The NME!

[drbastard]

Oh my God. I have just read the NME and the review for his greatest hits. Something awful about like: Robbie could have been the Kurt Cobain of Britpop.

Have you ever heard such shit? I don't even like the NME and despite my promises to myself every week, I still buy it in the hope they won't give coverage to smackie fuckers like Pete Doherty. Yet I am proven wrong constantly. Of course the one thing they do have in their favour is the little compliment they paid to Girls Aloud but this little crumb can't stem my growing hate for this vapid publication.

[LuckyStar]

For fuck's sake.

If the NME are going to have shirtless photos of indie boys - they should be at least acceptable looking.

Pete Doherty - uugh!

Bridgey xxx

[flum]

At least they're getting rid of the dull as Westlife "Why I love..." column and replacing it with a "hilarious back page". I wait optimistically.

What worries me though, is their claim that they're going to be having more live and album reviews. Last time they promised this, they achieved it by slicing the review length in half. If they do this again, I might finally have to stop buying it, something I've been threatening to do since the year 2000.

[Miss Mackenzie]

I know the NME is shit. Which is why I don't buy it.

[elmsyrup]

Miss said:

I know the NME is shit. Which is why I don't buy it.

What she said.

[veryjammy]

I never know what quite to make of NME, I mean they are supposedly an indie paper, but then they'll review pop stuff and give it surprisingly high marks; I think Britney's last 3 albums got 8, 7 and 7 respectively, and Steps greatest hits got either a 9 or 10, I can't remember. Their album reviews are too short and the single reviews ridiculously so. I never find much worth reading about in it to be honest, I'd rather read Q even though that's going down the pan as well. Why can't there be a popjustice in magazine form?

[fee]

veryjammy said:

Why can't there be a popjustice in magazine form?

See the argument for / against the Popworld thingie...

[flum]

veryjammy said:

Why can't there be a popjustice in magazine form?

There was last year:-



And very ace it was too.

[drbastard]

I hate it too but I still buy it. I never agree with the reviews ever and I've always found Robbie to be very mediocre as an aritst. He tries to make himself sound more interesting, you know, the whole tortured genius thing but he sounds like Oasis.

My magazine would be called Hate but that's already been done. Bums!

xxxDrBxxx

[AugustMoon]

The NME has gone full circle for me. In the early 80s they helped showing what was good and/or interesting on the music scene. Now they're helpful too - if they favour somebody I should probably avoid that act like the plague.

I'm not so surprised they have degenerated like that, but I thought something would maybe fill the void. Charles Shaar Murray writes in the foreword to "In Their Own Write" (2001) - "... The heyday of the rock press was an intriguing, and unrepeatable, phenomenon. ...". And then he goes on to give his explanation why - that the music press market is too diversified now. But that can't be the reason, can it? Quality won't go down just because of higher diversification. I don't know if his views are distorted because he was part of the "heyday".
Maybe it's rather that the new music has become less and less interesting to write/read about? Much of it because it's too bad, other because there's not much to say about it anyway? Except for the kind of chit-chat and gossip you find here.

[Tim]

The death of music journalism is because there's virtually no reason to buy it. We can all get our information for free so we don't need the news pages, we don't need the gig guides, we don't need reviews. Music is so saturated into the rest of the media that we don't need to specifically buy something to find out about it.
Couple that with the fact that most of the biggest acts are not interesting to read about. How many people who buy Coldplay records ever want to read an interview with them? Nice guys but they don't do or say anything that any of us need to know. And that goes for most artists today.
Of course, good journalism should be able to make music interesting to read but then we hit the big problem:

Good journalism is exclusive. It requires a level of intelligence to read and enjoy - that means that by allowing 'good' journalism in your publication you're limiting the amount of people who will want to read it. As sales continue to plummet you cannot justify to your publisher anything but lowest common demoninator writing. It would be like having a night club that wasn't doing well then insisting on a stricter dress code. The regular clientelle might be happy with the improved standard but if less people turn up then that's not good business.
Back in NME's heyday of the 70s it was shifting 250,000 a week. They could dictate what advertising they took and what rates they set because advertisers needed them and so could afford to employ writers with diverse and conflicting styles from every part of the intellectual spectrum. Now, since sales are around 70,000, the majority of income has to come from advertising and the publication needs to send a signal to the advertisers that they're doing their best to attract readers. And as Heat and Nuts and the like continue to sell well then the obvious route is to dumb down in style and content. We can all sit here and say 'well, if the NME was better written I'd buy it' but the sales are just too low to take those kind of risks - because the initial result to a mass 'dumbing up' would be the main advertisers running away screaming. And the publishers are not gonna be prepared to run it at a loss for the time it'd take for word to get around that NME was now a really great read.

