Albums Of The Year

It's nearly the end of the year, which is traditionally the time all kinds of magazines and other content providers reveal their favourite albums of the year. The Plague Doctors are no exception.

We've cogitated, coagulated and masticated over the very best that 2011 had to offer, and whittled down the 12,302 albums released this year into a list of the 50 very best. Each of these albums is a shining example of what makes it great to be living through such a culturally rich time in our musical heritage.

Now, without further ado, The Plague Doctors are very proud to present our 50 favourite Albums of the Year of Our Lord 2011:

1. That PJ Harvey one.

2. Jay-Z/Kanye

3. What else did I buy this year?
4. There must have been something...

5. Can't think what it was.

6. I meant to buy the Nicola Roberts album.

7. But I didn't.

8. I didn't even like the Jay-Z and Kanye album, it was pretty rubbish, there was, like, one good song on it.

9. That PJ Harvey album was pretty samey as well, it only had about three good songs on it.

10. This is embarrassing.

11. I listened to bits of the Stephin Merritt obscurities album on Spotify, does that count?

12. No.

13. I must have heard more than two albums that were released this year.

14. No, I didn't.

15. This 50 best albums of the year thing could take a while, couldn't it?

16. It's going to need some padding out.

17. Just stick some albums from 2001 in, no one will notice.

18. Andrew WK - I Get Wet

19. Spiritualized - Let It Come Down

20. Jay-Z - The Blueprint

21. The Strokes - Is This It

22. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

23. 2001 was pretty good, wasn't it?

24. Yes.

25. Were you an NME reader in 2001, by any chance?
26. Maybe.

27. You missed off Amnesiac.

28. No I didn't, it's rubbish.

29. There must have been something else you bought this year. Kate Bush?

30. No.

31. Adele?

32. Nope.

33. Radiohead?

34. That was even worse than Amnesiac.

35. You heard it though? That means it can go on the list.

36. Oh. Okay.

37. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

38. Oh! I thought of another one!

39. Lady Gaga - Born This Way

40. I really wanted to like that, but it was no good. Sad face.

41. Do you think this lack of good records is indicative of the death of the album?

42. What?

43. Has mp3 culture equipped us all with short attention spans, meaning we no longer have the patience or desire to sit through an entire album in one sitting? Are people no longer interested in the idea of a record as a cohesive artistic statement? More worryingly, have years of picking and choosing our favourite two or three songs and thoughtlessly discarding the rest prompted artists to give up on the idea of the very concept of the long player?

44. Sorry, didn't read that, it looked boring.

45. Yeah, it was bollocks, don't worry, you didn't miss anything.

46. I think the reason there weren't any good albums this year was just because there weren't any good albums this year. There were LOADS last year, I bet there's loads next year as well.

47. The Plague Doctors album is due out next year as well, isn't it?

48. Yep.

49. I hope this whole top 50 nonsense hasn't just been a shameless plug.

50. Err...

THE PLAGUE DOCTORS - CORNFLAKES AND FLESH

COMING 2012

The Stone Roses

This week, The Stone Roses announced their return to the live stage next year with a couple of enormo-gigs at Heaton Park.

The Plague Doctors are pleased to announce that they will not be attending these shows in either a professional or personal capacity.

Actually, that's not fair, I wouldn't mind going. I used to love The Stone Roses, and John Squire is literally the only guitarist I've ever really thought was any good. The solo from Ten Storey Love Song was the first thing I taught myself on the guitar, closely followed by the intro to This Is The One.

Then I discovered all sorts of other music as well, but I still quite like The Stone Roses, and I'd quite gladly stick my head in at Heaton Park next June if I thought it wasn't going to be full of absolute arseholes. You know who I mean. Oasis fans. Kasabian fans. Football fans. Chanting RO-SES RO-SES RO-SES! Throwing bottles of piss and being unpleasant.

Also, I was a huge Stone Roses fan, but I never liked some of their biggest songs. Fool's Gold isn't even a song, it's just a bassline waiting for something to happen. For ten minutes. And I Wanna Be Adored is gauche and dirgey. So if they leave those two out, I might go.

They've threatened to write some new songs, which I'd be quite interested to hear.

However, I'd be mainly interested in hearing the following songs (apart from the bleeding obvious ones): The Hardest Thing In The World, Standing Here, Going Down, Elephant Stone, Mersey Paradise, Tightrope, How Do You Sleep?, Good Times, Tears, Breaking Into Heaven.

I think this incoherent excitable rant is clear evidence I need to get my arse in gear and buy myself some tickets.

BYE.

