You make me sick; I make music

...In which our correspondent attempts to make the most of the 367 days remaining before his thirtieth birthday (and thus the end of his youth, if not his life) by claiming loudly and insistently that he's still listening to new music, he must still be relevant (he owns an iPod you know) and he hasn't just given up and declared that all music died after Definitely Maybe, Blood Sugar Sex Magik and/or A Man's Not A Camel.

Frenzals, man. That was good shit. 'I know why dinosaurs became extinct; it's because they learned how to suck their own cocks'.
That's philosophy, homes.

Fresh Produce Wrapup Part Deux: Enter The Baggin'

Jet
Shine On

Paid-up, ironed-on, guaranteed, government-underwritten, cast-iron, gold-plated, Teflon-coated candidates for the dreaded DSA (Difficult Second Album, for those who came in late). Emerged from nowhere amid massive amount of hype? Check. Supermassive first album, Hottest 100 numero uno, worldwide ad campaigns using their songs as jingles, more ARIAs than Hi-5? Check. Going on a two-year coke bender instead of working on your followup album? Check and mate. Thanks for playing. So the omens for Shine On, finally dribbling to market a good three years after Jet managed their highest altitudes with Get Born, ain't much chop. (Chop, geddit? With the coke reference and that? Ah, fuck yers)

Well, playa haters, bad news. Shine On ain't no White Album, Songs In The Key Of Life or Ace Of Spades, but it conspicuously fails to suck a suckload of suck. It's actually fairly decent. In fact... brace yourself... as an album, rather than a loose congregation of songs, it's probably more coherent and listenable than Get Born, which was distinctly bipolar: upbeat rocker/downbeat melodic track/upbeat rocker/more Beatles-esque navel gazing/rinse and repeat until your 41 minutes is up and the cheque clears. As per the template set by the Vines with Highly Evolved a year or two before.

Don't get me wrong. There's no Are You Gonna Be My Girl on this; the nearest thing they can come up with is a plea to show them yours and they'll show you theirs, which could only end with someone getting girls' germs and/or cooties. But the upbeat rockers are fun and frivolous, and maybe a little smarter than their Get Born equivalents; likewise the melodic stuff seems a bit more cleverly thought out and less Beatles redux-by-numbers.

Congratulations, Jet. You've managed to release a Difficult Second Album which is actually half-decent. Pity no fucker has bought the thing, but that what happens when you go on a two year coke bender while your career momentum is farting to a standstill. For previous reference please see 'Darkness, The'. On which topic: "One Way Ticket To Hell And Back: Worst. DSA. Ever." Discuss.

Highlights: Encouragingly, lots. Again they're leading with the upbeat rockers as singles, unsurprisingly. Dare say these tracks would play well live too.

Lowlights: See that horse - the one that's bolted? Yeah, that's the one. Now, see that gate - the one you're attempting to close? Yeah, any problems with that d'ya reckon?

Rating: Four and a half Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan engines out of five.


Arctic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Yeah... it's a'ight... can't really see what all the fuss is about though.

Highlights: Fake Tales of San Francisco, primarily for the line 'Oh you've saved me', she screamed down the line/'The band were fucking wank and I'm not having a nice time'. Gold.
In fact, major style points for lyrics throughout the album.

Lowlights: If only there was a spoken word version. Rollins, you up to anything this week?

Rating: Three and a half fookin' Northern monkeys out of five. In my day we 'ad t' clean road wit' toonge. And it were looxury. Etc.


OK Go
Oh No

Somewhere on the artistic continuum between normal and fuckin' weird lives OK Go. More poppy, less ascerbic and generally not quite as deranged as the Nirvana-meets-'70s-porn stylings of the Electric Six, but still happy to dress up in bodysuits made out of granny's carpet and bounce around like TISM on a psychedelic bender, or a ill-fated bid for commercial success. This stuff usually gets tarred with the 'power-pop' toilet brush which is like saying "They're derivative commercial shit, but they're louder than the other bands who play derivative commercial shit."

OK Go are actually a bit better than that. A bit smarter, too. There's some clever lyrics and some vaguely intelligent songwriting in there, with some hooks big and sharp enough to go a-huntin' fer marlin. Oh No starts encouragingly with the swaggering Invincible (a quirky take on your average post-breakup song) and the engaging Do What You Want, followed by current single Here It Goes Again... then goes gently and steadily downhill to the conclusion of play, the Chinese-restaurant- wallpaper-clad foursome unable to string together more than half an album at that level of quirky intensity. Still, it's better than being strangled by a subcontinental bookie's hired goons.

Highlights: The excellent partnership at the top of the order.

Lowlights: A long and inconsistent tail.

Rating: Three and a half second-hand (ex-TISM) balaclavas out of five.


Radio Birdman
Zeno Beach

Radio Birdman, along with the Saints, pretty much invented Australian garage punk, and like most massively influential bands, their following years after their demise is several orders of magnitude greater than their popularity when they were actually around the traps in the late '70s, playing venues like the Oxford Tavern in Petersham (back when its 'live shows' involved punk rock and not topless barslappers). Tracks like New Race, Aloha Steve and Danno and What Gives? still resound today. Following a series of annual reunions (kicked off by a decent comeback show at Homebake '02) this is the first new album from the fathers of Australian garage punk in almost thirty years, so it comes with baggage - and not just the baggage around the eyes of the protagonists.

So the fact that it sucks will be of moderate disappointment.

