I've mentioned this before, but Melanie Chisholm is responsible for me not just quitting a job, but hiding under the bed with the curtains closed, lights off, and phone off the hook when they came to collect me the next morning. Which sounds like a similar story to how Geri Halliwell ended her days in the Spice Girls, but I was only working in a pre-packed sandwich factory in the Fens.

I put up with a lot in that job. The terrible hours. The freezing temperatures. The guy who refused to talk to me because I didn't have a tattoo. My boss who took a dislike to me because I was haphazard with the prawn mayo mix. The guy who was openly masturbating in the middle of the canteen at lunch time. The total lack of any sort of intelligent conversation or intellectual stimulation. But the thing that finally finished me, that persuaded me to walk out and never come back, was when they played Mel C's 'Norther Star' album on repeat for twelve consecutive hours. It was, they claimed their way of motivating us. Well it motivated me all right. Motivated me in to fucking off, writing off the better part of a week's wages, and never going back.

Fuck David Gray being torture. Mel C has him licked.

And that's tonight's nightmare sorted.

To be fair to David Gray - and there's a bit more of what he said on the BBC, here - he's at least pointing out the slightly more important part of the story.

His music might be shit, but hats off to him for that.

QUOTE:
"Only the novelty aspect of this story gets it noticed... Guantanamo greatest hits," he said.

"What we're talking about here is people in a darkened room, physically inhibited by handcuffs, bags over their heads and music blaring at them."

"That is torture. That is nothing but torture."

"No-one wants to even think about it or discuss the fact that we've gone above and beyond all legal process and we're torturing people," he added.

I quite liked the Orbital remix of "Please Forgive Me". Damn you, GLR, for getting my hopes up that this was a new and exciting talent.

He's a very po-faced man, Gray, since about... two weeks after "Babylon" charted. Before that he was very 'umble.

Ireland is to blame for David Gray.

He consistently played to sold-out venues over here in the 1990s when he couldn't get arrested anywhere else. The punters of Oireland singlehandedly kept his career going through the lean, pre-'Babylon' years.

This country is a great place for supporting lame ducks.

He wasn't a lame duck though, was he? Commercially speaking, Ireland was prescient.

Or had shit taste earlier. Whatever.

I really dislike David Gray's music -- and this is the man who defends Snow Patrol talking -- but there is a reason Babylon was so popular: it's an attractive song.

When I hear it, or even think about it, I get a knot of anxiety in my chest. Fuck knows why. It must be due to some bad times I was having when the song was released.

Yeah, er, I think Babylon's a not unpleasant tune too. Though almost everything else he's done - particularly his brutal massacre of Say Hello Wave Goodbye - is dreary and/or unbearable.

David Gray's music is very dreary, but it's his horrible, nasally, whiney voice that makes me want to kill him. If I was a terrorist suspect they'd have no problem getting all the info they wanted out of me, if the alternative was listening to THAT voice...

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:
Yeah, er, I think Babylon's a not unpleasant tune too. Though almost everything else he's done - particularly his brutal massacre of Say Hello Wave Goodbye - is dreary and/or unbearable.

I first heard his version of "SH,WG" while in "Woolworths" - I thought it was Bob Dylan at first!

I'm still appalled at the Thicko Wonderland story from EIM's past employment. It makes my work circumstances - which I rate as thuddingly boring/infuriating and irritating - seem like an oasis of comfort. I feel like buying him a pint.

I found out the hard way that you could never have sex in Ireland unless you could keep a straight face while saying that David Gray is great.

Scorn David Gray in the land of Erin and a bleak period of lonely wanking stretches out ahead.

QUOTE:
I quite liked the Orbital remix of "Please Forgive Me"

Oh, Jesus, don't bring up the Orbital connection. He's Phil Hartnoll's brother-in-law, which is why he sings on Illuminate, far and away the most dire track they ever put out, even in their end-of-career 'we can't stand working with each other any more so we'll have to pad out our albums with huge swathes of filler' phase.