'Bromantic comedy' appears to be the latest hip genre tag to come out of Hollywood. I can't seem to make it through a Sunday paper lifestyle column of late without some arch and ironic reference to 'bromance' - ie the platonic manly love between a bloke and his buddy/chum/mate/bro/transatlantic political counterpart.
This stared with movies, but why stop ther? Surely there's an awesome bromantic mixtape to be made full of soppy songs by men about men.
It would surely include May You Never by John Martyn, and I'm sure My Brother Jake by Free would fit in nicely.
What else?

I know it's a stupid question, but don't analyse it or think about it, just say the first one that pops into your head.

I'll start.

Fairport Convention - Now Be Thankful.

It occured to me while listening to Thunder Road by The Boss in the car recently that if I had never heard it before and someone told me it was by Meatloaf then I wouldn't bat an eyelid.
Similarly every time I hear Rebel Rebel on the radio it always takes until half way through the song before I remember that it isn't by The Stones. And I confess that for quite some time I thought Cool For Cats was by Madness.
Any other songs by one artist that could easily be someone else's?

I learnt - via the Saturday Guardian magazine - that Eric Carle, who wrote The Very Hungry Caterpiller, gets 10,000 letters a year from children and he employs two people to respond to them.

You?

Listening to the podcast from a couple of weeks ago (I'm a bit slow) about the state of the record and live music industries I had a rather good idea.
As Hepworth rightly pointed out, if you have a bad gig experience who do you complain to at the end of the night? Barely a week goes by without someone posting on this forum some unpleasant gigging experience they've had, from bad sound to tardy performers and chattering fellow punters.
The music industry now survives because of its live revenue, so perhaps they should start taking their customers a little more seriously.
So I propose a watchdog to look out for our rights. An independent organisation that puts pressure on venues and performers to give us our money's worth. Someone who will pick up our complaints. Someone who will campaign on our behalf about noise levels, drinks prices, starting and finishing times, overcharging, touting, poor festival facilities etc.
This could be paid for by simply addding ten pence onto every gig ticket sold in the country, I'm pretty sure no-one would mind shelling out that bit extra.
Obviously it would require either an act of parliament or the voluntary agreement of everyone in the live music industry, but I'm pretty sure it would benefit both the industry, the artists and the gig goers in the long run.
What say you?

Is this the most tedious, pointless waste of ones and zeros ever to grace the music pages of a national newspaper website?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/10/oasis-best-gigs-mc...

I'm not sure if it made it into the print version of the Guardian (I can see one from where I'm sitting but I'm just to lazy to go and check), but if it did then that surely has to be the most worthless sheet of paper in existence.

The media celebrity faux pas are coming thick and fast. First Ross and Brand, then Carol Thatcher, now Clarkson. So how about we cut to the chase and create the world's most explosive media celebrity faux pas ever, get someone to say it within earshot of a Daily Mail journo and then everything else will seem tame in comparison so they'll have to stop reporting them.
I think we can acheive this by amalgamating some of the individual faux pas into one giant one. Eg 'I f*cked your one eyed golliwog grandaughter!'.
Can anyone beat that?

Anyone else just listened to this on Radio 2?
I thought James Taylor was on top form and whatever that lifetime acheivement award means I can't think of anyone more deserving. But Judy Collins reminded me once again what a totally pointless cover of Both Sides Now hers is.
A couple of other points. Mike Harding used to be a 'comedy folk singer' or so all the second hand vinyl in cardboard boxes at car boot sales seem to suggest. Well he seems like a lovely bloke - in fact he nicked my hat once backstage at a folk festival and I felt quite honoured - but I don't think I've ever heard him tell a joke during his entire time as folk overlord of the BBC.
Also somebody making a speech was saying how broad folk has become and how wonderful that is. Well, actually no it isn't, and personally speaking I think it's about time it stopped. Eliza Carthy's nominated album is not a folk album - that doesn't bother me, she can do what she likes, but there are plenty of very skilled traditional musicians out there who have lost out on a nomination and all the help that can bring a struggling artist just because the folk mafia have decided she has to be there because of who her parents are. Also, Jim Moray, Imagined Village, Simon Emmerson, et al - I have no issue with electronica or hip hop beats - but it always sounds rubbish when tacked onto the side of a folk song. Always. And the only reason no-one ever points it out is because they don't want to be shouted down as a fusty old traditionalist. I like real ale and morris dancing and songs about Jacobite rebellions - but maybe that's not cool enough for the BBC sponsored folk scene anymore.

Does anyone love pictures of snow as much as me? I hope so. I had to dig the car out this morning and drove to work through black slush at 15 mph.

Here's the a view from the office window as I was making a round of tea. I think I'll give my planned lunchtime picnic a miss today.

What does it look like where you are?