Highlights: You Just Make It Worse. Seriously, you do.

Lowlights: Age shall not weary them... my arse it shan't. Everyone hates an old band who want to go in a 'new direction' (cue Spinal Tap at Disney World playing Jazz Odyssey.)

Rating: Go buy their 'best of' and revel in those incendiary '70s punk riffs. Unfortunately this son of a beach is just a dumper. Two zimmer frames out of five.


The Raconteurs
Store Bought Bones

Vanity project alert. The Racounteurs (and/or Saboteurs depending on whether you're listening to Triple J or not) might be 75% not composed of Jack White, but the presence of the White Stripes guit/vox-wrangler on, surprise surprise, guit/vox, forever places these boys in the shadow of a certain band composed of a certain brother and sister who married each other.

So it's just as well this doesn't sound like the Stripes. At all. Store Bought Bones is propped up by a couple of very excellent rock songs, particularly the singles Steady As She Goes, Hands (which almost sounds like recent-era You Am I, at least until the vocal chimes in) and newie Level. The rest of the disc lacks the same punch, but that's OK; your girlfriend will probably like it.

Highlights: The aforementioned trio, particularly Hands; great riff, soaring harmonies, and a cool filmclip too.

Lowlights: Patchy - loses focus as their alloted forty minutes meanders to a conclusion.

Rating: Best considered a series of singles with a series of B-sides rather than a coherent album; on that basis, three and a half stripey white things out of five.


Lost Prophets
Liberation Transmission

Snotty emo kids trying to do '80s hair metal, and failing appallingly. Fucking woeful. Don't. Just don't.

Highlights: Discovering that Real Groovy (NZ alternative music store) generously offers 60% guaranteed cashback on any new CDs you sell back to them second-hand within 2 weeks of purchase, so long as you keep the receipt.

Lowlights: Somehow managing to scratch the fucking CD on its one and only play, invalidating the above generous offer.

Rating: Shithouse. No stars.


The Vines
Vision Valley

As the first 'new rock' outfit of the millennium, this lot went through the same sequence of boom-bust as Jet a few years later, with a frontman suffering from Assburger's Syndrome thrown in for free. So, the question for the Vines is: Is there life after DSA?

Well, no, there isn't. Not if all you've managed to put together is a Xerox of your failed DSA. For Vision Valley read Winning Days. Another catchy Nirvana-meets-Beatles singalong alterna-anthem? Check. Another eleven whiny, discordant, navel-gazing onanisms? Check. Well, at least they're consistent. But if Craig Nicholls and his mates from Miranda Shoppingtown Maccas are determined to rip off their old schtick, might we suggest ripping off the part of the band's repertoire that was actually popular? That would be the grungy thrashes, boys, not the self-indulgent wanking...

Highlights: Ride. No, sorry, Anysound. Either way, the by-the-numbers grunge pop song is decent enough.

Lowlights: Still pissed off about that fucking woeful Lost Profits CD. At least I got this one second-hand... which, when you're able to buy a brand new CD second-hand, should tell you something about the potential value of your purchase decision.

Rating: One and a half headless Kurts (yes, again; if they can repeat themselves so can I) out of five.


You Am I
Convicts

For Strayan kids of a certain generation - namely mine - You Am I are rock royalty. They were the prototype Triple J band who went BIG - four consecutive number-one albums from day one, wheelbarrowfuls of ARIAs, and a live reputation without peer. The Nineties belonged to them. Unfortunately, the Nineties ended some time ago. As the century turned they began to migrate away from their post-grunge roots into areas which could almost be defined as 'country', if not just old-school Southern blues, as heard on 2002's Deliverance. Not heard enough for the liking of label BMG, who subsequently gave them the arse in order to fit more Idol rejects under their salary cap. So began the beginning of the end for You Am I; record-label homelessness led to internal conflict, both within the band and within peerless frontman Tim Rogers, who proved he was the Bon Scott of his era by breaking up with his wife and going on a booze-and-pills bender that lasted about two years. His self-destruction on stage at the Falls Festival in 2005, as legendary as it was shambolic, marked the very bottom of the barrel for the band that owned the Australian rock scene ten years before.

So, they went off and did other things. Tim Rogers dusted off his vanity project, the Temperance Union, and recorded a double album (one loud, one soft, just like the Poo Fighters) which gave him something to do while he was drying out. Davey Lane and his band the Pictures put an album out, reportedly decent, though they were fairly anonymous the one time we saw them support Jet at The Arena. Rusty Hopkinson busied himself guesting on drums for various acts including the reformed Radio Birdman. Andy Kent played bass on the Vines' latest, though on the proviso his name was credited in such small print on the liner notes as to be near-illegible (the 'Alan Smithee' defence, Your Honour). Then rumours spread of a new You Am I album, on a new label. Namely EMI, where all old bands go to die. Nearly five years since their Deliverance from evil (or at least relevance), things didn't look promising. Half the nation shut their eyes and swore silently to themselves: lads, for God's sake, just leave it. Just let it go, and go quietly into the night.

Bollocks to that. One play of Convicts proves that Rogers et al will be buggered if they'll be going quietly anywhere, but instead rage, rage against the dying of the light. Big grungy riffs are smashed against old-school, down and dirty dirges - if any band has earned the right to play the blues, it's this one. Rogers' songwriting is alternately malevolent and melancolic, particularly personal on tracks like Thank God I've Hit The Bottom, I'm A Mess and The Sweet Life - but don't get the impression he's sitting around moaning about his misery, James Blunt style. Convicts rocks. Fifteen years after Sound As Ever, You Am I still have it. As the man himself would say, God bless the fuckin' lot of them.

