Izzy Brooks: Is this the coolest video ever?
Colin Ramsay: What? What sort of a way is that to start? Who is it anyway?
Izzy: Its Mint Royale. Ok you start.
Colin: I thought we'd started? Mint Royale are notable to me for one reason - Don't Falter with Lauren Laverne which came out in 1999 or something like that and it was fantastic. Kenickie were fantastic actually, and they had a good turn in b-sides.
12 points to whoever can tell me the name of the band that the fat one and the other one off Kenickie formed after Kenickie's demise.
Anyway, that song off that video's ok. I do like how we've single-handedly revolutionised the world of online music journalism by starting a written article with an entirely different form of media.
Izzy: We are the revolutionaries...also genius beyond our years. That band was Rosita and I claim my 12 points. Mint Royales Blue Song is funk dunk with some chunk ..no seriously it rocks and I love how such a simple video can be so mesmerising, (possibly due to Noel Fieldings eyes??). So lets have it then - the coolest videos of all time? Go go go.
Oh and I cheated and Googled for Rosita.
Mint Royale had something to do with that awful Priory thing with Jamie Theakson and Zoe Ball as well, that's got to be worth 30 lashes.
Ok videos? Mmm Bop by Hanson because they all look like girls when they are really boys, Dirty by Christina... um....
Izzy: You can have Dirty by Xtina then I can have...ummm Cry Me A River by Timberlegs. Not enough nakedness for my liking but boy does he look good in a hoody and the rain. Frankly though we're looking at this all wrong. I mean Danny McNamara..woof woof in most Embrace videos with the exception of Last Gas possibly - fry an egg on his hair anyone? - but most of those videos are utter pants let's have it right.
Cool video of all time: November Rain - Guns and Roses. Oh yes. With the not an oil painting that is Axl Rose, a woman with unfeasibly big lips in a wedding dress that looked like it had been designed by a 2 year old with an affection for lemon meringue pie, rain, cakes being crashed into, Slash exits a church the size of my garden shed into a field in Idaho or somewhere and rocks out. God I love that video. More importantly it made the song for me.
PS. Hanson - how is it 2 of them can be so pretty and the other one looks like he's had an argument with a psychotic orthodontist.
Colin: I Believe In A Thing Called Love by The Darkness - that's a classic video in the making. It's camp, it's over the top, and it's backed by a great song.
Also it has a giant crab in it.
Izzy: Oh yeah, anything with oversized crusteceans is the bees knees and I do a particularly good impression of Justins thumbs up at the end. I mean The Darkness are so over the top it's untrue and I do think that video is just awful...so awful it is almost cool. Like ...I dunno an episode of Rainbow meets Red Dwarf meets Blakes 7. But what do I know. At least it's not as bad as Keanes new video which is truly dire, possibly the worst example of a video not fitting the song ever. I tell you what I do like Embrace's One Big Family. Great editing even though it's pretty poor in other respects.
Colin: Is that the one with the Dodgems?
Izzy: Yeah it is...particulary clever editing that creates the impression Richard and Steve and move rythmically as it were.
Colin: And dodgems.
Izzy: And Danny in the sand? Or am I wrong there?
Colin: You are; that's I Wouldn't Wanna Happen To You, the greatest summer number one that never was. At this point I would like to draw the audience's attention to this photo of me buried in the sand in an "I Wouldn't Wanna Happen To You" style:
Moving swiftly on, let's get all freaky and meta and talk about music journalism. It's been clear for a while that NME and the other printed magazines are becoming increasingly less powerful in dictating the zeitgeist. My question is: who's influencing what people listen to? My answer? We are.
Music journalism is slowly becoming less important due to the increase in communication between those lucky people who are Internet-fluent. They can track dozens of online music mags, blogs, messageboards, chat with widely varied people across the world, download random tracks from people with similar sorts of music; they are able to construct an aggregate opinion without relying on a single source.
And that's ace.
Izzy: It is ace. I know that if the NME's circulation were to dissipate and the
It happened to The Coral, pushed to heaven and hell and back as the greatest thing to have emerged from Liverpool since... er... Brookside. Their first eponymously titled album nearly lived up to the hype but let's face it follow up, Magic and Medicine was very poor. No amount of NME hype could have saved them. People listened to it in record stores, downloaded it off the net and word got round. It's shit said the collective indie minded consciousness.
So more power to the voice of the ordinary man. Keeping it real and all that.
Colin: The Coral are a good example. Franz Ferdinand are a better one, an example of what can be done with a hook and a care. They were hyped to shit and are plunging like bastards as we speak. NME is in the pay of the music industry, and the music industry thinks they can have long term money spinners just by piling money into adverts at the start. They still haven't realised that the only way to truly do well is let the public decide.
There are exceptions to this. Westlife for example. As much as I hate them, certain audiences lapped them up and genuinely enjoyed their music. While they were a blatant example of the record company machine in action, they only succeeded so spectacularly because there was real demand.
You like Westlife don't you...?
Izzy: You had to mention that didn't you? Just what exactly have I done to you this week?
Being serious momentarily though, Franz Ferdinand are the best and most recent example of what can be done with a heavily contrived image and the NME behind you all the way. Who do they think they are? Joy Division?
The fact they were on the front of the NME under the heading "The best band in Britain", picked up by the supposedly "Hey we're so down with the youth" newspapers The Telegraph and The Guardian, you just knew that this band were all about an illusion of cool perpetuated by these publications.
I know the media is all about helping to set and carry trends but I think there should be a law especially when it comes to bands that states, "A trend can only be a trend and publicly and critically acclaimed to be good, cool and righteous if 90% of the intellectual population have voted it to be so".
Take Me Out btw makes me want to rip my ears off with bears paws and for the record I do like TWO Westlife songs. Good harmonies man.
Colin: The dark side of Izzy Brooks. Sick.
Izzy Brooks, Colin Ramsay.
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Izzy and Colin On: Downloading Music, The Singles and Album Charts and Kylie and Justin.
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