Liverpool Music Week

Yes, this week (30 October to 6 November) Liverpool is officially a musical city - as it is Liverpool Music Week. This week of gigs has passed me by somewhat because a) I've been in that there London, and b) US Presidential election fever, but last night I headed up to Bumper for a Johnny Foreigner gig. Unfortunately, I didn't make it as far as Dananananaykroyd because my boyfriend was feeling woozy (well, he had bravely donated a pint of his blood to the NHS a few hours earlier). And I was impatient to spend the night with David Dimbleby, watching Jeremy Vine struggle with touch-screen maps of US states.
But I did see a musical treat from Hackney Carriages, a young man with a guitar, Macbook and a knowledge of Conor Oberst's back catalogue. He was officially not bad. Liverpool music scene veterans the Down and Outs also appeared. Er, 2001 was on the phone and it wants its pop-punk guitar sound back.
There you go. Liverpool Music Week. It will end in a blaze of glory tomorrow night at the MTV Europe Music Awards. And when I say 'blaze of glory', I mean a lot of whooping, glitter and Katy Perry struggling with an autocue. When did MTV last have any relevance to music? Public tickets start at £65, if you're interested, but there is a 'restricted view'.
A whole load of free gigs sounds like a brilliant idea in theory, but it's usually difficult to find the diamonds in the mire of not-very-good unsigned bands. Maybe I'm just annoyed because Liverpool Music Week have the cheek to tell me what to wear.
PS Go Obama!

Mathew Street festival

The bank holiday weekend featured a big shindig in Liverpool's calendar: the Mathew Street festival. Mathew Street being the location of the Cavern. And it really is spelt with one T, ok?
The festival was cancelled last year due to those omnipresent health and safety fears (read: fears that people would get drunk and climb onto scaffolding). But it returned this year with six outdoor stages, including the Brit Pop stage.
I imagined a few bands plugging through Beatles covers, but no, it enveloped the entire city centre. Call me a misanthrope, but it just looked like a big excuse to roam the streets while drinking cans of premium lager. Most of the bands were tribute acts, including Amy Wynehouse, Fake That and Kaiser Thiefs.
I saw some of local heroes Blue Ruby up on the new band stage, and they were no better or worse than the hundreds of other local heroes up and down the UK. Here's a picture of the available merchandise. I'm sure you'll agree it's tasteful and reasonably priced.

I know it's all a bit of japery and I sound miserable, but I live in the city centre. And free, outdoor events usually bring out the people who stagger around clutching Bargain Booze carrier bags, pissing on my doorstep and setting off fireworks.

Still Fergie from the block

That Fergie. She must be very careless with mobile phones, because I've never seen her with the same one twice.
Here she is in the video for Big Girls Don't Cry, reaching for something...

...ah yes, a black, flippy phone (I don't know phones).

Here she is in the video for Glamorous. And how glamorous your whole life is, Fergie. During breaks filming a Bonnie and Clyde Hollywood smash, you have assistants primping your hair and make-up. They're also ready to hand you your white, horizontal flippy phone.

I promise that is Fergie's hand and acrylics clutching some sort of phone in the video for Fergalicious

Here she is texting that hot ticket Johnny in the video for Clumsy, using a Motorola. I know it's a Motorola because the logo is prominently displayed

The video for Black Eyed Peas' Let's Get It Started opens with another Motorola suspended in mid-air. In the background, a figure approaches...

Surprise, it's Fergie! She then bellows down the mouthpiece to some hapless person. That's a lot of phones. It's almost as though she's trying to sell me something...

Maybe I need a big, shiny car?

Hmm, I could do with a Louis Vuitton trunk for my summer holidays.

I hear that MAC is a really good make-up brand.

That's it! I'm off to the shops for some own-brand Fergie cookies!

She's got the look

In Low, Flo Rida sings of 'those Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur, the whole club was looking at her'. For me, this conjures images of a girl in unflattering jeans and Ugg boots over doing it on the dancefloor of a small nightclub in Pontefract while everybody looks on in embarrassment. But Flo Rida also mentions those Apple Bottom jeans in his new single, Elevator. So I turned to Google. And the answer: Apple Bottom jeans are not a new cut invented by Grazia magazine, but part of Nelly's brand.
For a mere $150, you can get a pair of 'sexy' skinny jeans hand signed by Nelly himself. On the backside. But don't worry! They are machine washable. And so you can feel that little bit sexier while working in the operating theatre, Apple Bottom also make scrubs.
Does this mean Flo Rida is a rapper, or a musical construct for aggressive product placement (cf Fergie)?