Highlights: Rather than individual tracks, it's the coherence of the piece. In the listening, it's a one-through-twelve album, not a pick-the-tracks collection. You Am I albums haven't always been as coherently listenable as this - a tribute to Rogers' development as a songwriter.

Lowlights: There's no single which vaults out and demands airplay - as indicated by the lack of anything off Convicts in the Triple J Lily Allen Memorial 100 this past year. More a problem for EMI than for you, me or the band, however.

Rating: Four Vicodin-with-vodka-chasers out of five - four and a half if bought with the 'Convict Stain' bonus disc, a fucking excellent Live At The Wireless set from a year or two back, guest-starring pretty much anyone who's everyone from the Strayan Music Scene - your Krams, your Tex Perkins, your Burgled Fannying from Powderfinger types, even that dude who played the genie from the Tim Tam ads (NFa to his mum.) Worth it just for the discussion of Tex Perkins' acting career (his most recent work was apparently an AIDS awareness film for the NSW Prisons Service, which he described as 'just some movie where I raped Marcus Graham' - to which Rogers asks 'So what happens if you return the movie late to the prison video library, Texan?')


There might be something in that for all of us, but I'm not particularly keen to find out.

The Doctor is OUT.

Musical cheers

It's the World of Bollocks' 80th Massive Missive and in line with our company policy of marking milestones by doing something completely fucking random, here's our Fresh Produce Wrapup: Seedy CDs, Recent and Decent, Difficult Second Albums, And Some Shit You Wouldn't Even Use For Ultimate Frisbee.

Uh, it's a bunch of reviews of CDs I bought in the last year or so. Thought that was fairly obvious.

___________________________

Audioslave
Revelations

This, it may surprise you, sounds a lot like an Audioslave album. Big booming drum-and-bass (in the truest sense) underlying Tom Morello's post-modern clusterfunk guitar work, just like Rage Against The Machine; Chris Cornell's thermonuclear yodelling out front, just like Soundgarden. It does exactly what it says on the label. It's the sum of its parts. It's the front guy from the 'Garden and the back three from the Rage. No Revelation there.

It's rather good, though. Note to Velvet Revolver, Rock Star Colon Supernova and whatever the fuck that thing with Vince Neil is about: here's a supergroup that is actually, in some way, super.

The Revelation here is more evolution than revolution; the overall feel is identifiably and unmistakably Raging In The Garden but compared to the last couple of 'Slave outings, there's a greater sense of coherence to the finished product. Their self titled debut and whatever the fuck the second one was called both suffered from bipolar disorder; either full-throttle stomp-'n'-shout anthems (some of which, like Cochise, were genuinely O for Oresome) or brooding, twiddly little downers (oddly enough not really my cup of chai latte.) Revelations even sees the lads turning their hand, rather effectively, to some James Brown style soul - admittedly Original Fire is still more Seattle than Motown, but it works.

Revelations also sees the 'Slave finally getting their knickers in a twist over political issues, in a throwback to the engine room's days of Raging. Through the first two discs it seemed the outfit made a conscious decision to sidestep the political stuff which drove (and eventually disintegrated) RATM; coming back to this is either a sign that they're more comfortable as a band, or that they're out of ideas. Witness the fitness as they hand out the leftie smackdowns to Dubya & Friends over their pre- and post-Katrina incompetence. We like a good leftie smackdown here at the World of Bollocks. We also like big fuck-off riffs with a dude screaming his hole out over the top of them. Audioslave have all of the above pretty much sorted.

Highlights: Original Fire, One And The Same, Somedays et al.

Lowlights: Solid throughout but gets a bit whiny in stoppage time.

Rating: Four headless Kurts out of five.


The Black Keys
Magic Potion

The Black Keys, the most prominent two-person guitar and drum combo not to involve a brother and sister who root each other, are from Akron, Ohio, where the rubber meets the road. Akron is the world headquarters of the Goodyear Tire [sic] and Rubber Company, as alluded to in the title of their previous album, 2004's Rubber Factory. Now we're going somewhere a bit odd here so just stick with me. Akron is where Goodyear make all their NASCAR race tyres, thousands of them a year. Now in NASCAR, handling is paramount. Barrelling around a banked oval at 180mph a few pube-widths from a faceful of concrete, it's important to have the handling balance right if you don't want to suck. In fact, having a 'handle' on your racecar is spoken of as critical come race day. NASCAR teams who've lost that balance and are suddenly falling off the competitiveness envelope often admit: "We've lost the handle."

The Black Keys have lost the handle.

Compared to its supercharged, irresistable predecessors, Magic Potion is different. It's moodier, more reflective, more dissonant. It's also not as good.

Highlights: Your Touch is as good a track as anything they've done.

Lowlights: Your Touch is only Track 2. The end of the album is a long way from there.

Rating: Two trashed NASCARs out of five.


The Casanovas
All Night Long

Before Airbourne were the alleged saviours of big, stupid rock and roll in Australia and adjoining territories, there was the Casanovas. Fifteen minutes ago these lads were destined for big things. They were touring with the Datsuns, the Donnas and Motley Crue, the Brit music rags were staining trou over their debut EP and follow-up album, both of which were shit-hot, and their single Shake It was nominate for an ARIA for best single and got picked up by Just Jeans for one of their stupid commercials. Indeed your correspondent has been banging on about them for ever and a day and has made at least half the reading audience go see them with him.

