ClaRK! Kent

Pshh, open game, I don't think. Milan can just shut them right down now, I reckon. They're like the best defensive team in the world. Anyway, aren't you a Chelsea fan? Shouldn't you be all angry at the Liverpool? RK/ZB!

I agree that there are a lot of worse bands out there than Coldplay, but I think it's a sad day for music when most of Britain starts using Coldplay as a musical barometer with regard to talent. They're so... fucking... boring! I know that Chris Martin's mummy probably paid an awful lot for those private piano lessons, but can't he just bust out some honkey-tonk every now and then to entertain me? I like blues, darnit, and if I hear a piano I want to hear it being played properly, none of this God-forsaken pseudo-classical bullshit. Don't they have a guitarist? What does he do for half of the live show? Sit around and masturbate? RK/ZB!

You're forgetting "Coldplay release song with second tune" is in there, which - according to some people - they have just done with their new single. Jury's still out, mind you. RK/ZB!

You heard it here first - the Apocalypse begins at about 7:55 on Friday night. RK/ZB!

Suggesting Coldplay deserve anything other than a long, drawn-out death involving several billion scorpions, some antivenom, a giant buzzsaw, six tonnes of peach cobbler, a buzzsaw, a Baywatch DVD, endless Conan O'Brien 'jokes', and a vat of bubbling hot tar to finish things off = wacky They deserve pain. RK/ZB!

I'd suggest that, if you're in the music business, singing goes as part of performing. Unless you're classical/instrumental/a dance act circa 1992. RK/ZB!

Reil - "perform" being a word used very loosely, hmm? Seeing as it's all miming and synth-pop anyway, these days. I fucking hate the UK singles chart. Give me the album and/or indie chart any day, biatch. I hate that the New Rhodes only got to number 38, yet are infinitely better than half of the crap in the top 10 every fucking week. And I'm not just saying that because my friend is dating the bassist's brother and this gets me free beer at their shows. Well, maybe a little. RK/ZB!

One could say the same about Coldplay, only replace "chavs" with "dull middle-aged people/public schoolboys" though, Pkmn. Coldplay fucking suck, they're the dullest piece of shite in the spectrum of recorded music, and it's not as acceptable as it was 3 years ago when the scene was almost dead on its ass. Now we have a fairly vibrant alternative music scene, and Coldplay are just intolerable. RK/ZB!

It's a bit of a redundant system, having a cliffhanger, only for them to then cut to... NEXT WEEK... *The Doctor and Rose are sitting quietly in the TARDIS, reading and drinking tea, without a care in the world* Doctor: Tea nice? Rose: Yes, thanks. I'm so happy and carefree... glad those gas-masked freaks didn't kill us. Doctor: Hahaa! ~End Teaser~ ...or something like that. Billie Piper has apparently quit the series and will only do 2-3 episodes of season 2 with David Tennant before leaving. Credit - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050523/356/fjkpo.html That's a big fuck-up for them, then, especially seeing as when they used to regenerate the Doctor, the main way of easing him into the part was to have the companions stay the same for at least a few months and let people get used to him whilst still being familiar with the companions. Now they'll have to get used to a whole new Doctor and a new companion as well... oh no. This is partly why Jon Pertwee's first season was so hit-or-miss, because the assistant was also brand new and they had a whole military subplot that had come from nowhere and you had to get your head around all of that + a new Doctor in 25 minutes per week. I love Doctor Who RK/ZB!

Wogan is very good indeed, he's the only thing that makes it worth watching. I dislike the notion that people don't vote for us because of 'politics.' The only politics is seen in how the former Eastern Bloc countries used to vote for each other, but that doesn't even happen much anymore. The reason people don't vote for us is this - in a lot of the other countries, the entry is picked by a panel of select industry insiders. In Britain, the public chooses our entry. As the UK singles chart shows on a weekly basis, the British public wouldn't know good music if it came up and punched them repeatedly in the face. This is why we lose. RK/ZB!

The Von Bondies, The Velvet Underground, The Subways, Gwen Stefani, The Suffrajets, Auf der Maur, Patrick Wolf. I like a lot of stuff on that playlist, GZ, and I also enjoy these bands as well, so take that for what it's worth I guess. If you like Garbage, you'll like AdM. If you like Muse, you might like Patrick Wolf. They're not too similar, but most people I know who like one like the other, so... RK/ZB!

A lot of those girls are quite air-brushed/Hollywood looking, which doesn't really do it for me. Especially Eva Longoria and Rachel Bilson. I don't mind Fergie. And Lindsey Lohan is incredibly attractive. I'm still crushing on the Oriental girls at the moment, in the main, I quite like Lucy Liu and Kelly Hu in addition to Kuri and Kou who I mentioned 3 pages/2 months ago in this thread. I'll venture Melissa Auf der Maur as an underrated one. There was also some woman on Have I Got News For You last night, called Daisy Sampson, who I thought was very attractive indeed. RK/ZB!

