- MIA - Arular - Definitely the fattest and funkiest record I've heard in a while, and it manages to sound flippant and funny and incisive and political all in one go.
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| Favorite Live Performance of 2005 |
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Rufus Wainwright, London Shepherd's Bush Empire, April 2005. Who else could open his set with a song in Latin and end it wearing a leotard and a tiara and reenacting the end of the Wizard of Oz?
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| Personal Favorite On-stage Moment/Show of 2005 |
- Radio City Music Hall in June. Firstly, the venue is incredible....very Art Deco-y and ripe with history and atmosphere. Secondly, it seemed surreal that there could be 6,000 New Yorkers who wanted to see us play...we really were not prepared for the welcome we got. You can see from our DVD that we were terrified beforehand and shell-shocked afterwards! Whatever else happens, I know that night will be one of the great experiences of my life.
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| Classic Album or Artist You Rediscovered This Year |
- Pulp - Different Class - I used to listen to this record incessantly, then I think I maxxed out and didn't listen to it again for almost 10 years. Someone put it on at the studio the other day...all the memories came flooding back and, of course, I remembered what an incredible atmosphere it
has - sexy and depressing at the same time.
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| Best Film You Saw This Year |
- The Sea Inside, directed by Alejandro Amenábar.
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| Artist You Are Most Excited About In 2006 |
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| Best New Gadget/Equipment/Technology you can't live without |
- My Powerbook G4 is the best thing I've ever bought, and it's the perfect gadget for when we're on tour - I can mess around with song demos on the plane, and when I get bored watch one of my own DVDs rather than whatever crap the airline is showing.
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| New Hobby Discovered This Year |
- Painting. I got a bunch of acrylic paints for Christmas last year....I’ve always been into fine art as an observer and I've always wanted to try my hand at it myself. I'm not very good at it, but I'm sure it's very good for my soul or something.
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| Guilty Pleasure of the Year |
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On our never-ending American tour in the summer, Tom and I became pretty much obsessed with a TV series called Everwood. You guys probably know it, but no one in the UK has heard of it. It's total slushy Dawson's Creek-style nonsense, but we used to watch it after we'd done our shows each night, and sitting down to the sound of the Everwood theme tune was the signal that the day's work was over and it was time to crack open a beer and a bag of Funions and lapse into couch potato mode.
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Billie Joe Armstrong - firstly for creating a whole new life for Green Day out of thin air, secondly for being the only mainstream artist with the guts to make an album bemoaning the mess that the USA is in. And the video for American Idiot is awesome.
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| Memorable/ Humorous/Classic Moment on the tour bus/on the road in 2005 |
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One happy and slightly disturbing memory I have is of Tom creeping around Houston airport pretending to be a lecherous Mexican...he would lick his finger and run it down my wife's arm whilst waggling his tongue and asking her if she wanted to run away to Mexico with him. As usual we were all in stitches and everyone else thought we were the scum of the earth..
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