Instrumental Sampler of 'Cornflakes and Flesh' our upcoming album

Deep in the Kastle Inkredible, we Plague Doctors have been beavering away trying to make an album that can stand up to the reputation of our live shows. It's not been an easy ride, the surface world has been very distracting this year, months of our lives have been lost in our office worker guises. I need not repeat that this is a necessary evil, we have to gather more credits to survive, we have very expensive tastes.

Its taken us an age but we've put together an instrumental sampler of some of the songs recorded so far, fans of Je m'appelle need not fear, we're working on that one right now...

Press Play Now.

Eurovision

On Saturday it’s the 55th annual Eurovision Song Contest. I love pop music and I love a competition, so Eurovision is pretty much my idea of heaven.
There’s no escaping that the UK has done abysmally in Eurovision over the past few years, despite efforts by such luminaries as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Pete Waterman to turn things around. Hell, The Plague Doctors even gave it a try, but to no avail.
The fact is, we haven’t managed to put a decent singer together with a decent song since Katrina and the Waves won in 1997 with Love Shine A Light. And they were American.
In truth, I’m not sure that will change this year. The UK’s entry, I Can, by recently reformed Blue, isn’t that great, but it should get more than nul points.
Having watched the semi-finals, it’s shaping up to be another great night of pop music and competition. And then you start to think, once a year isn’t enough. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a song contest where acts fought it out weekly to be the most popular? On the television? For half an hour on a Thursday or Friday night?
Then you remember that we used to have this. It was called Top of the Pops and the BBC axed it in 2006.
THE IDIOTS.

In summary: Bring back Top of the Pops.

ROYAL WEDDING

I'm very excited about the Royal Wedding. On the day, I'm having a wedding breakfast of champagne and smoked salmon in my morning suit, then after the ceremony I'm heading outside for a street party, where there'll be spam sandwiches and Coronation chicken in top hat and tails.

However, I want to know more about what Wills and Diana 2.0 are going to be doing after the wedding. In the evening, Prince Charles is apparently giving a private dinner in their honour, followed by dancing. This sounds like it could be 'the do', but the reference to dancing is disappointingly vague. What are they going to be dancing to? More importantly, what will be the first dance? WE NEED TO KNOW.

Here's my tips:

James Blunt - You're Beautiful

They seem like the type that would have this as 'their' song. You know, a bit thick. Plus James was in the army and is massively posh, and so was and is William, so that's got to count for something.

Kanye West - Gold Digger

I just did an internet search and Prince William recently admitted to liking Linkin Park and Kanye West. I don't know enough Linkin Park to know if they've got any songs that would be hilarious to hear at the Royal Wedding party, but I'm guessing that they absolutely don't. However, the chorus to Gold Digger would certainly leave those in the Middleton camp in danger of choking on their Dubonnet and cokes. You can also imagine Prince Philip, nay, the entire Royal family, enjoying the song for its employment of racist terminology.

Abba - Dancing Queen

The internet also revealed that Kate Middleton likes Abba. First dance, Dancing Queen, job done.

Bodyrockers - I Like The Way You Move

It's their favourite song, apparently. Probably not the classiest of first dances at a wedding, but it's their day, let them do what they like.

Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle

Not a chance, I just wanted to mention it because it would be an amazing first dance at a wedding.

Elton John - Candle In The Wind '97

Probably not.

(Although the double A-side, Something About The Way You Look Tonight, would be a good shout.)

Inside report on The Plague Doctors' new album

"I've never been totally satisfied with our sound" admits Brother John to me while tenderly placing a glass eye into his latest creation, a giant Peruvian Pelican. Everyone in this realm needs a source of income and The Plague Doctors are no different, Brother John J Hazakiah is a half arsed taxidermist, one of the most average in all of Britannia.

Digressions aside, the amount of effort the band have put into making their recorded music sound impressive pales in comparison to the amount of effort they have put into making their live shows entertaining. After a disappointing run on the live scene in 2010 and fearing their own mortality, the brothers decided it was time to focus on making some good recordings.


Brother John hard at work in The Kastle Inkredible

Six months ago they auctioned off a parlour full of Brother Paul II's family heirlooms and two of his Saabs, using filthy cash to buy up lots of exciting equipment that they will never fully understand.

The Plague Doctors are partially funded by a mysterious benefactor, my boss Mr Leonard Skully PhD. Last week he asked me to collect a microfilm of their work so far, naturally I've made a copy of it and here's one of the unfinished tracks...

Download Album Preview Track Here

Those boys won't be happy when they find out what i've done, i'm putting myself at risk here, I especially fear that big one who does the camp rapping. With any luck it'll give them a kick up the arse though and they'll actually finish something.

