If you don’t know who Glen beck is – here’s a primer. He’s an idiot right wing reactionary Fox News host with a penchant for crying like a kid with a scraped knee every time he thinks about how Communist the USA is becoming. Which is utterly ridiculous. He’s a bellend of epic proportions.
He also, weirdly, likes Muse. He seems to think there are messages in their lyrics warning of a terrifying Socialist conspiracy to enslave the world. Which fits right in with his thinking. Despite it being a load of old rubbish. And he enjoys the production values.

Muse evidently got wind of this and asked him to stop associating himself with their brand of accessible teen friendly modern prog rock.  Good for them. Hopefully they’ll pen a subtle track on their next album addressing Beck and his idiocy. Something understated. And classy.

Supermassive white asshole?

So the prize goes to…an artist no one has really heard of.

In all honesty Speech Debelle’s music isn’t bad – to my distinctly un – urban ears it sounds  what I’ve heard sounds like early hip – hop crossed with a bit of jazz. It isn’t horrible, paint by numbers indie or unlistenable experimaental dross, which is nice.

Van Canto covers Nightwish’s  Wishmaster

I always thought it would be cool to do an acapella metal song. I was very, very wrong. This is nerd metal to the power of nerd metal.

Tori Amos covers Slayer’s Raining Blood

Reigning queen of ‘alt’ – Tori Amos manages to take Slayer’s burst of frantic aggression and turn it into a haunting, terrifying and creepy piece of piano music. Impressive!

Manualist Covers Iron Maiden’s The Trooper

This man has a rare talent. And an amazing jumper.

Japanese Classical Group covers Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water

Classic songs know no language or genre as this proves in surreal effect.

Richard Cheese covers System Of A Down’s Chop Suey

The master of lounge shows those nu metal kids exactly how stupid those lyrics actually were.

Either way, to have it you have to sign up to Spotify Premium, which costs a tenner a month, and removes those pesky, if endearingly amateur adverts from you listening experience.

I’m going to try it out for a month and see what happens…

I’m not going to write anything about Michael Jackson’s funeral. Or more about Oasis split. So I present the best music video ever made. You’re welcome.

Josie and the Pussycats

More interested in solving mysteries than being musicians – as is the way of the Hanna – Barberra – verse, Josie and the Pussycats were a slightly too sexy for 70s Saturday morning TV all gir group with a nice line in Monkees esque guitar pop. Although only running for 16 original episodes they spawned a slightly too sexy for tweens movie in 2001…

DethKlok

Spend enough time with a metal fan and eventually they’ll drop a Metalocalypse quote into a conversation and giggle like a twat. DethKlok are the ultimate metal band – utterly ridiculous and stupid beyond words. But very funny. Their adventures in Metalocalypse usually revolve around being as ‘brootal’ as possible and inadvertently (or avertedly) killing off huge numbers of fans. It’s pretty much what is happening in the head of a fourteen year old kid with a Dying Fetus T Shirt.

Jem and the Holograms

So 80’s it actually hurts your brains a little bit Jem and the Holograms were the girly all singing all dancing answer to Sunbow Productions boycentric properties – Transformers and GI Joe. While all three were designed to sell dolls, only the boys shows went on to become mega popular, leaving Jem and co up obscurity alley. Most episodes involved Jem trying to put on a show or something, but having trouble from rival band – The Misfits (no, not them) – but Jem coming through in the end thanks to the power of massive hair and Keytars.

The Beets

Cult animated band from Nickelodeon wusstoon Doug – The Beets are a quite obvious parody of 60’s British invasion bands. However they did produce possibly the most catchy song ever in the form of ‘Killer Tofu’ – an earworm of epic proportions.

Cold Slither

A rock band formed be utterly insane terrorist organisation Cobra with deadly bike gang The Dreaknoks  manning the musical instruments, Cobra Commander as the manager and Desto writing subliminal message heavy music – Cold Slither are awesome. The Dreadnocks even sport prototype corpsepaint!

Although only featuring for one episode and used as another scheme to take over the world through subliminal messaging, Cold Slither get in the top five for sheer craziness.

So – Noel Gallagher has quit Oasis. A band that were culturally relevant about fifteen years ago, and have since produced a string of dishwater rock albums that failed to get anybody excited.

Noel claims “lack of support and understanding from my management and bandmates” as the main reason for leaving. Lack of support? For what? You’re IN THE BAND. Write a decent song or something. And it’s not like management have been dragging their feet booking them gigs.

More details have emmerged thought that point to the fact that Liam Gallagher was drunk and had a bit of an argument with his brother. About his fashion label.

It all sounds like the kind of thing that would happen between pissed up aunties at a wedding. Rock and roll it is not.

