The paper says Arsenal have been discussing a bid for the England player since March and are now poised to make their move.

However it also adds

‘putting together a financial package to land him is the major obstacle to a deal.
Lukas Podolski, the top earner at the Emirates Stadium, is on just over £100,000 a week compared to Rooney’s £250,000.’

It just won’t happen will it?! If Wenger can get Jovetic, a similar player who arguably comes with less baggage for £25 million and £120k a week, he is not going to fork out stupid money for Rooney.

I think this is serious mischief making by the Mail.

So says French radio station RMC which is reporting that Arsenal have agreed a deal to sign Auxerre striker Yaya Sanogo on a freebie this summer. Apparently it s four year deal for the striker who is currently plying his trade with Ligue 2 side Auxerre.

If it is true then the good news is that Sanogo ceryaionly knows where the sticks are. The 20 year old has scored eight goals in seven games for Auxerre in Ligue 2 season.

The bad news is that he is a bit injury prone. But then I seem to remember another Arsenal striker had issues with injuries for a while…

So is Sanogo the next Henry? Or the next Joel Campbell. We will find out soon enough. Above is his four goal haul against Laval in March which probably got Wenger and Grimandi over excited. Mind you, two of those goals my gran could have put away…

This one does sound like a goer to me though.

The Barca man, who very nearly joined Arsenal in the winter window is, according to radio station Cadena Ser and newspaper Mundo Deportivo, on his way to White Hart Lane and that a £15million fee has already been agreed between the two clubs.

However any deal is predicated on whether or not Spurs qualify for the Champions League.

Presumably if Arsenal qualify then the striker will want to join the red and white half of North London.

So what is really going on? I wonder if the Vila rumour is similar to supposed Arsenal deals for Higuain and Jovetic.

Maybe agreements have been signed but are only going to be activated if the club achieves Champions League football.

Both Arsenal and Spurs will need to announce some big transfers on Monday to ensure that, in these recessionary times, those wavering over renewing their season tickets cough up the cash.

Personally I think Villa is too old and out of form for £15 million. What do you think?

Thanks to everyone who voted. All the bands are great – unlike the real thing…

As you are very probably aware Eurovision hits our screens yet again this weekend and after of hours of listening to fluffy, camp pop drivel the continent’s nations then try outdo each other in some fantastic politically motivated polling.

In my book Sweden should pretty much always win. Not only because they have the best tunes, but every one loves those Swedes don’t they?

Anyway much more fun is this year’s inaugural Eurovision Psych Contest where space rockers, shoegazers and lysergic pop gymnasts from across the continent battle each other for this year’s award.

So without further ado here are the entrants for this year. I realty don’t give a fig if you vote for your own country, or even the one next to you. It is all down to you.

**Update** This is just a bit of fun and all the bands featured are excellent, so support them all. I will announce a winner on Saturday at about 10PM GMT. So you can vote until then.

Belgium - Bed Rugs – This is their new single Yawn from the excellent newly released album Rapids.

France – The Sudden Death Of Stars - Supernovae . Heavy on the sitar and smelly cheese from the Rennes based psychsters whose debut album soon on Ample Play is a wonderful stew of all things 60s.

Germany – Rockandys - Jungle In The Sky – Scary sounding gothic Psych from the Anton Newcombe approved band. I know they don’t all come from Germany, but do you really think this woman came from Luxembourg?

The Netherlands – Jacco Gardner – Chameleon – The Dutch Boy Wonder with one of many gems from his Cabinet Of Curiosities album

Spain – The Chemistry Set - Come Kiss Me Vibrate And Smile – Fine new-ish single from the Barcelona-based Anglo-Catalan band

Sweden – The Greek Theatre – Lost Out At Sea -Overprotection Doesn’t Work From the ace new album Lost Out At Sea

Switzerland – Balduin - My Love Soon – Gorgeous Symphonic pop from the Swiss fella.

UK – Beaulieu Porch – Anno Domini. The stand out track from Salisbury’s very own Mark Wirtz.

These are bleak and desperate times, people. We know this because we keep being told they are. As if the sight of increasingly vacant high streets, lengthening dole queues, a largely old Etonian government in Britain (run by “a pair of gay antique dealers”, according to Rich Hall) and Daft Punk recreating 1980s disco do not remind us.

Back in the 1980s, when things were last so bleak and desperate (increasingly vacant high streets, dole queues, old Etonian government run by a greengrocer’s daughter, Georgio Moroder blasting out of discos, as “clubs” were known, etc, etc) there were few truly erudite examples of the social and political zeitgeist captured, despite the actual agit-prop spirit of the times.

