affiliate programme

Nearly there, by Tuesday 11th November our new affiliate programme will be ready to launch. With great commission rates as standard, even if you only sell a couple of T-shirts, this is a great chance to make some cash from your website. The programme is being run by award winning network Paid on Results so you know you will get paid quickly and fairly.

The really exciting thing though is the Podcasters Affiliate Programme which allows podcasters to get in on the act. Not only will they get paid out when their listeners buy, but to make sure they tell us where they heard about us they will get an exclusive discount for themselves.

So tell check back and make sure you tell your friends and anyone you know that runs a website about us.

Bye for now and next time I will get back to talking my usual bollocks about music and stuff

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD

which old witch, the wicked witch, ding dong the wicked Bush is dead....

Led Zeppelin to tour without Percy?

So Led Zeppelin are planning on touring without Robert Plant… arghhh! Sacrilege I hear you all cry, and at first I thought so too. Personally I think it is just a ploy to attempt to kick Robert Plant in to action, but if it did get to the point of going out on the road without Percy, it would be horrible to see one person picked out and held aloft as ‘The New Singer Of Led Zeppelin’, after all, no one could be that.

However, I had a plan – so if you are listening Mr Page and Mr Jones (assuming that young Jason doesn’t get a say in the absence of dad John) after hearing all the rumours (Steve Tyler, David Coverdale etc) it got me to thinking that they should go down the route taken by MC5 (although in a bigger scale than the proto-punk legends) and get in a range of different singers. Not necessarily all on the same night, but get in great singers for just a few dates.

Led Zeppelin are one of the few bands that could do it as their back catalogue is so well known and every man and his dog holds them up as a great influence that they could get the best singers and front men in the world in for a handful of gigs so it wouldn't interfere with existing commitments. Just look at how well Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins went down with JP and JPJ at the Foo Fighters show at Wembley earlier this year.

This would also keep the integrity in tact, as it wouldn't be like any single singer was being touted as a replacement for Plant. It would be more like saying that the guy is irreplaceable so let other great singers put their spin on the songs.

No doubt some people would hate it, but it would be great going to go to see ‘Led Zeppelin’ and not know who you are getting, only for Steve Tyler to show up one night or people that you might never usually bother consider watching go at it without their own agenda. I would never usually go and see Meatloaf for example, but I could imagine him doing a stunning job as a one off. Or even some soul singer. After all, every one said Jay-Z would fail dismally at Glastonbury this year, but he received unanimous praise afterwards.

I don’t want to see Jack White, Eddie Vedder as the replacement for Robert Plant, but would love to see them doing a few tracks. Hell, maybe if they got it right then Plant could do a slot himself. It would mean that someone like Steve Tyler could do it in between Aerosmith commitments, whilst also throwing in some unknowns or really left field choices. It would be like the greatest Led Zeppelin Tribute Show. You could even tailor it to different markets. So in Australia they could wheel out Jimmy Barnes, Bryan Adams in Canada or even something as weird as Prince doing a couple of dates in Minneapolis (so long as no idiot thought it would be a good idea to get James Blunt or Robbie Williams involved in the UK).

Anyway, I would still much rather that if it was to happen then Robert Plant did it himself, but if he is determined to duck out, then let’s hope they do it right.

NEW PET DICTATORS

After some time off to regroup and form a new evil plan from their lair in hollowed out volcano, Pet Dictators are back.

As you may or may not know, Pet Dictators were the original inspiration behind all of our T-shirt exploits and sadly they have been neglected in recent months and now they not only want to get back out there, they also want their tummy tickled to make up for it.

Over the years Pet Dictators have had some cool fans. Axl Rose had one of our T-shirts at Guns N' Roses' Hammersmith gig a couple of years ago, Ginger from the Wildhearts has a couple of our shirts and even suggested a couple more. Billy Duffy from the Cult has an original Chairman Mouse, while a few of the DJs over at BBC 6Music also have them.

Anyway, the changes so far are in the form or new designs for Vladimir Lemming, Adog Hitler and Chairman Mouse. Then there is a brand new addition to the range with Mousechwitz. There will be new designs for the others soon and a brand new Fidel Catstro

The financial doom is all down to Angus Young & AC/DC

Yep, that's right, AC/DC and not bankers nor capitalist politicians are the real harbingers of economic doom - at least according to the Guardian. It has something to do with the fact that the last time an AC/DC album topped the charts we were in a similar state of financial woe.

As self-confessed bleeding heart leftie, I can be found reading the Guardian on most mornings with my cuppa tea, but today they delved into Daily Mail territory. No, they didn't tell us that gay, hoodie-wearing, paedophile immigrants are stealing your identity whilst pushing the price of petrol up, but we are getting equally as tenuous. OK, it was written with a certain sense of tongue in cheek, but still....

So here we have some choice excerpts:

"Those keen to draw wider inferences from its success might note that the last time AC/DC made No 1 in Britain, the country was on the brink of recession. Back In Black, the album that marked their commercial breakthrough and went on to become the second biggest-selling of all time, was released in 1980, just as inflation had reached 20% and unemployment inched towards 2 million.

When the economy recovered, AC/DC's popularity receded, albeit becoming merely immense instead of phenomenal: their "flop" 1985 album, Fly On The Wall, still sold more than 1m copies, a not unimpressive figure, but a fraction of Back In Black's 30m sales or the 5m copies that Black Ice sold in the last seven days.

But right on cue the album that returned the band to its heyday was The Razors Edge, released in 1990 - just as Britain headed towards its last recession."

It then went on to say something about people looking for 'simpler' forms of entertainment during economic hardship.

