Yesterday, apres-ski, I went to the cheap and cheerful Red Lion on Kingly Street to interview two members of Art Brut. and are both intelligent, articulate and amusing chaps, who didn't seem to mind for a moment that I was interviewing them because my piece on Hall & Oates had been spiked for having limited relevance to Teh Scene, or indeed Teh Kids who inhabit Teh Scene. I concur that teenagers in Stoke-on-Trent aren't currently making their own Hall & Oates t-shirts, before running out, buying 2 Fender Rhodes pianos, coming home and forming an impromptu band in their garage to play exquisite Philadelphia soul with soaring saxophone solos courtesy of their kid sister, but I'm finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that 2 weeks ago I wasted 20 minutes of John Oates' time. Hopefully he'll never find out. But oh, the guilt… I'd call him back to apologise, but that would only waste another 30 seconds of his time that he would surely rather spend in his home studio, coming up with something as profound as “I'm in a Philly Kind Of Mood”.

But goodness me… Sitting down and writing features about bands requires me to make a superhuman effort not to yawn expansively before typing “blah blah influences blah blah album blah blah supportive record company blah blah artistic integrity…” And it's incredibly easy not to make a superhuman effort, and just write the kind of drivel that everyone writes, because barely anyone notices what pointless guff most music journalism is. When Steve, Mo and I used to write for long forgotten indie mag Lime Lizard, we had a barmy American editor who indulged our contempt for reviewing records by actually printing our raw copy which might say something like:

The Bambi Slam – Don't It Make You Feel (Product Inc)
Eighteen ravenous bears lumber into a clearing, and with a sweep of their enormous paws ruin an otherwise pleasant Sunday lunchtime picnic. Poor.

Mo once interviewed My Bloody Valentine, and found them so unutterably tedious he just wrote a short story instead, and submitted it to aforementioned barmy American editor. Her patience snapped, and she demanded a rewrite. So Mo just transcribed the conversation verbatim:

“So, when's your new record out?”
“The 18th of April.”
“Oh.”

I think my disdain for anything bands have to say stems from this very incident. Fortunately Art Brut will make it much easier for me by a) not having an iota of self-absorption, and b) having spent a good fifteen minutes talking about girlfriends and alcohol, which is a little closer to where my real interests lie. Towards the end of our 2nd drink, I thought I heard Eddie say “Oh, I love this band.”

R: Did you just say “I love this band”?
E: Er, no.
R: Oh. What did you say?
E: Um, I said “I'm confused by the internet.”

Memo to self: get ears syringed.

I came home and watched Question Time. What ludicrous theatre it was. Thank god Blair didn't agree to a gladatorial 3-way debate, which would surely have been interrupted with audience cries of “He's Beside You!” Horrid.