I have to laugh when people say that rap music is dangerous, i.e. it encourages people to become violent and overuse the words 'ho' and 'bitch'. The truth is that most people, black and white, don't allow rap, or any other type of music, to impact negatively on their daily lives. Anyone who does is either black, and already had violent undercurrents in their psyches, or white, BORED, antisocial, maladjusted, and desperate for a more glamourous life. And vice versa, of course. I have come to realize that the only truly dangerous band ever, to my knowledge, was Spacemen 3. Many groups can claim to be hypnotic, even trancelike, but Spacemen 3's "Performance" is the only recording I've ever heard that can make a person feel rightly and fully stoned beyond all comprehension. I can actually feel my brain evaporating as I listen to it. That, folks, is one dangerous recording. Aural drugs, people turned into zombies by twisted radio authorities gone evil, it's straight out of a Twilight Zone/Poltergeist innocent bystanders sucked into a TV set scene. Their whole career, the Spacemen were practically begging people to take drugs, and if you refused them, they'd just sick their music on you, which left listeners feeling injected anyway. Thus, there was no point in resisting, and there still isn't, even fifteen years later. They'll get you somehow.

Two eves before the biggest live musical event of the spring, i.e. a life-affirming, spirit-raising, goosebump-rising, ear-splitting, finger-clenching, shiver-enticing, eye-watering, mouth-agaping, apocalypse-catalysing, fear-mongering, tail-wagging love-in of white noise and religious spirituals masquerading as a Mogwai concert, I have a thought for the boys. Lads, what do you think of the new Labradford album? One weakness of "E Luxo So", if you could call it that, was the apparent lack of guitars. Sure, they were there (if you listened very, very closely) but the abundance of strings, piano and subtle electronica pretty much masked them. But "Fixed:Context" feels like a guitar album, similar in feel (but not in execution, i.e. instrumentation) to Mogwai's "Stanley Kubrick", and the beginning and end of "Xmas Steps". The melodies convey stasis with such gorgeous hymns emanating from the fewest possible meticulously picked guitar strings. In short, "Fixed:Context" is a revelation, one-upping the grandeur and restraint of Mogwai's 1999 "ep". It's easily the best thing I've heard all year. Being huge Labradford fans, they know the gauntlet has been thrown down, so can Mogwai top it? Maybe I'll find out this Sunday.

The debut of the new Madonna video has come and gone, and what do you know, the pre-release criticisms turned out to be completely unfounded. Extreme violence? Hardly. Cartoon violence is more like it. Extreme violence would be Madonna strapping bombs to her chest and blowing up a cafe frequented by visible minorities. That would insensitive on many different levels. Instead, she threatens cops with a fake gun. So what? Any five year old can see that on a Road Runner cartoon on a Saturday afternoon. She wrecks her car at the video's conclusion. I can flip to any given episode of COPS and watch a fugitive ram into the back of a tractor trailer any day of the week. OK, she rams a car full of guys, just because she feels like it. But those guys were ogling her (with her Grandma in the car -- how crude!) so the violence may have been gratuitous, but not completely senseless. Note to boys whose hormones are uncontrollably oozing through their skin -- don't piss off Madonna. Perhaps I'm morally sick, but given all the hype and doomsaying regarding this video, I expected to see blood and graphic killings, and was slightly disappointed that it didn't deliver. Oh well, I'll blame it on my imagination running wild over the bones that were thrown to me by the incantations of the media and special interest groups that were in a tizzy for days, stroking my interest to the point where I just HAD to watch. Forget about this tabloid talk, maybe the answer is in, say, the LYRICS of the song. "What it feels like for a girl" to be, for instance, as mindlessly violent and cocksuckingly sexist as men are[B. Particularly in the music videos they make.