The article is then backed-up with a neat little time-line as further evidence:

"1973: AC/DC form in Sydney, Australia.
Economy: Start of the oil crisis, which saw the price quadruple

1980: AC/DC release breakthrough album Back In Black
Economy: Inflation in UK reaches 20% and unemployment nears 2 million

1990: AC/DC score comeback with The Razor's Edge
Economy: Recession in UK imminent

2008: AC/DC top UK album charts
Economy: Biggest world recession in decades looms"

You can read the whole of Alexis Petridis' article at GuardianUnlimited

Brain Surgeons shop at BathroomWall

I know it is wrong to mock the afflicted and it is also not generally considered good business practice to take the piss out of customers... but hey... what the heck....

A few days ago a lady contacted us to query what size she should buy. As I had never met the women unsurprisingly I was not able to make an informed judgement, so I asked her what size she usually was as as a guide the small womens' T-shirts were a UK 8-10, the medium a 12-14, large 16-18, x-large 18+. She then went ahead and ordered the medium. All good so far....

Then this morning I get an emailing saying I have sent her the wrong size and she needs a much bigger size. She was most upset because I told her it would fit, because I said a medium was suitable for a UK 12-14. The response "This is much too small as I am 14 stone, you would have to be 9 stone to fit in this"

I fucking despair

In defence of Axl Rose

Are we supposed to be excited about the fact (a strange word to be associated with GnR, I know) that Chinese Democracy is about to surface after 15 years? Every fibre of my rock n’ roll soul is telling me to say, “Fuck it, beyond caring.” But for some bizarre reason I am actually excited about it. Maybe it is borne from the same sense of curiosity that makes people slow down to look at car crashes? I have so far resisted the opportunity to listen the leaked tracks, just like I don’t want to know what I am getting for Christmas. Axl is going to surprise us and let’s face it, when was the last time a rock star did anything surprising? I hope it is great, but if it’s not I won’t care as the release of Chinese Democracy has nothing to do with music and is all about myth, legend and rock stars doing weird shit.

So many people have a pop at Axl about the legitimacy of calling the band Guns N’ Roses when it is pretty much just an Axl solo project and that it is simply not Guns N’ Roses without Slash, Izzy, Duff and Steven. But is that really fair? I am a huge fan of Slash, Duff is a star and Izzy was always my personal favourite, but it is Axl that created the mythology. Appetite For Destruction was of course just as much about Slash’s guitar tone and Izzy’s vibe as it was Axl’s vocals, yet as the years rolled on Slash’s solo projects sold poorly and only hardcore fans showed to gigs, Izzy is what is known as ‘big in Japan’, Duff’s really cool Loaded project sadly drew little but apathy, while the train wreck of Adler’s Appetite struggled to sell out Camden Underworld (for those that don’t know the place, imagine you bedroom…. Put a bar at one end, a stage at the other and drown the floor in piss). Even when Duff and Slash teamed up for Velvet Revolver they were still no more than a theatre sized band. I like Velvet Revolver and thought the first album was pretty damn good, while they certainly performed wonders live. Yet Axl can show up with a bunch of guys he has just grabbed off the street and he can headline the Download Festival. I saw Velvet Revolver a couple of times and had no problem getting tickets. They shows eventually sold out, but not so fans couldn’t get in if they really wanted. Yet I had to pull serious favours from friends and contacts to get in to see Guns N’ Roses at Hammersmith in 2006 (or was it 2007?). Why? It is because as much as every rocker in the world loves Slash and will tell you that he is the person that they would most like to hang out with, he is not a mystery. Duff is a gnarly old punk, but you get the feeling that if you rocked up at his house with a bunch of Stooges bootlegs he would invite you in for a beer. But Axl…. Axl Rose is a mysterious rock star. He is a rock star of the old school. He is just who he is and genuinely doesn’t care what the world thinks. Slash writes a book and treads carefully around everything, and he does so because he is a great bloke and because he is a fine enough human being to care what people think of him and indeed the people he is writing about. Axl on the other hand hasn’t written a book because he doesn’t give a shit what you think.

We live in a world where we know everything about everyone, a celebrity obsessed culture where nothing is a mystery. So when a rock star comes on like a later day Howard Hughes we should celebrate him and be thankful that he is there.

No one really knows the truth about the recording of Chinese Democracy, yet thanks to the Spinal Tap qualities of Metallica’s Some Kind Of Monster we know EVERYTHING about them. It destroyed any mystic and left pretty much no one with any respect for Lars (hey, we do a Kirk Hammett T-shirt, a James Hetfield T-shirt and a Cliff Burton T-shirts, but do you see one for Lars?). Which one do you want from your rock stars? To be the aliens from another planet full of intrigue and mystery or a bunch of fuck-ups about whom nothing is now left to the imagination?

The world needs rock stars that do weird shit. We need them to lord it over us from their Malibu mansions. I want to believe that our icons really do keep the bones of Sharon Tate in a pickling jar and that they bathe only in a secret blend of cobra milk and marmite. People are shocked and get all moralistic about Pete Dogherty being in court on drug charges. I am appalled to, but not because he is a junky, but because he is so public and crass about it. I want rock stars to be off of their tits if that what makes them produce their best work (are you listening Eric Clapton?) not to be scrabbling around with the general public.

So forget giving Axl are hard time (not that he gives a toss). Forget telling us that it is not the ‘Real’ Guns N’ Roses (as as much as you might love the others, Axl is who actually counts… that said, I would dearly love to at least see Slash return). Stop telling us that the tracks you have so far heard are crap or for that matter that they are great. Because none of this matters. All that matters is that at last a rock star has come to save us from banality. Long live Axl and long may he remain the weirdest guy this side of Michael Jackson.