NEIL YOUNG INVENTS NEW MUSIC SERVICE IN HOPE OF MAKING 1980s OUTPUT SOUND EVEN WORSE

 

 

Uncompromising sexagenarian rocker Neil Young has been working on an innovative high-resolution music service called Pono which he hopes will make his 1980s back-catalogue even less bearable.

Speaking to chat-show sex-pest David Letterman, Young explained:

“CDs and MP3s fail to accurately replicate how atrocious I wanted those records to sound, thus diminishing the true horror of my vision. An iTunes MP3 file only contains about 5% of the original audio quality. That means that the versions of Trans and Old Ways that people have been listening to recently have been 95% less diabolical than I intended. When I originally released those albums most consumers were still buying the majority of their music on the LP format. Those listeners could fully appreciate how bad Re-ac-tor was and thankfully the record bombed, just as I hoped. The versions that kids listen to nowadays on their iPods are so diluted it’s no wonder that numerous revisionist idiots are suddenly coming out in favour of my discography circa 1980 to 1989. A few of them even claim my vocoder sounds good! I mean, last week I read a blog by some punk arguing that Everybody’s Rockin’ is an ‘overlooked postmodern rockabilly classic’. It’s not that. It’s ****ing garbage. I wanted it to be ****ing garbage. If I’d wanted people to enjoy it, I’d have made a good album. Clearly you haven’t been hearing it properly.”

Young plans to launch the service in 2014, hoping to compete with the dominance of iTunes. In a promotional video for Pono Music, musicians such as Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Marcus Mumford from Mumford & Sons lent passionate support to Young’s cause. However, critics have noted the video may have been more convincing if Flea hadn’t been bouncing around with his cock out and if Marcus Mumford hadn’t existed.

GLASTONBURY GOERS WELCOME LINE-UP UNLIKELY TO DISTRACT FROM THEIR PRINCIPAL INTENTION OF GETTING SHIT-FACED

photo © 2009 Unofficial Glastonbury Festival more info (via: Wylio)

The full line-up for this year’s Glastonbury Festival was revealed this week, and has so far been enthusiastically praised by the majority of ticket-holders as there remains little danger of the music distracting from their primary concerns of watching jugglers, purchasing amusing headwear, lying facedown in the sun/mud, aimlessly wandering around talking drivel, and getting totally dribble-headed on all manner of legal and illegal herbal and chemical intoxicants.

Cassandra Palmer-Smythe, a student from Tunbridge Wells, tweeted: “Fought there wuz gonna be some propa legends on the bill. Luckily, U2 and Coldplay, innit. More time for ket wiv da boyz. Lol!”

With a line-up which also includes Elbow, Morrissey, Biffy Clyro, Mumford & Sons, Glasvegas, and Kaiser Chiefs, festival-goers have been relieved to know that there is very little reason to visit the major stages at all, and that they can simply relax and enjoy themselves safe in the knowledge that they will not be missing anything of any consequence or substance whatsoever.

Jasper Carter-Floyd, a marketing executive from Oxford who has been attending the festival since his teens, blogged: “Man, I remember when they used to have half-decent acts on. It was really rather dreadful. One year I spent two hours completely sober because I’d left some stuff back at Daddy’s camper van and couldn’t drag myself away from The Cure. Won’t have that trouble this year. Going to get really, really blathered.”

Organiser Emily Eavis emphasized that polls had proven that attendees had more fun when the acts booked were little more than background noise, even if this meant, paradoxically, spending more money on the headliners. Not all the bands which will be performing this year are completely mind-numbingly boring, but those which might excite have been kept to a bare minimum, whilst two of those acts, the Wu-Tang Clan and Beyoncé, are of African-American descent. They are thus unlikely to attract the attention of a large number of the festival goers, many of whom are, as proven by the controversy of Jay-Z’s headlining slot in 2008, massively intolerant hip-hop-hating racists.

Timothy “Peace Dragon” Dewhurst, a hippy who has been attending the festival religiously since its inception in the ‘70s, did not choose to announce his thoughts on the line-up via the medium of Twitter, instead choosing to stroll into Bristol city centre wearing a wizard’s hat and a glittery cape and announcing through a handmade cardboard loudhailer: “It used to be about the music maaan. Music and love. Love and music. You, me, the pagan brethren. I mean… for a start, where the hell are Hawkwind?”

When asked if he would be boycotting the festival, Mr. Dewhurst confirmed that he was still looking forward to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on the Friday.

2010 MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE TO BE JUDGED BY PANEL OF DEAF PEOPLE

The shortlist was announced earlier this week, and it has now been revealed that the panel set to cast the final decision on which album will receive this year’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize will consist entirely of aurally challenged judges. The appointment of the hard-of-hearing jury is speculated to have been instigated in response to last year’s competition problems, during which several panel members were struck down with sickness and nausea caused by intense and prolonged exposure to Kasabian’s West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Further alarm bells were triggered in the process of compiling the shortlist for 2010’s award when several listeners contracted symptoms of bilharzial dysentery upon being forced to listen to the debut album of Mumford & Sons for the third time in a row.

The employment of deaf people in judging the prize may effect the criteria for winning the award, although nobody at the Mercury Prize has ever revealed what the criteria may consist of, or if there is any criteria at all. However, it seems that quality of the albums’ artwork will hold more sway than usual this year, as well as the quality of the lyrics (at least for those of the nominees who bothered to reproduce them in the liner notes). It is perhaps for reasons of aesthetics, then, that since the announcement of the deaf judges, the betting odds on the prize have changed rather dramatically. Previous favourites The xx have slipped to 200/1 on account of their cheap haircuts, visible zits, and inability to appear non-monochrome, whereas Laura Marling and Corrine Bailey Rae have shot up to joint favourites as the panel, although being all-deaf, is still ninety per cent male and are therefore expected to admire the view of both Marling and Rae’s seductively crossed, long, luscious, young legs as each takes her turn to timidly and unenthusiastically strum her acoustic guitar whilst sat atop the traditional female singer-songwriter quite-high-stool.

Fears that the panel might accidentally pick an album that might not in fact the best British record of the year on account of their deafness are said not be troubling the organisers of the prize; previous winners have included Suede, Elbow and M People.