TOUCHING YOU! TOUCHING ME!

Welcome back to your working weeks, everyone.

I don't know about you lot, but I think I've had enough already. Can't it just be Friday again? Actually I was fine and then the intrawebnets started lighting up like that SLAYER house at Christmas. The big buzz? Lady "I don't wear Vegan dresses" Gaga is coming to our shores. Accompanied by The Darkness and their own particular brand of schmaltz.

I remember being subjected to an entire weekend of The Darkness in Langebaan once. The band I was in at the time was away for a weekend and our beloved founder/guitarist had brought along "Permission To Land". In the strictly ironic (I assumed) way that metal heads the world over antagonise each other with novelty/crap music, he made us spend all weekend listening to Justin Hawkins' snaggle-toothed assertions that he indeed did believe in a thing called love. I turned to drink to make the weekend bearable and can't for the life of me remember much. This goes a long way towards explaining substance abuse on the road and general addiction.

Let it be said that in general I do not have a problem with any band or artist. It is when I am forced to listen to them against my will or when their popularity becomes a sign of the times that the ire starts to rise. My world does not include the likes of Justin Bieber. He is just some entity that does his thing on another plane of existence. The fact that he is so successful is a product of a consumer driven populace with a short attention span, and nothing to do with me.

Lady Gaga. Or Stefanie Germanotta, as her mother once used to know her. I detest acts like Marilyn Manson. The above notwithstanding, it gets to me when otherwise seemingly competent artists feel the need to resort to such sensationalist tactics in order to grab the attention of the masses. I detest them for what they stand for. And what they stand for is a willingness to embrace the tacky, turgid and terrifyingly shitty in order to be noticed. The masses demand that extra effort. My only gripe is that the extra effort is not channelled into a better musical product, and instead channelled wholeheartedly into turning themselves into a fucked up caricature of themselves. If Lady Gaga spent half as much time on her music as she does on wearing Mzoli's on the red carpet, who knows what she'd be capable of in a recording studio...?

But I am getting away from my point here. And that point is: Justin Hawkins and Lady Gaga, you may be playing a show together in South Africa, just please for the love of all things holy, do not make a baby.

The world is not ready for that.

NGDG: ":I found two steak knives protruding from the lawn at the folks' place yesterday. Drunk neighbours? Kids playing ninja, or the Palestinian resistance has finally reached its nadir."

Spread The Love. I Believe In It. It's A Thing.