Well, folks, cue the Difficult Second Album. If the Black Keys have lost the handle, the Casanovas have merely been polishing theirs a bit too much. Moving production to LA and hiring a Big Name Producer (former Tool buttontwiddler Sylvia Massy Shivy) has resulted in the rough edges of their self-titled debut being sanded off. Unfortunately, as it turns out, all the Casanovas have is rough edges. What's left is a melange of 80's poodle metal and what could be mistaken for modern country rock. They also appear to be taking themselves vaguely seriously. This is not a good idea when you are writing songs that are cheesier than a cheeseburger with extra cheese at a fondue party. But, then again as the Good Lord said, what a friend we have in cheeses.

Highlights: Their cover of I Thank You (with a liner note shout-out to the Powder Monkeys) is fucking gold; Overload and Heartbreaker are also worth the price of admission.

Lowlights: Tommy Boyce's hideously-twee countrified (read curntree-fahhyed) drawl in Too Much ('Cos yer toooooo murch but y' ain't tooo murtch fer moyyy...') should have most of Tamworth throwing themselves into the Peel River, presuming there's enough water in there to drown in.

Rating: Hit and miss, marginally more of the former than the latter; three Whitesnake guitar solos out of five.


The Dandy Warhols
Odditorium or Warlords of Mars

The Verve are a pack of lying bastards. The drugs do work.

And judging by this incoherent lot of flotsam, they work very well.

Highlights: The two tracks that got played on Triple J.

Lowlights: Never seeing that thirty bucks again.

Rating: One and a half rehab interventions out of five. Go buy Come Down or Thirteen Tales instead.


The Datsuns
Smoke and Mirrors

You're simply asking for it when the closing track to your latest album is entitled Too Much Smoke, Too Little Fire. Particularly when you were one of the most heavily hyped bands of the early Noughties, mentioned in the same breath as Jet, the Hives, the Vines, the White Stripes and friends following your swaggering self-titled debut of 2002, then you went and put out a fair-to-middling second album and quietly disappeared back into the Waikato from whence you came.

To be fair, the indulgences on their DSA (Difficult Second Album™) can largely be blamed on the (over)production values instilled by former Led Zep bassist/keyboardist/self-indulgent wanker John Paul Jones, but the Datsuns' biggest problem on album three is a simple one: they've run out of good songs to write. A bit like the Black Crowes did in the late '90s, which is oddly appropriate as that seems to be who the Datsuns have decided they want to sound like. Smoke and Mirrors sees lashings of lap-steel slide guitar and gospel-style female backing vocals replacing the grit and gusto of their awesome STDA (Self Titled Debut Album™, precursor to the DSA). But it doesn't change the fact that the songs just aren't as good. Even their much maligned second album Outta Sight, Outta Mind had better songs - Messin' Around, Girl's Best Friend - and they don't even have JPJ as a blamehound.*

Highlights: A couple of decent tracks on board, but ironically the best song on the album, isn't; it's the B-side to the Stuck Here For Days single, Kick & A Bang. Not the first time the Dattos have pulled this stunt; Supergyration, one of their best songs and a live-set favourite, never actually got onto any of their albums.

Lowlights: The rest, up to and including the Art Deco inspired cover.
I hate Art Deco. It looks totally wank.

Rating: Two and a half rusty 1982 Bluebirds out of five.

*A blamehound is a dog kept around a household for the express purpose of blaming dinner-table farts thereupon. (Billy Connolly, 1976)


Deja Voodoo
Back In Brown

Yes, the dreaded phenomena of DSA seems to afflict joke bands too...

Deja Voodoo are a New Zealand institution, largely because they should be in one. The two cunts (as they would prefer themselves referred to) behind Deja Voodoo, Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, were the geniuses behind the most heroically offensive TV show in New Zealand TV history, Back Of The Y, which basically consisted of jokes about poo, wanking, drugs, police brutality and the continuing misadventures of drunken stunt guru Randy Cambell who takes up stunt challenges suggested by home viewers 'because you dared me to!' and manages to fuck them up. (Case in point: the week where someone wrote in and suggested he 'stick a firecracker in his arse and fuck off'.) Yes, it's just 'Shitscared' from The Late Show, just drunker and without that smug cunt Rob Sitch anywhere in sight. And it's being made into a feature film, titled 'The Devil Dared Me To.'

Deja Voodoo began as the house band on Back Of The Y, and somehow got big enough to take over the country. Their debut single Beers sold its ring off, ditto their debut album Brown Sabbath on the back of songs like Beers, I Smoked P But I'm All Right, More Beers, Your Boyfriend Sucks and Randy (an ode to NZ's favourite daredevil stuntman). Jesus Christ, as we speak they're even representing the Shaky Isles at the massive South By Southwest festival in the US. This, lentils and germs, is a Fucking Big Deal.

So what's wrong with Back In Brown? Well, the lyrics are funnier - case in point the first single, Can't Do What I Wanna Do With You (Cos You Weren't Even Born In The Eighties) - but the songsmanship is suffering. Big, stupid rock needs big, stupid riffs, and it looks like they've used most of theirs up. Still, there's some good stuff on here, and what do you want from a joke band anyway. With a movie AND a new series of Back Of The Y coming out this year, no real surprise that Heath and Stapp have spread their creativity a tad thin over the past months.

