I Eat Music

There’s always a queue of people lined up to complain about the sound quality of MP3s, but far fewer rushing to the audio format’s defence. Mainly because people who don’t mind the quality of MP3s are just getting on with listening to and enjoying music, rather than moaning about it all the time.

But anyway, I only mention it because Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood was recently asked about his opinion of MP3s by the New Yorker for a series of articles on the quality of recorded music. He told the magazine: “They sound fine to me. They can even put a helpful crunchiness onto some recordings. We listened to a lot of nineties hip-hop during our last album, all as MP3s, all via AirTunes. They sounded great, even with all that technology in the way. MP3s might not compare that well to a CD recording of, say, string quartets, but then, that’s not really their point”.

Asked if Radiohead’s fans would agree with that, he added: “We had a few complaints that the MP3s of our last record weren’t encoded at a high enough rate. Some even suggested we should have used FLACs, but if you even know what one of those is, and have strong opinions on them, you’re already lost to the world of high fidelity and have probably spent far too much money on your speaker-stands”.

However, he echoed the sentiment of comments made earlier this year by Six Organs Of Admittance man Ben Chasny, who said that he feared people were becoming addicted to hoarding information. Greenwood said: “The downside [to the MP3 age] is that people are encouraged to own far more music than they can ever give their full attention to. People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis’ record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row – there’s just too much to get through. You’re thinking, ‘I’ve got ‘Sketches Of Spain’ and ‘Bitches Brew’ – let’s zip through those while I’m finishing that e-mail’. That abundance can push any music into background music, furniture music”.

Read the full interview here.

		Melvin Benn explains this year’s flag ban at Reading and Leeds: "There have always been flags but not to the level that there has been [recently]. And the flags have become very long and tall. The people behind them – not immediately behind them, but 20 or 30 rows behind them – can’t see. For some reason those that buy a flag want to be closest to the stage"
		Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell reveals one of their roadies had a lucky escape recently: "One of our roadies got dead pissed. He was on the bus, and he sort of fell out the door of the bus when it was moving along at 70 miles an hour. I think maybe when he got on the bus, it wasn’t moving and he was already pissed, and sort of thought, ‘alright I’ll get up and go and take a piss around the corner’ or something"
		Keane frontman Tom Chaplin asks Noel Gallagher (who once said: "No matter what direction Keane take, they’ll still be shit") to produce the band’s next album: "I often wonder if Noel is almost resisting the truth that Keane and Oasis are alike in a lot of respects. I think we share a lot of fans. We are both bands of the people. It would be great for Noel to produce us – I offer the olive branch"
		Bob Dylan reveals that he might soon tell you where to go: "I am talking to a couple of car companies about being the voice of their GPS system. I think it would be good if you are looking for directions and hear my voice saying something like: ‘left at the next street, no a right – you know what? Just go straight’. I probably shouldn’t do it because which ever way I go I always end up at one place: Lonely Avenue"
		Muse frontman Matt Bellamy admits he started taking conspiracy theories he was researching for lyrics a bit too seriously, going out and buying 50 tins of beans and an axe: "I read somewhere a seven-day blockade and the UK would run out of oil. Another seven days and we’d run out of food. That’s why I bought the beans. The axe would chop firewood"
		KRS-One explains his new book ‘The Gospel Of Hip Hop: The First Instrument’, a 600 page holy text for his new religion: "It explores the spirituality of hip hop, the divinity of hip hop. I’m suggesting that in 100 years, this book will be a new religion on the earth. Respect [to] the Christianity, the Islam, the Judaism, but their time is up"

These little nuggets of conversation stimulation were taken from the 28 Aug 2009 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read in full here. I wrote a rant about flags. My third in as many days.

		New tapes of an interview with John Lennon from 1970 reveal his anger at his former bandmates over their treatment of his wife Yoko Ono: "They despised her. It seemed I had to be happily married to them or Yoko – and I chose Yoko. George insulted her right to her face and I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why. Ringo was alright but the other two really gave it to us. I’ll never forgive ‘em"
		Little Boots tells Sky News that people should stop talking about women in the music industry as one group (they went ahead and wrote an article that did that anyway): "It’s kind of bad – a girl isn’t some kind of genre you know. The exciting thing is that everyone’s really different and people should embrace that"
		Motley Crue frontman Nicky Sixx says Axl Rose let his fans down with Guns N Roses’ recent album, ‘Chinese Democracy’: "For it to fail was pretty crazy after so many years of being recorded. Then the tour got cancelled. A buddy of mine went to go play guitar for him. They rehearsed for three months and Axl never once turned up. Finally I think the fans just went, ‘Fuck it – can’t do this anymore’"
		Bono makes the Spiderman music written by him and The Edge sound rubbish (also, the story of Spiderman is not a "myth"): "It’s not a straight take on the myth. We’ve taken it to a much more dizzy place than you’d expect. We’ve got big tunes. We’re very proud of it. Our Peter Parker is much more… not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy"
		Patrick Wolf apologises for this on-stage rant: "Major mis-communications backstage x lack of sleep due to very busy schedule x singing many songs about battling x an intense education from the extreme parts of London nightlife/wildlife/streetlife as a teenager x Steve Strange going on very late x a full day of cameras flashing and questions x being 26 years old and should have known better = bad wolf"
		Liam Gallagher reveals that he and his brother Noel haven’t spoken since last year: "He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, that’s it. He hasn’t told me what he thinks of anything this year. We’ve got nothing to say to each other at the moment. We don’t travel together, so I never really see him. The only time I see him is on stage and we’re a little bit busy that time to be fucking scratching each other"

These quotes all come from the 21 Aug 09 edition of CMU Weekly. Check it out to find out the kind of stupid stuff that keeps me awake at night, here.

		Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell reveals that Elton John plays on one of the band’s new songs: "I wrote Elton an email explaining what that song means to us – that it’s a real, raw openhearted song for [deceased lead singer] Layne [Stayley]. We sent him the track and got a call shortly after saying he thought it was beautiful and that he wanted to play on it. We were blown away"
		Doves may split, or at least never record again, says guitarist Jez Williams: "We almost split up after the last album. It was such hard work and it wasn’t an easy ride for us, and it can’t be like that again, so we’re going to see what happens. I think if there is another Doves album, and we’re not sure at this moment whether there will be – we won’t be staring at a blank canvas"
		Saul Milton, of UK drum n bass types Chase & Status discusses recent recording sessions with Rihanna: "Rihanna got in contact with us after hearing our track ‘Saxon’ and said she wanted a similar thing for her next record. We’ve spent the past few weeks working with her in an undisclosed location. The stuff she’s doing now I would definitely go out and buy myself, it’s a big change"
		Calvin Harris has said he has no time for the London celebrity circuit: "I want to make music. I don’t really party anyway, I don’t drink any more either. I don’t need to party and I’ve actually got too much to do all the time anyway. It’s a subjective thing – one man’s party is another man’s fucking hellhole. There’s a lot of them in London that I just don’t want to be at, at all. Working is my partying"
		Dizzee Rascal reveals that he didn’t punch Prince Harry when he met him backstage at the Wireless festival in July: "Prince Harry came in and was joking around and being a bit cheeky, so I told him, ‘If you weren’t royalty I’d have punched you in the face by now’, and he seemed to like that. He’s a naughty boy, so he fits in. In fact, him and his mates are probably a bit wilder than us"
		Ian Brown’s kids have scuppered a Stone Roses reunion, of sorts, refusing to let their dad include a song by guitarist John Squire on his new solo album: "My sons turned round and said ‘Dad, you can’t work on that. He sold you out, didn’t he?’ John’s manager asked if I liked the tune, and I said: ‘I did, but my sons won’t let me work on it’"

Yep, these quotes came out of the 14 Aug 2009 edition of CMU Weekly. Read that whole bloody thing in its entirety right here.

		CDs are on the way out, I think we’ve all decided that now, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke can’t wait to see the back of them: "I always hated CDs. Just a fucking nightmare … There’s a process of natural selection going on right now. The music business was waiting to die in its current form about twenty years ago. But then, hallelujah, the CD turned up and kept it going for a bit. But basically, it was dead"
		Robbie Williams reveals his long awaited new album, ‘Reality Killed The Video Star’, due out in November, will feature a very brief tribute to Michael Jackson: "Michael Jackson died, then. It’s all so very sad. [I] couldn’t get a lyric to fit on one of the new songs, [so] when he passed away I rewrote it with him in mind. When I say ‘I’, I mean me and [lyricist] Don Black"
		Graham Coxon is still insisting Blur will play more shows and possibly record: "We’re talking about doing some more shows abroad… I’m not sure how much I can say about that, but we’re definitely talking about it. I think I said [to Damon that recording a new album would] be quite good fun. That’s as far as it’s gone. We didn’t bother really talking about it, we were just having a good time"
		Calvin Harris says lazy mainstream dance producers are stopping people from discovering the good stuff: "I just wish the bigger artists weren’t so lazy. It’s up to them to sustain the scene they created. You’ve got to have these tunes to keep the underground music alive as well. Commercial dance music is a gateway for people to get into dance music they wouldn’t hear on commercial radio"
		Former Ordinary Boy Samuel Preston says he regrets walking off ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’ in a huff in 2007: "It was just an uncomfortable situation. I wanted the floor to swallow up and eat me, so I did the next best thing and ran away, which is terrible, because I’m really not the sort of person to walk away from confrontation, I’m normally the sort of person to talk it out" >
		Daniel Merriweather likes to look at porn, but it’s okay, ladies; he’s supporting feminism by doing so: "My guilty pleasure is porn, porn is great. People say its misogynistic, but I think people who like porn are in support of feminist movements, like myself. I am all for it, I feel like women’s liberation is part of me, it’s a cause I want to fight, yet I like porn. You can have the cake and eat it too"

These quotes, for that is what they are, were taken from the 7 Aug 2009 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read in full here.