If you’ve ever read this blog before (which I doubt many people have) then you’ll know I’ve got a real thing about nostalgia. That Laurel Canyon experience is something that’s intrigued me for years now and there’s an undeniable aura of freedom and happiness that follows the scene of this period (and some incredibly dark ones, I know). Yet I always find myself going back to these past troubadours whose knowledge, experience, tolerance and bare talent will override anything you hear in modern music.
Here I’ve gone back to Little Feat. Not a band of the Canyon era and not a hipster California outfit, yet they’re a country howling outfit who exude sincerity and warmth and depth. This video’s hardly from their prime but it’s a gorgeous tale none the less.
Friday, 22 October 2010
A Different Kind Of Daydream
For three decades The Grateful Dead have expanded their trippy mindsets via hallucinogenic additives and by faithfully loosing themselves in their doped up hippy psych-folk fest, and finally, or though I’m rather resentful to declare, I have willingly and rewardingly immersed myself in their extensive back catalogue. With an expansive collection of studio albums and an even more impressive anthology of ’live’ experiences to bury yourself into, you really would be a fool to overlook these impromptu Technicolor instrumental journeys of love, life and all things incredible hippy.
Friday, 8 October 2010
The X Factor - The End Of Society
For the past few years, every Sunday morning, I’ve had to bite my tongue around even my closest of friends. If dealing with a hangover and a mouth like an ashtray wasn’t enough, I‘ve been subjected to listen to my deluded buddies chatter incessantly about The X Factor.
From my vaguest of memories I can remember a few things, primarily that I have always despised Baked Beans and The X Factor. And recently, after seeing countless posts and tactless feeds on my Facebook and in newspapers about this abomination of a program I began to question why I’m friends with so many of these people, but this got me in trouble before, so rather than rant until I’m blue in the face I thought I’d put it in words and post it through every letter box in the world, if I ever get round to it that is.
Arguments have ensued before with myself and my friends and my friends friends et al. and I’ve never had enough time or evidence to convince these duped individuals why this program is so god damn unpleasant and why it’s the beginning of the end of everything we’ve ever fucking adored. So with a world of information at my keyboard I’m going to give it a go, but I genuinely think it will have no effect, but what the hell, I’ve done my bit for society, right?
The X Factor began in 2004, the illegitimate brother of Pop Idol fame it immediately secured it’s prime time slot on Saturday night television, and rightly so. It claims around 12 million viewers per series, and if people want to waste their lives away watching this anti-reality then be my guest. However, since 2004 and the vigorous sessions, the tears, the scandals and the awful Sharon Osbourne, The X Factor has presented the music industry, and society respectively, with the likes of Steve Brookstein, Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson ( I don’t even know who this person is), Alexandra Burke and the captivating Joe McEldery. Well well, I could stop there, but I wont….
Leona Lewis, fair play on that one. She’s not my cup of tea but she’s certainly the biggest success story that this program has produced. She does have a fantastic voice and a slight personality about her, and in all honesty she sings songs written by other talented individuals hidden behind the ghost writers screen very well, but I can’t deny that she’s a golden girl. That ‘Keep Bleeding’ song, or whatever it was called, hit the charts harder than a re-mastered Elvis record and stayed there for longer than all of the other winners musical products put together. Her due success has shaped her into a popstar as well. She’s got better with experience, and although this does include the unjust demanding diva in her, I can’t complain as she slips into the pop industry of today faster than an England international and a ropey of fifty quid brass.
But then there’s the others. All of them. Steve Brookstein, the middle aged balding twerp with a grin like Zippy from Rainbow. He now sings Sinatra covers in Pizza Express, I hope Cowell’s still getting his cut. In what complex strata of humanity did anyone anywhere in England believe that this was the undiscovered gem of talent that had been kept secret from us? And who on earth thought that this man ‘had it’? he’s got a future on a cruise ship, better still, overboard one.
