Imagine you are Samsung, locked in battles with Apple all over the world for smartphone dominance. Sure, you might sell more phones, but Apple are making all the money and, even worse, getting all the cool kudos. You decide to spend $10 million dollars on a 90 second ad during the Superbowl to push your new product. Who should you call upon to front such a campaign? When times get tough, there's only one man for the job... it's an obvious choice... Justin Hawkins from The Darkness

It's February Album Writing Month - www.fawm.org - a challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days. I learned about this indirectly from a thread I started a year ago. In the intervening year I've been steeling myself up to maybe give it a go. Anyone else here have any form or curious to give it a try?

The votes are in!

Performer Category:
· Beastie Boys
· Donovan
· Guns N’ Roses
· Laura Nyro
· Red Hot Chili Peppers
· The Small Faces/The Faces

Early Influence:
· Freddie King

Ahmet Ertegun (nonperformer) Award:
· Don Kirshner

The Award for Musical Excellence:
· Cosimo Matassa
· Tom Dowd
· Glyn Johns

Guns N' Roses??!!??! That makes me feel old as it's the first time I can personally recall the debut of an RNRHOF inductee.

Oh yeah and: Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Once again, The Monkees have been robbed.

From The Who to U2, our children's children will remember the Christmas shopping season of 2011 as a time of crazy box sets and repackaging. So, has anyone of the massive taken a punt on Pink or spend a good bit on The Smiths?

Me? I just spent £20 to get all 11 ELO records in a box. Bargain!

Image linked from www.spincds.com

Well would you look at this lovely thing...

http://theseconddisc.com/2011/10/26/costellos-wheel-good-tour-captured-o...

*edit* It's $250! Oh well. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005O607UI

For a long time I thought that the Floyd catalogue needed a bells and whistles upgrade and when the initial announcement was made of the Why Pink Floyd? Campaign in May, I got excited.

As the release approached and track-listings, etc became clearer I feel that they missed a trick and squandered an opportunity to do it right.  Obviously a lot of work has gone in to all this.  Someone has shaken the tree to get some unreleased material and I can't remark on the quality of the sound, it's just the price and organisation I have a problem with.

The single disc Discovery reissues, fine.  The album is the album, there's no arguing with that.

The Discovery box looks nice.  It's looks like better value than the big single album boxes.  However, even though the discs inside the box are the single-disc vanilla versions, there's nothing that collects the non-album tracks like Relics or some kind of Son-Of-Relics.  So, £125 and you don't get Arnold Layne or See Emily Play?  What is point?

The bonus-disc experience editions - they made a mistake only releasing three albums this way.  They should have released the whole catalog with single bonus disc edition for each title.  There's enough stuff there: Mono Piper, 1968 radio sessions, live versions of Atom Heart Mother, stand-alone singles, etc.  Then put them all in a box set and sell that - that would have been good.

Then there's the Immersion editions.  I've embedded in the main thread a YouTube video of someone unboxing the DSOTM experience edition. It looks kinda poor.  The scarf's in a plastic bag, two of the discs are in slipcases, four of them are mounted at the back of the box and have come loose.  What a pain.  The Paul McCartney deluxe editions that have come out ithe last year is how these should have been packaged: Beautiful book which actually has something to read in it, four discs, £50. For the DSOTM Immersion, strip out the DVD Audio and Bluray and package if like this:

I also think they should have done Immersion editions of Piper and Animals. 

By having Experience editions and Immersion editions of the same three records, you feel that they fall between two stools and neither is satisfactory. 

If they had taken out the audiophiles discs from the Immersion boxes then they could have created a separate audiophile box of all the albums on DVD audio/Bluray for the people who like that kind of thing.  Interestingly, there doesn't appear to be a Bluray disc in the upcoming Wall Immersion edition, just two CDs of demos - that's good.  

I know I should care as much about the impending financial collapse as I do about this, but some things are more important. Fans, eh? So ungrateful.

It was a rather enjoyable evening with Pink Floyd on BBC4 last Friday, but it made me rethink the received wisdom about that Floyd period of 1982-1987. 