I would argue – but then I would – that The Specials’ Ghost Town, White Riot by The Clash or Weller’s Town Called Malice nailed it as good as any, though I still hold a candle for Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding (more about the Falklands than Thatcherite blight). There were well meaning protest organizations like Red Wedge, and Live Aid came along in the midst of the decade to shame us into giving up either what money we had, or the grotesque piles of it we were spending on pastel-shaded clothing.

And so it remains today. Thanks to the blandification of entertainment in general, no one is making a stand anymore. Now, this can be viewed as both bad and good. On the bad side, it seems that people seem to be accepting their fate and carrying on watching tripe reality shows featuring fame-hungry charlatans. On the good side, Sting has stopped writing curdled songs about Russian parents and Argentinian victims of human rights abuses, and trying to convince us that he actually gives a damn about coal mines being shut down.

When Bowie’s The Next Day came out of the blue to declare that a) The Dame was alive and b) He’s been reading the papers a lot, we were presented with his view of an imagined – but increasingly likely – dystopian future. Primal Scream have come along to something similar with their new album More Light, which shines a follow-spot on the dystopia of the present.

However, as with all Primal Scream records, don’t expect anything too deep. The lyrical legacies of Dylan and Woody Guthrie, even Springsteen’s take on the modern condition, are not under any recognisable threat. As we have grown used to with this band, More Light must be enjoyed at a relatively superficial level, i.e. whatever section of Bobby Gillespie’s vinyl record collection he has chosen to plunder this time. The result, by the way, is never bad. You just don’t want to get too involved in what he’s singing about.

As a lyricist, Gillespie has always been a great ex-drummer. The case for the prosecution stops with Exhibit 1A, m’lud, Rocks: “Dealers keep dealin’/Thieves keep thievin’/Whores keep whorin’/Junkies keep scorin’/Trade is on the meat rack/Strip joints full of hunchbacks/Bitches keep bitchin’/Clap keeps itchin’.”

Things haven’t improved much in ten years, if the nine-minute vibeout 2013 which kicks off More Light is anything to go by. It lays into modern Britain with well meaning, if slightly misappropriated venom, though it does make prescient references to the children of Thatcher’s heritage: “21st century slaves! A peasant underclass!”. Not exactly Shelley, but you get the point.

Removing 2013′s lyrical content from the equation, and letting the vocal simply become another instrument, it’s an impressive track, spread over an ambitious grandeur that mixes Middle Eastern brass with the chainsaw guitar of My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields. By its end you are left lacking any doubt that you have landed back on Planet Gillespie, in all that entails.

River Of Pain continues in the same dystopic vain, depicting a less than rosy domestic scene in which the drunken ‘Johnny’ (Gillespie’s stock character, you may have noticed…) who treats his lady ‘Susan’ like a punchbag, with a distinctly trippy sequence midway through the seven minute piece clearly representing a narcotic escape for one of them (replete with Beatle-esque psychedelia, a looped string sequence that reminds me of the intro to the Six Million Dollar Man theme music) before returning to a vibey Delta blues guitar riff and a sultry – and highly addictive – creeping undertrack.

If 2013 risks going down the route of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire by featuring a long list of cultural references, Culturecide walks even more awkwardly towards an attempted drive-by rapping that includes mention of the neutron bomb.

Perhaps it’s simply that “neutron bomb” scans well and has so many potential rhyming partners, but no two words annoy me more as a lyrical prop. In songs from artists as varied as Pearl Jam and UB40 (who managed to rhyme it with “Pentagon”), it’s lyrical inclusion has always made as much sense as anyone in a TV show feverishly hacking away at a computer keyboard when there is a perfectly serviceable mouse on the very same desk.

Anyway, back to the record, and a return to the Mount Florida estates of Gillespie’s native Glasgow with Tenement Kid, a bass-driven jazz-dub that paints a non-too-subtle picture of disaffected youth in the urban jungle of 21st century Britain. On Invisible City there’s a touch of latter day Bowie, with its grinding guitar intro and brassy chorus, while Sideman could easily have appeared on The Next Day. Indeed, the two albums share many common themes, though, sadly not the same degree of wordsmith dexterity as mastered by Bowie on his release.

If there’s one thing about More Light that sets it apart from almost anything else out there it’s the disparate directions Primal Scream move about the record in. Goodbye Johnny (yep, him again) bops along with a noirish swing before introducing a delightfully retro-King Curtis saxophone lead.