Highlights: Shotgun, Team Police, History Never Deletes (about looking up internet porn on your girlfriend's computer. No, really.)

Lowlights: What, no Even More Beers? These boys have forgotten where they came from. Otago Uni, as it happens.

Rating: Three firecrackers up the arse out of five.


Even
Free Kicks

This isn't really a new album - it came out two or three years back - but you'd have been forgiven for not noticing it when it came out. Even have never really been media darlings. Triple J used to play their stuff - particularly around the turn of the century with songs like Black Umbrella, Electric Light and Kommercial Radio - but record company wranglings and lengthening gaps between albums have put paid to even that weak shaft of dappled sunlight offering sustenance. This is a damn shame. In a fairer universe, Even would have strung together more hits than a western Sydney YouTube schoolyard punchup. Singer-guitarist Ash Naylor writes intelligent, melodic pop that you would be delighted to hear on commercial radio. He gladly credits his influences - both of them, the 60s and the 70s - and there's great enticing wafts of Bowie, Sgt Peppers-era Beatles and all kinds of lovely stuff in there.

So I've had a whinge about pretty much everything else under review today, how about Free Kicks? It's good. Really good. Ash and the lads have lost little, despite the industry quietly forgetting about them. Even songs are always instantly identifiable, and always greater than the sum of their parts and/or their influences. Even songs make you feel good about being alive. Buy this album and stop being such a miserable cunt already.

Highlights: A good two-thirds of the album are genuinely tops, the rest is... pleasant.

Lowlights: Triple J are playing the likes of Josh Pyke and Bob Evans (didn't he host Perfect Match?) instead of them. The next album - if the boys can ever get their acts together to finish it (another endemic Even issue) - will hopefully get more airplay.

Rating: Four black umbrellas out of five.

___________________________

Tune in next time for Part Two of our New Music Special, where our irascible reviewer whinges about more indifferent follow-up albums from bands you don't give an arse about, and tries to pretend he's not just turning into a sad old bastard who thinks all decent music stopped being released in Insert Year Here. Honest.

Eff One Season Preview

With the Formula One season about to kick off in Mudbourne this weekend, welcome to the World Of Bollocks' timely preview of... well, the Formula One season. Thought that was pretty obvious, actually.


McLAREN
Choadafone McLaren Mercedes
1 Fred Alonso (ex-Renault)
2 Token Black Guy (ex-TISM)




McLaren has the honour of being the only F1 team named after a dead New Zealander, at least until Tiger's caddie Steve Williams carks it (presumably by getting his head trapped up Tiger's arse and asphixating.) Set up by Bruce McLaren in the 60s and bought by charisma bypass recipient Ron Dennis in the 80s, McLaren won multiple titles with the likes of Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen and are basically F1's Arsenal - based out of shiny, architecturally interpretive new digs; untouchable on their day but average off it, reputation for being passionless and boring, and run by a guy who talks a lot of bollocks. Though they are favoured for success this year, the Mercedes-Benz owned team are hoping to guarantee their success through a proposed realignment of the pointscoring system, whereby points are awarded not for race results but on the basis of how much of a premium that label-obsessed wankers will spend to get the maker's badge on the nose of their car, thus making the season a two-horse race between them and BMW Sauber.
Chances: Conceptual.


RENAULT
F---ING Renault F1 Team
3 Giancarlo Fishkiller
4 That new Finnish dude who isn't Raikkonen




Back in the 80s, French govt-owned Renault were the first (and only) fully unionised F1 team in history, meaning everyone worked four-day weeks, half the team was on strike at any given moment, and they couldn't get their shit together to win a single fucking thing, even with future four-time champ Alain Prost driving for them. Prost was eventually fired for boofing the team director's wife. Reigning world champions, though known best for team boss Flavio Briatore' shagging (also of world champion quality - scaring sixty and with both Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum in his recent bedside visitors' book). Losing Alonso to the stormtroopers in silver will either fuck them completely or might actually prove that someone there actually knows how to engineer a race car. Heikki Kovalainen (yeah, had to look that up) appears to be the first Finnish F1 driver with an actual personality since the chain-smoking, perennially sideways Keke Rosberg in the '80s - and noone knows why the fuck The Fish still has a gig - but they might do OK.
Chances: Musty.


Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari Mafioso
5 Felipe Massa Attack
6 Mika Raikkonen... no, Kimi Hakkinen... no... ah fuck it, it's not Schuey anyway



Ferrari once were warriors, now they're just corporate whores. Back in the day they were run by wogs for wogs and did weird and wonderful things like making beautiful, superfast cars that broke down a lot, and hiring lunatics like Jean Alesi and Villeneuve the elder - not the whiny bitch with peroxide hair and stupid glasses, his mad dad who lived fast, died young and left a rather second-hand looking body. Then Schumacher and his team took over in the '90s, fired all the Italians, replaced them with drones from his Benetton team and that was the end of the fun. For Ferrari, and for F1. They won a bunch but who gives a fuck, that place hasn't been Ferrari for ten years. Will probably win something this year, even if it's 'only team still to depend on cancer-stick advertising this far into the 21st century'.
Chances: Embittered.