Next up, Mr Shayne Ward - now I had to google his whereabouts. Well the Manchester born All Saints clone is currently working on his third album which he’s originally titled, ’Obsession’ - no narcissism involved there. This record is sure to be a delight, and although I was half hoping he was now homeless or dead or something along those lines, I’ll admit that I am not surprised he’s still allowed to make music because after all we recently let a Nazi pope into our non Catholic country and judges all over the country are re-housing paedophiles near schools without really thinking, so you come to expect these things. I also googled teasers from his new record, out of curiosity more than anything, and it’s good people - it sounds a bit like someone farting in a jar. But one thing that pleased me about Ward was his consistently chart-slipping releases. He started with a number one and slowly the positions began to tumble like a fat kid down a hill. His third single, ‘Stand By Me’ (Ouch!), only reached number 14, such a shame. Luckily for us though, he did beat Journey South to win the X Factor, well, lucky for you I mean because if those two would’ve won I might have pulled a Columbine stunt of sorts.
Number three on my list is Leon Jackson. Not only did I have to google this bellend but I also had to dig up fucking relics to prove his pathetic existence. The first thing that caught my eye was a double figured number, 94. This was where Mr Jackson’s third single entered the charts. It was called ‘Creative’, remember? No? well we’ve got a lot on our plate. It makes you ponder really, all those people watching the 2007 X Factor religiously, praying for their contestant to emerge victorious, praising their every performance in front of that little dumpy Irish man, the man who ruined music with his trousers ever so high and that prostitute with the purple wig who used to fuck rock stars. I’m sure one or two of you must have thought this guy was the real deal?! Hold up! Thousands of you must have thought that, after all that’s the purpose of this program, to find the next big thing right? Or is there a time frame on that? ‘YOU COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING FOR AROUND A WEEK IF YOU ENTER THE X FACTOR NOW!’.
Let me just show you a little extract about…Leon is it? Well here’s what it said…
“In 2010, Leon Jackson embarked on a new journey, he has became a real 'jeans and t-shirt' artist, gave up his pop-jazz material and is now a singer/songwriter working on guitar and piano led music. Over the last year he has been crafting songs that uncover the last few years life, love and dreams. Jackson has also worked with American artists to produce acoustic songs as well as writing some himself”
Well done Leon Jackson! You working class mother fucker you! He might actually be onto something here, songs about love, life and dreams? I’m losing all faith in humanity. Since the beginning of music people have poured every ounce of passion and soul in their body into writing songs about their far more interesting, debauched, enigmatic and poignant lives - and now this smarmy little gob shite has decided to up sticks, kick of his Dunhill and write some blue collar songs about his fucking troubles? Give me a break, it makes me feel physically sick and fist-throwingly violent all at once.
See what the X Factor does is it glorifies the mediocre actions of worthless morons such as Leon Jackson and Steve Brookstein and it transcends them to you, the handfed hypnotised audience, bags it up in a commercial wrapper made of deceit, lies and the ill informed notion of talent and delivers it right to you with a label on it telling you that ‘this is good’ - because you need to be told what it is, you need to be pointed in the direction of what these money hungry moguls have now contorted into supposed talent - when all it remains is excessive commercialism in a shiny box for people who have lost their way with real music.
Then there was Alexandra Burke, not only is she a clone of Lewis but she also committed one of the biggest sins of the century when she left her shit stained mark on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Halleluiah’. This delicately enigmatic piece of song writing beauty was tarnished by the over produced screech of this incredibly dull individual. Not only am I bemused at the fact that Cohen gave consent for this monstrosity to be released to the masses, but I’m also stunned at the fact that in 24 hours it sold over 105,000 copies - and no, popularity doesn’t country for very much when we consider that both The Cheeky Girls and Katie Price released a single that reached the top ten. Also, I doubt that many people know this is even a cover.
But she was just what we needed. Another scantily clad, bone-skinny dullard singing yet more covers. I’ve seen enough smouldering faces staring down the camera with wind blowing through their extension filled hair to last me a life time, and if I do end up going to hell for my sins they’ll probably just sit me in front of a tv screen for 23 hours a day and show me these punch-worthy faces over and over until I end up hanging myself with a novelty Jedward skipping rope - what a way to go.
Before I get to last years winner, lets talk about the current panel of judges. Although I loathe Simon Cowell and what he’s done to the industry you have to pay give him his dues. He’s a clever chap. He knows how to work the industry, he knows how to pick a hit song, but he is literally the only man who deserves a place on the board of judges.
