Image from here.

Morning all, and welcome back to the Friday Fives, where I supply you with five entertaining, thought-provoking or just plain silly things which I have happened across on the internet this week and you, in return, either simply read and chuckle or, if you have something, jump into the comments and share something cool you’ve found in the last seven days. Because let’s face it, it sure as fuck beats working on a Friday afternoon, that’s for sure.

1. Beat Delete

Whilst I would tend to defend blogs who offer up the odd song for free download, even unauthorised ones (assuming nothing was pre-release), full album download blogs have always been absolutely and obviously wrong. Except in one case: deleted back catalogue releases. If something is genuinely unavailable to purchase then no-one is making money off it anyway, and the only thing which happens when a blogger posts it, even for free, is that a potentially forgotten piece of work is kept alive in the hearts and minds of whoever happens to find it.

Beat Delete have another solution. They have a sort of Kickstarter approach, where people simply order out-of-print records and, once a certain threshold is reached, the label will re-press them – simple!  There isn’t much on there yet, but as you can see from their list of most-funded albums, some things are getting pretty close already.

2. Song of the Week – Estrella by Shift-Static

These fellows are a Newcastle band with a tiny hint of Edinburgh about them, and they will be playing our next BAD FUN night, so I thought I might take the opportunity to introduce their new song.

The BAD FUN in question is on Friday 8th March at Henry’s Cellar Bar, and stars River of Slime and Jonnie Common as well as these chaps. And it will be awesome.

3. This Government are a  Bunch of Cunts – and Also Idiots

It’s almost, barely excusable that we voted for the Tories.  After all, it had been so long since they were last in power that I think a lot of us, to a degree myself included, had forgotten what a bunch of vicious, parasitic vermin they really are. Having said that, as a country I think we need to be pretty fucking ashamed of ourselves at how easy they have managed to turn us against the poorest and most vulnerable members of society and make them scapegoats for the problems caused by the collapse of our economy which was actually caused by the Tories and their ilk in the first place.

Because if we can be certain about some things, it is these: benefit fraud did not cause the financial crisis, nor did excessive pensions for nurses and teachers, and nor did the cost of providing disability benefits. Nevertheless these are the things which are being vitriolically set upon, and towards which the ire of the public is being so disturbingly shoved, while the real perpetrators are presumably sneering at us in their gentlemen’s clubs and sniggering into their port and cigars.

And I don’t like to link to the Daily Mirror, but as well as being viciously immoral, the government’s recent move to get more disabled people into work – chiefly using a ‘Tip Ironside Out of his Wheelchair and See What He Does’ approach – is also proving to be worse than ineffective.  Well, as any public schoolboy will tell you, you have to pay top dollar if you want to attract the very best and brightest people. Twats.

“Of 9,500 people moved off disability benefits and on to the flagship Work Programme, just 20 have found a job lasting more than three months.”

“Just 3.6% of people taking part in Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s scheme found lasting jobs.  That compared with the 5% who would have done so anyway, according to estimates by his own department.”

4. Fucking Architecture Blogs on Tumblr, Man!

Honestly, I just can’t get enough of these things.  Tumblr is like a deluxe version of Twitter in many ways, but one which lends itself to strongly visual media if just due to the extended amount you can actually do with a single post. Some of the architecture blogs on there are absolutely amazing, and although never an architecture student even in an armchair sense, I am absolutely addicted to them.

The image above is from Fuck Yeah, Brutalism! but there are loads more.  The one at the top of the page came from Previously Loved Places, and I also rather like Let’s Build a Home, Amadion and Architecture of Doom.

5. John Robb Deals With the Fucking Brits

I like this.  The link above takes you to John Robb‘s Open Letter to The Brits. It’s worth reading, both for its clear contempt for the vacuous circus the Brits seems to have turned into – 0r perhaps the circus it always was – and also for the hand-wringing which followed.  For all he clearly despises the Brits he doesn’t get drawn into the ‘Oh noes, musicks is ded!’ shrieking of many cultural commentators who have since had their say.  The celebrity entertainment end of the music industry has always been pointless, worthless, embarrassing shit designed for advertisers, but there’s no point getting it mixed up with actual music.  Sure, the two are related and do overlap slightly, but they are emphatically not the same, and we needn’t care too much, if at all, about what happens on the X-Factor, The Brits or any of that crap. It’s not for us or about us.