Honda
Honda Racing F1 Team
(as distinct from the Honda F1 Racing Team, Team Honda F1 Racing and the Honda Postie Bike Riders Club of Lithuania)
7 Jenson's Buttocks
8 Barry Rubenschello

Back in the day, this team was originally set up as a vanity project for Jacques Villeneuve (something like 'Babyshambles' for balding Canadian race drivers), Honda have wasted years, as well as more money than Roman Abramovich throws away on Marat Safin's exes, trying to get their F1 shit together and recreate the success they had in the late 80s as an engine supplier for Williams and McLaren. Buttocks managed to pinch an arsey win last year in the wet in Hungary (and knows there's nothing worse than hungary arse, particularly trying to dig your intimates out of your crack in public - Britney's not mad, just strategic) and now all of a sudden they're being bigged-up as world beaters. World-savers too, as discussed in previous media commitments. They think they'll win; they will not. I don't like big Butts and I cannot lie, while Lemoncello fermented many years ago and should be put out in the recycling bin.
Chances: Inconvenient.


BMW
BMW Sauber F1 Team
9 Nick Heidfeld
10 Robert Kubica




No humour is permitted. This is a German team run by Swiss people.
Chances: Efficient.


TOYOTA
Panasonic Toyota Racing
(if they are, I'm backing the Panasonic to beat the Toyota)
11 The Stupid Schumacher Brother (awarded on a countback)
12 Jarno Trulli Average

Have managed to trump their Japanese enemies from the postie bike factory by wasting even more money than them for even less result. Toyota's F1 operations were borne out of their successful world rally team which won multiple titles through the 90s with their Celicas. The minor fact that their Celicas were running massively oversized (and equally massively illegal) turbos didn't seem to bother the team's Japanese masters, even though their disqualification effectively gifted a world title to random haggis Colin McCrash, an anomaly that was thankfully never repeated. Chances for success are hamstrung by a persistent belief in their HR department that driving talent has a genetic component. Having spent more money than Chelsea, another year like the last couple will either lead Toyota to either to chuck this shit in and focus on that Camry NASCAR they've been bolting together in a barn in Louisiana, or getting those old Celica turbos out of storage and bolting them onto the F1 car. For the Japanese Grand Prix at least, given that it's at Fuji, a track Toyota kinda... own.
Chances: Inscrutable.


Red Bull
Red Bull Racing
(like Pamplona but with less Spaniards trying to fucking kill themselves)
14 Crazy Dave Coulthard
(och aye the noo, motherfuckers!)
15 Mark Webber
(former Canberra Raiders ballboy)

Before Red Bull were Red Bull, they were Jaguar, and they were shit. But awfully, awfully good at attracting publicity in inverse proportion to their competitiveness. Case in point, the Oceans Eleven cross-promo exercise at Monaco one year when both cars had several hundred thousand dollar diamonds impregnated into the nose of the car. Yes, at Monaco, the world's narrowest and most treacherous street circuit, where there's more fencing than a fucking Errol Flynn movie. Unsurprisingly the dickhead in the second car stuffed the thing into the barriers mid-race and the diamond was never recovered. This year in pre-season testing, Red Bull have been slower than a Datsun 120Y towing a horse float, up to the point when there were slammed in the media for being slower than a Datsun 120Y towing a horse float, after which they were all of a sudden topping the timesheets and walloping all comers. In unrelated news, in pre-season testing there is no technical inspection to see if you're cheating like a fucker.
Chances: Overstimulated.


Williams
AT&T Williams
(they have an engine, but they're too embarrassed to admit it's a Toyota)
16 Nico (Above The Law) Rosberg
17 Alexander Brat Wurz


Back in the day, while McLaren were the paddock wankers, with spotless garages, shiny uniforms, PR speak and a faultless sense of their own importance, Williams just used to get on with it. They won handfuls of titles through the 80s and 90s with smaller budgets and less grunt by just out-engineering every motherfucker in the field. And by employing hard-arsed racers like Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Keke Rosberg and Alan Jones. Of course they buggered this up in the 90s signing Villeneuve and have never been right since. Sledged horrendously by former driver Webber, who said they'd never win a fucking thing again now they were nothing but the Toyota B-team (which is slightly rich, as pointed out by one of our regular correspondents, coming from a guy driving for the Renault B-team). His replacement, former Benetton pilot Alex Wurz, is the latest in a long line of former world champions Williams has had driving for them. However, given that he was actually the 1986 world BMX champion, this probably shows how far these boys have slipped since the glory days. Not much chance for podiums, but after last year's abortive run things can hardly get any Wurz.
Chances: AT&Tenuous.


Scuderia Toro Rosso
Red Bull Wog Division
18 Vitantonio Liuzzi (Tony to his mates)
19 No idea yet but probably that Seppo cockhead Scott Speed



Scuderia Toro Rosso (what's Italian for 'Red Bull B-team'?) started life as perennially underfunded-but-cheerful backmarkers Minardi in the '80s, who gave half the field their first F1 drives - Webber, Alonso and the Fish among them. The new outfit is half-owned by unpronouncable Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz and half by former Ferrari, McLaren and Benetton ace Gerhard Berger, who was renown throughout his long and illustrous F1 career as one of the most dependable 'number twos' on the grid. Not to say he drove like shit, but that he was always happy to come second. That's why the ladies loved him. STR are running second-hand Ferrari motors and last year's Red Bull chassis, so they'll be thereabouts, but probably not there.
Chances: Astringent.