And perhaps there really aren't that many great music writers out there anymore. Just as each new generation of bands grows up with less and less of an idea of how to present themselves in an exciting and interesting way to the media so each generation of writers have less and less of a grasp of how to write. Who would they look to for influence and inspiration? And what would be the point? If Paul Morley were starting out as a music journo today I doubt that the NME would give him a job.

[AugustMoon]

Elvis Costello once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do." I got this quote thrown in my face by Susanne Manning's guitarist when he thought I was trying to be too deep a few months ago. Costello has a point - why should two different types of culture necessarily be able to feed off each other? The NME at its best could be an example that it sometimes is possible to have such cross-fertilization, but what were the circumstances that made this possible? To me it was because music was linked with social currents, and that things were so unpredictable during that era. Like - in the early 50s it would have been impossible to predict the nature of the popular music of the early 70s. The social currents thing might still be there, but aren't things a little more predictable now?

My fundamental idea is that we always have cultural movements that are at different stages of their course. An interesting possibility is that a late stage of such a movement is when things get "too advanced". The NME seems to have been too simplistic in the 60s, during their Monkees phase. Then they became more interesting during the 70s, with people like Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Tony Parons and Julie Burchill. In the early 80s Paul Morley and Ian Penman were good, but it was a bit of a struggle to read them. It was as if music journalism had developed too much into an independent art form. But it did sell - the circulation went up from 180,000 in 1980 to 270,000 in maybe 1982. Maybe it was the snob factor? Like people making Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" into a best seller, to put it on the coffee table but not to read. With a magazine you would only do that for some time before you get tired of fooling yourself.

Writing has a more exclusive aspect to it than music, because it's less direct. But I wonder how big the gap really is? And lowest-common-demoninator is not equivalent with "low quality", even if it feels like that, maybe most of the time.

This thing about a specific music press not being needed now, because pop coverage became ubiquitous, is raised in "In Their Own Write" too. But doesn't that overlook the community aspect of cultures? It's good to have a focus for group identities.

Maybe nobody really wants to read interviews with the likes of Coldplay, but did they ever? Nick Kent noted the futility of interviewing 20-year olds, because they have precious little to say. He would find TV interviews with S Club 8 doubtful too. But there are ways to work around this - for the journalist to work from the premise that an artist need only be interesting for the reader because of the familiarity, and should otherwise be treated as a normal person of that age-group/background etc. I'm personally more curious about what David Bowie and Marc Bolan have said than what Chris Martin will ever say, but maybe I'm just showing my age here?

[Bam]

Tim said:

Just as each new generation of bands grows up with less and less of an idea of how to present themselves in an exciting and interesting way to the media so each generation of writers have less and less of a grasp of how to write. Who would they look to for influence and inspiration? And what would be the point?

What do you mean by this? Do you mean it's hard to do anything new because everything has already been done?

I'm not trying to criticise I'm just interested.

[Tim]

What I think happens is a gradual eroding of traditions (and that's not a word to be scared of - modernists are always also traditionalists). If you were a child of Ziggy era Bowie, for example, then your idea of how to be a pop artist would be influenced by someone who was a showman, an original, and an erudite - and controversial - interviewee. Similarly anyone who was caught up in the original punk movement. The groups that were formed by those children sought to be as original and flamboyant as possible and used the media to preach their subversive message to the world. But that idea of a popstar took a battering in the 90s. 'Keeping it real' became the all important mantra. Rather than see Oasis as popstars (which they really were) the bands that followed just saw the dressing down and the uninspired videos and live performances. So we get an endless parade of indie groups determined to be indistiguishable from their audience - and that manifests in interviews where they say nothing of interest: talking about their drug experience or how "bad things are bad, mkay?"
Pop saw the Spice Girls and instead of realise that half their war was won by the sheer scale of their ambition and audacity and the anarchy that ensued whenever they encountered the media - they took just the marketing and made sure that nothing could be said or done that might alienate any potential demographic. The kids who saw the Spice Girls or Take That didn't form bands to be flamboyant shamanistic showmen but to get rich and to get laid (as if a career in IT and a flash car wouldn't get you that just as easily). And it goes on and on.
The public is in the grip of hating anything it believes might be fame for fame's sake. In such a culture it's hard for an artist to exist because, honestly, that's all an artist wants - fame. It's just that fame has been priced and therefore devalued.
Those like Robbie or Eminem who flirt with ideas are quick to show us their 'normal' sides at every opportunity lest we forget that it's all just-a-laugh. They'll never do anything other than follow the script - almost, it seems, apologetically.
I see bands who should've avoided this trap like Franz Ferdinand still being dull & magnanimous about fellow acts on CD:UK (and they're right to be - they would surely be crucified if they attacked any sacred cows) and wonder if it's possible for anyone in pop to be interesting ever again.