Milton Bigglesworth, secretary to Leonard Skully PhD


Mr Hazakiah, he stormed out of the room as soon as i'd taken this, we don't get on.

The Plague Doctors Sell Out

We haven't played any gigs for ages, for a variety of boring reasons. But don't worry, we're not just sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, we're making PLANS.

John is beavering away in his bunker, tinkering with all kinds of magical devices in his endless quest to create the perfect sound. I'm coming up with all kinds of malelovent and malodorous schemes to make sure that The Plague Doctors remain the most incredible band in town.

I can't go into specifics, but what you need to know is that there will be CHANGES. The overall aim is to be reborn as a SERIOUS MUSICAL OUTFIT.

We want to burrow our way into the hearts of fans of the real music fans. Those people who don't like pop music, they like REAL music. People who like Mumford and Sons and Ellie Goulding. People who bought the xx album and think that the xx are their 'special' band despite the fact that everybody else in the whole stinking world is into them as well. People who go to V Festival. People who just plain don't like rap music, apart from Eminem. That's who we're after. Stupid people with cash. For obvious reasons.

Therefore, a certain change in attitude is required. There will be less jokes. There will be less silly costumes. There will be less ridiculousness. Our fans will like it a lot less. But we don't care about them, we never have. All we want is cash. The cash of the stupid people.

We're selling out, people, and we're doing it NOW.






Disclaimer: The Plague Doctors reserve the right not to do any of the things they have promised they are going to do in this blog.

New Year, New DANGER

WHILE I was writing the last blog I had a brilliant plan to write a blog on January 1 and then write new one EVERY DAY for a WHOLE YEAR. And then I forgot. As New Year's resolutions go, that was a pretty short-lived one.

Now I'm thinking that maybe I can just start it now and finish it on January 9 next year. Which would be fine, obviously, except it would all fall down again when I go away next weekend to Lyme Regis, where the internet doesn't exist. So now I'm thinking I'll just try and blog MORE OFTEN. That'll do.

Yesterday I ate snails for the first time. It was in a French restaurant in Nottingham called French Living. They came in a special ceramic snail serving dish with a two-pronged snail spearing device. They were very tasty, but I suppose anything tastes good if you serve it in that much garlic butter. I'd have them again though. The restaurant was very good too.

Today I went for a walk in a place called Gotham. It's nothing to do with Batman though, and it's pronounced Gotem. It looked like this.

I got a bit muddy and had a nice time. I'm glad it wasn't like the Batman Gotham, I'm not interested in Batman, he's by far my least favourite superhero. He's not even a superhero, he's just a really rich man with a Messiah complex.

Then I went home and watched Liverpool capitulate against Manchester United. The game was pretty much over within half an hour, what with a penalty and a sending off both going in our favour. Still, it's always nice to beat Liverpool, so I celebrated by drinking a load of Guinness and port. It's like a rich idiot's Guinness and blackcurrant. It's nice.

GIGS OF THE YEAR

I went to quite a few gigs this year, a lot of them were very good. Here are my top five.

1. Crowded House, Manchester Apollo

I was reviewing this for the MEN, so I took Brother John as my plus one. We had incredible seats, we were on the front row. John and I are big fans of the Crowdies, you can't argue with songs like theirs, and they're such damn nice guys. Admitting a penchant for the House will get you about as many cool points as being a Nazi sympathiser in most quarters, but sod it, they're brilliant (Crowded House, that is, not the Nazis).
Highlights included saying hello to Neil Finn's dad in New Zealand via Skype, the entire crowd holding the final note of Better Be Home Soon for what felt like a full five minutes, and the most middle-aged, middle class middle of the road moshpit you've ever seen for Weather With You.
And this was all before Johnny Marr came on for the encore and they did Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want and There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. Everybody left grinning from ear to ear, it was an incredible gig, one of the best I've ever been to.

http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10018314_review__crowded_house___manchester_apollo

2. Jonsi - Latitude

Latitude was rubbish this year, make no mistake. It was full of dicks, the line up was rubbish and there was a gang rape on the first night. I'm never going back. However, Jonsi on the final night was all kinds of amazing.
I'm not a Sigur Ros fan and I'd never heard any of his solo stuff before, so I wasn't expecting much. However, me and Bob (who I was there with) just stood there with our mouths open for a full hour and a bit. I remember at the time thinking, “If I was writing a review of this I'd say it was like a rave in a sonic cathedral.”
It was epic post-rock pop on a grand scale, culminating in a brain-exploding brilliant white noise crescendo. And he was wearing a very impressive feathery headpiece.
Needless to say, I bought his album as soon as I got back and it was shit.

