F1 Splits!!

The FIA and FOTA have not agreed on the issues facing Formula 1, with the result being the FOTA teams leaving F1 to start their own rival series. FOTA - which consists of Ferrari, McLaren, Brawn GP, Toyota, Renault, BMW, Red Bull and Toro Rosso - have decided after ongoing talks broke down (again) that their dealings with FIA are now concluded in dramatic fashion.

Stunned... simply stunned!!
I have not written or commented on this recently as the press releases and news flowing in each direction with supreme regularity left me feeling nauseous and confused.

So now it's on. The great irony is Formula 1 had in recent years dropped many of the fans' popular circuits, so it's quite conceivable that the likes of Silverstone, Imola, Montreal and Indianapolis may find their onto the FOTA Grand Prix calendar as they're still easily up to FIA safety specs. There won't be word of a potential car design or rules for a while yet, so that'll be interesting when it comes about.
I am also rather intrigued to see who will pick this up commercially too.


Leigh

Kap Bambino / Advert (Cargo, London)

One thing I've noticed about the local music scene in both Dublin and London (and this may not be a popular view) is the sheer arrogance that is often present amongst its participants - the thought that we deserve cool purely because of where we come from regardless of the output that is produced ...and I've seen this a lot over the years - an awful lot!! I will not go into the details here, because I could spew my guts for page after page.

This shithead-like arrogance was slammed in face once again on Tuesday night in Cargo, where I witnessed quite possibly the worst band that I have ever seen.
Let it be said now that Advert are simply the most pointless, horrible group to ever take a stage anywhere. They even managed to piss me off before they started by refusing to get on stage until more people arrived - listen to yourselves you dickheads, you're the support band; get up or fuck off!! As a result people got tired of waiting and actually left before they started!!

When the London based three-piece (two guitars, one bassist, one backing track) pride themselves on apparently making post-punk/industrial music; but one would be hard pushed to tell seeing as how you simply could not hear anything. At first I thought their sound was botched, until I leaned towards the front of the stage and realised that every distortion pedal (there were lots) for each instrument was turned up to 10. Therefore, the audience proceeded to get 15 minutes of solid noise, feedback and fuzz - I really hope they're not trying to be "challenging", because they only succeeded in being very, very boring.
Throughout their set, they posed, pouted, strutted, lamely threw their instruments around, knocked monitors off the stage, played at rock 'n' roll with about as much charisma as dead boy moments after he's thrown his car into a tree.
They played, they finished and then left without saying a word with their guitars and bass leaning into their amps to generate as much feedback as possible. It was so pointlessly loud, that I left the room feeling physically ill, but worst of all when I turned to leave, I was met by an audience that just looked so bored to death and wondering what that show of ineptitude actually was. Maybe if Advert stopped ripping off industrial and post-punk bands from the 70's/early 80's and leaned off the distortion a little, they maybe surprisingly tuneful, but until then...
Advert (MySpace)

Occasionally I often am criticised for not being positive enough about music - that's not strictly true, it would be more accurate to say that I have great trouble putting wonderful things into words and this is another one of those situations and it is with that in mind that this night provided me with another first.

At the gig where I caught the worst band I had ever seen, Kap Bambino entered and proved to be the best band that I had ever witnessed. One must be honest here and that I can't remember most of the set, so violent was the show; however I do remember singing (possibly shouting) rather loudly, being thrown around by slightly younger burly people, the vocalist - Caroline Martial - climbing on my shoulders demanding a lift, a stage mosh (during New Breath), losing my glasses in a sea of people mid-mosh to find them perched precariously between Martial's legs, scores of men whipping out their digital camera's whenever she fell over (how subtle!!) and me drowning in my own own sweat (kudos to bar staff handing out pint glasses of water to throw over ourselves in the smoking area).
I vaguely remember Acid Eyes, Dead Lazer's, Blacklist, Red Sign being played amongst others and the encore featuring Hey! This was about an hour of pure ecstasy driven electro-punk (or electro-grunge??) that left me with most incredible feeling of euphoria afterwards ...and I was sober too!!

Blacklist is out now on Because Records. They're back for Glastonbury this year and are also playing the Offset Festival in September.
Check.Them.Out.
Kap Bambino (MySpace)

Current listening:
Kap Bambino "Blacklist"


Leigh

Was the IRL Texas 550 Fixed? (Updated)

While sitting in watching Round 6 of the current IRL season from Texas Motor Speedway something quite irritating popped into my head (apart from the incessant ad-breaks). Ryan Briscoe - once again driving an impeccable racing for Penske - was leading by around 11 seconds (just under half-a-lap) and had lapped everyone up until Tony Kanaan in 8th place.

No problem there; I remember sitting through the Schumacher years of Formula 1 when he pulverised everyone repeatedly, but then on lap 150 the stewards through a full-course yellow... for debris on track, thereby closing the entire field up. Now I must agree with Pressdog on this occasion by calling bullshit - this was a crude trick taken directly from NASCAR's big book of cheap thrills. In NASCAR, they don't bullshit though; they call them "competition caution" - an open and deliberate ploy to close the field up if someone is too far ahead; in the IRL, they call the "debris cautions"... hmmm.

In the long run, Briscoe got passed by his team-mate Helio Castroneves for the win in the pits and Briscoe came a close second, but this came about purely because the "debris caution". I doubt there was any call to make sure Castroneves won, but that they wanted to bring the field together for a "close finish".
There are many folks calling the IRL's bluff on this - there's a lot of unhappy folks that felt a race win had been stolen from Ryan Briscoe. Let's hope this get nipped in the bud, as we don't need NASCAR type rules in open wheel racing.


Leigh


*edit:
Grumble... grumble... grumble...
As a follow up to this post, IRL official, Dave Lewandowski has released a statement to counter the many complaints raised following the phantom debris on lap 150. According to the release, there were loosened bolts and marbles on track on the outside of turn 2 that had been spotted by the trackside safety crew and the stewards acted upon those notifications - which is sensible considering the deaths of drivers Tony Renna and Paul Dana are still fairly fresh in the series' history.

However, I still would like to debate why it took longer to tidy up stray tyre marbles than clear a three car pile-up at the start of the race. Commercial breaks, pit-stops followed by more commercial breaks anyone?