Posts Tagged ‘connor mcnicholas’
THE
2009
MERCURY
PRIZE
There’s the Brits, NME awards; Grammys. All that..
The Mercury Prize though?
A celebration of the ‘Great Art of the Long Player’
A bit high-brow at times, but some great winners..
A great showcase..An Institution! No less.
Downloads, MTV, & commercial radio playlists..
Thom Yorke has declared the LP dead…
But the album has, to me, by some freak of mathematics in the dimensions of the old vinyl record; turned out to be the perfect length in which to frame a picture of a time and place..
by definition, every great modern album is built around much much more than just a ‘timeless’ Single.
Its a concept, an ‘era’, and a summary of a ‘phase’ in the life of a band/artist &/or a ‘scene’
This year the nominees are:
[in order of betting odds]
[3/1]* Florence and the Machine – Lungs
[9/2] Bat for Lashes – Two Suns
[6/1] The Horrors – Primary Colours
[6/1] Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew
[13/1] Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires
[10/1] La Roux – La Roux
[10/1] Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
[15/1] Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy
[16/1] Glasvegas – Glasvegas
[25/1] Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men
[33/1] Led Bib – Sensible Shoes
[40/1] The Invisible – The Invisible
[via wikipedia & olbg]
In the meantime-a little bit of Mercury’s past!:
Amy Winehouse!!
My fav. Mercury’s performance..still goosebumps territory; probably career-defining. Keep in mind this is 2007, just after Back To Black takes off, (pardon), but just before it all starts to spiral a bit;
Lovely tune, perfect rendition:
The Streets:
Some priceless voxpops, 2004
Thom Yorke:
Doing a solo performance of ‘Analyse’ from ‘The Eraser’ in 2006. Menacing azz:
PJ Harvey
Interview 2001,(“oh so overwhelmed”)!:
And then, again sounding/ looking amazing for her ‘Stories…’ win in 2001, great interview at the end
Pulp:
Beat Oasis to the prize in 1996:
& They say that live performances arent meant to influence the judge’s decisions, but:
Elbow’s
Glasto show surely marked the point at which they attracted enough attention to win last year’s award:
& Here’s Connor McNicholas (exNME editor)
talking about last years;
He could be talking about the NME in the start,
such is the sheer verbal-wank of it,
“Experts in our fields” ?????
He’s gone on to ‘Top Gear Magazine’ now?;
mostly gets the idea across here tho:
Its odd that nothing from Peter Doherty has ever been nominated… Not Libertines, not Babyshambles, & not even his brilliant solo album.. Kinda takes alot away from the awards to not nominate the most prolific & fascinating figure in British Music this decade…. but,My favourites in the shortlist are La Roux, Kasabian, and Glasvegas, so I’ll spell out the singles in the next 3 posts (mainly for my own reference,kinda thing) & you can make up your own mind. But I tend to think that La Roux might win to break the ‘guitar band’ deadlock of recent years,seeing the guardian/observer type’s covered, and Radio1 rinse as well…but florence is fav and i got no idea.