In memoriam

As you’ll be well aware from today’s newspaper headlines, one of the true greats, a man who dominated the 80s and still had a major impact in the 90s, as well as leaving an indelible mark on football, has left us all. We here at ILB want to pay tribute.

Does NME journalist James McMahon want to blap the shit out of his new boss?

We took a stab in the dark at Phil Hebblethwaite being the next editor of the NME a few weeks ago, solely because we had a string of Google search hits for this site reading “phil hebblethwaite new nme editor” and we thought we’d chance our arm. So it’s probably safe to say we’re not the RP Ratings of the music industry game, probably more likely the Templegate, being as Krissi Murison is now taking the helms at IPC “Towers”.

In celebration of the CMS operatives at last.fm

Totally stoked for this gig you guys, hope I can get a ticket from the touts.

Dan Hancox memorial post

Add Glitter to your Photos

Well, he’s not dead yet, obviously, but anyone who’s been following Dan Hancox’s heartbreaking series of blog posts on CommentIsFree detailing his battle with stomach cancer will be aware his time on this planet is limited. We at ILB have been touched by this, and threw the Batsignal up to find someone who could replace him. Society, whether or not it realises it or not, needs a prissy, cossetted, privately-educated Oxbridge ponce writing about urban music, otherwise certain… “undesirable” members of society might start demanding to be allowed to write about the music that, you know, they actually created and maintained for the past 70 years. ILB is now proud to present to you Louis: a legit, 3k a term education, graduate of Oxbridge, 100% dyed-in-the-wool posh kid. He will now be reviewing hip-hop, R&B, whateverthefuck that shit is that’s on Channel U these days, and other genres on this site in the upcoming future. Here he is on some of the latest bloghype rap tracks. Take it away, Lil’ Louis:

Vote now and choose ILB’s new Carpentieri

We’re talking about the art of the square-go.

Post-midnight Youtube filler: Dave Van Ronk – The Outcaste

We usually copypasta a dumb comment from underneath the original Youtube clip here, but not this time, because a) said video has less than 400 views and only one comment and b) this song really is so fantastic that I don’t want to draw attention away from it with zings.

Make your mouthpiece obese like Della Reese

I think most connisseurs of ILB would peg “A Brief History of Vandalism To MP3 Blogger Wikis” as one of the high points of this blog to date, and, really, any excuse to update it is gonna be eagerly pounced upon by us.

A brief history of pinball machines based on bands written entirely with stolen content

Can we get a little love for the noble art of pinball up amongst the ILB readership? Like many a working class yoot with a little bit of cash to spare since graduating, ILB has, over the course of its lifetime, placed more cash into fruit machine note slots than it has the palms of Tesco checkout counter workers, and we’ve so much time on quiz machines that we can actually answer Hex Appeal questions before any clue has come on screen. We’re that damn good. But the triumphant reigns of these two behemoths of the shiny light/loud noise circuit have led to the OG of them, the pinball machine, being ignored by bars and pub UK-wide. Possibly because it’s much harder to smash someone’s face into an Itbox than it is a pinball machine, I dunno. We at ILB want to change that. We want to bring them back. And what better way of doing it than by going over to the Internet Pinball Database, stealing a bunch of photos about pinball machines based on bands (this is nominally a music blog, remember), and then passing that off as content? Sounds good to me.

Results 1 – 100 of about 23,900 for “hold me closer tony danza”.

Does this strike you as too many or not enough?

Today’s ILB guest music critic: Cristiano Ronaldo

Courtesy of your super soaraway:

“Liverpool have The Beatles and Manchester have Oasis. I think we (Manchester) have the better band.

“I have all the Oasis albums but my favourite track by far is Champagne Supernova. It’s an absolute classic.

“One thing I will miss about Manchester is Oasis.

“I will be honest, I didn’t even know who they were when I first arrived in Manchester, but you can’t live there long without knowing who they are.

“The lads in the dressing room loved them, especially the English boys.

“When I came to England I was into my techno, but I think Oasis are one of my favourite bands now.”