[Bam]

I see what you're saying, but Geoff the budding musician / journalist can be influenced by bands / writers of the past (who may have stopped producing work before Geoff was even born) as well as those who are successful during his own lifetime. Can't he?

[Tim]

Of course, but the majority aren't and that has created a climate where it would be near impossible for someone truly original and outspoked to succeed. Things that are like other things is the safest route and the safe route is the acceptable route. It feels to me as if the problem with the whole of the pop industry is that it lives under a cloud of fear. Fear of getting it wrong, again.
Even thinking back a few years to Jarvis wiggling his arse at the Brits. It's a pivotal moment in pop. But in another way it was the last time anyone would be able to rebel. When Jarvis made that drunken shimmy - everyone got the joke. The final wall dividing those in-the-know and the clueless was demolished. The whole country now knew how to be cool and Radio 1 took a smug snort of the same drugs the cool kids took and carried on being obliviously naff (but now sporting a t-shirt with a band on that they didn't own records by) It's like that episode of the Simpsons where everyone decides to be naughty - there's no longer a place for Bart. A real rebel would get up and shake his arse at Coldplay or The Libertines. A real rebel would say they hated the Manic Street Preachers more than they hated Hitler. A real rebel would push Fearne Cotton over when she introduces their band with her usual inane banter. But it wouldn't be accepted. The rebel wouldn't be seen as cool - just an idiot who should be more respectful. Eminem - supposedly the bad boy of pop - is the biggest kiss-ass when it come to appearing on TV. He knows not to bite the hand that feeds him - just to look as if he would. How can you rebel when the whole world thinks of itself as a rebel already? Innocence lost can't be replaced and all that. Not without a bloody revolution at any rate.
With hindsight, what Jarvis did caused great harm to pop. It was a great pop moment in itself but, like Live Aid, the aftermath was culturally regrettable because it changed the way musicians perceived themselves; it made pop self-conscious. After Live Aid the 80s died and with it the fantasy and makeup, the pretentiousness and the art; making way for the earnest flag waving of U2. Any band who dressed up from then on had to make it clear that they were being 'ironic' (the worst concept ever to infect art) or become pantomime (I hate the concept of 'camp' too) or excuse it all as drug induced (he's weird because he takes drugs - brilliant!). Never be serious and strange or you'll be laughed out of the industry by the inkies and the radio stations (lest they be associated with you and no longer allowed a guestlist to the cool club). There's no longer any room for having a white stripe on your face, singing about pirates or spacemen, and taking your art seriously.
Michael Jackson's performance at the Brits was vile but, after Jarvis' protest, no one could risk anything that ego led again. Performances at the Brits now are inevitably disapointing since they're so knowing - so reserved - never anything that might hold one up for ridicule (which really is "nothing to be scared of".)
Money has a lot to do with it too. A risk might be a financial one too and we live in such uncertain times that who can afford to take risks except the Britneys and the Robbies (and they aren't talented or visionary enough to do much of worth when presented with such an opportunity).
So now the 'naff' pop acts are tolerated because they remind us that we know better. The more knowing pop acts are enjoyed because we know they'd rather be listening to Nirvana or mashed at a club like 'us'. And indie and rock gets ever blander and derivative as it becomes ever more self-satisfied - but no one minds because they're all great lads. You'd have to be an idiot or have balls of steel to go against that kind of peer pressure and conformity. Outside of that the veteran acts (everyone from Nick Cave to Brian Wilson) do their thing with dignity and greatness because they tread a lonely path. Similarly there's always great music from the real outsiders and weirdos (once you've sifted through tons of well meaning garbage). They survive by staying out of it but as such don't impact on everyday life. They can only exist on the outside. But my love was always for the mavericks who worked within commercial artforms. That always seemed more worthwhile. Anyone can make art unchallenged. It's easy to not-fit-in once you've left school. I was only 6 when punk began but it left its mark. I want people who are 'different' to be at the centre of things, jumping up and down and making a big noise. Because artists like that saved my life. Can't see anyone brave enough to rescue me now.

