Category: [Music]

Roo clouds of holocaust

This is one of the damnedest photos of a musician I’ve ever seen. I am told that this is Douglas P. from Death in June (minus that damn stupid mask he usually wears), and I am also told that, despite him somehow looking like he’s been photoshopped into it, it’s an actual photo of him with, frankly, two kangaroos behind him engaging in biff. I find it utterly perplexing but I’m so happy to have discovered it (thanks, Pinterest). Doug would never have encountered such a scene in the Europa he’s so fond of…

Victor goes west

Victor Willis, frontman of Village People, dies age 74

Victor Willis, the lead singer of the Village People, has died age 74. The group shared the news in a statement: “Victor passed on Monday 30 June 2026 of a short but aggressive illness,” they said. “Privacy is requested.”
The writer of what were widely accepted as canonical gay anthems in YMCA and Macho Man – also performed in costumes of hyper-masculine male stereotypes – Willis refuted the idea that YMCA was a gay anthem and threatened to sue “each and every news organisation” that made the claim.
“As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life,” he said in 2024. […]
Willis had a flip-flopping approach to Donald Trump’s use of YMCA in his campaigns and pageantry. After approving its use for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, Willis retracted his support as the Black Lives Matter movement came to prominence, but then changed his tune again.
He repeatedly said he was ideologically opposed to Trump – and in 2024 supported Kamala Harris – but admitted the that president’s use of the track had “greatly benefited the song”. In 2025, the Village People performed at the Turning Point USA ball to mark the president’s second inauguration, as well as the pre-inauguration rally.
On Wednesday, Trump posted a tribute to Willis on Truth Social, writing: “He was a great and happy guy who loved that I used his groups song, YMCA, at my Rallies. We will think of Victor every time YMCA is played, like today, and all throughout this July Fourth Birthday week.”

Well, I hope that whatever money he made from the song’s latter-day resurgence was worth the loss of his soul.

Can we have our record back, mister?


Sixty years since the Fabs’ “butcher” album cover debacle. I wonder just how many of those reviewers did actually obey the request to return their misbegotten original copies, or did they all just think to themselves “fuck that, I’ve got a collector’s item here”… original first state butcher covers will set you back thousands now, with a still-shrinkwrapped original stereo copy having gone for $125,000 ten years ago. Just a few weeks later they’d be pissing off Imelda Marcos and Christians in the southern US, and then releasing their best album to date. What a period mid-1966 was.

Everyone’s got punk roots, apparently

Yeah, even Dieter Meier from Yello was a punk once. I only just discovered this tonight from a show I was listening to on Mixcloud; I knew he’d already had an interesting history before he joined Yello, but I never knew he did music before joining Carlos and Boris, and I obviously never knew it sounded like this, and I’m even more astonished to discover a music video of it was made at the time. Goddamn right it’ll be on the podcast soon.

Flop of July

The other funniest story from American politics has been the collapse of the proposed 250th birthday of the US concert. This was amusing enough when they just announced the artists that would be performing, most of whom were last big hitters around 1990—including the surviving half of Milli Vanilli who were… not exactly renowned as live performers (or studio performers, of course)—but it became genuinely comedic when pretty much all the advertised “stars” abruptly withdrew from the show; apparently no one told any of them the Freedom 250 concert was actually an official celebration endorsed by the Shite House, which I find hard to believer but that’s what most of them seem to be saying.

Mushroom Cock’s solution to this slight problem: who needs music when you’ve got… him?

“I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!” Trump wrote.
The president appeared to be referring to the concert series announced last Wednesday, which lost seven of its nine featured musical acts within 48 hours, but since none of the shows was scheduled for next Wednesday, his meaning was difficult to parse.
A spokesperson for Freedom 250, the organization Trump created to run celebrations of the nation’s founding, contacted the Guardian later to say that the Wednesday in question is one next month, 24 June, when the president “will personally kick off this historic celebration” at a previously unscheduled “opening ceremony” for a 16-day fair on the National Mall. The fair was to have started a day later, on 25 June, with a concert by Martina McBride. The country star announced on Thursday that she would not perform, because, although she had been “assured this was a nonpartisan event”, that “turned out to be misleading”.
“I don’t want so-called ‘Artists’ that get paid far too much money, who aren’t happy,” the president added. “I only want to be surrounded by Happy People, Smart People, Successful People, and People that know how to WIN. So, by copy of this TRUTH, I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, DC, same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited — It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America!”
Trump’s promise that his rally will be “wild” echoed a tweet he issued after his 2020 election loss to urge his supporters to protest in Washington DC on 6 January 2021: “Be there! Will be wild!”

I wonder if this means we can look forward ro a repeat of that day. The worst thing is, Krasnov just monologuing for as long as he can stay awake would, for a lot of MAGAts, actually be a much bigger draw than any of the musical acts would be. Oh well. The dude from Milli Vanilli is apparently still keen on performing, which is… something, I suppose. Not sure what.

Life goal indeed

My friend Matt (that’s him at the bottom) posted this on BS:

I’ve always had a particular animus towards Nickelback cos Chud Kroeger was born on the exact same day as me (albeit in Canada, so I think in real terms I’m probably nearly a day older than him). Don’t know what Wax Trax did to deserve this, but it was clearly the right thing, and I need to do it myself…

I hear you’re an antisemite now, father

RTÉ to show ‘Father Ted’ instead of Eurovision in Israel protest, Graham Linehan calls it “antisemitic harrassment”

Irish broadcaster RTÉ has confirmed plans to show Father Ted rather than Eurovision in protest against Israel’s involvement in the ceremony.
Ireland is one of several countries to have withdrawn from competing in Eurovision in 2026 due to Israel’s participation, alongside Spain, Iceland, the Netherlands and Slovenia.
Now, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ has gone a step further by confirming it will air the Eurovision special of the beloved sitcom Father Ted on RTÉ 2 rather than showcasing the singing competition, which is due to take place on May 16th in Vienna, Austria.
Similarly, the Slovenian national broadcaster will also not be showing Eurovision amid the boycott. Instead, they will be airing Voices of Palestine, a series of documentaries on the Middle East.
However, Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, who has become a vocal supporter of Israel in recent years, has aired his anger on social media with RTÉ for their decision to air his show instead of the 70th edition of Eurovision.
Taking to X, Linehan shared a link to a petition, which he created, calling for RTÉ’s director general, Kevin Bakhurst, to resign, writing, “Please join me in demanding the resignation of RTE’s Director General for using Father Ted as a tool of antisemitic harassment.”

As a serial hater and harrasser of trans folks, I suspect that Glinner is… not the best person to be making a statement like this. Also, can we not just boycott (which I initially wrote as “goycott”… Freudian slip or just struggling with a new laptop keyboard? You decide)—I say, can we not just boycott Eurovision on aesthetic grounds? Sometimes you don’t need to drag politics into a thing…

Optimism is beautiful

I don’t know who wrote this blurb for the Velvets from Hullabaloo magazine, but they were unnecessarily upbeat about White Light/White Heat‘s commercial prospects, as that album notably appeared on the Billboard chart for just one week at position 199. With hindsight, of course, even that looks miraculous. There was no way in hell this album was ever going to make Lou and the gang pop stars, and if our author expected that to happen they were being deeply naive. Either that or they were being deeply sarcastic, of course, which the “happy sunshine” line suggests, cos if there are two words no one with any sense would associate with this album, those words are “happy sunshine”…