In regards to everyone I’ve ever spoken to about this program, I can honestly say that no one on the face of this planet, except house-bound middle aged women with lots of cats, give one solitary shit what Louie Walsh has to say. His input is about as useful as giving a rapist the benefit of the doubt. He mumbles his fruitless comments with zero sincerity, he’s wet and useless. I really don’t like him, but no one does so I’ll leave him alone.
Now for the ladies. Although we’d all like to wake up next to a face like Cheryl Cole’s on a daily basis we can’t deny the fact that she is in fact a melodramatic cunt. Her evaluating expressions are far from convincing and the fact that she married a footballer like Ashley Cole shows she’s hardly a good judge of character, let alone a judge worthy of notifying talent. Malaria or no malaria, she’s not fit for any form of authority when it concerns other people’s livelihood. Slag.
And Danni Minogue. Her sister’s a star, she however, is not. I wasn’t even aware of her past achievements prior to this show until I scoured the internet for dirt, as per. Apparently she started off in TV and film, well that slipped past me. I thought to myself, if we’re talking the small screen that inhabits your living room then it’s got to be one of two programs. ‘Neighbours’ or ‘Home and Away’ - it was ‘Home and Away’. Hardly a pedestal for permission exposing clout. Who thought this would be a good idea? Right, picture Cowell and his followers in the penthouse boardroom of Psycho Records in London. Swanky and covered in marble and ivory and the bones of children, they discuss possible candidates for the job…’Who do we know who has a lot of experience in show biz? Who’s got that certain flair of indefinable brilliance? Who has the intellect to splash their ideologies into controversial situations?’ and the answer was a ‘Home and Away’ veteran who was in the stage show of ‘Grease’, were they high? I’d have to be high to sit through that tripe, and I usually am.
If I bare the bones of my honesty in true guilty fashion, I’ll compromise with one point that people continually bring up when jabbering about the hullabaloo of the X Factor, ‘But it’s entertaining!’ they cry. Well, let me raise a few issues on this.
One big seller for this program lies in humiliating the future mass-murdering odd balls who hit the stage in the audition period of the show. Every year they crawl out from under their rocks to reassure us that England still has the ability to produce a high quantity of seriously outlandish, peculiar and often plain menacing individuals. They screech their way through Robbie Williams ‘Angles’, they howl like horny hounds through Take That’s ‘Rule The World’ and occasionally a duo of midriff-exposing over weight teenagers with Big Mac stains down their tracksuits with drawl over a Pussycat Dolls cover. Sure it’s funny. Anything that mugs off strange people in front of an audience is funny, but there’s three audition stages prior to the television appearances. The problem with this returns to what I was talking about earlier regarding the handfed audience. This is the X Factor, once again, controlling what you view, how you view it and it’s revoltingly manipulated so that you see what they want you to see - what else are they hiding from you?
I’m not against anyone having fun. Each to their own, right? Fair enough it’s primary purpose is entertaining, especially the freaks - they‘re amusing to a certain extent, So why get carried away? One of the things that vexes me more than anything, and this goes for Britians Got Talent as well, is that the susceptible audiences who grace these shows are literally so devoid of any rich and fulfilling that they see it fit to rise on their chubby little ankles to give anything with a remote hint of tone a standing ovation. This dim-witted reaction has numbed the potency of a deserved retort when someone viable actually twaddle’s along. Oh and they now use auto-tune during the first television auditions, for those of you who don’t know what that is, here’s an explanation…
“Auto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform perfectly tuned vocal tracks without the need of singing in tune.”
So to put simple for all you Jeremy Kyle fans and X Factor obsessive’s, it helps those who cannot sing sound near-perfect, followed by Mr Walsh exclaiming, ‘I tink you made de song your own’. Of course they did tubs - queue standing ovation.
