Parents growing older, Brazilians 2 cool 4 school and Bergerac music

We had some sad news last night. A close friends dad passed away earlier in the week from cancer. He's been poorly for a while but went down hill quite suddenly over the last few weeks. Our friend was with him when he died at home, which is perhaps a very small mercy. We also had news that another friends dad is also not so good at the minute. It has brought it home to us that the time you have with your parents is limited and that we should perhaps make more of an effort. I'm guilty at times of getting too wrapped up in my own concerns and not being as attentive to them as I should be. None of us are getting any younger.
On a lighter and more trivial note I picked up a copy of the NME today. I don't buy it very often these days and whenever I do it reminds me why I don't. I used to get it every week when I was kid along with Melody Maker and Sounds (remember that one kids ? You used to get a badly printed free poster in the centre pages every week). The Maker was always the one which took itself more seriously, Sounds was just rubbish, and the NME was the one which poncey Sixth-Formers who listened to Pink Floyd would roll their eyes at. This weeks edition features the annual NME cool list of luminaries who they reckon have been the epitome of all things now this year. It's mostly Greek to me I'll be honest, but I did notice my current crush is featured. She's a Brazilian woman who goes by the name of Lovefoxx (not sure if that's what she was christened), who sings in a band called Cansei de ser sexy. That's Portugese for "I'm Tired Of Being Sexy". I wish I could say I knew the feeling. She is quite perfect as far as I'm concerned. She's stroppy, pretty in an interesting way and sings suggestive songs. The band are seriously cool and play a kind of guitar-disco-funk-noise thing. The name gets abbreviated to CSS. They're very good and this is her in action...

Stroppy indie girls are and always have been my thing *sigh*. Lovefoxx is the the polar opposite of those bland air-brushed MOR songstresses you get today like Norah Jones, Katie Melua and Nerina Pallot. Highly talented of course but so over produced and packaged as to become completely bland and lifeless. They have all perfected exactly the same look for their promo photos, and you can just see the hand of some bean counting record company exec behind everything they do. Pallot in particular is exceptionally bland. It's quite fitting that she comes from Jersey as what she's turning out is Bergerac music for the unimaginative. It's musical shorthand for dull people trying to affect sophistication. Resist, resist. Get into something daft and joyous instead, whatever the genre, rather than that kind of musical middle-of-the-road mogadon. It's processed cheese slice music in a world of exciting dairy products.
So three cheers for Lovefoxx and her like and three cheers for ageing parents everywhere. They made us what we are.