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An early by-election in Nadine’s seat? – politicalbetting.com
An early by-election in Nadine’s seat? – politicalbetting.com
In recent weeks there have been a number of reports that the Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, will be made a peer in Johnson’s resignation honours. This would mean that the first electoral test for the Truss administration could be a by-election defence in Mid Bedfordshire where Nadine had a huge majority last time.
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Tory voters will be willing to give Truss the benefit of the doubt at a BE.
On my playlist:
Mazzy Star
Quantic
Tash Sultana
DJariium
Husky Loops
Paul Hartnoll
Finley Quaye
Young Fathers
Dave Thomas Junior
Light Asylum
Nitin Sawhney
Elbow
Unkle
Kerli
Wankelmut
Leftfield
X Ambassadors
Silver Mt Zion
FKA Twigs
Covenant
Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra
The Allergies
Michel Kiwanuka
Dennis Lloyd
Robert Levon Been
Maribou State
The Cinematic Orchestra
Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
The best pop music is made by skint kids with no musical training on the cheapest equipment. In the Big Band era that was kids with guitars, and that lasted until something cheaper and easier to learn than guitars came along - computers. Now it's kids with a counterfeit copy of Ableton or Cubase, or whatever, on a laptop. No it's not my cup of tea, but I'm not the audience. The kids love it.
But there's loads of good, often complex, new music out there. Here are some recent-ish new releases, all come highly recommended:
Skin by Joy Crookes - smoky voiced young Londoner doing soul//funk/blues type stuff
Dancing Dimensions by Ural Thomas and the Pain - old skool soul guy finally getting some recognition
My Finest Work Yet by Andrew Bird - classically trained American indie type railing against Trump, but beautifully
Yn Rio by Carwyn Ellis - lush Tropicalia with Welsh lyrics, an unlikely combination but makes a great summer album
The Overload by Yard Act - nominated for the Mercury this year, excellent post-punk indie from a Leeds-based band
INTROSPECTIO by Mario Batkovic - what this guy does with an accordion will blow your mind
Having pretty much the entirety of recorded music at your fingertips can be quite overwhelming, but there are gems out there.
And if you're still thirsty for new - to you - music, you could always go back to old stuff that you never heard when it came out. I just discovered One Year by Colin Blunstone, who was the singer with the Zombies. Great solo album, came out in '71, could've been recorded last week it sounds so fresh.
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
9.6 Rishi Sunak 10%
Next Conservative leader
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
9.6 Rishi Sunak 10%
At this point, economic pain is both severe and inevitable, and the government has no good explanation for how it intends to cushion the blow. The voters will respond by kicking the government at every opportunity.
I'm quite sure there is as much good music as ever, even if, as a middle age man, it doesn't speak to me directly in the way that, say, the Pixies did when I was 18. But it no longer forms the glue in a cultural bond in the same way.
And as far as I can see, kids no longer identify by musical tribe. When all music is available virtually for free, why pick and choose? And as a consequence, emotional investment in any particular niche is less fierce.
My oldest daughter likes the Wombats and the Arctic Monkeys. That would be like me at the age of 12 in 1987 liking, I don't know, Slade, or something.
I say bollocks.
The way I'd put this is - I totally agree that music today isn't as good as when I was young but in saying this I realize I'm almost certainly wrong.
Can you give us a three hundred page memoir of all your “face to face encounters with grime”, and maybe a hand filmed cinema verite docudrama about your experiments doing Phenibut in your council flat in Northumberland Park?
Donald Trump showed he retains his wit and charisma in a speech lasting over an hour and a half.
https://youtu.be/ahnwKC4xydc
Joe Biden finally got his $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62457386
1. The public mood will be dark. Holidays over. Days getting shorter and cooler, and a growing storm of bills getting crazier and crazier. Contrasted with a government focused on itself with batted away non-answers to the crisis.
2. A candidate who faced with the task of staunchly defending Mistress Truss's lack of a safe word for the British people will likely be contained in a box and not allowed out to meet voters.
So the only question is do the LibDems come from 3rd again or do Labour say "our turn"?
There is *no way* the Tories can put up a positive campaign to defend it. None.
Not sure I can think of a battle in which both leaders were so old.
As I said I wouldn't know those bands if they were carving a dildo in front of me. I just Shazam anything I like and add it to a playlist (that same playlist includes Guitar Man and Calling Occupants...).
The point is that those ones I painstakingly typed out are, in your parlance, modern beat combos.
Put Shazam on your home screen (do Nokia 6233s have home screens?) and start exploring.
OK let’s analysis this. i know Wet Leg, they are OK
Here’s their first single. Chaise Longue
https://youtu.be/Zd9jeJk2UHQ
Pleasantly monotonous. Quirky. But “among the best singles of the last 30 years” is absolutely farcical. For a start, compare it with this song, Yellow Horse by Cowboy Racer
https://youtu.be/5rdW_0c6zvY
I submit they are almost identical, the deadpan approach, the slightly off key female vocals, the deliberate flatness of affect, the eccentric lyrics. The different is that Yellow Horse is better, funnier, sexier. Written 17 years ago
However, it is the final chance to give the old two-fingered salute to him - so make sure the Tories have a resounding majority.
And to celebrate the departure of Mad Nads. Be so much easier to vote Conservative for her successor, for many people.
There are up to 10,000 Russian troops on the wrong side of that bridge.
My star of the games is Eilish McColgan , not just for her gold and silver medals but her sheer joy at winning and her warmth . She seems really lovely from the interviews and you can’t help but smile .
