Most articles on MSN are crap but I thought this was pretty funny.

Agree with a lot but take exception to this:

While we're on the subject of our simian cousins, The Verve staged one of rock's most underwhelming comebacks with Love Is Noise ("and the award for most meaningless, adolescent song title goes to…"). There's a delicious kind of justice in the fact that the supposedly cool and iconic Verve failed where the apparently uncool Take That succeeded.

But that was because Take That wrote more than two good songs to begin with and, when they came back, wrote even better songs that didn't feature the sound of a seagull shouting "hello" down a chimney, unlike The Verve's disastrous effort that was so bad, every time it came on the radio we feared the earth would burn up with embarrassment. i.e. VERY, VERY BAD!

Love Is Noise wasn't a great song but was decent enough, and to say The Verve didn't write more than two good songs shows the author is utterly ignorant and probably hasn't even heard the whole of Urban Hymns, let alone the two arguably better albums with preceded it.

Went in the excellent Barzooka for a 'quickie' of a diffrent kind whilst I waited too.

Surely I wasn't the only one who thought along these lines...

There's all sorts of influences on there, I love the way you have the NERD/Prince-esque Golden Age followed by the gorgeous Family Tree which sounds like its influenced a little by The Beach Boys.

http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go_ty...&bir_index=

Stick £38.10 (the maximum stake they'll allow you on this market) on Springsteen. Tidy profit of just over £100, probably 80% chance it'll happen at least.

EDIT: Was 11/4 when I made that post, already dropped to 9/4. Still well worth a punt though.

Favourite album of the year? Dear Science by TV on the Radio probably gets my vote.

some more to talk about

Ecstasy certainly shouldn't be class A.

Yeah the version of Hallelujah on there is brilliant but is probably only middling in context of how good the album is. Lover You Should Have Come on Over is probably my favourite one from that album just about.

I posted my top 40 a couple of pages back but here's the top 5:

1. Radiohead @ MEN Arena, Manchester 2003

2. Arcade Fire @ Leadmill, Sheffield 2005

3. Muse, Glastonbury 2004

4. My Bloody Valentine, Roundhouse, London 2008

5. Daft Punk, O2 Wireless Festival, Harewood House, Leeds 2007

God we were rubbish today. Hoofing the ball upto the front man, lacking imagination, no sign of any goals. Guess some of us were wrong after all...

We sure as hell don't need condescending a-hole fans like you.

That's a compliment coming from you. Cheers.

It's hard not to be condescending to anyone who thinks relegation would be better for this club than having Sam keep us up, but then I would expect you to side with the idiotic and illogical.

Nonce. Dont you dare insinuate that I do not know about football over a msg board just because I have a different opinion to you. You dont know me and thankfully never will. As a season ticket holder who goes to around 1/2 our away games as well-I think clubs do needs fans like me. Considering your attitude to me and the fact you slated Sam in that previous thread yet are now brown nosing him-do we need human beings like you?

With regards to the Jack Walker. He died at the start of the season-I dont remember us making any big money signings whilst down-most of it came from selling off the relegated team. We have lots of young potentially good players, due to the pressures of money invloved in the prem league have not been given fair oportunity.

Oh and do one pr1ck

I don't give a toss how many games you go to. I'll insinuate what I want - there's most people quite rightly saying relegation would be a disaster for us, some even saying we might go bust - yet you, the wisest man on the board thinks it might be better for us to go down than stay up, so long as we don't have Sam in charge. I slated him before, he was a rival clubs manager and the likes of Henk ten Cate wouldve been better in the summer, but now we're in a relegation struggle he's the best man for the job.

When we went down we were still a reasonably big club, we could attract talent much better than we could now. Now a good deal of the Championship will have better crowds and more money than us. And if you honestly think the likes of Treacy and Olsson compare to Damien Duff and David Dunn you're seriously deluded. Even in the season we went down they were good enough to show their class.

I hold my hand up here, I was one of those who slated Sam on that thread. I do not consider myself too old to be unable to learn a lesson from it.

I felt the same about Robbie Savage and Craig Bellamy, and whilst only a mother could love Craig, once he and Robbie were Rovers I stood squarely behind them and supported them.

I have always believed there is no shame in admitting you were wrong. I will do so if Sam proves to be wrong for Rovers and I will do so if Paul Ince takes over at Newcastle and is a resounding success there.

I slated Sam, I was wrong too.

I mean he wasn't the best choice for us in the summer (Laudrup and HTC were), but we should have instantly have seen he was a better choice than Ince.

