GARY GLITTER, after years of captivity, has been released from a Vietnamese prison and returned to his homeland. But! Answer me this: why is JOHN MCCAIN lauded as a war hero while Gary Glitter is cast as a child molester? I won’t rest until this injustice is — oh, wait, because he has sex with kids.Actual unaltered lyrics from the new OASIS single: “Love is a litany/A magical mystery.” I’ll bet you $50 that if you break into Noel’s house, you’ll see his Word-a-Day calendar still open to “Litany.” Another $50 says Liam thinks it’s a made-up word, like “Wonderwall.”
CLAY AIKEN has, through a process too mysterious to comprehend, sired a baby human child. As a journalist, I wish I could provide some details on how the hell this happened, but I’m just scratching my head over here. I don’t even know where to start. The Silmarillion, maybe?
Former LIMP BIZKIT guitarist WES BORLAND has joined MARILYN MANSON’s touring band, creating one of the most potent supergroups of the nü-metal era. If only all the troglodytes who might have given a shit hadn’t died years ago in Woodstock ’99 bonfire accidents.
Manson, desperate to mitigate the blow to his reputation caused by recruiting a dude from the only band uncooler than his own, issued an awkward, semi-apologetic explanation. “We have a new guitar player that’s gonna play for the first time tomorrow,” he sheepishly blubbered. “It’s the first time we’ll play on stage. His name is Wes Borland, and he used to be in a really terrible band that he left because he felt that it was a destructive force in art . . . but now he is in Marilyn Manson.”
I downloaded a leak of the new VERVE album, and the quality was a bit suspect. I was thinking some jackass might have recorded it from an Internet stream, and my suspicion was rudely confirmed when the cheery voiceover of that ubiquitous “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to receive a free laptop computer” audio banner ad came blaring through the guitars. Wait a minute — maybe that’s really part of the song and this reunion is all about the money.
Hey: when the Verve play shows in America, they should start out their set with a cover of “The Freshman,” just so everyone’s like, “Wait a minute, I thought I had this shit figured out.”
MASTER P shall henceforth be known as P. MILLER. If you’re one of the dozens of people who still has a mental Rolodex entry documenting Master P’s existence, I urge you to update the info. Forgive me for drifting into anecdote, but my enduring memory of Master P comes from a time when I was visiting home: my friends were sitting around watching Dancing with the Stars and my mom called him “Mister P,” and we all had a jolly laugh at the adorable momness of that. They should put a picture of that moment in the dictionary next to “Mom.”
CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN’s new best-of release has such a rad name that I’m thinking of grabbing it even though I already have everything on it: Popular Songs of Great Enduring Strength and Beauty. That swims so far into gotta-love-it territory that I’m pretty much willing to pay them $15 just for naming their album that.
Holy shit, actual press-release headline this week: “Progressive Rock Band Influenced by Gandhi Releases Songs Addressing World Issues.” TRUTH ON EARTH are a group of teen girls who, with an undercurrent of extreme parental supervision, write heavy-handed songs about the evils of war, starvation, and the mainstream media. From the release, unadulterated:
“We have all seen devastating pictures of abuse, starvation, homeless, effects of war, but never have been unified with music in a way, until now, that reaches the listener’s core level, creating feelings that pictures alone can’t and that allows for the proper contribution,” stated the band members.
Stated the band members? I’m picturing them reciting it in unison, like some kind of creepy oath. I swear, that’s the greatest press-release line since Pete Wentz’s “I am stoked to collaborate with Nordstrom.” The whole package is similarly hilarious, but I’d better stop now — this column appears on the Web, so I’m treading close to cyberbullying, a subject that’s poignantly addressed in the track “Shot with a Bulletless Gun.” Lyrics:
Back in the day was a time/When life was simpler and/Folks came face to face to deal with their differences. I’m told/By philosophers that change is a good thing except when that change hides out in a room brewing evil ideas that belong to a criminal mind.
It’s like they know me.