Great news for music loving gadget dorks (me included) as Spotify – the music streaming service, and best friend to the deskbound antisocial headphone sporting types (me again) comes to the iPhone. It basically means that for £10 a month, roughly, you can listen to whatever you want. Which is pretty decent.

Rather than take the time to explain how it all works – check out this handy video…

Pretty, swanky eh?

In a strange internet switcheroo, we’ve managed to grab an interview with music and celeb interviewer exraordianare – Matt Edmondson. Probably best known for his work making D list celebs sound interesting on Holy Moly TV, he has made a massive career switch and is now making D list musicians sound interesting on Sony Ericsson’s Pocket TV. We talk Mr T, Sneddon, fans, and why he is the next Richard Blackwood…

Hey Matt, hows things?

Very good thanks! I’m currently lying in my bed, awaiting the imminent arrival of grime artist ‘Kano’. Don’t worry- we’re not having an affair- he’s just, rather unusually, coming over to my flat to do an interview for Sony Ericsson’s Pocket TV show in which he will help me tidy up. I’ve never done an interview at my own house before, but the lazy part of me (98%) likes the idea a lot.

You’re probably best known as the face of Holy Moly TV – which celebrity was your worst interviewee? And on the other hand, who was the best?

The range of interview subjects on Holy Moly is very diverse, ranging the ‘big’ names like Sir Alan Sugar to the ‘ohmygodaretheystillalive?’ names such as Spike from 911 as well as everything in between. You often find the rudest, or most irritating interviewees are people who are new to it all- up and coming bands who like to talk all over each other, but generally everyone we’ve interviewed has been great, got the tone, played along and had an enjoyable time. It’s hard to pick a favourite- I loved the Sugababes- I got them to discuss Dave Berry breastfeeding, McFly were great (Dougie confessed that he liked to masturbate FOUR times a day) but my favourite was probably Mr T. He was exactly as you would imagine and tried desperately not to laugh throughout the interview, but I broke him! The worst was ‘Flo Rida’ the American rapper. He just had nothing to say. He was so, so, boring. I tried my hardest to coax something remotely fascinating out of him and it was a struggle.

Holy Moly is known for getting the best gossip – first. Got any gossip on the man himself Mr Holy Moly? There’s got to be some dirt there surely!

I am under strict mafia-like confidentiality agreements to reveal nothing about Mr HM. All I can say is that he is very well connected. If you work in the television, music, journalism or law you may have unknowingly met one of his ‘moles’- there are currently 146 secret informants who deliver gossip to him- none of them know each other, but Mr HM knows them all. He also has a beard, once appeared on Tiswas and plays the stylophone. Badly.

You’re a minor internet celebrity yourself now. Do you attract a particular type of fan?

I think even the phrase ‘minor internet celebrity’ is too strong! Most of the people who get in touch to say they like what I do are generally very nice and normal and polite, but they range from the very eloquent to the utterly unreadable. I’ve just gotten in to ‘Twitter’ and I often get messages that are so difficult to understand that it’s like trying to decipher the enigma code.

You now front Sony Ericsson’s Pocket TV interviewing musicians. What’s your take on the British music scene at the moment?

I think it’s in good shape- the charts are looking quite diverse and I think that’s a good thing. With the popularity of downloads, I think it’s become ‘all about the song’ , so if you’ve got a good record then you’ll do well. There are some very talented Brits out there; personally, I think Tinchy Stryder has had an amazing year so far and continues to surprise me with great record after great record.

Any bands you can recommend to our readers?

I’m tempted to send your readers off of a wild-goose-chase here e.g “There’s a guy called ‘David Sneddon’ that you should really check out…he’s AMAZING”

I am, in all seriousness, eager to see more of Taio Cruz’s solo work- he’s been producing a lot with Tinchy, but he’s a talented singer in his own right and knows how to deliver a catchy song. I am also excited about hearing the new stuff from Remi Nicole. I did some filming with her a few weeks ago and she was really good fun.

Any chance you’ll be moving into music yourself? It worked for Richard Blackwood!

My girlfriend confessed to me a few weeks ago that she’d once bought ‘1,2,3,4 Get with the Wicked’ by Richard Blackwood when she was younger. So, like rubbing a puppy’s face in it’s own poo to teach it a lesson, I made her listen to it on Spotify to remind her of the atrocity she part- funded. I don’t think a recording career is for me- I did an interview with Daniel Merriweather for Sony Ericsson’s Pocket TV where we wrote a song together and then I had to sing it back- it is one of the most audibly offensive things you could ever hear. It was, however, better than the solo material of Sid Owen.