But now he is the perfect man for the job.

Not quite as simple as that, but thanks for your thought out response. 10 years ago, imo, the club were in a very similiar position. A team full of underachieving, overpaid and injury prone players that ended up being relegated. Within 2 years we had forced our way back, in the mean time having cleared away most of the dead wood, played some of the most exciting football we seen in years with a good staple of players through the ranks and brought back a feel good factor to Ewood (remember our home and travelling supports in our first 2 years back in the prem?).

My main point was that if we cannot sta in the prem with a manager who plays attacking good football-then perhaps we are due a 'cleaning out process' I beleive clubs like ours need them from time to time. 8 years ago we returned a far stronger club then we went down as-ive no reason to feel why it should not be like this again.

Furthermore, the hypicrosy on here is incredible-there is an 8 page thread discussing what a pr1ck '###### Sam' is, not all of it was written by Waggy and me....

We had lots more money then.

The other teams had far, far less money.

We had bright young players in Duff and Dunn, players who were good even the season we went down but weren't going to leave as they'd been brought through the ranks.

Now anyone remotely good is going to want to leave.

You know squat all about football, now naff off to Turf Moor because we sure as hell don't need fans like you.

if you had read my post on a locked thread,

SEEING THE ORIGINAL THREAD WITH THE POLL On BFS, has been locked this one will do.i cannot believe jw has picked this c555k to manage my team,last night i gave away my season ticket,i simply refuse to watch a team managed by this man.hopefully he will be gone within the year,i do not want rovers to go down,i do not want rovers to lose a game,like some off you so called supporters.i hope he saves us from relagation and finds another job

i cannot and will not watch the rovers whilst he is the manager

Pathetic. And you have the gall to call others "so called supporters".

Think their newest album is their poorest effort. Don't blame them for moving into stadium rock and there's a few great numbers on there - Sex on Fire is a great tune no matter how much it gets played. But yeah I still long for their old days of Red Morning Light and The Bucket. Oh well.

Anyone else getting really excited about Blur's reunion? Gonna get tickets to my 4th Glastonbury sometime in the next couple of weeks, heard they're headlining the Sunday...closing the festival with "This is a Low" would be an amazing way to end it. Does anyone on here remember the gig they played at King George's (minus Coxon) back in autumn '03?

Im in total aggreement Waggy. Rovers have sold themselves to the devil in exchange for 17th place. Incredibly sad times, Id rather we'd have gone down and rebuilt like we did last time, then 3 years of scrapping the barrell football in the bottom 1/3rd of the league

You're pathetic. There's no other words for it.

your happy for this man to manage the rovers

You told us there was no way that JW would sack Ince before summer.

Then you told us there was no way Sam would join Rovers.

Are your posts worth anything more than mentally deficient ramblings punctuated by the kit smiley?

Saw the new Bond a couple of weeks back, it's pretty average stuff. A load of action scenes tacked together with a weak storyline which moves far too quick. Not a patch on Casino Royale IMO.

TGM - Can I just apologise for being very blunt in my first post, I was skim reading and thought it was an NME chosen list. The scary thing is you didn't even mention NME, so I have no idea what happened in my head.

I might have a crack at doing this tomorrow, I think Blonde Redhead would probably come in at number 1.

That's an even bigger insult!

Finally got round to buying the latest Kings of Leon album yesterday. It's superb.

I think it's a bit disappointing compared to their previous efforts...

tony - if it was the 40 best gigs 'of all time,' why was the oldest one in 2004?

It was "Your all time top 40 gigs"...I went to my first gig in 2002 since I'm in my early/mid twenties now...

I nearly went to the Go! Team (no. 9) but didn't in the end. Seen a lot of the bands there but not at those actual gigs. It's a good list but seems to fall apart at the end with bands like The Killers and The Zutons thrown in.

I'm going to see Animal Collective in January and I know for a fact that gig will far surpass anything those two have done, whether or not it makes any lists is another matter though.

Not really a Killers fan but that was a top gig, it was in the New Bands tent just when they were starting out, caught them at the next Glastonbury on the Pyramid and they were much worse. Zutons are a really good live band and were perfect for that atmosphere.

Not a fan of Animal Collective from what I've heard on record, I would say each to their own but there's a lot of unconventional stuff I enjoy but maybe they're much better live.

The only other forum I post on is a music one and they had a thread where we all posted our top 40 gigs of all time. Since I had an hour or so to kill, I thought I'd make the list. Would be interesting to see other people's and/or whether they were at any of these...