[Pierre]

I still enjoy reading NME. For some reason, their album reviews makes me want to listen to music. And, more importantly, they make me laugh. When all you have is the French music press (quite clever but incredibly boring), it's a great quality. I can't quite understand how one can prefer Q to NME to be honest.

I agree though that the music press is facing a probably hopeless battle against the Internet. I'd be surprised if NME, or any other music magazines for that matter, is still going in 20 year's time.

[AugustMoon]

Things are getting heavy here, aren't they? But with a name like P-Justice what should one expect!?!

People like Jarvis Cocker and Morrissey are good enough as an interviewees. At least I wouldn't complain. They're not predictable, and they seem to channel some of their creativity into the interview, rather than to just churn out the "We have an album out!" fodder.

His escapade during the Jackson Brit performance was maybe a pivotal moment. It was certainly controversial - in one pop history TV programs one white music journalist celebrated it as one of the best things to ever have happened, whereas Harvey from So Solid Crew denounced it. To me it was just a sign of frustration.

I was going to make this point in the "Ch4 Hall of Fame" thread, but I do it here instead. One reason why the first program felt so iffy could be that it was a 90s idea applied to the 90s. It's doubtful to have awards in something as simplistic as pop/rock - if you do it's a sign that nothing real is happening, so you have to make something unreal happen for anything to happen at all. Of course it can work, if the fun and/or ulterior aspects to it are strong enough. And that's what I believe the programs on the earlier decades will have - they will be slightly educational nostalgia fests.

As the 90s progressed the Brit Awards seems to have gone from being a bad joke to being one of the cosy fixtures of the pop calendar. When I heard how Fleetwood and Fox failed I just thought that it served the viewers right - who were foolish enough to watch it in the first place. But now I'm like: "This Matt Busted guy is an even greater Bass Genius than Greg Lake!", or whatever; and completely took their side against that Kerrang journalist in the bust-up afterwards. This is how in-authentic I've become, and I won't blame anyone who has degenerated as much. (I always liked "Jimmy, Jimmy" and "My Perfect Cousin" better than "Teenage Kicks" anyway.)

So during this decade there would have been moments when the large-scale corporatism that the event symbolises would start to feel throttling. And what can you do when you're up against a power that is vastly stronger than yourself? You can go for a soft spot in the armour. Maybe it won't achieve anything, but at least you can do it. MJ is so physically weak, and so obviously going bonkers, that it's really cowardly to attack him. To justify it you must really see a strong bond between him and the corporate establishment, don't you!?!! Obviously Harvey didn't, and almost as obviously the white music journalist did.

It actually reminds me of the black and white reactions to the OJ Simpson trial. From a white perspective it could be difficult to understand how black identification with those two individual works. How, maybe, most blacks have close enough experience of the justice system being against them to believe that it could cook up an elaborate conspiracy against OJ. And how, maybe, blacks could give MJ freer rein; since they can feel how he's a person from a normal difficult black American background, who has managed to do good despite of it.


Since this is a thread about the NME I could mention what I feel could be a pivotal stage there:

"Mat Snow - You'll talk to people who characterise 1986 at the NME as some kind of hip-hop jihad. That was really Stuart Cosgrove. His mission was that the most exciting music coming through was hip-hop and house and that the NME should align itself with that and cut down on rock coverage. My view was that you could have everything, because the people who paid our bills were the New Order and The Fall fans. Whatever he thought of the music and the overcoat brigade, they were the ones buyning the paper week in, week out." ("In their own write" - page 309)

I always felt that the NME got a good balance between the most happening and relevant types of music. But did something happen there? Did they start to champion indie more and more after 1986? I've bought very few copies since then, so I don't know. But didn't the NME even coin the term "indie", back in 1979, or whenever? And indie lacks African influence to a depressing degree to me. When I hear those guitars, playing the same chords, by the same dreary-looking guys, in the same jeans, as they were the year before, and the year before that; my mind sometimes drift towards Heinrich Himmler, and his anti-swing programme. Pure white culture might have been a good idea when white people had almost no contact with other cultures, but how is it now? I'm not sure.