Any Star Wars game, simply because they all start off with the text crawl and music, and have the 'spaceship flying overhead' thing that just gets you right into it. Also any FF game, because as has been said - Squaresoft know how to get you involved with it all. Hell, I even liked the X-2 opening. If anything's going to get me into a girly bubble-pop mood, it's Rikku. RK/ZB!

Got the new Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith game last night, have been playing it this evening and a little bit before school this morning. I must say I'm very impressed with it. The quality of the graphics is excellent, and the gameplay is very accessible without being too easy. It focuses on the 'get-in-there-and-hack-stuff' method, using Jedi, but there is also a lot of the usual action-adventure puzzle stuff, using the Force and stuff. Action switches between Obi-Wan and Anakin, and they level up independently, so after 4 levels with Anakin, you find Obi-Wan is comparatively weaker and you have to alter your combat style until you catch up levels, which is quite neat. The sound quality is, as we have come to expect from LucasArts, excellent, and the lightsaber-related stuff especially is great. Soundalikes, alas, for Christensen, McGregor, McDiarmid, Jackson, and Lee, but they're all very good and the banter during lightsaber duels is scripted very well. The cool thing about this game is that you start off as a badass, and the levelling-up only makes you badder. The lightsaber duels themselves are excellent, with a lot of combo-fighting, blocking, counter-attacking, and Force jiggery-pokery making it a lot like a 'real' saber duel, with comparatively-few blows landing unless you're very good or your opponent has made a mistake of sorts. If your opponent swings at the same time as you do with the same type of strike (fast, strong, or critical) you enter a 'saberlock' where the lightsabers lock together, humming and cracking for all they're worth, and it's a frantic button-bash to overpower your opponent and get in a cool maneuver. The coolest thing about saber duels is that once you've defeated a Jedi character, they become unlocked for use in multiplayer versus duels, so you can spend hours duking it out with a friend or whatever, as I have been doing this evening with my brother. In addition to this, it goes beyond the plot of the movie to some extent, whilst a surprisingly-high level of movie cutscenes (I've seen 12, and I'm on about level 10 right now - each saber duel is a level in itself, and I've had about 5 of those, even) mean that you can tell which bits are 'within' the movie, and by the time I complete this one I should be able to bluff my way through the plot of the movie itself and pretend that I've seen the film on opening night when I haven't. All in all, if you like Star Wars or the third-person action-adventure game, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. It's not the best game of its genre I've played, and it has some of the usual movie tie-in fallbacks (the soundalike actors, and the fairly linear level progression) but it's definitely worth £30. Hope that helps if you were pondering whether to buy it. RK/ZB

Oooh, fantasy bands. Love it! (As a side-note, my Reading signing tent exploits last year got me a shirt and CD signed by Marcie Bolan, and I gave her my phone number. Two days later, I actually got a call from her! She said that Jason had found the whole thing very funny and was refusing to let her into the Astoria, their venue that night, until she called me. We discussed tea for 2 minutes, then she had to go. Made my fucking year) Lead Guitar: Brody Dalle, Rhythm Guitar: Marcie Bolan, Bass Guitar: Melissa Auf der Maur, Drums: The drummer from The Donnas, because I don't know any other female drummers. Brody and AdM would share lead vocals, while Marcie would simply excel at her fucking excellent deadpan chanting in the background, possibly with Brody or AdM (whoever isn't singing the vocal lick on any given song) lending their voice to the sweet din of siren song as well. Also, with that line-up, you'd get some great riffs, and the fact that AdM is probably the most competent female bassist in the world (and probably in the top 10, non-gender-specific, in terms of sheer style and ability) you'd also have a pretty good rhythm section. RK/ZB!

I see no such proof there. Direct pointing to a picture will be required. Post it on here if you will. RK/ZB!

Example of a picture of AdM looking anything other than the carnal, Edwardian sex kitten she is will be required for this viewpoint to stand, rvdwannabe. Such accusations cannot be made without proof, you see. RK!

Doesn't Darcy freak you out now that she's all smacked up? Debbie Harry was the shiznit, though. I'll nominate the entirety of The Donnas, while I'm at it. RK/ZB!

Yeah, but the AdM comment demands some form of removal of something. Pick an appendage, buddy. RK/ZB!