Trump blamed Biden for Afghanistan, Russia invading Ukraine and China threatening Taiwan. He also blamed Biden and the Democrats Green New Deal for being a key factor in rising inflation.
If Biden doesn't run again then as I have said before Buttigieg is a good bet
Blair too of course departed before the 2008 crash and Brown had to deal with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P2qL3qkzk
It feels like it should be a very safe Tory seat, many comfortable villages where the cost of living crisis will happen to other people.
But electorate around 90k due to significant housebuilding in the likes of Marston Moretaine, Wixams, Ampthill, Shefford etc. They will take the average age of the constituency down significantly which is where the opposition have a chance.
I'd expect the Lib Dems to be challengers, but may be harder to squeeze some of the Labour vote here. Lots of active Lib Dem parties around and Bedford have already started: https://twitter.com/BedfordVann/status/1555982233038716934
And a fair bit of affection for Dorries locally - might be hard for some of us to believe but she does carry a decent personal vote.
On Wet Leg - who, betting post, will almost certainly win the Mercury, by the way - I must admit I was quite irritated by Chaise Longue when I first heard it. The opening line is about getting a degree. Regrettably unrocknroll. Did the Rolling Stones get degrees? No, as Mick Jagger said in his letter to Kent County Council, they left uni to pursue opportunities in the entertainment industry. Getting a degree epitomises everything that is wrong with modern culture. Being a student band used to be something bands kept quiet, a cause for derision. [\rant mode off\].
Anyway, that aside, the song is quite good. I wouldn't say their the best thing in 30 years, but enjoyable nonetheless.
That you are turning into your father (you wish) seems to be meanwhile what is irking you.
In that scenario the Lib Dems would risk winning neither if they went for both Mid Beds and NE Somerset, so it's possible they'll concentrate on the seat in the West, where a smaller swing of 14.2% is required, compared to the 23.6% needed in Mid Beds.
Labour, of course, would concentrate on the seat in London.
This raises the nightmare scenario for OGH of having a by-election on his doorstep only for it to be overshadowed by two more exciting contests elsewhere on the same day.
And besides, it is you making the outrageous claim: that Wet Leg have produced “two of the best singles of the last 30 years”. It is comically absurd. And what is this amazing double entendre? Buttered muffin? It’s been street slang for decades
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=buttered muffin
The MAGA forces are very busy trying to get "Stop the Steal" supporters elected into key Secretary of State and Governor positions in various states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/magazine/stop-the-steal.html
What are the demographics for this seat?
Indeed, also very similar and even earlier
This is yet another one of the problems faced by popular musicians. Almost everything - in terms of style, attitude, subversion - has been done, and at the same time almost every chord progression has been explored, every percussive rhythm banged out. Music is not infinite
Classical music faced the same problem in the early 20th century, and so it went down the rabbit hole of atonality, whence it has never really emerged, or recovered
He has nothing better to do & has no interest in spending the rest of his years being an "elder stateman" like other ex-Presidents.
As you are always reminding us, English is a living, evolving language. An evolving language will always create new songs for new experiences.
What are some cracking British dramas of the past few months and years - Top Boy, Blue Story, Pirates, Attack the Block, Ill Manors, Small Axe, My Brother the Devil, etc.
Those, to use a literary flourish (ask someone), put you "face to face" with grime and related subcultures.
AI can now write every conceivable song using the western musical scale
“The AI software that could turn you in to a music star
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59878572”
“You can do things such as add or strip-out instruments, change the tempo, adjust the volumes, add echoes, make everything sound brighter or softer, and lay down some vocals.
California-based, Boomy, was launched at the end of 2018, and claims its users around the world have now created almost five million songs.”
Five million. And this is only going to grow
With people making billions of songs a year we will exhaust the possibilities fast
Of course you can vary the presentation, the lyrics, instruments etc but it eventually becomes mere tweaking
The one in the first verse (that seems to have gone right over your head) is simply funnier and sexier than anything by Cowboy Racer, who in turn should be sued by Flying Lizards if you’re into that kind of thing. And Nirvana should have been sued by Killing Joke for ripping off the riff from “Eighties”. While George Harrison was actually sued for ripping off the Chiffons. Etc etc. Boring.
LoveDrummers Don't Live Here Anymore.There. Glad to have cleared that up.
You're welcome.
(Though I will allow 3 small exceptions: the Dies Irae in Mozart's Requiem, the Libera Me ending of Verdi's Requiem and Elgar's Salut d'Amour played here by Aldo Ciccolini - https://youtu.be/pkcHjmXmEg0).
Fabulously mortifying
The large number of songs being produced makes it harder to find the better songs, but it doesn't mean they won't exist.
It always amuses me that Peter Maxwell Davies composed all sorts of avante garde stuff but what the audience actually liked was a simple almost throwaway piece written as a protest (Farewell to Stromness). As for his mate Harrison Birtwistle - always good for filling up the bar.
As well as atonality, though, there's also been minimalism - which has been less of a rabbit hole and has crossed back over into pop music as various forms of rock and electronic music.
Where to go next though? Back to Bach...?
As the old joke goes, the words most likely to get someone to turn off the radio are: "And now for the premier of a new piece of work by a young British composer/poet/insert as necessary".
https://twitter.com/reuterschina/status/1556536151615217665
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I <-- Axis of Awesome “Four Chord Song”, 70M views.
The reason is that the price isn't that different and it's 1gb upload which is useful for some of the things I do...