The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'naff'

2007/2/15

The Wikipedia page on this year's Eurovision Song Contest has some details about the UK's possible representatives:

Swedish act Ace Of Base have expressed an interest in representing the UK in Helsinki, however this has been denied on their official website, along with a denial that they were even asked by SVT (Sweden) or the BBC (UK).[55]. Also the Norwegian drag act Queentastic [56] and the 2006 UK Representative Daz Sampson (who will be dueting with Carol Decker)[57] have also expressed an interest in participation. A group from Devon, Goth Opera want to enter a song this year with a song in protest to its move from a Devon country estate.[58] None of these artists are confirmed by the broadcaster. The BBC have confirmed however, that Morrissey is in talks with the BBC about writing a song for the national final.[59]
Nice to see that Britain is maintaining the standards its entrants have become synonymous with over the years.

culture eurovision kitsch music naff 0

2004/6/11

Apple's iTunes has been offering "celebrity playlists", of celebrities favourite songs (well, those licensed for DRM-encumbered iTunes sale, anyway). Not surprisingly, many of them are naff:

The liner notes to wild-eyed rawker Andrew W.K.'s playlist sport a delightful exclamation-point-to-sentence ratio of 1.27-to-1. And I can't think of a better summation of Avril Lavigne than her exegesis of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic": "I love how this song was written with all the different examples Alanis uses of things being ironic."

No surprises either that the hip-hop blingerati's playlists are shamelessly commercial:

Missy Elliott, on the other hand, reveals little. Her liner notes, like her playlist itself, are pure hippity-hop boilerplate: "From ol' skool to new skool, these are some of the hottest songs on the sickest beats ever. Holla!!!" For the most part, iTunes celebrity playlists are unlikely to make anyone holla back. The worst of the bunch are those celebrity playlists padded with the celebrity's own songs, epitomized by the queen of the craven playlist, Beyonce Knowles. Eight of the 14 songs on Beyonce's playlist are performed by her thin-voiced sister, Solange, by her former bandmates in Destiny's Child, or by Beyonce herself.

(Pity that Apple don't publish summaries of the playlists in HTML; I wouldn't mind seeing the Sleater-Kinney and Thievery Corporation playlists mentioned in the piece.)

celebrities itunes naff sarcasm 5

2004/3/19

During the 1980s, various musicians and bands put A gallery of 8-bit computer games on their 7" singles. The theory went that you'd play the 7" into a tape recorder, put the tape into your ZX Spectrum (and most of these were Speccy programs), load it and get some bonus content. The exact nature of this content varied from rather iffy-sounding branded video games (such as the Thompson Twins Adventure Game, or The Stranglers' "Aural Quest") to sometimes dubious games actually written by actual band members (Chris Sievey of The Freshies was a serial offender here), to Satanic messages with other messages hidden in the comments. (via bOING bOING)

music naff retrocomputing the stranglers thompson twins videogames zx spectrum 0

2004/2/27

Some selections from a website selling Java games for mobile phones:

Boobi Sisters: Boobi sisters went to farm to get experience. Their mission is to gather the cattle in a pen.
Butter Head: Butter Head is mail carrier in the Magic Land. One day, while taking a nap he looses his mail.
Christmas Eggs: Help Santa to catch all eggs at his Lapland chicken farm. Don't let the eggs to fall down!

This is one of about half a dozen Santa Claus-themed games on the site. But "Christmas eggs"? "Lapland chicken farm"? WTF?

Mobile Dolly: The cloned Sheep Dolly is based on the previous Frog Game which was a famous arcade game during the 1980's. It is a mobile phone game recreated with a cute character of sheep for the sheep year.

Yeah, it looks like a Frogger clone. The question that immediately comes into mind, though, is: what would a cloned sheep be doing hopping on lilypads and logs across a river?

Mobile Ttarzan: Ttarzan and Jjani live in the nature and study plants. One day, Jjani goes out to collect some plants and then is kidnapped by a monkey.

bizarre java mobile phones naff unintentionally hilarious videogames wtf 2

2003/4/21

Best-selling electronica star Moby admits to being a Celine Dion fan. Given that his career also involves peddling bland, inoffensively MOR music to the suburban masses, I'm not too surprised. (via Largehearted Boy)

celine dion moby mor naff 0

2003/2/3

This is Graham the Happy Scum's universe and we're all just living in it: To counteract the rise in vegetarianism and similar "wacky eating behaviours" among teenaged girls in America, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has set up a site whose message is basically "Grudnuk sez: Eat meat, it's cool!".

The site, which looks like a cross between a Barbie fan page and a Taco Bell ad (beef-filled tacos and gigantic hamburgers dot the screen), extols teenage girls to "Keep it Real" "real" as in a person who eats beef, preferably three or four times a day. Visitors are also invited to send e-cards to their "real friends" and to tell the world why they are "real girls" (because they eat beef burritos, of course!)

(Now we finally get to find out whether irony did die on 9/11/2001, as some commentators claimed; if this site somehow succeeds in turning the tide of teenage veganism in America, then we are indeed living in the New Norman Rockwell Era of plain-dealing boy-scout earnestness. If it falls flat, then irony is alive and well.) (via rotten.com)

marketing meat naff vegetarianism 2

2001/3/18

I'm Wayne Kerr, and if there's one thing I hate... well, allow me to explain with a story:

Recently a flyer caught my attention; it announced, in ravey typography, that a singer/songwriter named Julia Messenger was performing at a pub known as the Grace Darling. Reading further, it mentioned her involvement in the "downbeat" and "electronic dub" scenes in Germany, and worked with Klaus Schutze (of Tangerine Dream fame). This piqued my interest; this would at least be interesting, I thought, and probably somewhat enjoyable. There was nothing to prepare me for the pinkness and horror that was to await.

The show was tonight, scheduled for 10pm. I arrived half an hour late. Instead of a musical performance, I found a fold-out stage prop in the form of a cruise ship and three inflatable floaties. It turned out to be the set of some dating game show called the Love Boat. Two loud-voiced women in sailor costumes were asking questions like "what is your star sign?" and "which reality TV show describes you?", of a group of fashionably dressed (and probably fashionably drunk) late-twentysomethings. The audience seemed to be similar people, as well as a large proportion of middle-aged people, and a few children running around making noise. A bad sign; definitely not an avant-garde crowd.

I was told the game show was running overtime and Julia Messenger would perform at 11pm. I sat down at the bar, reading a copy of InPress and waited, expecting some music. At 11pm I was assaulted with the Love Boat theme blaring out of the PA, and the synchronised off-key singing of the two hostesses as the next instalment of the game began. I retreated to the other room, lest I win a dinner date there with one of the contestants.

Julia Messenger did perform, finally, just before midnight; though her show didn't seem anywhere near as interesting as the flyers suggested; it seemed more like radio-friendly pop songs over canned electronic backings, with one of the choruses sounding dispiritingly like a Britney Spears song.

If they have band venues in Hell, I now know what they must be like.

false advertising naff trash wayne kerr 0

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