That the Primals have access to well-thumbed collections of vintage vinyl has never been in doubt, as the obvious Stones nods of Rocks and Country Girl generously demonstrated. More Light does open up the record cabinet a little wider, with Elimination Blues – featuring no less than Robert Plant and black-chick backing vocals – actually sounding like a song Plant might have easily recorded in his exploration of American roots. It’s also one of the most satisfying tracks on the album, with its pumping, looping bass and sweaty late night blues.

Be warned, however, when you reach the final track of the ‘regular’ version of More Light (the deluxe version contains an extra six songs). Because, if you’re British, you may be alarmed by the title It’s Alright It’s OK. Thankfully it is not the theme song to TV’s ‘light hearted’ crime series New Tricks, the one for which Dennis Waterman “writes da feem toon and sings da feem toon”, as Little Britain helpfully pointed out he does tend to do.

Thankfully, too, Primal Scream’s It’s Alright It’s OK is not in the same vein as its chirpy, postman-friendly counterpart. Instead, it is a truly uplifting return to the happy-clappy gospel vibe of Movin’ On Up, filching The Faces’ “Ooh-la-la” hook in the process to produce a song as reassuringly ‘up’ as the lyrical premise of 2013 was a dour reminder of just how bleak these times are.

Lyrics aside, More Light is a return to strength for the Primals after their disappointing Beautiful Future five years ago. Produced by David Holmes, the northern Irish DJ responsible for one of my favourite film soundtracks, Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, there is a warm intimacy to this album than anything Primal Scream have ever produced before. Thanks to Holmes, it is less of a basement recording and more of an upmarket loft apartment of a record. The edge is there (and Shields’ guitar plays a large part in that), but so is a more measured cocktail of the band’s obvious love of vintage sounds, and a newer, more innovative approach to making music. Just don’t listen too deeply to the words…

Article originally published here.

Here is his list of other Quiet Loners

“He was a quiet loner who kept himself to himself”. So goes the media news reports as they explain the latest serial killer or lone gunman rampage, almost as if a withdrawal from society was reason enough to explain the murder and violence.

As a species we’re sociable creatures, so what about the ones amongst us who go their own way and won’t join in the party games? As the news reports show us, loners are feared, we are suspicious of them and we expect the worst from them. As a society we seem to find it hard to accept that someone might not want to belong.

In the last 30 years as we increase our knowledge of Autistic spectrum disorders like Aspergers Syndrome we offer up a medical model for some of the character traits and social awkwardness we often associate with loners. As if we fear it so much it is now something that needs to be “cured”.

Yet we also admire our loners. Author Tom Robbins thought them brave, he said “Courage is required to reject the secure blessings of society, in order to woo the unpredictable ecstasies of the solitary soul”. Loners say what the rest of us dare not to say. Their outsider status allows them to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. Or it would do if they would only come out of their bedsits and talk to us.

Here are my top ten loners

Shamen (historical)

In cultures across the world from the frozen wastes of the Arctic circle, to the deserts of central Australia, to the lush rainforests of the Amazon, Shamen were the original outsiders. Their journeys to otherworlds, through the use of psychoactive plants, and their contact and dialogue with the ancestral dead, placed them apart yet also at the heart of those societies. They were relied on for advice, counsel and for healing the sick. These early loners were essential: Respected, feared and revered.

Bill Hicks (1961-1994)

American comedian Bill Hicks was one of the 20th century’s greatest artists. As a jobbing stand-up Hicks travelled relentlessly playing in small clubs to audiences that mostly failed to understand him. Increasingly Hicks came to see himself as an old Wild West gunslinger riding into town tackling fear and injustice and blowing away the bad guys. Hicks the loner railed against mainstream culture for it’s superficiality, mediocrity and banality, seeing these traits as oppressive tools of the ruling class designed to keep people stupid and apathetic.

Mark David Chapman (b 1955)

Having just fatally shot John Lennon and seemingly unaware of what he’d done Mark David Chapman calmly sat down on the pavement and staring reading his copy of Catcher in the Rye, patiently waiting for the police to arrive. And so Chapman became the archetypal “quiet loner” of the media. He didn’t fit in, we shunned him so he got bitter and killed our hero to spite us. The truth of what really happened to Chapman is a little more complex and remains elusive.

Greta Garbo (1905-1990)

According to a very knowledgeable friend of mine, patriarchy demands that women cannot be loners. The lone woman is feared as a witch or condemned as sexually predatory. No surprise then that the classic loner type is usually male. Yet occasionally there is a woman who bucks that trend. Swedish actress Greta Garbo was one. She is remembered for her famous line “I want to be alone” – so unusual and beguiling it became as famous as she was. Almost as soon after her career took off, Garbo became known as a recluse. And that mystery only made her more desirable. Throughout her lifetime she refused to do press interviews, she never signed autographs, she didn’t go to social functions and she never answered fan mail. The beautiful loner intrigues us.

