Covidiots in music

Are you at least enjoying Netflix like the rest of us?

I could if my wife hadn’t torn all of the big-screen TVs out of our house when she found a face scan of herself on the screen behind the screen of one of the TVs. Which are made in China, of course. She actually found a face scan of her head, with a log to see how many decibels her ears could take, how thick was her head. And any computer or television has a screen behind the screen — this is stuff that I’ve just come to find out. And she’s like a wizard at getting past codes and figuring out how to make code into text — it’s just a natural ability she has. But this scared the shit out of her, and she said, “I don’t want any of these TVs in my house.” And we had three of ‘em — in the bedroom, the spare room, and the front room — and now we have none, and I don’t miss ‘em. So I’m just looking at the news on the computer now. But when she first showed it to me, I thought, “Well, this is reminiscent of when an old friend drops by with a crazy, manic story, and the more he told it, the less sense it made. And a couple of days later he’s in the psych ward — that kind of thing.

(xp) A few too many braincells have gone bye bye.

God, he seemed really clear-headed just a few years ago.

thank god computers are safe

Not even just drugged-out, but people who have spent their lives exercising the part of their brains that deals with abstract thought, and then on top of that spending their lives living on the margins of "normal" society - out on the road all the time, working off-hours in night clubs and stuff. It's disappointing, but not surprising. I'm more surprised when someone who has lived this kind of life suddenly gets all conservative in their old age.

that oldham article is really poorly written, it's so hard to understand the context and his intent behind the comments

There's a screen behind every screen except the screen I'm looking at right now, thank god.

Yeah, dude is fucken gone.

haha yeah ditching your TVs because you are worried about being tracked to opt for....a PC....is an interesting choice

Lanegan goes on to talk about software stuff in that SPIN interview (something that particularly sucks about it is how the interviewer kind of makes a show of agreeing with his points and egging him on, especially re: Covid restrictions).

Look, he didn't say he was worried about having his head measured by a webcam, just by the underlying screen of a television set. This isn't hard.

xpost

how thick was her head

I really mean to leaaarn

that oldham article is really poorly written, it’s so hard to understand the context and his intent behind the comments

Exactly. Does he mean people who refuse to wear masks are cowards? Or the people who don’t want to leave the house because of all the assholes not wearing masks, etc? Kind of important to be explicit about that, like.

As for the Lanegan thing… anyone who’s read his memoir should understand the kind of person he thinks he is.

yeah I guess with some of these...I don't care that much? in that I see really zero real world chance that Mark Lanegan's views on Covid matter at all and I sort of assumed he was real out there personally?

PNW ‘90s rock dudes in general tend toward yikes. King Buzzo’s hero is Thomas Sowell.

guy from Candlebox allegedly recited Goebbels quotes on-stage for 45 minutes before the band would play a song

The Foo Fighters protests come to the West Coast: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-06-16/covid-19-foo-fighters-concert-protest-canyon-club-agoura-hills

such a weird thread

i really hope Mad Professor is not saying what i think he might be saying

https://www.dubvendor.co.uk/mad-professor---covid-illusion---herd-effect-dub-ariwa-12-112954-p.asp

I don’t really care that much if someone whose music I like is a covidiot, but I don’t think I could sit through a song about expressing those views.

Student Vaccination Time

No lyrics on the Mad Professor A-side, but the video at least hints that he may not be a denier? (Maybe there are some words in one of these five mixes, if anyone wants to listen through.)

B-side has a couple of vocal adlibs but nothing that gives the game away. This Earl Zero b-side might be a version of it, but appears to have horns instead of lyrics, at least in the sample clip. (It's pretty sick, but that's probably not a clue either.)

Verdict: uhhhhh, hurry up and release your Roisin collab before we get a definitive reason to eschew listening to you?

Play it backwards and you can hear "oh sweet covid conspiracy, I sing for thee many many conspiracy."

I must admit I did read the Will Oldham interview as ... fairly unpleasant.

can someone please link the Lanegan and Oldham articles? I don't feel like searching but I do feel like reading!

Oldham

Lanegan

FWIW, the same writer did a brief follow-up interview w/Lanegan in December:

Having disappeared down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole in our last chat, he was much more reserved, grounded, and altogether stress-free during this Christmas-season exit interview. That doesn’t mean he’s stopped looking over his shoulder, though — otherwise, how would his best, most sinister slithery songs ever get written?

thank you!

