The shit album with one decent track is under threat as an institution, and it’s all the fault of the cursed intertubes.
The ability to download individual tracks from albums means that consumers of music no longer have to tolerate shelling out for a big old pile of album filler just to get that one totally, totally awesome song they heard on the Glastonbury coverage. And that, quite frankly, is cheating. The internet is making us stupid, weak and complacent.
A recent Guardian article drew the attention to this.
A comprehensive guide to the Britpop years. Hey, everybody! Remember ‘Britpop’? Crap, wasn’t it?
“Well, that depends”, you may respond, “on whether you construct a picture of an era from various sell-through compilations and poorly-recalled media events or whether you maintain a vivid, quasi-synesthetic recollection of the era in your own imagination.”
Finally, the sun is shining, which means it must be festival season. All across the land, students are updating their FB status to tell you just how AMAAAAAAAZING Download is gonna be because NIN are on, only to change it to inform you how awesome Def Leppard were when they get back. Bestival go-ers are packing their pickernick baskets, and the interminable hordes of morons who spent £100 on a Glasto ticket BEFORE THEY ANNOUNCED WHO WAS PLAYING are polishing their finest paisley patterned wellies.
This Week: Iron Maiden!
1: Despite being a professional pilot in his spare time, Iron Maiden’s diminutive frontman Bruce Dickinson actually suffers from a crippling fear of heights. “I just don’t like looking down, that’s why I never grew taller” said the pint-sized air raid siren.
2: Maiden’s legendary manager Rod Smallwood is actually the proud owner of a small wood. After buying several hundred acres of the New Forest in 2001, Rod had every single pony driven out or shot. “I’ve never trusted their long faces” Said the grumpy impresario.
3: The South American leg of Maiden’s mammoth 1980’s ‘Somewhere In Time’ took a turn for the worse when the band stopped at a roadside stall to buy some Strawberries. Unfortunately they ended up blowing the next month’s tour budget when an accounting error left the band not realising that Ecuador’s exchange rate is the wrong way round, meaning each punnet cost nearly £30,000!