3. LCD Soundsystem/Hot Chip – Magna, Rotherham

Two of the best bands at Glastonbury (more of which in a bit) coming together for a joint headline tour was the stuff of geeky electro rock fan's dreams. LCD are a brilliant live band, even if James Murphy is far too cool for school and does tend to shout a bit too much.
Hot Chip made one of the best albums of the year and are absolutely shit hot live, dismantling all of their songs and putting them back together in a different order just for a giggle. They've got properly amazing songs that make you dance and make you cry all at the same time. You just want to hug them all. And then dance some more.
Other highlights of this gig include the longest bar queue I've ever been in, during which I was recognised as a Plague Doctor by a man who tried to start a bar queue sing along of We Killed Everyone at Radio One. He didn't get very far, as no one else knew the song and just thought he was mental, but full marks for trying.

4. Scissor Sisters – Glastonbury

This year's Glastonbury was the best one I've ever been to. And I've been to LOADS, so there. The best non-musical act was the sun, which was so damn hot everyone almost died of heat exhaustion. As mentioned, LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip were pretty damn ace and Pet Shop Boys and the Flaming Lips both played absolute blinders headlining the Other Stage.
Ash were as reliably fun as ever, and have some surprisingly good new songs as well, fully justifying our decision to see them over Stevie Wonder. Judy Collins in the Avalon tent was the biggest namedropper and owner of the loveliest voice on site. Avi Buffalo made me realise that I didn't hate all new guitar music, which was surprising. And where else can you go from Snoop Dogg to Kevin Eldon to Shakira?
But Scissor Sisters were probably best, because it was Saturday night, there was a glorious sunset, we danced like loons and then Kylie turned up. What more do you actually want?

5. Wu Tang Clan – Manchester Academy

Another review for the MEN with Brother John in tow, this was hilarious. They were an absolute shambles, no stage set, just eight mikes, a set of decks and a group of incoherent shouting men. But they were incredible. The whole place stank of weed and the predominantly male, white, middle class audience bellowed back every word. It was weird. But it was brilliant.
They plugged the film they're allegedly making. They brought the motherfucking ruckus. They urged all the ladies to get naked, which one of them did. They ain't nothing to fuck with. They urged us to check out their gravel pit, which we did, and we saw that it was good.

Another Year Of The Plague

The Plague Doctors have had a strange old year. I can't remember everything we did, especially not the stuff we did back in January, so I'll just pick out some of the highlights.

PRESTON
We played at a festival in Preston in the summer to an audience of precisely no one. It was in the upstairs room of a pub at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon some time at the arse end of summer. The crowd consisted of the soundman, the promoter and our entourage of one.
Inspired by the complete lack of interest, I decided to go all out Freddie Mercury at Wembley, leading our entourage to describe it as one of our best ever gigs, despite no one being there.

SOWERBY BRIDGE
We fulfilled a long held dream of mine to play the Puzzle Hall Inn in Sowerby Bridge. It was a Tuesday night in early June, and virtually no one was there. Most of my so-called friends who live in Halifax didn't bother to turn up. THANKS GUYS. However, Party Andrei and his Afghan friend Ravi from the Nestle factory were there, which more than made up for it. They both enjoyed it, as did blog legend Claire Smith and her friend Lora.
We played a storming set, the highlight of which was the angry folded arms people on the table next to the stage getting up and leaving half way through.
Afterwards, we were paid £64 for our efforts, which remains the highest fee we have ever commanded. The last I heard, the Puzzle Hall was due to shut down because the owners couldn't afford to keep it open. I think it is entirely unfair to link these two events.
Other highlights included a decidedly perilous drive home through fog so thick you could top a shepherd's pie with it.

CHESTER
After a well coordinated but somewhat undignified Facebook campaign, we found ourselves on the bill at one of the heats of the Standon Calling battle of the bands contests. To the winner, a slot on the bill at one of the country's hippest music festivals. We went on second to last, after three bands so bad you actually felt sorry for them. Some of them had come down from Scotland to play in Chester, as it was the only heat that took place outside London.
There was literally no one there (again) in a cavernous trendy food pub bang in the middle of Hollyoaksville. But we had Brother Paul Thompson back on board for one night only and we gave it everything to try and impress the judging panel. We all thought we'd done pretty well, we were clearly the best band there so far and we started allowing ourselves to believe that we might just sneak it.
Then a band called The Feud came on. They were all dressed in white and they sounded slick, like Muse crossed with Editors. They had banter like “This is our new single, it's available on iTunes” and “We've just come off a European tour, it was great.” They had precisely no songs or tunes, just a collection of bits that sounded like they might be songs if you weren't really paying attention. They were the most godawful offensive pile of shite I've ever heard. And yes, I am bitter.
Within three seconds of The Feud starting, we knew the judging panel (a grade A behatted Shoreditch dick) was going to pick them and there was no point in any of us turning up. Sure enough, that happened. We drove back along the M56 in an angry mood, just glad that we we weren't going back to Scotland.