James Bond (fictional)

Ian Fleming’s creation is a man who works alone. He has very little human contact outside of his work. He shuns company, seeks women purely for sex and is generally contemptuous of human beings. This makes him a great killer, and that’s what James Bond is – a hired killer. Yet despite his loner status we see rare glimpses of his humanity – his friendship with Felix Leiter, his admiration for M, and briefly his love for Tracy his wife. When Tracy is killed he becomes the loner again. Detached, cold and driven by his desire to avenge his wife’s death.

Brian Wilson (b 1942)

Brian Wilson is the classic artistic loner genius. At the height of the Beach Boys’ fame in the sixties he refused to go on tour and had to be replaced by Glen Campbell. Increasingly paranoid and frightened by the world, Brian retreated to the studio where he wrote and recorded his masterpiece “Pet Sounds”. By the next album “Smile” in 1967 he had retreated even further – to a sandpit under his piano. He didn’t come out until the 1990s.

Travis Bickle (fictional)

Travis Bickle is Robert De Niro’s lead character in Martin Scorcese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. One of cinema’s most iconic characters, Bickle is a loner. A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Bickle has problems fitting back in to society. He is socially inept, and doesn’t have any friends. He takes a job as a night time taxi driver in dangerous neighborhoods where his customers are pimps, drug addicts, and thieves. He is disgusted by them, and begins fantasising about “cleansing” such “filth” from the streets. It can only end in tears.

Nick Drake (1948-1974)

Singer Nick Drake died tragically young after battling with depression for years. He didn’t tour much, he recorded very little and towards the end of his life retreated to his childhood bedroom at his parents home. And so Drake is often portrayed as a loner. His music has a wistful sad and indeed lonely quality to it. Yet friends speak of a gregarious and outgoing young man who was popular and sociable at school. Behind every loner cliché is a more complicated story.

Scott Walker (b.1943)

After a critical peak in the late sixties by the mid-seventies Scott Walker was back in caberet playing Working Men’s Clubs in the North of England. Then after 1978’s Nite Flights album he began a slow retreat into a period that saw him release only three albums over the next thirty years and earn himself a reputation as a Garbo-esque reclusive loner. More recently we have seen that this wasn’t quite what it seemed and that Walker is actually quite a sociable and funny man driven by his art but dismissive of mainstream pop culture.

Veronia Sawyer (fictional)

Portrayed by Winona Ryder in the 1989 film Heathers, Veronica Sawyer is your classic misunderstood teenager. She doesn’t fit in at a school where a powerful clique called “the Heathers” top the social pile. When she meets Christian Slater’s character J.D. she unwittingly gets embroiled in a spate of killings that spirals out of control and that only she can stop. Her loner status is assured when having witnessed Slater blow himself up with a suicide bomber belt, she walks to his smouldering remains and lights her cigarette on the flames and walks away alone.

Article originally appeared here.

It only really struck me last night just how sheltered a fan I am. I decided to get a ticket to the Crystal Palace vs. Brighton play off semi final, caught up with the romance of a big rivalry and the opportunity for both sides to get one over each other on a march to the big time that is Premier League football. It was always going to be a heated clash, but for me, the iron didn’t strike in the way I thought it would.

I have heard so much about the competitiveness of the Championship, and judging from the game on offer that viewpoint was certainly not without reason; It was a match of true heart, with full-blooded tackles flying in and incessant goading from both sets of supporters. The only times I’ve genuinely been exposed to an atmosphere like the one at Selhurst Park have been watching Arsenal get creamed at the San Siro and seeing Ronaldinho receive a red card at the Camp Nou.

It was a genuine throwback to the days before the modernisation, and some would say commercialisation, of football. There were fans without tickets crammed in the isles, wooden seats that were stood on, smokers, a camera team relying on crummy scaffold to keep them from falling into an abyss of South London smog. In all honesty, it was absolutely awe striking. The only real blotch on the show that the Holmersdale and Arthur Wait stands put on was the sheer amount of homophobic abuse towards the Brighton contingent.

Yet, the football was atrocious. Without the stereotypically brazen snobbery of an Arsenal supporter, there was so little to get excited about on the pitch it made sense that the Palace fans generate such a fantastic atmosphere. So much of the chanting is rolling, thundering around the ground whilst the ball is lumped back and forth to the apathy of thousands, so many songs sung to the theme of Peter Ramage and co. slicing the ball out for throw ins and corners.

