Albums
I shouldn't like this album. I really shouldn't. This is 14-year-old Californian rock, basically. And in its very simplest form. With a singer who sounds like he used to front the Crash Test Dummies, but has since migrated up a few octaves (with the strained voice to show for it), vocal harmonies, thrash guitars and occasional naff solos, Four Star Mary are a band designed purely to attract the sort of cider-swilling teenager with piercings, dyed hair and statutory Limp Bizkit T-shirt you see skating round your local car park on a Saturday morning. That's the theory, anyway. But then the juicy guitar riffage kicks in, somewhere between the Smashing Pumpkins and Offspring, some little trigger in me switches on, and I realise that FSM ROCK. Then, about three bars into each chorus, I feel a small thrill of recognition, despite never having heard any of the tracks before, a thrill that says "yes, they are onto something good here"....
Music: Singles
If anybody was in a position to record a song about being fucked over by The Man, it was Eggman. Unfortunately, his spirit was totally destroyed before he got the chance. Step forward, then, Martin Carr, his long-suffering friend and musical associate. And Noam Chomsky. And a troop of monkeys. And some other super furry animals. And, not coincidentally, one of the records of the year....
Music: Live
Glasto's off. The other festivals have played safe, bowing to their sponsors and offering little more exciting than Toploader on any main stage. So where to go for Britain's music hungry youth, keen to pack in a year's worth of acts into a few hours, get monkeyed as never before and spend the rest of the summer boasting to their less fortunate friends about their moshpit epiphany? The answer, as any wise teenager will tell you, is the dance festivals. Gatecrasher, Essential and last week's Homelands market themselves less as traditional parties in muddy fields, and more as the ultimate club nights they are - giving you scores of top names and still allowing you the comfort of your own bed in the morning....