Suedehead2

What, the Farage who has remained loyal to his first wife. Oh,....

It doesn't help that this issue is always reporte4d from the perspective that "Immigration is a problem". The alternative view is rarely presented despite the fact that two GB-wide parties in parliament, the Lib Dems and Greens, are much more positive about refugees and immigration in general.

He advocated stoning gay men. That seems quite violent to me.

Scarily for some of us, Bohemian Rhapsody will turn 50 later this year. To mark the occasion, the second half of the Last Night of the Proms started with a performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Brian May and, eventually, Roger Taylor. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody - 2025 BBC Proms - 50th Anniversary Premiere Performance

I was also in London this evening. Lots of people draped in flags at Waterloo Station and in the nearby bars. For the first time in my life, I was nervous when I left the (Suede) gig that there would be a lot of seriously tanked-up thugs between the Festival Hall and the station. Fortunately, many of the bars had already closed (even though it was only just past 22:00) which meant there weren't many of them about.

Saturday 13th September Arsenal 2-0 Nottingham Forest (12:30) AFC Bournemouth 1-2 Brighton & Hove Albion Crystal Palace 1-1 Sunderland Everton 2-0 Aston Villa Fulham 2-2 Leeds United Newcastle United 3-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers West Ham United 1-3 Tottenham Hotspur (17:30) Brentford 1-2 Chelsea (20:00) Sunday 14th September Burnley 1-3 Liverpool (14:00) Manchester City 2-2 Manchester United (16:30)

Epic fail

This week's comments are now available from the usual places. I might have said a little about a particular band.

There is still no shifting HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast from the top of the singles chart as Golden stubbornly stays there for a sixth week. The KPop film is also responsible for Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast at number four with Soda Pop. Olivia Dean's Man I Need remains Golden’s closest rival for the top slot, remaining at number two. Sabrina Carpenter is still shedding her Tears at number three. Disco Lines and Tinashe climb back up to number five with No Broke Boys. Without the limit of three songs for an individual artist Sabrina Carpenter’s When Did You Get Hot? would have been in the chart last week. This week, it is one of her three most popular songs, so it is a new entry at number nine. I have enjoyed some of Carpenter’s songs, but this isn’t one of them. Lady Gaga has a new entry at number thirteen with The Dead Dance. It is a third hit of the year for Gaga, and her 33rd top forty hit in a chart career that began in 2009. Calvin Harris enters at number 34 with Ocean, his 46th top forty hit. He is joined by Jessie Reyez whose only previous top forty hit was also alongside Harris, as well as Sam Smith. Sabrina Carpenter gets a second week at the top of the albums chart with Man’s Best Friend. It is the first new album to get a second consecutive week at the top since Eminem’s The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace) in July and August last year. Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department spent two weeks at number one last December, but by then it was seven months old. This bit maintains the tradition of scrupulous impartiality in these notes. There can be no doubt that Suede are the best band ever to have existed in this, or any other, universe. They started to come to public attention when they featured on the front cover of one of the music papers (ask your parents) under the headline “Best New Band In Britain?". This was before they had released anything. I first saw Suede in March 1992, still two months before they released their debut single. That was with the 50-60 other people who had turned up to see them support The Heart-Throbs. Seven months later, touts were charging £30 for tickets with a face value of £5 at another London venue. Tomorrow (Saturday), exactly 33 ½ years after that first Suede gig, I shall be seeing them for the 60-somethingth time at London’s Festival Hall. Their debut album, unimaginatively titled Suede, was released in 1993. It became the fastest-selling debut album since Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasure Dome in 1994 and won the second Mercury Music Prize. Shortly before the release of their second (and best) album Dog Man Star in 1994, guitarist and co-songwriter Bernard Butler left the band. Many people speculated that his departure would lead to the end of the band, but they recruited the then-tennager Richard Oakes and carried on. Suede got a second number one album with Head Music in 1999, but the follow-up, A New Morning (2002), only got to number 24 and they broke up the following year. Those of us who attended the band’s “final” gig in December of that year had to hope that singer Brett Anderson’s promise that there would be another Suede album would be fulfilled. Even when Suede re-formed in 2010, it was officially a one-off to perform a show at the Albert Hall to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust. However, that went so well that they announced new shows and, eventually, a new album. Last week, they released their fifth album since re-forming, matching the five they released before the break-up. Antidepressants is meant to be the second of a trilogy of albums, so there should be at least one more to come. In the meantime, Antidepressants becomes Suede’s second number two album, following Autofiction in 2022. The top five is completed by three compilations. Oasis are at number three with Time Flies, Ed Sheeran’s Tour Collection is at number four and Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years - Don’t Stop is at five. Suede bassist Mat Osman has also published two novels, including the excellent The Ghost Theatre. By a weird coincidence, he started writing his first novel, The Ruins, at about the same time as brother Richard started work on The Thursday Murder Club. That must been that Red Rum Club should meet on Yadsruht. Their fifth album Buck, my second-favourite new album released last week, is at number seven. One of the 90s bands I most regret not having seen live are St Etienne whose members include Bob Stanley, another published author. This week the band get their third top ten album with International at number eight. They last reached the top ten in 1994 when Tiger Bay also reached number eight. Just two months after the surprise release of Swag, Justin Bieber has added 23 tracks to the original 21 and reissued it as Swag II. The album, which enters at number ten, now lasts for a little over two hours. Faithless enjoyed their biggest success from the mid-1990s to the early noughties with fantastic singles such as God Is A DJ, Insomnia and We Come 1. It is now eighteen years since they had a top forty single (although they came close in 2010), but they are still recording hit albums. Their latest, Champion Sound, is at number fifteen. David Byrne came to the attention of the music world as the singer and songwriter for the band Talking Heads, one of the most original bands of the 1980s. The band are no more, but Byrne is now pursuing a solo career. He gets a fifth solo top forty hit with Who Is The Sky? at number 34.