To synopsise what happened:
The Wall movie, The Final Cut, Floydy solo albums get released, Waters leaves Pink Floyd, assuming the band will fold behind him, Gilmour works on a solo album which morphs into the next Pink Floyd record, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is released, sells a lot.  Radio KAOS is released, sells a little, Gilmour's Floyd tours the world.  Prints money.

That's what happened, but the narrative that gets put with those events is that Mad Rog took over Pink Floyd, released a rubbish Floyd record, them left the band on a low.  Then the scrappy underdogs, Mason & Gilmour come from behind to conquer the world. Hooray for them.  Take that Waters!

But it's not true, is it?

If you were Roger Waters in 1982, why shouldn't you think you were the leader of Floyd? For four years you had created and lead a project that had sold 20 million records, demonstrated to the most technically advanced stage show of all time and had it all turned into a movie.  I think that might let you assume you could do it again. 

The Final Cut is a fine record, although understandably less popular. Waters manages to capture the dawning of neoconservatives dismantling the post war state.  The lead single off A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was about flying lessons. 

Is AMLOR really a fondly remembered Floyd record? Surely the only reason that post-1987 Floyd is deemed a success was the associated mega-tour.  The first proper Floyd live hits show. 

In short, can we rewrite the narrative: The Final Cut is not a bad record.  The Waters-less Floyd were diminished and going through the motions. 

DISCUSS!

Now and then an artist releases something that is just a bit different from what they normally do.

Exhibit A:
Monty Python's Flying Circus, Series 3, The Cycling Tour, wherein the Always Look On The Bright Side of Life Hitmakers forego their usual stream of consciousness sketch format and try to craft a 30 minute whole:
http://youtu.be/Grad9m2K5g0

Exhibit B:
HJH - You Know My Name, Look Up The Number - More fun and interesting than its A-side.
http://youtu.be/UrGFhY8uZOU

Any other examples of this kind of thing...

About 25 years ago, when I became musically cognisant and started to buy proper records, the received wisdom was that the best Beatles record was Sgt Pepper.  This opinion seemed to shift in the 90's towards Revolver and then it seemed that, no, Abbey Road is the one.  Personally, I still think Sgt Pepper is the one, or if not, the correct answer is A Hard Day's Night. 

Anyway, the question is: are there any other examples of rock revisionism out there?

Brief, but I thought it might interest the Massive:

Driving to work this morning REM's The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight was on the radio and I realised I hadn't listened to Automatic For The People in a long, long time - but it is an album I loved and listened to a lot when it came out.

It got me thinking that there are albums that come up over and over as "classics", "top 100 of all time" etc and I'm not trying to start a thread against these records, but rather highlight records where you might feel "yes, that's a very good record but I haven't heard it in a long time and I really have no need to listen to it right now, thanks"

I mean, I think I don't need to hear Pet Sounds again. Anyone know what I'm on about?

Oh hello, this looks interesting...

http://wp.me/pLF46-208

As the reality of my three-day work week kicks in, let's do a head count of who's going. Starting with: Me (it's Glasto #3)

(last minute advice/suggestions welcome too)

I've been listening to a lot of The Move recently. A lot. Plenty of great songs. However it struck me that their biggest hit, Blackberry Way, is also their best song. It's a perfect bridge between their early pop-psychedelia and their later rock stylings with a timeless production by Jimmy Miller. 

Compare that with Steely Dan. Apparently their biggest UK hit is... Haitian Divorce, a number 17 smash.  I wouldn't put it anywhere near being the best SD track. 

So when is an act's biggest hit their best song? Oliver's Army? Mull of Kintyre? This Charming Man?

This morning I woke up to find that Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips had sent me a DM on Twitter responding to a kind, but dull, tweet I sent his way. Needless to say, I was tickled no end by this correspondence and once again I marvelled at the wonder of Twitter.

Anybody else got any stories of Twitter interactions? A tweet from you idol... or nemesis..?