Spotify has been forced to remove thousands of tracks and restrict many thousands more in certain countries.

http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/01/28/some-important-changes-t...

Does this mean that the petty politics and outdated attitude of the music industry has stalled soemthing that could genuinely move things forward for online music distribution? Or was it all just too good to be true all along?

There's an article on Aunty's website here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7844192... which contains the following quote,

"the provocatively-named Paris band Nelson (the Admiral, not Mr Mandela is who they have in mind) whose frontman J.B. sings in English because, he says, French does not have the right cadences for true rock."

Well that got me thinking. I recently chatted with a Danish singer who told me that Danish was totally unsuited to songwriters. Firstly the number of words to choose from is a fraction of what is on offer in an English dictionary, and also the meanings of words are much more prescriptive. So for instance, she told me, you really couldn't sing about loving something or someone in Danish because it's a very serious word. Saying you love your dog in Denmark is either very strange or somewhat perverted.

So does all this mean that English is the natural language of rock and roll? And is that why British and American bands have ruled the world of rock for so long - because we have the advantage of a mother tongue which just happens to be sealed within the DNA of pop music like no other? Perhaps someone can provide an example of a great rock song in a language other than English to prove this theory wrong...

Having downloaded Spotify and got that small-boy-in-a-sweetshop feeling I'm wondering where all this is leading.
CD sale are falling, record shops are closing, music is being downloaded illegally everywhere and there's no way anyone can stop it. Add in a way anyone can stream any music for free (although, crucially, not yet on your ipod) and the inevitable conclusion is surely that all music will soon be free.
So how will this change the way we listen to music?
For me personally I'm worried that it will mean I never listen to the same album twice. As there's a gigantically enormous amount of albums I have access to I will stupidly actually try and listen to them all. This will eliminate that phenomenon whereby you download an album or buy a CD, listen to it once and decide it's not great and then rediscover it again a year later via shuffle or after a CD shelf clearout and find that it's amazing (some examples for me personally include The Shins, Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens).
But it will also be a great leveller. All of a sudden the tiniest little obscure act will be just as accessible as Jay Z or Robbie Williams or Girls Aloud. And because it's all free there'll be no reason for record companies to spend money promoting any of it.
To be honest, it’s starting to make my brain hurt a bit just thinking about it.

Interesting article on the Grauniad website here about how internet 'buzz' around certain artists is all a load of hot air most of the time.

Given past stories like how Sandie Thom's massive internet fanbase was all cooked up by a PR company and the absurd amount of stories written when the Arctic Monkeys came out about the band distributing their music free via the internet (they didn't), can we beleive anything we hear about bands who are apparently creating a buzz on the web?

Bloggers have to get the tracks they post from somewhere and most of the time it's from a PR firm. Anyone can easily download programmes that artificially clock up play rates on their MySpace tracks or harvest users and send them 'freind' requests so these stats are essentially meaningless.

So should we believe the bloggers or are we having the net pulled over our eyes?

Yesterday, thanks to Whisperin' Bob Harris, I was completely bowled over by a track from soulful bluegrass bunch The Steeldrivers. Checking them out this morning on MySpace I was bowled over once again, they really are damn fine. Listen for yourself.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendI...

Also recently, possibly via this blog I can't remember, I discovered Malcolm Holcombe and his great album Gamblin' House - gritty, gruff voiced string band delightfulness. Somewhere between Rod Stewart and Tom Waits singing Steve Earle songs on a battered old acoustic guitar with his drunken mates on fiddle and banjo.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendi...

Another recent find - thanks again Radio 2, Mark Lamarr this time - is the beautiful Eilen Jewell. Not that new and I'm sure I'm a bit of a Johnny come lately but her album Letters From Saints and Stranglers is filling a Honky tonk Gillian Welch shaped hole in my life currently.

Anyone else got any new recomendations from the world of country music? I'de love to hear them.

The publicity for Billy Ocean’s new UK tour proclaims him to be ‘the biggest black recording artist the UK has ever produced’.
Now at first I thought this was a rather mighty claim, but on closer inspection it would appear to hold some water.
I have no idea how they calculate ‘bigness’ – record sales? Critical acclaim? Longevity? Global appeal? – but whatever method they use he certainly has a fair claim. Six top ten hits in the UK and three number ones in the US, a household name and still going strong, although nowhere near as high profile as he was in the 80s.
But who are the challengers for this fanciful title?
Phil Lynott was, of course, not British. Joan Armatrading enjoys popularity in the US but has never sold enough records to compete. Lemar, Dizzee and Leona haven’t been around long enough. Craig David never had staying power. We can’t claim Hendrix even though the Experience was, arguably, a British group. Or Bob Marley even though his dad was Scottish.
So who else? Eddy Grant? Seal perhaps? Gabrielle maybe? Or is Billy’s boast unbeatable?
And why such a paltry list of contenders?