Melbourne Music Week’s 2014

Back for its fifth big year, Melbourne Music Week’s 2014 program has been release today and it’s bigger and bolder than ever. The 10-day curated music program is hurting with 110 dynamic event to be held morning, noon, and night across 40 uniquely Melbourne locations.

From quirky music events in laneways, trams, power stations and elevators to experiential performances at iconic Melbourne institutions, MMW’s 2014 program celebrates the crossover between music, art, film, food and design in the country’s cultural capital.

Chair of Council’s Marketing Melbourne committee, Councillor Beverley Pinder-Mortimer said the City of Melbourne continues to work with the music industry to produce an event like no other.

“The city becomes the stage for this 10-day event which highlights the breadth of music in Melbourne. Melbourne is one of the world’s great music cities and Melbourne Music Week absolutely highlights this,” said Cr Pinder-Mortimer.

As previously revealed, this year MMW’s flagship venue, Queen Victoria Market (QVM), will transform into a vibrant performance space with an impressive line-up of local and international acts. Midnight Juggernauts will debut the Melbourne premiere of their visual and musical installation, Aerials, celebrating their tenth anniversary on Saturday 22 November.

Legendary Detroit techno collective Underground Resistance will present a night of jazz and techno music with visionary founder Mad Mike on Tuesday 18 November.

American Idol Say Sorry For Steven Tyler, But Sadly, Not For Years Of Dismal Aerosmith Music

Steven Tyler has managed to keep his toe in the celebrity pondscum by, lately, having a very open and ugly feud with his band mates, declaring himself to be “the whole rainbow”, whatever the shit that means.

And, now, he’s still hanging around like a rubber gargoyle filled with sleeping tablets and meths, sat behind a desk as one of American Idol’s judges. It’s the latter which he’d like to apologise for.

Getting someone as unhinged as Tyler on the programme is clearly a move by the show’s producers to recapture that bug-eyed mania that Sharon Osbourne brought to television all those years ago. Alas, with Tyler, you may as well hire a simian to throw fistfuls of its own faecal matter at contestants while rubbing its genitals against a tyre on a rope.

As such, American Idol has felt the need to say sorry for Tyler’s ‘outrageous behavior’, despite the fact that no-one can quite recall what he did wrong. Apart from, y’know, having a face so frightening that it could curdle water at a thousand paces.

Wednesday night’s show kicked-off with a black screen and the words:

‘American Idol would like to apologise for last week’s outrageous behavior by Steven Tyler. Mr Tyler has been warned and assures us it will never happen again.’

The show then played a clip immediately after the apology which saw Tyler asking a contestant named Jake Muck:

‘You know what Muck rhymes with, don’t you? Read my lips.’

Are we to assume that was the outrageous behaviour in question? If so, why would you then repeat the clip? It’s a bit like saying sorry for punching a nun square in the face and then turning around to everyone who missed it, saying…

‘Sorry! Sorry! I punched a nun square in the face… just like this’ THWACK! ‘Sorry. Sorry, won’t do it again… unless some of you missed it the second time ’round. For the record, her nose wasn’t broken the first time I did it. Could we get a replacement nun in here?’

Anyway, what the show should be apologising for is the renewed interest in one of America’s most pedestrian bands ever to blight the stage of an arena. And Steven Tyler’s stupid, stupid face. Apologise for that, not him mouthing the word ‘fuck’ at someone.

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Man The Helplines! The White Stripes Split-Up!

On hecklerspray, we like to take the piss out of people and bands, even if we like them. All in the name of writing some jokes. However, when it comes to the White Stripes, it’s kinda hard to mock them, even though we’re not fans.

This is most troubling.

Alas, Jack and Meg White have decided to call it a day and draw the curtain on The White Stripes, leaving us with only the very boring option of sneering about it or saying something like “Hur hur! MOR rubbish!” when they clearly weren’t. Will we find something funny to say before this article is out?

On these pages, we’ll always root for the enthusiastic amateur. In Meg White, you had one of the most hapless drummers in rock ‘n’ roll, which of course, made her one of our favourites. In Jack White, you have a man who uses volume to accentuate the mistakes, like he was Ron Asheton from The Stooges or something.

We also had a band that were wilfully stubborn, refusing to play ball with any journos who didn’t own a record player. Jack White was also really good at punching people in the face repeatedly. He punched that bloke out of the Von Bondies so much that he left him looking like a post-operation bollock.

The White Stripes managed to find all the best riffs that Keef had seemingly missed, throwing out monstrous pop record after monstrous pop record. And yet, they still didn’t really float our boat. We were just glad to have them around (despite the whole Meg/Jack soap opera of being siblings/lovers/divorcees).

And now they’ve gone, we’ll probably end up liking them more as we re-evaluate their back catalogue.

In a statement on their site, the band said that the split wasn’t down to artistic differences but rather…

“mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way.”

They say:

“The White Stripes do not belong to Meg and Jack anymore. The White Stripes belong to you now and you can do with it whatever you want. The beauty of art and music is that it can last forever if people want it to. Thank you for sharing this experience. Your involvement will never be lost on us and we are truly grateful.”

Of course, we can’t do whatever we want with the White Stripes’ music. If that were so, hecklerspray would be putting in a claim for 100% of the royalties. In fact, we tried it this morning, but that man from the record company threatened to come round the ‘spray bedsit and give us a good seeing to with a cricket bat.

Wonderful.

So yeah. We couldn’t find anything funny to say. Sorry about that.

Adele Really Doesn’t Want To Be As Famous As Lady GaGa, Which Is Fortunate

The original headline for this story was going to be: Adele In Fear Of Becoming As Famous As Lady GaGa Despite Incredible Unlikelihood That She’ll Ever Be As Famous As Lady GaGa, Fear. However, that’s long-winded and not funny.

However, Adele really doesn’t want to be as famous as GaGa, which is incredibly fortunate for her.

Apparently, her fear is that she’d end up with a load of mental fans who would chase her around and yank out clumps of her hair and all that fun stuff.

The bum-chinned warbler, who has just bagged her second number one album in an age when chart placings pretty much mean piss-all, is making something of a name for herself around the world. She is, of course, the new Macy Gray inasmuch that she’s the kind of artist people believe they’ve discovered for themselves, and therefore, coupled with her cod-soul, gives a feeling of authenticity, despite having a PR machine so slick, that she could put Katy Perry to shame.

Of course, with this, Adele must uphold her end of the bargain, which means shunning the obvious trappings of fame in the press and maintaining that she’s is unlucky in love, like a proper, tortured artist.

Alas, while most pop stars embrace all their fans, Adele is quietly pointing out the nutters that she’s attracting, who will have become infatuated with her because of the constant “I’m single” chat.

She says:

“The other day I was up north and there were these – well, I don’t think they were fans actually, they were like eBayers.

“I’d be at the venue, they’d be there. I’d leave the venue and they’d be there. Then they started taking pictures of my dog doing a shit and stuff like that. It was really weird.

“I was on my own taking (my dog) Louis out for a walk. One of them just got in the lift with me and I got really panicky.”

No. Don’t even think about making a joke about her being too heavy for a lift, hence her nerves. That’s just plain lazy and nasty.

Anyway, keeping it slick and real…

“I was just thinking, imagine being someone like Cheryl Cole or Katy Perry or Gaga, where you’ve got to be conniving to have a normal day.

“That scares the life out of me. I don’t think I’d be able to carry on doing music if it got to that point. I don’t think it ever will – I don’t think I’m the kind of artist where that will happen.”

Well, at least she’s got that right.