I’ll compromise further still. I agree that a number of the people who go on this show can sing, some of them very well. However, rather than moan about the fact that there are countless other people out there on cruise ships, in pubs, in casinos and in back street music venues who can hit a note just as well as these people (because there are), I’ll argue that there’s more to this elusive x factor than clearing your pipes like Tina Turner. We have to understand that a powerful voice, cringingly spouted out at its highest possible velocity, isn’t an indication of conviction - it’s merely a peripheral frill with the primary function of flaunting the one dimensional ability of a totally boring twat. A good voice is a good voice, the x factor, if there is such a thing, is an indescribable spark of beauty that triggers Goosebumps on your skin, a presence that wells up your tear ducts with something so heartfelt that it surely can’t be bottled up and sold by the mass. (see The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones et al).
Last Saturday I was in the pub with a friend. In front of us, on a screen the size of a bus was X Factor, in all its superficial glory. On stepped a girl, a blonde girl with a silly umbrella who was wearing too much make up and had a bit of a Jimmy Hill going on. Now this girl has a distinctly average voice and a less than average face, however I believe it was because this girl looked a little different to the other chumps who grace this visionary program that she was given a shot. She didn’t have a skirt creeping up her buttocks and she wasn’t into ‘R ‘n’ B’ - wowza. But here’s the thing with this grubby little 80s throwback who believes her individualism is key to her success - walk down any university hall or street in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Brighton blah blah, you’ll see an exact clone of this social faux pas minus the voice but double the personality and authenticity. She’s no more than a gimmick who is hoodwinked by her own image, which by the way is diabolical because she’s obsessed with Madonna and all things 80s. Vomit.
It’s difficult to write something with balance when you dislike something so much. I’ve tried to show both sides of this show and even a dashing of compromise here and there, along with a smattering of sarcasm, apparently. But its tough for me - I just hate the false entity that runs through the artificial veins of this apocalyptic beginning. I do understand that its entertaining, but a lot of things are entertaining - throwing rocks at cats is one, lighting a paper bag full of human turds and placing it on your teachers door step while watching them stamp it out, shaving your drunken friends head and writing ‘Penis’ on his forehead, hurling abuse at lowlifes from your speeding car window and also farting on people - that‘s one of the best. But what is more entertaining than all of that is music with heart. Good music that invokes nostalgia, because that means the world to more people than the retarded z list celebrities who coast this show. Ask yourself, do you genuinely think the ‘original’ Ollie Murrs will make a seminal record? Will you go and see him live? Will Leona pen a ditty that with bring tears to the eyes of the future generations? Will Leon Jackson…oh fuck Leon, he’s not going to do anything, but you get my point. This isn’t real, it’s the beginning of the end.
Oh, and I didn’t bother with that Joe chap who won last year because I can only insult these bottom-feeders so much, oh and i was sooooooo surprised he 'came out' (because we were all fucking stunned at that one, it was like when H from Steps came out on Big Brother - we know, we don’t care and, no, it wont appeal to a homosexual audience so you literally have no niche. Tough break).
From my vaguest of memories I can remember a few things, primarily that I have always despised Baked Beans and The X Factor. And recently, after seeing countless posts and tactless feeds on my Facebook and in newspapers about this abomination of a program I began to question why I’m friends with so many of these people, but this got me in trouble before, so rather than rant until I’m blue in the face I thought I’d put it in words and post it through every letter box in the world, if I ever get round to it that is.
Arguments have ensued before with myself and my friends and my friends friends et al. and I’ve never had enough time or evidence to convince these duped individuals why this program is so god damn unpleasant and why it’s the beginning of the end of everything we’ve ever fucking adored. So with a world of information at my keyboard I’m going to give it a go, but I genuinely think it will have no effect, but what the hell, I’ve done my bit for society, right?
The X Factor began in 2004, the illegitimate brother of Pop Idol fame it immediately secured it’s prime time slot on Saturday night television, and rightly so. It claims around 12 million viewers per series, and if people want to waste their lives away watching this anti-reality then be my guest. However, since 2004 and the vigorous sessions, the tears, the scandals and the awful Sharon Osbourne, The X Factor has presented the music industry, and society respectively, with the likes of Steve Brookstein, Shayne Ward, Leona Lewis, Leon Jackson ( I don’t even know who this person is), Alexandra Burke and the captivating Joe McEldery. Well well, I could stop there, but I wont….
Leona Lewis, fair play on that one. She’s not my cup of tea but she’s certainly the biggest success story that this program has produced. She does have a fantastic voice and a slight personality about her, and in all honesty she sings songs written by other talented individuals hidden behind the ghost writers screen very well, but I can’t deny that she’s a golden girl. That ‘Keep Bleeding’ song, or whatever it was called, hit the charts harder than a re-mastered Elvis record and stayed there for longer than all of the other winners musical products put together. Her due success has shaped her into a popstar as well. She’s got better with experience, and although this does include the unjust demanding diva in her, I can’t complain as she slips into the pop industry of today faster than an England international and a ropey of fifty quid brass.
But then there’s the others. All of them. Steve Brookstein, the middle aged balding twerp with a grin like Zippy from Rainbow. He now sings Sinatra covers in Pizza Express, I hope Cowell’s still getting his cut. In what complex strata of humanity did anyone anywhere in England believe that this was the undiscovered gem of talent that had been kept secret from us? And who on earth thought that this man ‘had it’? he’s got a future on a cruise ship, better still, overboard one.
Next up, Mr Shayne Ward - now I had to google his whereabouts. Well the Manchester born All Saints clone is currently working on his third album which he’s originally titled, ’Obsession’ - no narcissism involved there. This record is sure to be a delight, and although I was half hoping he was now homeless or dead or something along those lines, I’ll admit that I am not surprised he’s still allowed to make music because after all we recently let a Nazi pope into our non Catholic country and judges all over the country are re-housing paedophiles near schools without really thinking, so you come to expect these things. I also googled teasers from his new record, out of curiosity more than anything, and it’s good people - it sounds a bit like someone farting in a jar. But one thing that pleased me about Ward was his consistently chart-slipping releases. He started with a number one and slowly the positions began to tumble like a fat kid down a hill. His third single, ‘Stand By Me’ (Ouch!), only reached number 14, such a shame. Luckily for us though, he did beat Journey South to win the X Factor, well, lucky for you I mean because if those two would’ve won I might have pulled a Columbine stunt of sorts.
Number three on my list is Leon Jackson. Not only did I have to google this bellend but I also had to dig up fucking relics to prove his pathetic existence. The first thing that caught my eye was a double figured number, 94. This was where Mr Jackson’s third single entered the charts. It was called ‘Creative’, remember? No? well we’ve got a lot on our plate. It makes you ponder really, all those people watching the 2007 X Factor religiously, praying for their contestant to emerge victorious, praising their every performance in front of that little dumpy Irish man, the man who ruined music with his trousers ever so high and that prostitute with the purple wig who used to fuck rock stars. I’m sure one or two of you must have thought this guy was the real deal?! Hold up! Thousands of you must have thought that, after all that’s the purpose of this program, to find the next big thing right? Or is there a time frame on that? ‘YOU COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING FOR AROUND A WEEK IF YOU ENTER THE X FACTOR NOW!’.
Let me just show you a little extract about…Leon is it? Well here’s what it said…
“In 2010, Leon Jackson embarked on a new journey, he has became a real 'jeans and t-shirt' artist, gave up his pop-jazz material and is now a singer/songwriter working on guitar and piano led music. Over the last year he has been crafting songs that uncover the last few years life, love and dreams. Jackson has also worked with American artists to produce acoustic songs as well as writing some himself”
Well done Leon Jackson! You working class mother fucker you! He might actually be onto something here, songs about love, life and dreams? I’m losing all faith in humanity. Since the beginning of music people have poured every ounce of passion and soul in their body into writing songs about their far more interesting, debauched, enigmatic and poignant lives - and now this smarmy little gob shite has decided to up sticks, kick of his Dunhill and write some blue collar songs about his fucking troubles? Give me a break, it makes me feel physically sick and fist-throwingly violent all at once.
See what the X Factor does is it glorifies the mediocre actions of worthless morons such as Leon Jackson and Steve Brookstein and it transcends them to you, the handfed hypnotised audience, bags it up in a commercial wrapper made of deceit, lies and the ill informed notion of talent and delivers it right to you with a label on it telling you that ‘this is good’ - because you need to be told what it is, you need to be pointed in the direction of what these money hungry moguls have now contorted into supposed talent - when all it remains is excessive commercialism in a shiny box for people who have lost their way with real music.
