It's was the second time around on the Zoo TV tour, in Vancouver. Unfortunately I got them when they were dripping in irony.

Heh. I actually liked them dripping in irony. I saw them in Madison, WI on the Zoo TV tour, but oddly enough, I hardly remember the show at all.

But when I go back and watch the concert videos from that tour, I LOVE it. The Zoo Sydney video is incredible.

Popmart was weird and their hearts didn't seem to be in it, and I think they knew they had to get back to basics with the Elevation tour. This one is pretty similar to that tour in terms of "back to basics," but it's got some cool light stuff.

Neil Gaiman seems to enjoy an interesting life. I need more life like this:

This morning I got up very early and went off to spend the morning in a cafe in Notting Hill with Damon and Jamie, talking Gorillaz, and the nature of story, and why an imaginary cartoon band can have more integrity than some flesh and blood ones, and all that sort of stuff (all while having our photo taken). Enormously pleasant -- I'd not met Damon before, and hadn't seen Jamie since we went to Berlin for the (first? second?) anniversary of the coming down of the Berlin Wall, about fifteen years ago.

why an imaginary cartoon band can have more integrity than some flesh and blood ones,

This reminded me -- last night I was talking with some people about "embarassing" music we like, and I said something about Milli Vanilli being awesome, and my friend said, "They weren't even REAL!" But guess what? The music is still real.

Another Milli Vanilli fan?

I thought the music was great fun, cotton-candy pop. And, well, I didn't see their videos all that much.

I listened to the new New Order disc last night, Waiting for the Siren's Call. I was intending it to be crash music, because even Substance works as crash music for me.

No such luck - it was too astonishingly good. Just one track after another of really compelling stuff. Unmistakebly New Order (except for the penultimate track on the US disc, "Working Overtime", which is a straight up rock song - and also really good) and except for one or two less-than-fully-compelling tracks (most noticeably, the title track), there's not a bad song on it, and at least three or four (including the rocker) that I'd throw on a mix in a nano-second.

I'm almost afraid to listen to it again, since I've had some albums that I thought were amazing not hold up under repeat listening, but I don't think that's going to happen with this.

I need to pull out their last album, Get Ready, which I also thought was stellar (it stayed in my CD player for a couple of months without being switched out for anything else) and see how it compares.

In short, yeah, I really, really liked it.

The thing that pissed people off about Milli Vanilli at the time was that they took themselves way too seriously.

Time magazine, March 5, 1990

"Musically, we are more talented than any Bob Dylan," announces Robert Pilatus, 24, with very little prodding. "Musically, we are more talented than Paul McCartney. Mick Jagger, his lines are not clear. He don't know how he should produce a sound. I'm the new modern rock 'n' roll. I'm the new Elvis." His (often silent) partner, Fabrice Morvan, 23, has his own key to success: "Rhythm, you know."

They more or less brought on the backlash themselves.

From Milli Vanilli to New Order.

The breadth of the Buffistas is astounding.

They more or less brought on the backlash themselves.

Oh, definitely. It's just that since it's 15 years later, I don't care anymore. And anyway, you've got to blame it on something!

And anyway, you've got to blame it on something!

I say either "the bossa nova" or "Cain", myself. That way I don't have to listen to any Milli Vanilli.