WALES
We played in Wales at the Workhouse Festival in early July. Somehow, some friendly Welsh hippies had got hold of Wasting My Time and decided they liked it, especially the dance routine. We tipped up in the middle of the Welsh Valleys late on a Friday night and set up camp, ready for our festival-slaying set the next day.
We didn't have long to wait, as our set took place at 11am on the Saturday morning. Again, not very many people turned up, but it was the premiere of my white suit jacket and sunglasses combo, and we had a very nice time. Apart from when some children wandered into the tent and John got the fear about playing Snipping Off Your Face in front of them. But it was all fine.
Later we wandered into the town I can't remember the name of and found out Raoul Moat had been cornered in Rothbury. Then we had fish and chips and went back on site, spending the evening discussing the plainly unworkable Freeman on the Land concept with a friendly Welsh hippy who might have been called Barry.
On the way home we visited a lovely waterfall, which was nice.

Other highlights of the year include a storming gig upstairs at Fuel in Withington where we threw flowers all over the stage and were cajoled into doing an encore, so we had to do our Christmas song, as we literally had no other songs to do.

We've not done any gigs for AGES, but normal Plague service will be resumed at some point in the New Year.

Brother Paul's Review of the Year - Albums of the Year

Album of the year by an embarrassingly large distance...

Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Totes amazo...

Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

Hot Chip - One Life Stand

The Divine Comedy - Bang Goes The Knighthood

Bubbling under...

Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo

Belle & Sebastian - Write About Love

Robyn - Body Talk

Janelle Monae - The Archandroid

Ash - A-Z Vol 1

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

Take That - Progress

Best Coast - Crazy For You

Well, it's okay...

The Futureheads - The Chaos

Field Music - Measure

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From a Young Man

Approach with caution...

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

The Magnetic Fields - Realism

Not bothered listening to yet...

The Walkmen - Lisbon

Jonsi - Go

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I think it's been a good year, better than most. Well done to everybody involved.

I wrote a massive long thing about how amazing the Kanye West album is, but all you really need to know is that it's amazing. Well done Kanye!

Buying Music

KANYE WEST has got a new album out this week. It's called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and by all accounts it's very good. In fact, the internet has practically wet itself over how good it is, most notably with horribly-po-faced-and-pretentious-but-I-still-read-it-every-day music website www.pitchfork.com giving it a virtually unheard of perfect 10.0. That's not just ten out of ten, that's 100 out of 100. Oooh!

Always one to be swayed by media hype, I decided I'd quite like to own this record, so I set off to buy it. Now, being stuck in an office somewhere off the M60 for most of the week, there aren't many opportunities for buying records. The only shop near the office is a massive Morrisons, so I tootled in on Monday lunchtime, but Kanye's latest opus was nowhere to be seen. Thus followed a week of me visiting various towns and supermarkets to try and get hold of the album.

As well as Morrisons in Chadderton, Kanye's album was nowhere to be found in Tescos in Halifax and Haslingden, Asda in Rawtenstall, the whole of Accrington town centre and the whole of the Rossendale Valley.

Now, I know I didn't visit any actual music shops. But that's because they're not there. Accrington doesn't have a music shop. Rossendale doesn't either. Kanye West is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, so it's fair to assume that some of the biggest supermarket chains in Britain might be stocking his album. But they're not. And when did WHSmith stop stocking music?

I know I could have ordered it off the internet, but I thought buying it from a shop would be easier and quicker. What a ridiculous idea.

And I don't do mp3s or illegal downloading. Sorry.

Having adopted and 'I've started so I'll finish' attitude, it looks like I'm going to have to go into a town centre that isn't dying on its arse to try and find the new Kanye album. It's a bit of a sorry state of affairs, whichever way you slice it.

In the meantime I've been whetting my appetite for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by listening to it on Youtube, specifically the track Monster, and even more specifically, the verse by Nicki Minaj, where she lays waste to everyone else on the track. When 'everyone else on the track' includes Kanye, Jay-Z, Rick Ross AND Bon Iver, that's no mean feat. It's incredible. Go find it NOW. Go Nicki Minaj!

A New Northern Soul?

Northern Soul is pretty much one of my favourite things ever. The music itself is amazing, obviously, but the whole story around it is brilliant too. If you broke the history of Northern Soul down into a timeline, it would look like this:

THE SIXTIES - Some people in America make some brilliant pop songs that for one reason or another get completely ignored on their release and are largely forgotten about.

THE SEVENTIES - Some people in Wigan discover said brilliant pop songs and start playing them in nightclubs in Wigan. Everybody in the north becomes obsessed with obscure long-lost American pop music.

How amazing is that? You literally couldn't make it up. Men used to sprinkle the dancefloor with talcum powder and then go and do ridiculously complicated dance routines. DJs would go over to America to find 'new' tracks, bring them back and then to stop their rival DJs from seeing what they were called and stealing them, they would cover up the names of the songs on the records when they were playing them. Amazing.

My favourite Northern Soul song is either Out On The Floor by Dobie Gray or The Snake by Al Wilson. Or Sweet Talkin' Guy by The Chiffons. Or the original version of Tainted Love by Gloria Jones.

Anyway, it got me thinking, it would be incredible if something similar happened these days. I would love it if all there was a club playing all the best overlooked pop gems from the last few years. I'd be there with a whole bloody vat of talcum powder.

Here are some songs that would be playing.

Scooch - More Than I Needed To Know

Annie - Chewing Gum

Aly and AJ - The Potential Break-Up Song

Robbie Williams - Rudebox

All Saints - Chick Fit

Girls Aloud - Graffiti My Soul

Rachel Stevens - I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)

Natasha Bedingfield - I Wanna Have Your Babies

Paris Hilton - Stars Are Blind

Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Today The Sun's On Us (This would have to be the last song of the night, during which everyone would cry themselves to death)

Ok, so not all of these songs are desperately obscure, and some of them were even actual hit singles, but I have never heard any of them in a club and I'm never likely to and that makes me a bit sad. I might even have to start it myself. I'll look into it.

I'm sorry i haven't a glue.

Apropos of nothing, we're talking about glue. Not the drugs kind. Just glue for sticking stuff together. It turns out that the Plague Doctors have had some pretty harrowing glue incidents over the years. Here's some glue nostalgia.

BROTHER PAUL
On my first day of primary school, when I was three, I ate some white PVA glue. I don't remember why. I don't remember what the effects were, but I imagine I was sick.

The best thing about white PVA glue was the weird little spatulas you used to spread it on stuff. It was also fun to put it on your fingers and hands and play with it so it went tacky and you could peel it off and roll it into balls. Very satisfying.

When I was in Mrs Hickson's class we had moved on to using the glue gun. I loved the glue gun, especially the weird burning smell and the sense of danger. I managed to glue gun my hand once and ruined my best orange jogging bottoms in the process. I had to run my hand under the cold tap for about an hour and it was well boring.

In the second year at secondary school, I was playing football in the tennis courts in my brand new shoes and the stitching came off, leaving the front section flapping about and my foot getting wet. Not wanting to admit to my mum I had broken my new shoes, I bought some Bostik and glued them back together. This didn't work very well, so I had to buy a lot of Bostik. My mum then found all the tubes in my bedroom, arousing her suspicion.

Mum: Are you sniffing glue?

Me: No.

Amazingly this answer sufficed, as she didn't seem to care what I was actually using the glue for.

That was my last major glue incident. Over to John.

BROTHER JOHN
At the age of nine I was a pupil at a very nice little countryside school in Cumbria.

One day during some sort of crafts lesson one of my little friends was using the much revered glue gun to create a peg-gun (a gun that fires pegs). While waiting patiently to use the glue gun myself I noticed that my shoe lace was untied, bending down to tie it I put my head into the line of fire, resulting in a large unsightly white blob in my hair. Mother cut it out for me on return to the Kastle Inkredible.

My dad would occasionally refer to “The Knackers Yard” throughout my childhood. He would tell me with a big smile on his face how if next door’s horse didn’t get better soon then it would end up being made into the glue that I use to make airfix models. Thanks to wikipedia I can reliably tell you that horse glue is only used for pipe organs, antiques and stringed instruments nowadays. So you can get glueing those model planes without images of melting horses spoiling your enthusiasm.

We're still alive – promise.

First blog update since the beginning of the summer. I kept on starting to write things and then not finishing them. Sorry.

Anyway, here's what's happened this summer:

- The World Cup was rubbish.

- Glastonbury was amazing.

- The Plague Doctors went on holiday to the Yorkshire Dales and Brother John gashed his head open on a toilet door and had to have it glued back together.

- The Plague Doctors played at a festival in Wales at 11 o'clock in the morning and scared some children and learned about alternative culture from a nice man called Phil.

- Latitude was rubbish.

- The Plague Doctors played at a festival in Preston to a crowd of precisely no one, then declared it to have been their best ever gig. Mind you, they do that after every gig.

- Brother Paul went camping for four weekends in a row and started to think he was Ray Mears.

- The Plague Doctors played their last gigs for a bit.

With regards to this last one, fear not! We haven't split up, all that's happening is that one of the Plague Doctors is moving somewhere else. We're contractually obliged to keep quiet about the ins and outs of everything, but what it means for YOU, Plague fans, is that we'll be playing around town a bit less.

However, hopefully the new situation means we'll be able to write some more songs and finally update the set that we've been peddling to general indifference for the last 18 months, and then when we do play some shows they'll be super incredible, because we'll be all hungry, like.

If you're still in need of some unsettling musical entertainment the Cabinet of Curiosity will be rearing its mangled head at some point soon, so you can always go and see that.

Also, Brother Paul is rumoured to be finally starting work on dentist-pop side project the Plaque Doctors.

TTFN!

World Cup Poem

There's a World Cup on, don't know if you've noticed. Lots of bands have decided to mark the occasion by recording their own World Cup song. The Plague Doctors are not like other bands though. We've gone all Carol Ann Duffy on your bum and we're marking the occasion with an actual POEM.

Also, most World Cup songs contain at least some sense of optimism about England's chances of winning the tournament. Our poem is a bit more realistic. Here it is people.

We're Going Out On Penalties (A Sonnet)

Take the flags all back indoors

We don't need them anymore

Take that novelty St George's wig from off your head

Rip the shirts from off your back

Tear them up or paint them black

Tell the bars with all their big screens to put the cricket on instead

Text everybody in your phone book

Football isn't coming home, look

There'll be no parade round London on an open top bus

There'll be no dancing in the streets

We might as well admit defeat

We should all have stayed at home this year and saved ourselves the fuss

Abandon all your idle daydreams, they have no chance of coming true

Because we're going out on penalties, just like we always always do.


Soz and that.

Manic Street Preachers

The Plague Doctors have an unashamed love of the Manic Street Preachers. The first gig John and I attended together was the Manics at the Manchester Apollo on the Know Your Enemy tour in 2001.

They were royally pissed off, making for an incredible gig. My main memory is of Nicky Wire in a pink tutu intoning “Brain dead mother fuckers” at the end of Miss Europa Disco Dancer. It was pretty amazing. He's a brilliant pop star, much greater than the sum of his parts, exactly how it should be.

I even quite like Know Your Enemy, but it's not classic Manics. They really lost their way after that, with a greatest hits and the so-rubbish-I -haven't-even-bothered-listening-to-it Lifeblood.

Everyone thought they were dead, but Your Love Alone Is Not Enough was a cracking single and they got half decent reviews for the album too. I've never bothered listening to that either, but John assures me it's quite good in places.

Then came Journal For Plague Lovers, a stonking great return to form as they used up the last of Richey's lyrics. It was hailed as The Holy Bible part 2, but it's a great record in its own right. However, the album's general amazingness was tempered by a niggling thought that here at last was absolute proof that Richey was the talented one.

Perhaps James Dean Bradfield only writes amazing songs when presented with amazing lyrics. And amazing lyrics have been few and far between since Richey disappeared.

So now there's a tour and a new album (Postcards From A Young Man) and James Dean Bradfield has said this: "We're going for big radio hits on this one. It isn't a follow-up to Journal For Plague Lovers. It's one last shot at mass communication."

Hmmm. Everything Must Go part 2 anyone? If they must put out a pop record, there's a few rules we'll have to put in place.

1. Shorter songs. Do not even THINK about starting the album with a ponderous 6 minute epic eg The Ever-bloody-lasting. Short songs work best, Journal for Plague Lovers if full of gnarled and twisty melodic nuggets and it's all the better for it. Verse chorus verse repeat ad infinitum will not wash here.

2. Better lyrics. That means no lyrics about being tired, Mr Wire. Nothing about doing the housework. And for God's sake nothing about Hillsborough. S.Y.M.M wasn't even about Hillsborough, it was about an ITV drama about Hillsborough! ARGH!

3. Get Steve Albini in again. The drums on Journal for Plague Lovers sound great, and I don't usually give a crap about that kind of thing. Get Albini in again, if only to keep military-obsessed mouse-man Sean Moore happy. Either that or give him some Dairylea, he'd probably be happy either way.

4. Bad Romance. I would LOVE to hear the Manics cover Bad Romance. They have a history of covers and this would be perfect for them. Imagine Nicky on the Ro ma, ro ma ma's and then James coming in with an anguished "Whoah whoah whooaaa!!" AMAZING.

Any more suggestions on what Postcards From A Young Man should sound like would be greatly appreciated.

