Dispatches from our Royal friends Across the Pond

Check out the stamping madness the Brits are up to next year, an enticing adventure in teleportation. It will surely call forth a colourful combo of stamp aficionados and music nerds alike.

The Royal Mail apparently consulted Greatest Album Cover polls and U.K. music editors to put together their top ten list of album covers, which I graciously typed out for you below:

1. Blur Parklife
2. New Order Power, Corruption and Lies
3. Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV (aka ZoSo)
4. Primal Scream Screamadelica
5. Rolling Stones Let It Bleed
6. David Bowie Ziggy Stardust
7. The Clash London Calling
8. Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells
9. Pink Floyd The Division Bell
10. Coldplay A Rush Of Blood To The Head

F YEAH stars to picking Blur over Oasis, and for including New Order and Primal Scream instead of all the new crap that hasn’t been crossing over well since this decade. But where’s Moz and RADIOHEAD? Where the hell are THE BEATLES, and since when does Coldplay get dibs on the R.M.S. throne? Are they even considered British anymore?

To conclude, are We (royal) really saying that this crap…

is more striking than, oh, say…this gorgeous glacier of electronic genius?

C’mon guys…you’ve had better bands, festivals, and drinking laws than the Americans since music was cool. Can’t you at least represent yourselves fairly?

Radiohead, “Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box” Amnesiac

Public Image Ltd. “Flowers of Romance”

Follow this closely, for it is beautiful.

Now in the summer
I could be happy or in distress

Depending on the company
On the veranda

Talk of the future or reminisce
Behind the dialogue
We’re in a mess

Whatever I intended
I sent you flowers
You wanted chocolates instead

The flowers of romance
The flowers of romance

I’ve got binoculars
On top of boxhill

I could be Nero
Fly the eagle and start all over again

I can’t depend on these so called friends
It’s a pity you need to defend

I’ll take the furniture and start all over again

Punk is Dead, but Leather Lives On

Look at these guys….

…they knew how to make it work.

The concept of cool will forever be embossed in the skin of a leather jacket that makes even the straightest-edge vegan kids squirm with wanton sin. Last night’s metal mayhem at Aragon Ballroom proved it so. While there was an undesirable amount of pimple-faced, middle-hair-part Hot Topic concertgoers, and NO RE-ENTRY (?!), it was still a pretty sweet show. Onion scribe David Wolinsky writes all about the Converge, Mastodon and Dethklok show on SPIN, accompanied by my photography. Czech it, kids.

Here were some of the cow skin toting babes…