Then there was Alexandra Burke, not only is she a clone of Lewis but she also committed one of the biggest sins of the century when she left her shit stained mark on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Halleluiah’. This delicately enigmatic piece of song writing beauty was tarnished by the over produced screech of this incredibly dull individual. Not only am I bemused at the fact that Cohen gave consent for this monstrosity to be released to the masses, but I’m also stunned at the fact that in 24 hours it sold over 105,000 copies - and no, popularity doesn’t country for very much when we consider that both The Cheeky Girls and Katie Price released a single that reached the top ten. Also, I doubt that many people know this is even a cover.
But she was just what we needed. Another scantily clad, bone-skinny dullard singing yet more covers. I’ve seen enough smouldering faces staring down the camera with wind blowing through their extension filled hair to last me a life time, and if I do end up going to hell for my sins they’ll probably just sit me in front of a tv screen for 23 hours a day and show me these punch-worthy faces over and over until I end up hanging myself with a novelty Jedward skipping rope - what a way to go.
Before I get to last years winner, lets talk about the current panel of judges. Although I loathe Simon Cowell and what he’s done to the industry you have to pay give him his dues. He’s a clever chap. He knows how to work the industry, he knows how to pick a hit song, but he is literally the only man who deserves a place on the board of judges.
In regards to everyone I’ve ever spoken to about this program, I can honestly say that no one on the face of this planet, except house-bound middle aged women with lots of cats, give one solitary shit what Louie Walsh has to say. His input is about as useful as giving a rapist the benefit of the doubt. He mumbles his fruitless comments with zero sincerity, he’s wet and useless. I really don’t like him, but no one does so I’ll leave him alone.
Now for the ladies. Although we’d all like to wake up next to a face like Cheryl Cole’s on a daily basis we can’t deny the fact that she is in fact a melodramatic cunt. Her evaluating expressions are far from convincing and the fact that she married a footballer like Ashley Cole shows she’s hardly a good judge of character, let alone a judge worthy of notifying talent. Malaria or no malaria, she’s not fit for any form of authority when it concerns other people’s livelihood. Slag.
And Danni Minogue. Her sister’s a star, she however, is not. I wasn’t even aware of her past achievements prior to this show until I scoured the internet for dirt, as per. Apparently she started off in TV and film, well that slipped past me. I thought to myself, if we’re talking the small screen that inhabits your living room then it’s got to be one of two programs. ‘Neighbours’ or ‘Home and Away’ - it was ‘Home and Away’. Hardly a pedestal for permission exposing clout. Who thought this would be a good idea? Right, picture Cowell and his followers in the penthouse boardroom of Psycho Records in London. Swanky and covered in marble and ivory and the bones of children, they discuss possible candidates for the job…’Who do we know who has a lot of experience in show biz? Who’s got that certain flair of indefinable brilliance? Who has the intellect to splash their ideologies into controversial situations?’ and the answer was a ‘Home and Away’ veteran who was in the stage show of ‘Grease’, were they high? I’d have to be high to sit through that tripe, and I usually am.
If I bare the bones of my honesty in true guilty fashion, I’ll compromise with one point that people continually bring up when jabbering about the hullabaloo of the X Factor, ‘But it’s entertaining!’ they cry. Well, let me raise a few issues on this.
One big seller for this program lies in humiliating the future mass-murdering odd balls who hit the stage in the audition period of the show. Every year they crawl out from under their rocks to reassure us that England still has the ability to produce a high quantity of seriously outlandish, peculiar and often plain menacing individuals. They screech their way through Robbie Williams ‘Angles’, they howl like horny hounds through Take That’s ‘Rule The World’ and occasionally a duo of midriff-exposing over weight teenagers with Big Mac stains down their tracksuits with drawl over a Pussycat Dolls cover. Sure it’s funny. Anything that mugs off strange people in front of an audience is funny, but there’s three audition stages prior to the television appearances. The problem with this returns to what I was talking about earlier regarding the handfed audience. This is the X Factor, once again, controlling what you view, how you view it and it’s revoltingly manipulated so that you see what they want you to see - what else are they hiding from you?