Spyker
Spyker F1 Team
20 Christjian Alby Mangels (fuck me, a Dutchman driving for a Dutch team!)
21 Some rent-a-hack with just enough budget to keep the wheels turning


This team's greatest highlight was as the Jordan team in the 90s, apexed by Hairy Harry Frentzen's unlikely run at the title in 1999 in the Honda-engined Jordan 199 (wonder how they came up with the model name?) Jordan went broke and sold to Midland, a bunch of shady looking Russian oil barons (think Roman but dodgier), who in turn bailed out to Spyker, a reinvented Dutch sportscar company who first traded in the early 20th century. Spyker's own greatest highlight was one of their two-seater sportscars scaring several shades of shite out of Clarkson on Top Gear. Last year the team hit upon a remarkably successful means of increasing their airtime on TV: painting the cars to look like McLarens. And getting lapped a lot. Their best chance for success this year is to paint this year's cars to look like Ferraris, and swapping the wogs enough drugs and porn to get a few of Schuey's old motors to bolt into the back. Done, and done.
Chances: Oranje.


SUPER AGURI
Stupid Aguri F1 Team
22 Takuma Satay
23 Anthony Davidzzzzzzon




To call Stupid Aguri the Honda B-team would be an insult to the letter 'B'. Can you have a 'Z' team? This is the vanity project of former Japanese F1 'star' (as in 'a character used in place of an expletive in printed text') Aguri Suzuki, who somewhat ironically has sold his soul to a different motorbike manufacturer altogether. Despite pedalling near-new Honda chassis and engines and getting plenty of yen shovelled their way from the postie bike factory, they are still slower than Paris Hilton. Both drivers, while competent, are unremarkable other than for the fact that they are absolute fucking midgets. I can't be arsed going on about them, and I'm sure you can't either.
Chances: Nepotismic.

Roamin' with Abramovich

Have a good look at the picture to my right (your left.)

Does this look like $2 billion worth to you?

If the answer is YES, you may in fact be manky-bearded Chelsea owner and seriously rich cunt Roman Abramovich. Move over Matt Giteau - never mind the six million dollar man, here's the two billion dollar woman, Russian model (and Roman's new girlfriend) Daria Zhukova.

For, dear reader, two billion of your capitalist-running-dog American dollars is the sum which Roman's foregone in his divorce settlement with newly ex-wife Irina, a former flight attendant - see it's not just Paul Keating and Raiff Faaannes who can pull on long-distance flights (though clearly, quality-based decision-making is affected at high altitude). Given that Roman's cumulative worth is around ten times that amount, it's not quite chicken feed, but he's not going to be reduced to having the hat passed around at Chelsea home games to afford avgas for the chopper ride home.
















No, Roman and Irina haven't been through a fraught counselling session, they've just had to sit through yet another arse-bitingly tedious 'one-nil' at Stamford Bridge - grounds for divorce in anyone's books

Though Abramovich has long had a reputation for expensive acquisitions, pundits within and without football have questioned the value of his latest buy. Indeed, the last time Abramovich paid ridiculous money in order to get fucked over was as recent as last August, though Shevchenko has at least started scoring goals eventually. For her part, Daria comes with the highest recommendation possible for any Russian hottie: she has the official seal of approval from Honest Marat Safin's Quality Pre-Owned Babes.

If only she was rubbish at tennis.

There's an anti-NZ conspiracy? Where do we sign up?

In a week packed full with rugby, cricket, league and football news, we start with motorbikes, because that's just the sort of people we are. Weird.

Case in point (or 25 points and a nice trophy, to be accurate)
Proving our long-standing claim that he would amount to far more than your average Stoner from Kurri, Casey Stoner won the season-opening MotoGP round in Qatar in his first ride for Ducati, beating some skinny wog dude with an afro (that would be seven times world champion Vale Rossi, greatest rider in the history of motorbike pedalling ever and ever amen, etc). In keeping with company policy we would make some sort of hideous pun at this point, but after vegan punk guitarist Lindsay McDougall's efforts on national yoof radio, nothing we could come up with could possibly compare with the claw-your-own-face-off cringeworthiness inherent in describing Stoner's victory lap as a 'Qatar solo'.


















Map not to scale

















The factory Yamaha boys celebrate their podium with an impromptu routine from 'A Chorus Line'

You're not paranoid; we really are out to get you
Of course, Stoner winning in Qatar is an anti-New Zealand conspiracy by Australia, for the simple reason that everything else fucking well is. Just ask the New Zealand media. The NZ Knights failing to secure their A-League future isn't down to their own massive stuttering incompetence, but because the Aussies have it in for them. Last year the NZ Warriors were busted for salary cap breaches and were penalised a bunch of NRL comp points, but this year the Broncos are getting off scot-free: obvious anti-Kiwi consipiracy. Some stick-thin Kiwi twiglet entered an Australian national championship running race last week, won, and threw a tanty because she wasn't given a trophy, medal or even a gold star for participation. Now you'd think that being an Australian national championship event she'd have figured out that to get acknowledged as the champion you might actually have to be an Australian national, but no: obvious anti-Kiwi consipiracy. Lote Tuqiri, NZ national enemy number one for his spear-tackle on Richie McCaw (which noone in Australia remembers, much like George Smith's 'late hit' on mouthy Justin Marshall in the 2003 World Cup semi, but everyone in NZ from the Prime Minister down is carrying to their grave with them), re-signing for the Wallabies is clearly an anti-Kiwi consipiracy; to be fair though it can't actually be explained by any logical reasoning related to Tuqiri being a decent rugby player, let alone one worth the price of two New Zealand-based A-League franchises. Even Australia playing like perforated arse in their three Chappell Hadlee-matches last month was portrayed as the Aussies trying to bugger up the BLACKCAPSLOCKs World Cup preparation....
A balanced nation, New Zealand: chip on both shoulders.