I assure you, I'm one of the biggest Beatles fans around. But, the fact remains that they started out as a 'pop act' with rock-n-roll leanings, and these bands are the natural successors to them in that sense. The Beatles' first few albums sold a lot to teenage girls and other such core demographics, but a lot of more 'serious' music people - the NME, Melody Maker, for instance - thought that they were quite naff and too poppy compared to, say, the Rolling Stones. Which is a fair point. I love the Beatles, they changed the face of music for the better, yes, but their first couple of albums were hardly taken 'seriously' by your average rock-savvy teenager or the weeklies. It was only really at about Hard Day's Night or Rubber Soul when people started to sit up and say "fuckin' Hell, this is quite good, isn't it?" and then the drugs/Sgt Pepper's and beyond era began, the prog-rock stuff. Which was my point re: McFly. My dad grew up in the 1960s, as did uncles of mine on both sides of the family, and they never tire of lecturing me on how music today is just a rehash of everything their generation did first. The Beatles weren't even a rock act, so to speak, they were a pop act (like these bands today) until they stopped doing the commercial stuff, really. And so the comparison stands. RK!

I'm with Booker T, it's ALL about Melissa Auf der Maur. The girl from the Zutons is fine, as is the woman from the Suffrajets judging by those photos, and girls in bands are generally quite foxy (Brody Dalle, the entire Riot Grrl movement really, Kate Bush... ) but it's all about AdM, baby. I saw her at Reading Festival last year, having spent the last 4-5 months loving her from afar. At the signing tent place before the show, when I met her, I actually almost died. It was stunningly embarassing. The show was quite good, there, if I remember. I spent much of it totally enraptured and staring at her. AUF DER MAUR IS WHERE IT'S AT. RK/ZB!

I don't mind Avril Lavigne, because it's somewhat pop-punk by numbers but it's done with a degree of savvy and musical ability, but I have noticed the somewhat formulaic single trend before. McFly are not good, but miles better than Busted, and at least they have a halfway decent grounding in good quality 50s rock-and-roll music, even if it doesn't find its way onto many of their songs. They're big fans of that era, apparently, so I'm hoping they'll do a "Beatles" and get really prog-rock on their later stuff. Let's not forget that the Fab Four were the 1960s equivalent of these bands. RK!

I'll buy the album when it comes out and listen to singles/songs on the radio as they come, because I'm not some prick out to fuck the music industry over. Ahem. Lyla is a very 'Oasisy' sounding song, and that's exactly what the album will be. Everything they do sounds like them, to some greater or lesser extent, because they have their own distinctive style much beyond most other bands. They're a very culturally-relevant band for the 1990s, seeing as that whole "Cool Brittania" and Britpop thing was their/Blur's scene (Blur were better, mind you) and they were responsible for kick-starting a lot of the bands on TODAY'S scene. To the guy who said they weren't responsible for anything - Coldplay, Keane, Travis, etc, as well as The Killers and a few other new-wave bands, all inspired by Oasis. Most of it is music I don't like, which is their lasting legacy, but they inspired it nonetheless. Thing is - Oasis, and I'm aware I'll get flamed for this, have never done anything as good as Definitely Maybe and they never will. Morning Glory was alright, Be Here Now was their second best record (ironic, as everybody seems to hate it yet it's fucking beautiful), SOTSOG was pedestrian, and Heathen Chemistry was alright at best. Lyla sounds a bit like Britpop-by-numbers, so jury's out on the album until I've listened to it a few times. I like Oasis for their earlier stuff, and I'll buy this album out of hope, but as their 2-part interview in the NME shows, they're still labouring under the delusion that they're a culturally relevant band here and now, and that they are still in a position where they have a right to criticise bands like Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, etc. Those bands are the here and now, Oasis belong filling up stadiums every couple of years and desperately trying to recreate their past 'laddish idealism' stuff when they're pushing 40 and have kids and stuff. Don't believe the truth, they say. It's viewed as "truth" in most of Britain that they're our best band. Don't believe it. PS: Although I will be forever grateful for their two-fingers-up attitude to breaking America, which let's face it doesn't hold a candle to our music scene anyways. Breaking America is a pipe dream for losers and ass-kissers, I'd rather stay in Britain if I were a 'professional' musician (which I hope to be) 'cos the Yanks tend not to know good music, rather than what is overplayed on all of their radio stations and conditioned into them. And yes, I say that having been to America several times. RK!

Generally, people who haven't seen it will enjoy it I think, having seen it last night, but as a LONGTIME follower of the series in basically every format (I first read the books in the car on the way to the south of France when I was 8, I think) I really liked it. As somebody said, all of the versions have been very different, because they change to fit their medium. This is a very 'movie'-feeling installment of the Guide, but then it's a movie so what do you expect? The radio series was very much done for radio, the books were re-written to make more sense in prose, and the TV version was overhauled almost entirely to make sense for TV. I'm happy that Simon Jones was in the new film, because fuck Martin Freeman - Simon Jones IS Arthur Dent. I love him so. I prefer the new Marvin, unlike some people who hate him. They say that he isn't done "how Douglas wanted him" but then Douglas never described Marvin in the radio/books beyond his voice, and in the TV series he was too clunky and a typically BBC-in-the-1980s piece. He looks wicked in the new version. Plus, Rickman = god, with the voice. RK!