Gallows humour

The true failed bands of each generation, as opposed to your Ordinary Boys/Lady Sovereign/The Others mid-tier failures, get far too easy a ride, precisely because nobody can remember enough about them to mock. For instance, if I was to start busting on The Glitteratti right now, would you recall enough about them to laugh along? Koopa had three top 40 singles: try and hum one of them. What did the lead singer of Kubb look like? Have a go at pinpointing the exact year Ben’s Brother failed to happen. See what I mean? History has absolved them of their myriad sins by simply tippexing them from your mind. It’s hard to know if Gallows, who bizarrely a bunch of indie types spent the better part of 2007 trying to make happen, will be totally forgotten. Frontman Frank Carter has been cutting some utterly stunning interviews in an attempt to make them remembered, even if just as a punchline. Which is something, I’d imagine Kwame is quite happy with his station in life these days. Let’s enjoy one of those interviews together:

Congratulations to America and all their fans on a tremendous achievement

I mean, effectively, this post here is the one that we would have posted in April if a) Veltroni had beaten Berlusconi and b) this blog was actually, y’know, active in April. Only without seminal Italian acts Pooh and that one dude that did that “somebody answer the phone” techno tune. But never let it be said that ILB doesn’t mark the major occasions. Free MP3s after the jump

Pop criticism on the campaign trail

From what I understand there’s some election-or-other happening across the pond, where apparently the main talking points of the campaign boil down to how much ABBA is too much to have on your iPod. Thankfully, some brave political pundits, notably John McWorter of the NY Sun, have looked aside from the spin and deceit in order to drop some pretty intellectual viewpoints on the hip-hop: