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

DON'T VOTE TORY

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Cheers,

The Plague Doctors