Roll Out The Dread Carpet!

So, it’s that time of year again when the red carpet is rolled out and everyone is made thoroughly sick by posing rock stars, shameless schmoozing and the cringe-worthy over-emotional acceptance speeches. It can only mean two things: Coldplay making tits out themselves and The Brit Awards – and what a completely staged, camp, over-the-top embarrassing affair it was! Whenever anyone mentions the Bit Awards they always at some point in the conversation mention the fateful debacle of Sam Fox & Mick Fleetwood when they hosted the event in the nineties. When the show went out (live) it was slated for its gaffs and cock ups. But, in my opinion, I thought it was utterly fantastic and remember laughing my head off all the way through (“er … over to you … Mick????”)!! Other notable Brits past ‘cock-ups’ included Jarvis Cocker invading Michael Jackson’s dance routine while he paraded himself as some kid of god-like figure in front of a load of kids (probably not the first time Jacko did that as well – allegedly). And the best of all was when some members from Chumbawumba threw a bucket of water over the then deputy Prime Minister John Prescott (good job they weren’t standing next to him or he probably would have sparked them) – all three brilliantly un-scheduled bouts of mayhem which no doubt had the producers pulling their hair out and of course provided lots of fun for us watching viewers at home. By the way, sorry about saying cock-up all the time, I can assure you I’m not Dennis Norden’s love child. So, after that reminiscing of the good old days of the Brit awards I’ll turn to the current nice, squeaky-clean, nearly-live cock-up free Brits and how they have become as exciting as a Chris Martin acceptance speech. The likes of Fox & Fleetwood have now been replaced with nice little manufactured pop stars and other notable celebrities from the world of showbiz such as Davina Fucking McCall and this year’s Brit hosts Kylie Minogue, the seriously un-funny James Corden and his Quegg mate with that moody suit on whose name does not come to mind. They all go totally by the book and keep the running schedule tighter than an S Club Junior’s gym suit and usher drunken rock stars Like David Hassellhoff off the stage quicker than you can say “I’d like to thank Gaaaaard”. The other ‘safety net’ the producers of the show and many other ‘live’ shows have is the concept of airing the show almost live. This, in case you didn’t know is having the show aired with a three or five second delay just in case anyone says a naughty word (bet the bosses at channel 4 wished they’d have thought of that before allowing Shaun Ryder on TFI Friday a few years ago eh?). They also employ an idea of muting certain parts of the dialogue for legal reasons. What ever legal reasons they may be just adds to the total embarrassment of the whole event and, in my opinion, makes the organisers look like utter dickheads. Which brings me to this year’s awards and the latest ‘hip’ band to be nominated: Year in year out everyone expects Take That & Coldplay to be nominated for every award under the sun even if they haven’t released anything, but I bet most people weren’t expecting Elbow to be there were they? Elbow! I bet most of the fourteen year old pre-pubescent kids who watch the awards will be looking at the nominations and thinking “who the fuck are Elbow?” the only reason Elbow featured is because of the bandwagon-jumping Brit Awards panel noticing they won the Mercury award! But, good on Elbow as I’m glad they won. Should boost their coffers no end due to the usual increase in sales a Brit award victory brings. Good set of lads as well. But, it’s not just Elbow that prompted so many WFT’s on Wednesday, here’s another nomination that was without doubt the most surreal of them all: best British Live band – Iron Maiden!!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of Maiden, but they do not belong at the Brits. Nico McBrain and the boys must have laughed their stuffed cod-pieces off when they received the news of their award!!! If only they could have been there in person and Eddie (he’s their mascot by the way) runs on stage and eats Kylie Minogue’s head. That would be up there with Jarvis, Fleetwood & Fox in my opinion. And by the way, can anyone tell me why Ian Brown & Paul Weller we’re nominated for best British Male when they have probably spent the last year or so sitting at home getting stoned? Mmm, might have to try that one sometime. Maybe I’ll get a pay rise at work. Then again ……. As regards categories, over the past few years The Brit Awards have had this knack of ‘creating’ an award for the newest hip thing in music. Anyone remember 2004 when The Darkness released ‘Permission to Land’? The album was a resounding success and outsold most other bands from different genres of music that year. So what did the Brits do? … They created an award for best Rock Group. This had never been done before in the history of the Brits so they jumped on the Darkness/Rock bandwagon so they could ‘have a piece of the action’ (see previous paragraph about Elbow) I suppose you could say, shameless arse kissing or a smart move for the promoters of the event? Either way I don’t think on the night of the awards The Darkness ever had they’re cocks sucked harder or in such abundance! Oh yeah, surprise surprise, they also won the rock award. You know what else I hate about The Brits (and every other awards ceremony)? - The category of Breakthrough Artist. This year’s Breakthrough Artist includes Adele. Now, don’t get me wrong, she has a fairly decent voice, but she is an exact replica of Amy Winehouse!! So, can you tell me what is ‘breakthrough’ about imitating another singer? If breakthrough was the case then Oasis would win this award year in year out for imitating The Beatles!! Another breakthrough act in this year’s awards were Scouting for Girls (or Scouting for Quilts as a mate of mine calls them). Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but wasn’t their debut album released in 2007? That means they have taken nearly two years to ‘break through’. If they would have won maybe they should have change the title of the award to ‘Eventually Breaking through after years of banging their heard against a brick wall Artist’ Award? Another thing I noticed the other day about The Brits is they already have an album out of songs from Brit Award nominees. The advert consists of snippets of songs from five American artists and four British artists. Now, I don’t want to sound like Al Murray here, but the Brit awards are about British singers and British bands aren’t they? If not, shouldn’t it be called The Yanks with a few Brit Bands Awards? Finally, the most embarrassing thing I’m sure any respected musician must surely have to endure is receiving the life time achievement award. Not just at the Brits, but at any award ceremony. It’s basically a golden handshake with a welcome to the nursing home pass thrown in for good measure. I really do think any artists who receive this award shudder when the words ‘life time achievement award’ are mentioned as they have to perform that ridiculous medley of songs at the end. I don’t think there is anything quite as cheesy in music! Although two words are needed from the musician in question to offer to the organisers when the award is offered (the 2nd word is ‘off’ in case you were guessing). Personally I thought Brandon Flowers definitely should have chose them words instead of doing that damn right embarrassing duet with The Pet Shop Boys!! Truly shocking! And the less said about Flowers’ jacket the better, he looked like he just skinned and ate some sort of bird of prey back stage and stuck it’s feathers on his shoulder pads (he must have been watching Bear Grylls before he came out I reckon) So if you didn’t get a chance to see Duffy accepting her three awards while sounding like an over emotional Stephen Hawking gargling peppermint mouthwash, Chris Martin’s shocking contribution to the sello-tape and shocking outfit industry or ‘un-prepared’ speeches by novice musicians shitting themselves with fear at the prospect of having their arses grabbed by James Corden and his Quegg mate, don’t worry, ITV has every base covered. You can always watch the thirteen repeats again followed by The Brits after Show party, Brits Backstage, Brits Re-Visited and Brits Access all Areas VIP Lounge Extravaganza Special on ITV4 for the next eighteen weeks! If you get sick of that, you can always watch re-runs of Fox & Fleetwood on It’ll Be Alright on the Night … if your one of them people. Mol