Lanegan's paranoic apophenia + technical ignorance seems pretty commonplace as it goes.

Yeah, I can think of at least a couple of examples in my extended family.

Here's one that really hurts for me: Joseph Arthur. Someone I always put on a pedestal and considered to be one of the greatest artists of all time.

A year ago he already occasionally raised questions regarding measures such as lockdowns and masks, commented against Fauci and Gates, sympathized with conspiracy theories. Over the last few months it's gotten so much worse, as he (while saying he's not anti-vax in general) believes people are pressured via media propaganda into taken experimental bad vaccines. His own social media accounts feature several sessions each day of unloading 'information' in validation of his stance (generally: misinformation, or uncorroborated disputed statements from doctors or whatnot). He shared and supported comments from Ian Brown and Eric Clapton. He's been going on about how anything other than the main narrative is being silenced and how people deciding not to get the vaccine are 'segregated'.
The nature of the statements & the sources hint at alt-right roots, even qanon, which is especially disappointing as he wrote a heavy anti-Trump/Trump supporters song during the US presidential campaigns 6 years ago. It's clear that he used to be different. He himself said a while ago that he turned 'right' as he came to experience the 'left' trying to put limits on freedom. Many fans and even friends of his are alienated by his ways of late, I also had to unfollow his social media as it got too extreme.

Among other collaborations, he's been in a band with Jeff Ament (as RNDM), in another with Peter Buck (as Arthur Buck), one more with Dhani Harrison and Ben Harper (Fistful of Mercy). I wonder if all of those will be able to discern professional work from politics/worldview, if bridges are being burned in silence or if anyone will still speak up against this BS or smack him on the head or whatever.
I personally hope that if I give it some distance, I may eventually want to listen to his old work again & enjoy it as I used to, as he really seems to have become a different person over the past few years.

Re the plague rave in Zanzibar.

How much difference is there between that and Aaron Ramsey flying out to play in Baku?

Agreed on Joseph Arthur. Well-articulated. Also unsubbed from his social media. Love his music and his odd artwork, but not his recent takes.

How much difference is there between that and Aaron Ramsey flying out to play in Baku?

Azerbaijan appears not to be denying that COVID exists, and to be requiring both proof of vaccination and a negative test for foreigners to enter, so it's different on that account. How big were the gigs this guy was playing, and were they indoors or outdoors, with assigned/distanced seating or open?

30,000 and outdoors. Good point on the vaccine requirement

Some fans turn against Foo Fighters after hearing concert-goers need proof of vaccination

― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Saturday, June 12, 2021 3:30 PM (one week ago)

turns out they welcomed covidiots who hold super-spreader events to this, just not in the audience

Fully vaccinated… Gets you into a concert… To see the Foo Fighters… And David Chapelle sing

Creep pic.twitter.com/XxCqVgorpO

— ⚡️✨🌟💥⭐️💫🔥☄️⚡️✨🌟 (@JIMrichards1010) June 21, 2021

One of the two competing versions of UB40 has required their touring members to be vaccinated, so: a backing singer that you have never heard of announcing his refusal on twitter has resulted in randos yelling at the other UB40 for betraying their working class ideals.

New nominee for the most 2021 sentence yet.

What's it got to do with working class ideals though?

What does logic have to do with anti-vaxxers?

Right Said Fred are in the replies advising him to "Issue a notice of liability, their position is unlawful."


Turns out that as of Monday, the other UB40 is without a lead singer, so perhaps this guy is angling for an invitation to level up.

(having replaced the original lead singer with his big brother in 2008, the elder replacement suffered a stroke last year and retired due to ongoing ill-health this week.)

Chapelle is a Covid denier?

not a denier, but moved to another state in order to hold spreader events during lockdown, gave misinformation about testing, got a freelance photog and his child infected, crowed that anyone who was wearing masks or not attending crowded indoor events with strangers was a pissbaby (once he caught it himself and did not die), etc

Richard Ashcroft strikes again, with support from none other than Ian Brown:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/06/richard-ashcroft-quits-tramlines-festival-owing-to-its-covid-research

Nick McCabe further proving by way of contrast that he was the most based member of the Verve.

a lucky escape for ticketholders for tramlines festival

Ashcroft has a six foot sign with the words ‘natural rebel’ outside his house at all times

naturally mystified rebel

he's just been doing that bittersweet sympathy walk around the north all year breathing really hard in people's faces. PROPER LAD ROCK AND ROLL.