I’m not against anyone having fun. Each to their own, right? Fair enough it’s primary purpose is entertaining, especially the freaks - they‘re amusing to a certain extent, So why get carried away? One of the things that vexes me more than anything, and this goes for Britians Got Talent as well, is that the susceptible audiences who grace these shows are literally so devoid of any rich and fulfilling that they see it fit to rise on their chubby little ankles to give anything with a remote hint of tone a standing ovation. This dim-witted reaction has numbed the potency of a deserved retort when someone viable actually twaddle’s along. Oh and they now use auto-tune during the first television auditions, for those of you who don’t know what that is, here’s an explanation…
“Auto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform perfectly tuned vocal tracks without the need of singing in tune.”
So to put simple for all you Jeremy Kyle fans and X Factor obsessive’s, it helps those who cannot sing sound near-perfect, followed by Mr Walsh exclaiming, ‘I tink you made de song your own’. Of course they did tubs - queue standing ovation.
I’ll compromise further still. I agree that a number of the people who go on this show can sing, some of them very well. However, rather than moan about the fact that there are countless other people out there on cruise ships, in pubs, in casinos and in back street music venues who can hit a note just as well as these people (because there are), I’ll argue that there’s more to this elusive x factor than clearing your pipes like Tina Turner. We have to understand that a powerful voice, cringingly spouted out at its highest possible velocity, isn’t an indication of conviction - it’s merely a peripheral frill with the primary function of flaunting the one dimensional ability of a totally boring twat. A good voice is a good voice, the x factor, if there is such a thing, is an indescribable spark of beauty that triggers Goosebumps on your skin, a presence that wells up your tear ducts with something so heartfelt that it surely can’t be bottled up and sold by the mass. (see The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones et al).
Last Saturday I was in the pub with a friend. In front of us, on a screen the size of a bus was X Factor, in all its superficial glory. On stepped a girl, a blonde girl with a silly umbrella who was wearing too much make up and had a bit of a Jimmy Hill going on. Now this girl has a distinctly average voice and a less than average face, however I believe it was because this girl looked a little different to the other chumps who grace this visionary program that she was given a shot. She didn’t have a skirt creeping up her buttocks and she wasn’t into ‘R ‘n’ B’ - wowza. But here’s the thing with this grubby little 80s throwback who believes her individualism is key to her success - walk down any university hall or street in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Brighton blah blah, you’ll see an exact clone of this social faux pas minus the voice but double the personality and authenticity. She’s no more than a gimmick who is hoodwinked by her own image, which by the way is diabolical because she’s obsessed with Madonna and all things 80s. Vomit.
It’s difficult to write something with balance when you dislike something so much. I’ve tried to show both sides of this show and even a dashing of compromise here and there, along with a smattering of sarcasm, apparently. But its tough for me - I just hate the false entity that runs through the artificial veins of this apocalyptic beginning. I do understand that its entertaining, but a lot of things are entertaining - throwing rocks at cats is one, lighting a paper bag full of human turds and placing it on your teachers door step while watching them stamp it out, shaving your drunken friends head and writing ‘Penis’ on his forehead, hurling abuse at lowlifes from your speeding car window and also farting on people - that‘s one of the best. But what is more entertaining than all of that is music with heart. Good music that invokes nostalgia, because that means the world to more people than the retarded z list celebrities who coast this show. Ask yourself, do you genuinely think the ‘original’ Ollie Murrs will make a seminal record? Will you go and see him live? Will Leona pen a ditty that with bring tears to the eyes of the future generations? Will Leon Jackson…oh fuck Leon, he’s not going to do anything, but you get my point. This isn’t real, it’s the beginning of the end.
Oh, and I didn’t bother with that Joe chap who won last year because I can only insult these bottom-feeders so much, oh and i was sooooooo surprised he 'came out' (because we were all fucking stunned at that one, it was like when H from Steps came out on Big Brother - we know, we don’t care and, no, it wont appeal to a homosexual audience so you literally have no niche. Tough break).
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