It will need more than one broadcaster threatening a boycott. That said, good on RTE for taking a stand.

That's great too (Brett-Butler would agree), but Dog Man Star remains my favourite. It's an album that demands to be heard in full, in the right order.

Israel might possibly have hit a new low. They targeted the building where the Hamas delegation in peace talks were gathered. That, inevitably, leads to speculation that Israel's commitment to the talks was totally bogus. It was just a ruse to get several senior Hamas figures in one place where they could be attacked. Naturally, Israel isn't going to worry about minor issues such as the fact that it meant launching attack on the territory of a sovereign state. Israel is a terrorist state, but the rest of the world can't bring themselves to say so.

Listen to Dog Man Star.

Mostly the band, although the song title meant that the name sounded OK.

A comfortable majority now say that leaving the EU was a stupid idea. The Lib Dems and the Greens need to exploit that. They should be asking why voters should take any notice of the politician whose only achievement is to achieve a vote in favour of something now seen as a terrible mistake.

I think what you meant was "They are the best band ever to have existed".

I'm lost for words

Stop the count!

Every single new-born baby is a potential criminal. They are also a potential brilliant surgeon, great entertainer, hugely successful author, or the person who eliminates cancer. What is your point?

We made it Now we need to buy an atlas to find out where Fljotavik is

Given the huge amount of exposure Reform are getting - compared, for example, with a party with 18 times as many MPs - this isn't surprising. I'd be interested to see how many people could accurately say which are the three biggest parties in the House of Commons.

I've used the hug occasionally. It's not something that's going to be used a lot, but it is nice to have as a supportive emoji.

I remember him from the time he was in the Lib Dems. He spoke at a pre-conference rally and was a very impressive speaker. If he succeeds, the next election could be an even bigger mess with many constituencies being won on under 30% of the vote.

Ed Davey has spoken out against the hate-filled rhetoric, but "news" providers haven't bothered to report it.

Keep safe