Okay, I admitting right up front that I am shamelessly ripping this idea off from the Guardian talk boards, or GUT as it is known. There are a couple of reasons for this, firstly because it is fun, today is Friday, and Friday is not made for being serious, for doing work, or for anything other than frittering time away whilst waiting for beer o’clock. And secondly, I would be participating in this on GUT itself, but for the multiple bannings I’ve received under various pseudonyms for sexism, racism, bad language, inappropriate sexual remarks, being derogatory about disabled people, and other generally offensive behaviour. Telling them that I wasn’t being literal was apparently no defence, so here we are.

The idea here is to encourage as many lurkers as possible to come out of the shadows and post a comment, because you can be as involved or as brief as you like, just fill in your answers to the list and say hello.

So, today’s five are:
1. Favourite sandwich.
2. Favourite rock (or indie) beard.
3. Favourite bullshit bingo phrase.
4. Favourite music reviewer’s bingo phrase.
5. Favourite animal that is chiefly a native of Russia (link to a picture appreciated).

And here, to accompany the silliness, are some songs, just for fun:

Squirrel Nut Zippers – Twilight
Paul Weller – Has My Fire Really Gone Out?
Junior Walker & the All-Stars – (I’m a) Roadrunner
Charlie Don’t Shake – Heaps of Dirt
The Delgados – Aye Today

This is a truly hilarious story: Maxim have been rumbled writing a review of an album they’ve never even heard. Superb!

What happened was that they printed a review of the new Black Crowes album, and weren’t especially generous, and they did it before the actual album was sent out to anyone for review – only the single was in circulation. Maxim’s excuse? They kind of, erm, just made it up.

“Of course, we always prefer to [sic] hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.”

What a wonderfully high falutin excuse for basically being lazy, lying publicity whores. Needless to say The Black Crowes are a bit miffed, but honestly – Maxim? Is anyone even mildly surprised that a sphincter-tighteningly pretentious shandy rag has sloppy, arrogant standards of journalism? If you are surprised, have you actually ever read Maxim? I know it’s tough to take your hand out of your trousers, look beyond the over-cooked pictures of empty, desperate slappers and actually read the shit, but have you? It is unbearably facile, lazy, smug, misogynistic, borderline xenophobic, playground garbage. I’d rather be caught on dogsandteens.com than with a copy of that shit on my coffee table.

Anyhow – two possible explanations I suppose. Firstly, the limp, self-righteous one above basically masquerading a case of laziness and a total absence of integrity. No surprise there then. Secondly, perhaps they downloaded an illegally leaked copy beforehand and felt that the legal connotations of admitting to that would be too dubious so they were left with so few options that was the best they could come up with.

Either way, I couldn’t really care less. The Black Crowes really are rubbish and I reckon Maxim, lazy as they were, were probably just about on the money: another album of turgid, derivative sludge was so inevitable you could bet your sister’s virginity on it with total confidence. That said, Maxim is such an awful little rag that it really is enjoyable to see them getting a big fat slap with the wet fish of comeuppance. Everybody wins, and I go to bed sniggering and happy.

Reminds of that reporter in Glasgow who wrote and published a fairly condescending review of a Meat Loaf gig she was too pickled to attend, only to find out after the fact that the gig was cancelled.

Paul Weller – Instant Karma
Smog – The Morning Paper
Billy Bragg – It Says Here