The first ever What's Going On...

From way back in January of 2006! The things I was getting het up about then... I don't even remember why I cared. Still... I do like the bit about Ian Curtis.

You could be forgiven for thinking, after the year that was in it, that Bob Dylan was the closest any human being had ever come to God.

You’d be wrong, however, as that mantle has been unashamedly grasped by none other than ex-Verve warbler, Richard Ashcroft, who said recently of the Big G, “I love the man, I feel like him.” But he’s not just blowing his own, oh no, apparently: “There’s only Richard Ashcroft and Liam Gallagher who know what it feels like. We’re the only ones who know how many people we’ve touched and how powerful that is. I feel like I’m on a one-man mission. I’m here to use my tools and my gift to take them to a higher level.”

Gallagher, when asked, said, “Who the fuck’s Richard Ashcroft?” After careful explanation, he retorted with, “Well, who the fuck’s this God character then?”

In more enlightening news, Mercury Prize-winning hip hopper, Ms Dynamite, recently strutted her stuff all over a policewoman’s face in London after being, um, asked to stop kicking a nightclub door. She was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer – although now she’s no doubt regretting her decision to leave the Glock at home. Imagine the scandal? Imagine the record sales! Sigh…

The hip hop don’t stop there, no not neither. Patrick “The Paedophile Out Of Donnie Darko” Swayze is planning to follow up his 1987 Dirty Dancing hit with a rap single. He was overheard talking his way out of a mugging by saying, “Rap rhythms are an emotional undercurrent for ballads.” This melted the heart of the 12-year-old crack addict holding the knife to his balls and he was allowed to go. The single is tentatively titled, I Still Gots My Wallet, Yo.

It’s not all bad news though, for noise fans anyway. Sonic Youth are also in the studio recording their seven-hundredth and eighteenth album. They’re working in their favourite New York studio and had given some songs names, like Pink Steam, Do You Believe In Rapture, Or, and Sleepin’ Around. The as-yet untitled album is due out sometime this year.

Guitarist Lee Ranaldo said of the new material: “Some of it seems to be an extension of the last couple of records…” More of the same, eh, Lee? He goes on, “Some hearkens forward into a new territory and also back to earlier, more dissonant and atonal stuff we’ve done.” In a nutshell – more of the same.

Interestingly enough Joy Division will be reforming to record songs for a film about the band. Presumably it will also cover the death – and, it would seem, the recent resurrection – of Ian Curtis. He won’t like that…

Terror strikes the heart of Nashville as Bee Gee Barry Gibb splashes out $2.5million on Johnny Cash’s house. I hope he haunts you like no country singer has ever haunted a squeaky-voiced gimp before, Barry!

And as if that wasn’t enough tragedy and mayhem for one lifetime – Van Halen are threatening to reunite! Lead singer David Lee Roth was recently quoted as saying, “I talked to the drummer [Alex Van Halen] and the inevitable will happen…” Do you have to make it sound so sinister though?

Seriously, who’s next? Hawkwind, perhaps…

Oh, and Tom Jones got knighted alongside Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Declan O’Rourke and the Conway Sisters. Bono didn’t get one this time, but he said he doesn’t mind because he’s the Pope’s favourite.

Probably a bad idea... But, hey, bonus material!

I don't know quite why, but it occurred to me this evening that I could squeeze an few blog posts out of recycling old stuff I wrote for Connected in the not-so-distant past. I mean, why not?

Obviously there are a great many reasons for why not, but I'm going to disregard all of them and plough on regardless. A distinct lack of readership on here emboldens me somewhat, because this is mostly so I can look back over my old babblings and pat myself on the back for being such a witty sort, wince with embarrassment over my clunky use of the English language and perhaps even learn something in the process. Who knows maybe I'll get that Harper Collins deal out of it.

So, without further ado I give you the What's Going On? column that was recently NOT published in December last year thanks to various things, not least Editor Niall's tobacco-inspired heart attack. Yipes! It could happen to any of us. Well, you. Certainly not me.

Ahem.

Here goes:

Alternative-to-the-Alternative WGO, Dec 09 (Re-re-written because the original re-write was 'too negative' and implied that Connected would disappear forever. I still have my suspicions. Censorshipses!)

“Gadder roun, young uns, tis time fer a tail grown ole in der tellin. A tail of time gone wenn dere wuz still ‘Kool’ on der Grate Earf. Wenn dere existed a tribe known by der tag of Konnekted (smart-mens still argue over spellins and such, it could’ve bin ‘Connekted’, either). A ragged bunch of viagrabonds an so-called blaggin bastards, whose sole motive on dis Grate Earf wuz to bring larfter an deelite to der moosik-lovin masses, be dey late tens, early twennies or p’raps a mite beyon collidge age… Fer five long Grate Earf-Cycles did dis tribe exist, limpin Moon-to-Moon by skins of teef an hooks of crooks, bringin to lite not twenny, but twice that an haff as much again more Maggerzeens filt wiv tellins tall an moosick deeds mitey. Larfter an slander in measures equal dey containt, wyle never once fer munny did ever dey arsk…”

If there were to be a cataclysmic event, or series of events, sometime in the next few months then I would hope that once the dust clears and the rubble settles and the new, post-Armageddon society has formed itself into primitive groups governed by stories of the Pass-Dat-Wuz – I hope they will remember us in this way. ‘Us’ being Connected Magazine. I would like to think I’ll get a kind of Beowulfian walk-on part at some stage, but I wouldn’t want to put words into the mouths of our soon-to-be-replacements on what will be left of our devastated planet…

I’m not counting on it – although stupider writings have been used to rebuild fallen civilizations in the past. The bible, anyone? (Did you know bible is actually an acronym for ‘Believe in bollox? Life eternal!’ – which kind of sums it all up…) I mean, the worst anyone could get out of a Connected-based society is the foolish idea that Bonde Do Role actually deserved a cover story, or that the world is run by alien-lizard-people or that snarky in-jokes were actually funny.

Sadly, it might not take a nuclear winter/asteroid strike/Sarah Palin pussy-fart to make a post-Connected world a reality. Perhaps it is already too late, but with carbon-trading and… Er, sorry, wrong crisis… With a generous donation from some wealthy donor (kebabs? Where?!) this magazine might live forever. On the other hand, in the real world, it will more likely take a couple of months off and then return as a bigger (more pages), bolder (more colours – nothing on the spectrum is too far out. Infra-red? Fuck yeah!), badder (everyone’s a cunt, you fucks, etc, and so on), and bi-curious (will include stuff that is not music, too). Ha! You thought this was going to be all doom’n’shit. (It was.)

I was asked if I’d insert a word for all our fallen comrades in publishing arms and, while I am sympathetic, this is not the page for sentiment. Schadenfreude is the only ‘S’ word around here (well, aside from Shit, Sucks and Steve – not always in that order).

Sigh. (Oh, another one!)

Perhaps there is time for one nugget of music news. An Xmas miracle, if you will. It seems that The Velvet Underground, or at least some of them (Lou Reed, Mo Tucker and the guy who replaced John Cale) are going to appear in a panel discussion in Noo Yoik in December. Could this be the start of something beautiful, wonderful and international? Could it be that ‘An Evening With The VU’ will become a touring show, where they get to bicker and break up every night before an audience of bloodthirsty fans?

You already know that answer to that – but perhaps someone will put a drumstick through Lou’s face for having the unmitigated Bad Taste to record a song with the fucking Killers. Transformer and Berlin were a long time ago, Lou!

Fuck Buttons, anyone?