This Blog Post Can’t Change Your Life

Posted on by David Lloyd

and you can make my career

I’ll tell you where it all went wrong. When Paul McKenna lost his job at Radio One and started to believe he was the Dalai Lama of Enfield.

When a nation starts thinking that God is a (failed) DJ you know that, before long, our Highways Agency is going to forget that it gets icy in winter, that we’ll all shuffle off to Shanghai’s World Expo to congratulate China on killing duped bipolar drugs mules, and that Waterstones will devote a greater surface area of shelving to Self Help than to Science.

And it came to pass…
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Dreaming of The Dingle

Posted on by David Lloyd

Park Palace, (c) Keith Rose

We like to claim a lot of things around these parts. Some of them require a leap of faith and a dash of creative thinking, but there are things we really can shout about.

Take the tale of St Helens born George Groves. He was the man who got the big names talking: forget Alan ‘Chatty Man’ Carr, or Jonathan Ross, it was Groves who really made the stars of the silver screen open up and mouth off. And they’ve not really stopped since. Continue reading →

Posted in Art

In Search of Santa

Posted on by David Lloyd

what's the opposite of the Trafford Centre?

A decade ago, Rovaniemi’s corrugated  airport – three and a half hours away from Liverpool – saw little in the way of international flights. Now, in December, it’s better connected than Alan Yentob. And, since they’ve cracked down on his licence-payer funded soirées, arguably a more inviting place hang out.

There has to be a good reason to travel to this straggling industrial town, so far north, at this time of year.

And, according to the ‘Lapland Experience’  brochure,  if you really want to remember a time when images of a white Christmas didn’t automatically include Simon Cowell’s teeth, and when The Guinness Book of Records actually celebrated the highest, fastest and strongest, and not just how many profiteroles Fearne Cotton can squeeze up her nostrils for Comic Relief,  this place is your instant refresher course. Continue reading →

Urban Planning Committee

Posted on by David Lloyd

Get Rich, or Die on QVC

If this week’s Charts tell anything, it’s that 2009 was the year that Urban music, from hip-hop to grime,  Rascal to Stryder became all-conquering in the UK.

For all the hoo-hah about the Cowellisation of the music business, the man has remarkably little influence in the bigger picture. Sure, he shifts advertising slots on ITV, but his acts have about the same influence on the business of music as Eurovision or the NME.

The only way an X Factor winner can be a contender these days is if they, like Leona,  follow the rules of engagement.

Ladies – sing R’nB lite and rub up against a radiator. Gents, let’s have some naked machismo and locker-room posturing. Oh and that video? Can you storyboard flights on private jets, a crate of Cristal, a VIP nightclub enclosure, some gang signs and sexual irresponsibility with semi-clad lovelies.

Because that’s the stereotype we’re comfortable with, isn’t it? – black lawlessness, hedonism and shallow self-aggrandizement. Pimps, playaz and prima donnas.
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BBC Killed the Radio Star

Posted on by David Lloyd

It's tough at the top

It’s sad to see more staff thrown from the Radio City Tower, as City(Music and)Talk struggles to keep its mandate, and attract advertisers in a tough city market. That it’s now moved to a music output is a real shame too. Perhaps city advertisers didn’t need yet another Liverpool music station? Perhaps we didn’t.

Commercial radio is having a tough ride. And, ultimately, we’re the ones who suffer. Or, more accurately – those of us who want more than Rhianna and rants 24/7. Continue reading →

Holding Out For A Hero

Posted on by David Lloyd

Let's play spot the shark...

I’ve tried, but I really can’t think of a city with a bigger disconnect between its real talent and the pool of people it promotes as its public face.

Wasn’t it fruity old Oscar Wilde who, when asked why America was such a violent society, suggested: ‘Because you have such ugly wallpaper’?

His point? That by accepting the second-rate, the derivative and the artistically vacuous, we devalue ourselves and those around us. Actions which can only, eventually, lead to violence…

(I’m about to make a huge leap here, but bear with me) Continue reading →

What? No Animal Collective?

Posted on by David Lloyd

Hey, if you can’t beat em…

My top thirty this year. And, I know, Florence and The Machine must be gutted. But it’s just her voice…It drives me mentile. And, no, I don’t know why WordPress does that for number 8 on any list I do…

1) Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Proof positive that French music is smarter and sleeker than ever. Not a duff track in a peerless set of clever-boots Gallic pop. Great cover too.
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Turning The Tables

Posted on by David Lloyd

Where's the Richard and Judy section?

I thought I’d been Christmas shopping. But, as it happened, I’d been abducted.  My cold, lifeless shell merely shuffled around the the streets of Chester picking up things that had already been chosen for me by a silent, invisible army of personal shoppers.  I was merely a prop. A patsy. A pawn. And I’d been punk’d from one end of Chester to another.
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The Lost Art Of Getting Lost

Posted on by David Lloyd

London Road. Not paved with gold.

I don’t have sat-nav. I have a phone with maps on it. It’s not as good. As I found out on the Staffordshire moors at dusk, last week. It doesn’t have what my mum calls  ‘that patient woman’ who directs you soothingly into a swollen ford to your certain death.

With Google maps, sat-navs and location-aware iphone apps leading us all precisely where we want to go, aimless wandering is the last taboo of the always-connected.
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The Death of Live Music?

Posted on by David Lloyd
morrissey6_web

That joke isn't funny anymore

Imagine this. You’re in the ODEON watching the latest post-modern, irony-strewn computer animated adaptation of a kid’s book, but you’re so into it that, rather than miss the next smartass one-liner, you piss into your empty coke carton and throw it over the audience in front of you.

Or you’re at the Playhouse, but you really can’t be arsed getting into the play, so you hold up your iPhone and record the best bits, so you can watch it later.

Afterwards, you take in a meal at a restaurant, and you notice they’ve got your favourite dessert on the menu. Carried away with the excitement of it all, you elicit to show your appreciation by lobbing your bottle of mineral water at the waiter. Continue reading →