O Americano, Outra Vez!

How did OMD go from the synthesiser equivalent of Joy Division and turn into the backing band for Pop Stars? The soundtrack for today is Sugar Tax and while there are a couple of songs on it worthy of note (Neon Lights but that was written by Kraftwerk and their version was much better; and Big Town) the rest are totally forgettable. I don't know why I bought it. The last good OMD single was Tesla Girls but Talking Loud and Clear was the last one I bought. That has Julia's Song on the B Side which is brilliant. The picture sleeve is a wallpaper design by William Morris (the background on this website is a design of his as well and similiar to the OMD sleeve). Compare all those moody black and white photographs of the band in the late 70s with how they looked just ten years later, all black leather jackets and attitude. They looked like some pub covers band. And now - Atomic Kitten! What are they thinking. They wrote songs about a phone box, the plane which dropped the atomic bomb and the pop-song equivalent of a Vaughan-Williams piece. (Red Frame, White Light; Enola Gay and Talking Loud and Clear). How did it come to Pandora's Box?

When we moved to this house a couple of years ago, the first person I saw walk along the pavement outside was a teenage girl with a large book under her arm, a book of William Morris designs. She was dressed as if she should have been carrying a skateboard and I know the book was probably homework but it did make me feel quite happy about our move.

How come Beckham and Chelsea are the top headlines at the moment. It seems that the BBC news teams are all football fans and are letting that colour how they report things. I bet they would have screened the Beckham medical if the Real Madrid had decided to film it. It obviously wasn't going to be shining a light in one ear to make sure it didn't come out the other side (always a worry for quite a few footballers) but it was three hours long and some saddo would watch every minute. "This is Raourie McTavish reporting live from inside David Beckhams Knee. And now we all have heard about that obscure bit of bone; it's called Victoria." Get some real news please. Or is the BBC trying to remove all the bad news so we all feel happy and hence avoid campaigns of Civil Disobedience.