Sex and the City 2

I can't have been the only one a little perturbed by the absolute mauling that the new Sex and the City film has come in for. It seems everywhere you turn people are cackling about how terrible it is.

From the posters that have been photoshopped into oblivion, to the plot that seems to be so threadbare as to not actually exist, via an accusation that even the clothes are a bit rubbish, no one has a good word to say about this film.

Fans of the original series feel betrayed that the films could have taken everything they liked about its TV incarnation and made it into an empty-headed, vacuous mess. This seems fair enough.

Fans of misogyny are braying at the tops of their lungs about the whole shebang being an empty-headed, vacuous mess all along. This seems a bit off.

I've never watched any of it properly, the TV series or the films. What's troubling is that I suspect many of the people currently slagging it off haven't watched it properly either, they've just spotted an easy target and kicked it while it's down. Unbridled nastiness, that's what it is, and it's pretty unpleasant.

Here's Tanya Gold slagging it off in the Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/7746119/Sorry-sisters-but-I-hate-Sex-and-the-City.html

Here's a review that says it's "blatantly anti-Muslim"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/sex-and-the-city-2-film-review-1004093261.story

TV series fan Hadley Freeman had a go at in the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1281157/Sex-And-The-City-2-How-Carrie--Co-man-obsessed-morons.html

And it got a kicking in the Evening Standard too

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/review-23839220-sex-and-the-city-2-is-ugly-on-the-inside.do

All a bit depressing, no? I'm not saying the film's any good, I've not seen it, and it does look dreadful. I'm just saying leave it alone, move on, forget about it.

It's just a bad film. There's a lot of them about. No need to be so nasty.

Culture Vultures

Like some other people, Plague Doctors enjoy popular culture in all its forms. Here are some bits of culture we have been imbibing over the last few months

Robin Hood
Apparently, Robin Hood didn't wear green and live in a wood and rob the rich to give to the poor. He wore brown and saved England from the French and was deeply politically conscious. Drab and baffling.

LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
Too concerned with being cool, not concerned enough with being good. Like some hipster mash-up of The Knife, Hot Chip and The Fall. But not as good as any of them. It'll probably sound amazing live though.

Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Lots of people have reservations about Gorillaz, but Albarn haters be damned – this is great. Just a really fun album, probably a bit long, but if you can't find something to like here you're in danger of not actually liking music.

Crowded House – Manchester Apollo – Wed May 26
John and I went for an evening of singalong fun with the world's most singalong band. It was already amazing, but then Johnny Marr turned up in the encore and did a couple of Smiths songs and it became super amazing.

Mark Knopfler – MEN Arena – Tue May 25
I saw Nigel Havers looking harrassed in the foyer beforehand. This was as exciting as the evening got. A deeply dull few hours with a man who doesn't appear to care anymore. Still, Romeo and Juliet was quite good.

Jenny Holzer – The Baltic – Gateshead
I'd not really heard of her before I went, but this was incredible. She does these flashing LED sign installations that are just absolutely amazing. Utterly inspirational and mesmerising.

Hot Chip – One Life Stand
The first track sounds like The Knife (note to self: get wider frame of reference) and they end up sounding like The Beautiful South halfway through, but it's all good. The title track is particularly excellent.

STOP CAMERON

David Cameron must be stopped.

Obviously, you can stop him by not voting Tory. That's easy.

However, some people might still want to vote Tory. We need to stop these people from voting. Is this electoral fraud? Probably. I'd have thought being a smug lying twat was electoral fraud, but apparently not.

THE PLAN

If you see any Tories going out to cast their vote, stop them.

Here's a few methods you might like to try:

- Tell them Margaret Thatcher just died and we're having a national month of mourning instead of an election.

- Tell them you've got a load of poor people in your house they can point and laugh at. Bundle them into your cellar. Repeat until cellar is full.

- Tell them that the Big Society will also include people who aren't middle class and white. (It won't.)

- Tell them not to vote Tory because you just can't cope with the idea of that vile posh idiot running the country and none of his policies make any sense and you want to punch him in the head even though you've never punched anyone in your life and they'll set the country back thirty years because while Tories aren't all scare-mongering Daily Mail reading bigots quite a lot of them are actually and it frightens the bejesus out of you and OH GOD I CAN'T BEAR HIS FUCKING FACE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH

Actually that's unhelpful and unfriendly, all that swearing and violence. It's all a bit Danny Dyer.

My view is this: I hate Tories. Not the people who vote for them. But the people they vote for.

I didn't write that myself though, it's the intro to a piece on the Guardian website by Gary Younge. You might want to read the rest of his article, because it's really good and says everything I want to say about Tories and more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/04/why-i-hate-tories-david-cameron