You bring up Live Aid, Tim. It's one of those things that makes me wonder how closely the British music scene follows the political scene. During the first years of the 60s the thoroughly inoffensive The Shadows were kings, and there was a Tory government. When Labour came into power we got the rougher Beatles, Stones, Henderix. With Heath came glam, in the early 70s. Then, as Wilson came back, we had pub rock, punk, new wave. With Thatcher came the New Romantics. And when she really settled in we got Live Aid. Charity doesn't feel very rock'n'roll; but it's sure anti-statist, in a way that must have felt so encouraging for the iron lady. After this things maybe break down. The music scene of the first half of the 90s maybe felt as grey Major, and Blair maybe brought in some glitz. Which would be reversed roles. But maybe Blair is as tory as Heath? What do I know?


But whatever the case. An art form's potential will feel more and more exhausted as time goes on, and the potential becomes more and more realized. But how much is this just a feeling? Life goes on, and new generations discover things anew all the time. Maybe one shouldn't worry too much about the regeneration of a particular form?

Pierre said:

I still enjoy reading NME. ... When all you have is the French music press (quite clever but incredibly boring), it's a great quality.

It's so funny for me to see French music press described like that. When my family lived in Geneva in 1975 my sisters kept buying the pop mags - and the most serious articles they seemed to be able to muster were about "Sheila B Devotion's favourite knitting patterns", or whatever. Later I've realised that magazines like "Rock et Folk" offer more worthwhile copy, but my French has never become good enough for me to try and read it. And now you say they are too serious? So I don't miss too much anyway? Apart from the beauty and poetry of the language itself?

I wonder if there are any Sheila fans at PopJustice, by the way? She did have a hit in Britain, didn't she?!!

[Pierre]

AugustMoon said:

It's so funny for me to see French music press described like that. When my family lived in Geneva in 1975 my sisters kept buying the pop mags - and the most serious articles they seemed to be able to muster were about "Sheila B Devotion's favourite knitting patterns", or whatever. Later I've realised that magazines like "Rock et Folk" offer more worthwhile copy, but my French has never become good enough for me to try and read it. And now you say they are too serious? So I don't miss too much anyway? Apart from the beauty and poetry of the language itself?

Well I can't talk about 1975, obviously.
But at the moment the most talked about music mags are Rock&Folk, which is only a shadow of its former self (it was apparently quite good in the 70s-early 80s, but now it's just a joke, with each month a big paper on the Stooges, the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd). The journalists are all in their 50s and they wouldn't be able to relate to younger people even if they wanted to. Then you have the weekly "Les Inrockuptibles" which cover music but also other popular art forms (cinema, literature and contemporary art). I'm still a subscriber, mainly for their movie and literature pages but they have a way of making music sound like the less fun thing ever so it gets tiring after a while. Moreover the concept of saying that pop music can be great is alien to them. It's indier-than-thou all the way with vicious attacks on whatever sells. The lightness and open-mindedness of NME is a relief in that context. There's also a bunch of magazines aiming at younger readers (Rock Sound for instance) and a French version of Rolling Stone, which has no personality whatsoever. A sad state of affairs indeed.

[JennyVABS]

What's pissed me off recently is that now there's no Melody Maker etc, and the only music weekly they have to contend with is Kerrang! (which is about as relevent to their sales as Take A Break), they know they can get away with fucking lazy journalism. 'The Live Issue': WHAT A LOAD OF SHITTING BOLLOCKS. The article on groupies was futile and inconclusive, the piece on trashing a hotel room on a budget was both void of any humour and one of many page-fillers. It was the equivalent of an Embrace album: All filler, no killer. It's been like that for too long.
The interviews are boring even when they get decent interviewees; there's barely anything left in there worth reading, never mind shelling out £1.80 for.
The 'rock trivia' issue, there's another example- t's been a dead week in news and we can't be arsed thinking of any ineresting angles for articles or een conducting any interviews, let's fill every page with meaningless crap that takes two minutes to research on Google!
I don't like to slag it off because they DO have some decent journalists writing for them, but half of them they need to get rid of cause they've been there sincd 1895, get a new editor, and stop letting the work experience kids write gossip colums. That reminds me, the new NY and LA correspondents- what the fuck? I didn't think it could get any more like Heat without printing a double-page spread of photos of Brian 'Bryan' McFatty and wife shopping for a new futon in Ikea.

