had a page I opened on this years Mercury awards - the british pop music award
Bloomberg.com: Muse - Mercury awards . The big news this year was that they decided to give it to a British band. Novelty is everything in the music biz. The award went to the Arctic Monkeys
Mercury falls for Arctic Monkeys' tales of street life - Home - Global - Times Online. Who certainly are a fun and energetic band. I mean after all; they're monkeys and they're from the arctic. Or possibly Sheffield. You hear them on the radio and you think this is what rock and roll should sound like. You don't find yourself thinking - someone should find these boys other work, don't they have guidance counselors in England? More and more I find myself thinking about exactly what reaction a new band provokes in me. Not so much 'kicking beat, great tune', because after all that may have been true when the Jam did it in '77 or the Buzzcocks, the Who, Kinks, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry etc. I listen, and ask myself: do they give me the feeling they know what they're doing? Not just that they've studied the last few back issues of [insert user supplied content] and have determined how create this month's hit. But do they understand what its about, do they intend to say anything with it? Have they staked out a plausible new direction? I often decide to retain a musical acts name by drawing a line between various songs I've noted on the level of just the composition itself. The feeling I get from Carl Newman for instance. There was a piece in the paper the other day about the short life spans any particular songs or albums have at the top of the Billboard charts
No Longer the Loneliest Number - washingtonpost.com. As record sales fall it's easier to hit the top ten, harder to stay in the charts long enough for it to mean much to the public conciousness. That's the Billboard charts. Alt and indie have lived in a world of fickle and low volume sales since the first DIY manifestos were mispelled onto paper. I'm happy for the Arctic Monkeys it's just that , well. I really thought that maybe this would be the Country Teasers year. I know they didn't even have a recording out this year - or last year - and may not next year. If I may drop down into a diplomatic gear for a moment. I might suggest that such year a describes the best chance the Teasers will ever have.
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