The drug crack cocaine doesn’t exist in Romania. If anyone is interested in a completely immoral and extremely profitable business venture (er, just about everyone in the Romanian Senate, then), a crack import and distribution scheme could be a real money spinner. Since Romania has so far been spared the misery of having its streets full of desperate and extremely violent crack addicts, I’ll give you a bit of background info on the drug. Pay attention: crack cocaine users have to burn ‘rocks’ of crack with a lighter, at an angle which melts the plastic of the lighter onto the users fingers. The result is known as ‘crack finger’ – a look that one Amy Winehouse has allegedly been sporting of late. What is definitely true is that she’s currently having a competition with Pete Doherty over who’s going to be the first to ‘do a Janis Joplin’.
At the time of writing, Amy Winehouse has, according to her website, “cancelled all remaining live and promotional appearances on the instruction of her doctor.” And anyway, since turning up to an Amy Winehouse gig is a bit of a game of roulette, best to save your money on concert tickets and check out her DVD, “I told you I was trouble.” The live show is great, with Winehouse recreating an authentic 70s soul sound thanks to her astonishingly tight backing band, The Dap-Kings.
It’s so good that I was going to make it ‘DVD of The Month’. However, Amy’s dad made an emotional appeal to Winehouse fans to ‘stop buying her records’, for fear that she’s spending the proceeds on drugs and fuelling her own increasingly inevitable downfall. As parental interventions go, it’s on about the same level as your mum turning up to the school disco and taking you home at nine o’clock because it’s past your bedtime, while all your friends laugh and point. Anyway, it would be immoral of me to go against her father’s wishes, and so I must beseech Elle readers to not buy this DVD under ANY circumstances. Sincere apologies to the people at Universal records: I suggest you attempt to recoup any lost revenues from her meddling father.
The second Live DVD I got sent this month is the equally entertaining “Live in Cartoon Motion” by the instantly likeable Mika. If I had to write something intellectual about him, I’d probably say that he was the embodiment of Francis Fukuyama’s end of history thesis applied to the world of music, a post-modern poaching the past played out within the confines of the dominant ideology of pop. However, if I did write anything like that I’d deserve to loose my job at Elle and be ridiculed in public, so instead I’d like to point out that, basically, his songs remind you of other songs. Since, to my knowledge, Mika’s mum hasn’t as yet issued an interdiction against buying his products, I’ll go ahead and give him the thumbs-up.
After just having sat through two Live DVDs, I can tell you that they’re a bit of a mixed blessing. They bring the advantage of being able to see how charismatic and talented the stars in question actually are. On the downside, it’s less than reassuring when, every time the camera pans over the audience, all you can see is an ocean of sweaty, red-faced gawp-mouthed morons who look like they’d watch a public hanging, as long as they could mouth along to the words and video it on their paper-thin mobile phones. Might I suggest that in all future live performances, the audience be airbrushed out entirely, with nice big pink spoon-shapes appearing In Lieu of their faces?Or perhaps we could have the faces of sophisticated-looking models digitally super-imposed on their own offensively moronic mugs?
Other notable releases: Seal released a new LP, ‘System’, on which he decides to do a duet with Heidi Klum, called ‘Wedding Day’. Now, because I’m English, I find any kind of public display of affection (such as holding hands in public) utterly distasteful. So in my book, these kinds of smug ‘look-how-much-we-love-each-other’ duets are basically only slightly less immoral than child pornography. I would also like to draw Heidi’s attention to the fact that if she expects to muscle in on her husband’s music career, it’d only be fair if Seal started promoting ‘fond de tan’ products and appearing on TV commercials for leg epilating devices while sporting a pair of extremely revealing hot-pants.
Finally, the Romanian band Desperado were also kind enough to send me a copy of their CD, in an envelope that also contained (rather oddly) a torn-out page of my most recent column. On closer inspection, the page had seven tiny holes in it, the kind made by darts, or, more worryingly, needles. Perhaps I’m over-reacting a little, but the only conclusion I can come to is that Desparado are attempting some kind of dark magic on me. Either that, or I’m being stalked. Either way, I’m pretty scared, and would like to end this column with a glowing review of their latest LP, ‘Raspundem Ascultatorilor’. It’s great, and I’ve decided to make it Album of the Month, if only out of an oppressive sense of fear, and a suspicion that occult forces have been set in motion against me. Desparado: you got what you wanted. The album’s amazing. Now leave me alone! Please!