The contrast between what I experienced at Selhurst Park and my day job as a Gooner is massive. Whether it’s in the comfort of Islington’s leather seated Emirates or standing up on an away day at Swansea, everyone is always watching the game, waiting for that spark of magic the team is capable of. There is a tangible reaction to what happens on the pitch, a smattering of applause for a Cazorla flick or groans when Sagna opts to pass the ball backwards rather than cross into the box. Palace’s contingent seems less reactionary and more relaxed than Arsenal’s about the state of affairs on the pitch.

It left me wondering why that could be. If Arsenal plays bad football, often there is not an aura that is negative so much as barbed and drenched in poison. As opposed to an acceptance that no footballer is perfect, there are cries and yells when someone cannot function in the way highly expectant fans crave. The high ticket prices at The Emirates surely contribute to the obsession with perfection on the field. My £30 ticket for the Palace game would have cost me about £90 had it been Arsenal vs. Spurs. The higher the price, the more significant the quality is.

To qualify the difference, I can point to two matches against the cash cows of England. Last season, a ticket for a League Cup game at home to Manchester City was on sale as cheap as £25, whilst this year, when Chelsea came to the Emirates, fans were paying up to £126. Whilst the side lost both matches, there was a marked difference in atmosphere. Against City, the fans were very supportive of the players, even when they failed to match the quality on offer from the away side. Against Chelsea, even at 1-1 and playing well, every little mistake was met with roars of discontent and frustration. This culminated with an own goal, the first loss of the season and a red exodus.

When comparing the dynamics of Crystal Palace fans and those supporting Arsenal and the like, genuine footballing factors also have to be considered. The Eagles have been in the second tier for the majority of the last twenty years, whilst Arsenal fans have been accustomed to the best football on offer in the country. Their fall from a position of such strength has resulted in frustration at the failings of 2013’s Arsenal; namely through means such of almost callow anger.

In my opinion, Palace aren’t brilliant, but they do they really care? Arsenal used to be fantastic, and they really do mind their relative fall from grace. There is an inferiority complex around The Emirates about the team’s shortcomings, whilst at Selhurst Park they welcome their side’s imperfections as a true reflection of themselves. There is a siege mentality at Crystal Palace, which I am sure is common amongst many sides playing away from the glamour and glitz of the Premier League.

Which mentality do I prefer? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you want your wallet emptied several times over to be entertained but almost unfailingly disappointed, pick the Emirates. But if you prefer the good old days of being unfashionable and proud, pick Palace. For me, it is, and always will be, Arsenal. Then again, I’m just a modern football fan.

1 It has the most amazing image on the cover

That’s The Mallard, the art deco-esque train, coughs, Class A4 Locomotive, that was the fastest in the world at the time

2 It really was the album that made started to make Britain, and especially London, an incredible place to be in the 90s.

The early days of Brit Pop were incredible. And this album’s success inevitably made it easier for Pulp, Oasis, Elastica and, err Menswe@r to break through.

3 The brilliant B sides

This beautiful song inexplicably didn’t make the cut and ended up as the B side to Chemical World.

4 Those group photos

Remember this was a time when no one was wearing British clobber. No one else dressed like this in the early 90s.

5 It is partly responsible for finishing Grunge’s popularity in the UK

Grunge by then was well past its sell by date. Nirvana was one thing, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were another..

6 It kicked off the trend for those bonkers instrumentals that Blur are so good at

Intermission and Commercial Break were just the start

7 Without Modern Life there would be no Parklife

The fantastic reception the albums got was the catalyst for Blur to create Parklife, End Of A Century and especially this tune

8 It brought classic British songwriting back to the fore

This lot. But also The Jam, XTC, Teardrop Explodes, The Kinks, Bowie and this fella.

9 For Tomorrow’s video captures a moment in 1993 when to be young and living in London was like winning life’s lottery.

I am not sure if Damon intended it to be taken that way but it just exudes optimism.

10 It is 20 years old today

Now don’t you feel old

Moyes is ready to move for Leighton Baines and Marouane Fellaini and will give his erstwhile employers around £40 million for the pair.

Baines has apparently been a United target for a while though the club have never formally bid for the 28 year old. Meanwhile Moyes is likely to face opposition from possibly Chelsea and Man City for the Belgian midfielder Fellaini. The player reputedly has a £24 million release clause in his contract.

The big question then is whether Patrice Evra will hang around or return to his native France to finish his career.