I crushed a few people's dreams the other day when I revealed to them that Jools Holland's Hootenanny wasn't actually recorded on New Year's Eve, but a couple of weeks earlier. I thought this was a well known fact - comedian Richard Herring once wrote a rather funny blog about how he spent a New Year's Eve watching himself on television, celebrating New Year. But my friends didn't have a clue, and the look of devastation on their faces ("but the party poppers... the countdown... say it ain't so!") made me realise that a lot of people don't realise just how much fakery goes on in the media. And so it's with a heavy heart that I must reveal that much of the music press over Christmas and New Year is conceived, written, shot, subbed, designed, proofed and put to bed way before the Xmas break has started. So, if you want to know what your favourite musicians really got up to this New Year, you have to rifle through their blogs.
I'm sitting at home working very hard on a new hairstyle, Brian is back from spending a Floridian holiday with his grandparents and Nick is training a monkey.
Yep, working on a new hairstyle is hard work when you're Karen O. "YYYs have never had a busier year than 2006," she says (yeah, sounds like it!), "and we're all spun out with a little withdrawal, longing for your sweet faces to be spitting out and cursing our name in crazed bliss".
Karen might be finding it hard to know what to do with herself, but other artists are planning a more hectic schedule for 2007.
I'm seriously contemplating selling my body on the Eastern European sex market to get money together to buy another laptop and tour Japan. I also want to beat Blanka and fucking Ryu. Who the fuck needs to flame throw their opponents?
Hotly-tipped laptop poet George Pringle has made a list of 115 (ok, so she misses out everything between 38 and 89) New Year's Resolutions to share with us. These include - deep breath - pass degree with a 2.1 (she's still at uni, bless), play some more gigs, sort out projections, quit smoking so that she can save up for a new Mac, do a samba cover of "Life On Mars" with David Bowie, buy some rollerskates, get married, get divorced, stop drinking straight whiskey and smelling like an old man, take her eye makeup off before going to bed, stop wearing sunglasses on Cowley Road in the winter like she thinks she's boss and go and see a doctor about her insomnia. Still working hard on that hairstyle Karen? And so on to the final sample for this week...
I've read other web dairies by other prominent indie bands and they usually come across as complete dicks. But I'm slowly catching up with the rest of the world. I think I'm currently in March 2002.
Yes, Ricky from Kaiser Chiefs has finally ditched Betamax, sold his MiniDisc collection and got hip to this old internet blog thing. "This is the first of many of these," he promises. "Well, unless I get bored and sack it off mid feb."
Ah, isn't that always the case with these new fads? So there we go, a few crushed dreams but at least now you know how to find out what really goes on in pop when the music press is off having a holiday. Join me next week for more blog madness and the startling revelation that the tooth fairy was all just a big fat fib.