[drbastard]

Oh and McFly get better press than Placebo for some inane reason. McFly are McShit and I don't care what the fuck NME says about it.

That spread as well with Rachel Stevens and Richard X doing Blondie gutted me badly. Rachel is so boring, to compare her to Debbie Harry is like comparing shit to wine.

[JennyVABS]

Yeah, that WAS bad. Plus she's the most boring interviewee ever.

[Pierre]

JennyVABS said:

Yeah, that WAS bad. Plus she's the most boring interviewee ever.

Oh Come on. To hear her saying "Oh my god! You're right. That's what it means." about Some Girls is priceless.

Besides I really think that late Placebo is more offensive than everything McFly ever released. Placebo were once a great band (there's no question about that) but now Brian Molko has become the most arrogant dickhead ever which means I can't stand to listen to his voice or read an interview of him. Still, Without You I'm Nothing was a great album, better than McFly's first one.

(For your information Placebo is arguably the biggest rock band in Belgium at the moment).

[LuckyStar]

The only really good thing about it is that it seems to be an extension of Smash Hits before it went all EMAPized after Emma Jones took over.

But the glossy posters should return. The NME is thinner and poorer without them.

Why isn't Smash Hits on in this particular area?

Bridgey xxx

[Tim]

Pierre said:

Placebo were once a great band (there's no question about that)

I'd question that! I was assailed by their nonsense in HMV the other day (that one about the rat race being - guess what - a race for rats) and realised there's probably no other band I'd like to put into Room 101 more than they.

but now Brian Molko has become the most arrogant dickhead ever

Become? I must have missed the days when he was affable (though I wouldn't want to aff him)

(For your information Placebo is arguably the bigest rock band in Belgium at the moment).

Lucky old Belgium. Chocolate and a ludicrous whiney balding goth rock group. "Hello, Easyjet? A single to Belgium please . . ."

[JennyVABS]

Oh no, the posters were awful- that was the last straw I think, in surendering to the indie scally tweens of England.


Placebo have got so bad they come across like a rip-off of the Rasmus.

Wouldn't you jut kill yourself?

[Pierre]

Tim said:

Become? I must have missed the days when he was affable (though I wouldn't want to aff him)

Molko did appear as quite a decent guy during the promotion of Placebo's first two albums. But success seems to have really gotten to his head. His famous interview in the NME was hilarious in that respect. I really never liked arrogance in my pop/rock stars. It's a huge turn off for me.

But I do remember seeing Placebo live three times in small venues at that time and it was quite good.

PS : You can't diss Belgium. It's a lovely place to be (if you like rain, serial killers and waffles, that is).

[AugustMoon]

Pierre said:

For your information Placebo is arguably the biggest rock band in Belgium at the moment.

Brian Molko grew up just across the border, in Luxembourg. Has their popularity anything to do with that? Are they more comfortable with Belgian audiences than other Anglo-Saxon acts, for example? But it's still strange if they have become more popular when their quality has declined.

Of course, Belgium is a country with a rich rock'n'roll heritage, with, for instance, natives like Jean-Philippe Smets and Roger Jouret. So that might make it more comfortable for bands to play there compared with playing in France?

[Pierre]

AugustMoon said:

Of course, Belgium is a country with a rich rock'n'roll heritage, with, for instance, natives like Jean-Philippe Smets and Roger Jouret. So that might make it more comfortable for bands to play there compared with playing in France?

Placebo is also huge in France and in a few other European countries. In fact it's quite possible that the UK is nowadays their least popular market in Europe (I don't have any figures to support this claim though).

It's clear that Molko's speaking perfect French and releasing French versions of many of their songs helped in French-speaking regions. For instance he was able, earlier on in his career, to say that he was inspired to start a band by listening to people like Arno or Jean-Louis Aubert (don't ask) when he was a kid. That resonated somehow with young indie kids over here.

PS : I'm impressed with your knowledge of Belgian rock stars's pseudonyms.

[Electrobix]

Brian Molko has always been an arrogant wanker. I was obsessed with Placebo in my younger years (well, when I was 14 at least). A lot of my friends had met him and he couldn't be more unpleasant.

That said, Placebo are fanfuckingtastic. Sleeping With Ghosts was quite shit, but 'Twenty Years' is really amazing.