» Worst Band Ever

What annoys me most about music these days...
... is how technically poor it is. Vocalists can barely sing in tune, instrumentalists struggle their way through basic chord progressions that would get a C in GCSE music, orchestrations are simply lazy and changing key up a semitone pretty much the standard indication that the last verse has been reached (at least you know it'll be over soon, I guess). Being good at music sadly doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for being a musician these days.

I had the misfortune of sitting through part of the X Factor final this year (was stuck on the sofa feeding our baby with the remote out of reach). The bit I caught was the "duet" round, where they got some established stars to sing with the prospective contestants. The most astonishing thing was that not only were the contestants musically crap (which is what you'd expect), but the star musicians were awful too. Rhianna and Robbie Williams were dire, Will.i.am was simply beyond awful. Surprisingly, Christina Aguilera seemed to actually be able to sing, and ended up completely upstaging the poor contestant she was accompanying. The judges then had orgasms over these shit performances.

What's really depressing, though, is that there are legions of really talented people, who can really sing well and play their instruments brilliantly, who simply aren't marketable enough to make it. In almost any televised performance, I can almost guarantee that the backing singers and the faceless instrumentalists performing off-screen are far better musicians that the star thrashing out off-key vocals on the camera.

So who's on my musical shit-list? Pretty much all of them. I want to listen to stuff where I don't simply feel that I could perform it better myself or know somebody who could. I want to hear stuff with more novelty than the elevator music that's churned out.
(Tue 4th Jan 2011, 10:43, More)

» The Onosecond

I was once texting a friend...
... detailing my plans to blow up parliament, but instead of sending it to "Mike", I accidently sent it to "MI5".

I hate it when that happens!
(Mon 30th May 2005, 14:06, More)

» Worst Band Ever

What about the metal band ...
... that lined the tyre of Air France Flight 4590. When this band broke up, it destroyed the engine, causing a crash that killed 109 people and led to the end of commercial supersonic flight.

Surely the worst band ever.
(Tue 4th Jan 2011, 11:36, More)

» Broken Promises

After my mother died...
.. a rather long time ago, my father ended up back on the dating scene. So many years of marriage had dulled his instincts and he ended up with someone who can only be described as a gold-digging whore of the Heather Mills school of gold-digging whoreishness.

To cut a long story short, her true history only really started coming to light after the wedding bells had stopped ringing. She had never worked a day in her life and been married six times before each one terminating with a very generous (to her) divorce settlement. She was a serial wife, verging on professional scam artist.

The inevitable divorce ensued. He made her an offer which, in the context of her past and their very short marriage, was very generous. She however, was determined to get in front of a judge, shed a few tears and rake in the cash, just as she had done many times before.

Then as luck would have it a friend alerted him to something else that was going on. One of her previous marriages had resulted in a child and she was currently involved in a custody dispute. The judge in that case was already particularly unimpressed with her behaviour and was considering granting custody to her ex-husband: details of her latest behaviour could be the straw that broke the camel's back. Well, since she was clearly not fighting fair, my dad decided a little blackmail was in order: accept his settlement or he would go to her ex-husband with information that would lose her the child.

She squirmed, screamed and threatened for a bit, before she finally realised she was defeated. She eventually relented and took the settlement.

I guess it was a case of him breaking his pro mrs.
(Wed 8th Dec 2010, 15:19, More)

» Petty Sabotage

Setting silly messages to come up on boot on a friend's computer
Dull and boring? Well, it was made more interesting due to the fact that this guy is technologically highly literate and would know where to check for the usual run-on-boot suspects.

This is a little gem that will catch out even experienced computer users. Not many people except those who are network administrators know about the Windows group policy settings (gpedit.msc). Even fewer know that you can use it to run things on boot before the login screen comes up (at least on win 2k).

This guy actually ended up reinstalling his OS to get rid of the barrage of message boxes that would come up before he could log on. I resisted the temptation to reinstate them on the fresh OS. Aren't I an angel!
(Tue 10th May 2005, 13:50, More)