We don't like cricket... which is a bit of a bugger really as that's all that's on for the next two months
And speaking of the most important World Cup in international sport, at least for this month anyway, here's our ICC CWC Photo Gallery...

















Unable to get a date in time, the entire NZ team went 'stag' to their Year 12 formal


















Proving that not everything Australian is an anti-NZ conspiracy, Glenn McGrath offers Jacob Oram a better solution for his broken finger rather than cutting the bloody thing off














Ipswich demonstrated its World Cup hosting credentials in a pre-tournament warmup game

















So if that little piggy's off to market, reckon he could get me a beer on his way back?

Slap(head) happy
Former Socceroo winger (actually the way he played for Perth last year, best just to say 'former winger') Stan Lazaridis has tested positive to finasteride, a masking agent for steroid use which is on Dick Pound's list of Naughty Stuff at the World Anti Doping Agency. Finthingy is also an ingredient in hair loss remedies, which Laza has claimed he needs to take in order to ward off congenital alopecia. One look at Stan Lazaridis will tell you why there is practically nobody in the Football Federation of Australia who disbelieves his story: he's a skinny Greek man with a bald patch. With a drug ban hanging over his head, and his only other option being to end up in one of those God-awful 'Yeah Yeah' commercials with Warnie and Mo' Matthews (I think he smokes his), Laza has pledged to develop alternative strategies to combat his condition.














One of the strategies Lazaridis has developed: supergluing a football over his bald patch



Artist's impression of what Lazaridis will look like should he be forced to stop taking the anti-slaphead pills








For the love of God... keep taking the pills, Laza.


The Doctor is OUT.

Pics, drugs and rock and roll

We start, as always, with bollocks. Lots of them. Huge green ones, in fact. It's not just the Hulk who can boast a load of massive green bollocks, you know.

This just in: Formula One is not that good for the environment
Actually, to be honest, it's the most environmentally vandalous, wantonly wasteful forms of international sport around. Teams, most of which owned by massive multinational car manufacturers, piss away hundreds of millions of dollars a year in order to shave pube-widths off lap times and get a marketing edge over their fellow massive multinational car manufacturer competitors. Million dollar motors are junked every second event; hundreds of tyres and thousands of litres of fuel are poured onto the bonfire of the teams' collective vanities each and every test and race weekend.

In short, Formula One is an environmental clusterfuck.

So say, theoretically, you happen to be one of the world's largest car manufacturers. And you happen to own a team or two in the F1 circus. And, let's say, you've been one of the first to vault onto the green bandwagon, having vigourously pedalled the hybrid car story in your marketing bumpf. So how exactly are you going to get around the fact that your deep and unavoidable involvement in aforesaid environmental clusterfuck isn't doing a great deal for your green credentials?

I know, said Honda's PR weasels, between hoovering lines of powder big enough to scare Diego the Dago.
Let's paint the car like a stylised representation of Earth so piss-poor it would embarrass Ken Done, and get our hired driver-monkeys to spin some bollocks about global warming.















So this, folks, is the 'green' Honda F1 car. 'Green' as in 'backs', presumably - the ones they burnt by the pallet in order to fund the fucking enterprise.

Is it a hybrid?
Uh, no.

Does it run on biofuel?
No it does not.

Is it in any way more fuel efficient than any other car on the F1 grid?
Or, say, than the Space Shuttle?
Doesn't fucking appear so, given it uses just the fifty-odd litres per hundred km, just like every other bastard. Not to mention the fact the thing will only go 1400km max before blowing up.
Insert Challenger/Columbia joke here.

So is this just the most superficial marketing wankfest in the history of the universe?
Uh, pretty much.

Will this actually make them more likely to win an actual fucking RACE, other than completely by arse like Jenson Buttocks in Hungary last year?
That would be No.
But they will be the most environmentally aware minor placegetters in F1 history.


A word tells 1/1000th of a picture














Well Schumacher should have put the little yappy fucker on a leash if he's going to bring it to the race track
















Usually it's just Beckham's missus the fans sing this song about




















Static's a bitch this time of year ain't it?

















NASCAR team rues driver's Jack Daniels sponsorship contra deal
















Smartarse sports photographer scores cheap points at expense of fat bald man with mutant teeth






















Indianapolis man celebrated for inventing world's most advanced marital aid


Drugs are bad, mmmkay
Following the news that Pakistan will be taking cheating drug-addled bastards Admiral Akhbar and Drugfree Asif to the World Cup, Canada have announced they have dropped not-very-Canadian ring-in Jon Davison from their World Cup squad in favour of a controversial recall for little known quick Ben Johnson. The Canuck selectors have, in their own words, been 'oot and aboot' and are convinced that while Johnson's batting technique is somewhat suspect, he is remarkably (some would say suspiciously) quick between wickets. In related news, Australia have recalled Warnie, NSW have been in touch with Wendy Sailor, and Queensland have signed Andrew Walker. No, seriously, they have. Steady Eddie Jones would be well advised to keep him off the wings on the prospect of him being distracted by the sidelines.


The other Thorpedo
And finally... Vale Billy Thorpe, a true legend of Australian rock. Most people I know think that I'm crazy too, but I can't punch holes in walls simply by means of bashing seven shades of shite out of a overdriven Gibson Les Paul cranked to eleven.


The Doctor is OUT.