I doubt that I listened to Catatonia's "International Velvet" during 2000 -- unquestionably a consequence of a) getting lost in the shuffle of a ever-ballooning CD collection and b) my general disdain and loss of enthusiasm for much UK rock in general. A short 18 months ago, I was of the opinion that "International Velvet" had the unimpeachable singles, while "Equally Cursed and Blessed" was the more accomplished, well-rounded album (sorry, long-time Catatonia fans, those are the only two albums I have, but it's tough to be pushing the vanguard of music all of the time, sometimes it feels good to jump really, really late onto the bandwagon and open my wallet in plain submission to the hype. Kind of like the way a 12-year old girl buys the O-Town album based on their looks and fame rather than the complete lack of musical talent that they "exhibited" on their TV show, I shelled out for Catatonia). Well, this week I spent some time revisiting these albums, and it's clear that IV has held up MUCH better over the scant couple of years since its release. ECB's lack of a killer single is glaringly evident. Stunningly haunting fragility aside (i.e. Valerion), it sounds lost in the slush of drab, grey, semi-acoustic pseudo-balladry that has been the norm in Brit-rock over the last few years. Heard in the context of said norm, IV is even more fun that it was in 1998. That sparkling array of -- get this -- *happy* pop gems takes me back to those wanton days of yore when a guitar band could sing of sunny days without the emotional baggage associated with waiting solemnly for the eventual rainstorm. Pre-tabloid hell and Cerys' breakdown, IV is the sound of band feeling no pressure because they have nothing to lose and only superstardom to gain. Perhaps that is the true lesson learned from Britpop: each band gets only one such burden-free album ("Parklife", "Different Class") before the beast that is the embracing and subsequent shunning of the public eye renders such pop genius unattainable ever again ("The Great Escape" ... "13", "This is Hardcore"). Thus, "International Velvet" = "The last great Britpop album". As Pulp and Blur have shown, what follows is significantly more restrained, yet need not be any less beautiful.

Even outside the sphere of "let's all sound like Radiohead" British rock, excellence can breed familiarity, which is why I could swear that I've heard Six By Seven before. 6B7 remind me a lot of Marion, except that they're far grittier than Marion could have ever been. And far louder (which is really saying something). Both bands have that "we're all gonna die in 45 minutes" urgency, the same urgency that cloaked the music of the early Manics, not to mention their strongest album, "The Holy Bible". And the Manics themselves can't come up with titles like "Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt" and "Eat Junk Become Junk" anymore. 6B7 took the reciprocal (i.e. Joy Division) route of Travis et al: they're sad and they're proving it by striving to be the most white-in-horror, most intense band on earth, rather then the mopiest band on earth. 6B7: the most anguished British band since The Smiths?

WWF: The Music Volume 5 debuted at #2 on the Billboard Chart. To that, I say: wow. Wow because the WWF released the themes of their biggest stars on volumes 3 and 4, hence, volume 5 is filled with a bunch of jobber themes. Raven? Too Cool? The One Badd Rockabilly Ass Billy Gunn? Does anyone have a pressing need to have their themes? Kurt Angle is a true superstar, but come on, in what POSSIBLE setting would you want to hear his theme music? Besides, I see an image change in the near future for him. He's being pushed (finally) as a more vicious character, and when they've flushed the rest of the goofiness out of him, his music should transform much in the way that HHH's did (from Beethoven to Rage to Motorhead). But even worse: whose stupid idea was it to let the Rock do a rap song? In theory, a Rock rap about his favourite, ahem, dessert was a good idea, but the song sucks and his "rapping" is straight off a 1988 Fresh Prince record.

Also, considering that Nelly Furtado's competition in the Best New Artist category lily-white folk and country artists, what exactly could she have meant when she said that her Juno represented the diversity of Canadian musicians? Sure, her music is somewhat influenced by her Portuguese background, but overall, it's just standard Lilith Fair stuff. Since her competition for her two big awards (New artist, Best album) were plain ordinary white people and the tried and true MOR staples (The Hip, BNL) her Juno wins were more a representation of a boring year in Canadian music than anything else.