1. Radiohead @ MEN Arena, Manchester 2003

2. Arcade Fire @ Leadmill, Sheffield 2005

3. Muse, Glastonbury 2004

4. My Bloody Valentine, Roundhouse, London 2008

5. Daft Punk, O2 Wireless Festival, Harewood House, Leeds 2007

6. Oasis, Elephant and Castle Coronet, London 2005

7. Primal Scream, Glastonbury 2005

8. The Verve, Blackpool Empress Ballroom 2007

9. Go! Team, Manchester Ritz 2007

10. Morrissey, Bridlington Spa, Bridlington 2004

11. Blur, King George's Hall, Blackburn 2003

12. LCD Soundsystem, Manchester Academy 1, 2007

13. Bloc Party, Sheffield Leadmill, 2005

14. British Sea Power, Leeds Met 2005

15. Justice, Manchester Academy 1, 2008

16. Ash, Leeds University Union, 2004

17. Brian Wilson, Glastonbury 2005

18. Sigur Ros, Manchester Apollo 2006

19. Supergrass, Leeds University Union 2004

20. Love and Arthur Lee, Glastonbury 2004

21. Franz Ferdinand, Glastonbury 2004

22. The Music, Leeds Cockpit 2, 2007

23. Killers/Futureheads/Bloc Party/Kaiser Chiefs, NME Tour, Leeds University Union 2005

24. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club/Brian Jonestown Massacre, Leeds Cockpit 2005

25. CSS, Leeds Cockpit 2006

26. The Strokes, Hull Town Hall, 2006

27. Chemical Brothers, Glastonbury 2007

28. Art Brut, Leeds Cockpit 2007

29. Ian Brown, Glastonbury 2005

30. Super Furry Animals, Glastonbury 2007

31. James Brown, Glastonbury 2004

32. Klaxons/CSS/Sunshine Underground/New Young Pony Club, Leeds Met 2007

33. Doves, Glastonbury 2005

34. Maximo Park, Glastonbury 2007

35. Howling Bells, Leeds Cockpit 2006

36. Interpol, Blackpool Empress Ballroom 2007

37. The Coral, Leeds University Union 2006

38. MGMT, Manchester Academy 2 2008

39. The Killers, Glastonbury 2004

40. The Zutons, Glastonbury 2005

The Love Guru is coming out this weekend in the UK, the trailers make it look like its literally the worst movie ever made.

I'd be tempted to see it out of sheer curiosity for how bad it actually got (after a few drinks obviously) if I wasn't leaving the country this weekend.

If I'm saying he's not atleast very talented I'm wrong?

I guess I'm wrong then, becasue he is not.

Bono, The Boss, McCartney, Lennon, Prince, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, and even though I'm not a fan, Noel Gallagher fall in the catagory of 'very talented' song writers because over a 15-20 year period these guys have consistantly banged out great songs and have released many great albums, and even not so/as great albums which have sold millions of copies.

Those who have had what most consider one good album, lived of the hype for a bit then bugger off fall into the aptly put catagory of 'Lucky chancer who writes a decent song every so often.'

As I said, lucky chancers don't get identified as worthy to go on government funded trips to read out their poetry at the age of sixteen. The fact he's a brilliant lyricist (as was shown before anyone even knew who he was) and can construct at least a good tune represents a considerable talent, even when you look at it objectively. If you use record sales to justify talent then that's a very, very flawed argument.

People can be very talented and yet throw it away during their careers no matter whether theyre a musician, a footballer or anything else, which is what Pete looks like doing. But at least he's starred on one more excellent album than most of his peers.

And I hasten to add being a great poetry writer does not in any way mean you are a good song writer.

Music is an extremely large factor when deciphering great song writers.

Being a great lyricist is half of being a great songwriter, considering theyre the main two components. And much of his best work is musically very good too, although this is harder to really argue over.

Yep, the fact he won a national poetry competition and went on a British Council funded trip to Russia to read out his poems at the age of 16 is definitely proof the guys got absolutely no talent whatsoever. Clearly he can't write.

If you actually bothered to give the music a proper listen and stopped focusing on his bad habits you'll see they've made some excellent tunes. I'm no Pete apologist - the man's a fool and since Up the Bracket his output has been patchy at best. But credit where credit's due, if you're saying the mans not at least very talented then you're simply wrong.

SFA are an excellent band and beat seven shades of crap out of Babyshambles live when I saw both at Glastonbury last year though, they definitely need more recognition.