Originally written in December, just found down the back of the sofa. Here, for your perusal…
One of the newer features of the iTunes / iPod software (alright, it was probably added in 2004, or something, but I’ve just got around to upgrading, so it’s new to me) is the ability, at the push of a button, to import CD cover art for all the albums you have in your iTunes library.
It’s very clever, and one can’t help wondering how they do it. The general wisdom seems to be that the program picks up key words (Album name, Artist etc.) and trawls several sites on L’internet looking for gifs or images that are a match, before importing them and pasting them into your ’scrapbook’ (as ‘t’were).
That sounds logical, until we get to my album ‘Gemini‘ by Gemini, a brother and sister duo whose fabulous and beautiful 1987 album was largely written by, and totally produced by, Benny and Bjorn from ABBA. And it shows. It’s my fave ABBA period: Ice-Cold, digital production. Plinks and brittle snaps as opposed to twangs and thuds. Lyrics that have matured to the point where they write songs about depression, loss, loneliness and the oppression of the majority by elected governments in democracies (seriously), theatrical chord changes and almost operatic singing (don’t believe me - listen to ‘Another you, another me’, and think Maria Callas but less camp), and presentation that eschews glam and glitz for subtle classic tailoring and minimalist styling (dodgy, late 80’s spiky ‘do’ notwithstanding). Below is an admittedly rather small pic of the album sleeve.
It’s sharp, stylish, sexy and mature, and you can understand how concerned I was to discover that, instead of this image, my pod (which, for some reason, I’ve set to ‘Backlight always on’ so that everyone can get an eyeful of the image that goes with what I’m listening to), was displaying this one:
Click on it. Check it out. Jesus, what do they look like? No, don’t answer that: I know what they look like. And, frankly, the fact that they have their faces on cd sleeves (let alone their faces leering over the top of two juniors who look like badly photoshopped versions of themselves; check out the one on the left - if that half smile and those dead eyes don’t scream ‘Child Protection Squad’ or at least ‘X Factor Winner’, you’re as blind as Jon Benet’s grandparents), gives me the creeps.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure these guys are lovely, and I’m sure they make great music for ‘Children and Families’ (it says here), though I suspect it’s going to be rather short on songs about depression, loss, loneliness and the oppression of the majority by elected governments in democracies, theatrical chord changes and almost operatic singing, rather heavy on twangs and thuds, and the styling looks a little more Primark than Prada. Still, overall, I’m sure it does what it says on the tin.
Except, the rest of the folks on my train (particularly the heavy woman who rammed herself into the seat opposite me and gave me the ‘evils’ from the moment she clocked the pod til the time I got off at London Bridge) don’t know that, and, clearly, nothing starts the year better than an entire trainload of people (or, at least, the heavy woman opposite) thinking you’re playing pop for paedos on the commute to work.
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on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 10:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
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