The Brown Note

Pitchfork music magazine has apparently been executed, the century's most important music bible being folded into GQ magazine by its evil corporate overlord Conde Nast. As a devout consumer of Pitchfork since the turn of the century, I've been predicting this for the last five years - the post Fetch the Bolt Cutters years, but really the five years that editor in chief Puja Patel has been in charge, and until I hear otherwise, misguidedly shaped the direction of Pitchfork into oblivion. Conde Nast bought Pitchfork over a decade ago and it survived, it's the direction the publication took under Patel that killed it. Sidelining music that was it's core audience to promote music for people that never even read Pitchfork. A sad day.

With only 15% of Israelis wanting Prime Minister Netanyahu in charge after the current war, him having so few friends, either internationally or at home, and his saying the quiet part part out loud - there was never to be a Palestinian state, is a wider conflicting his goal now? He has only ever craved saving his political career, is solely beholden to an ultra-extremist right wing in Israel and probably thinks World War 3 will suit him quite nicely thank you.

In a banner year for big, great and terrible movies, my best and worst films of 2023.

Emperor's New Clothes award going to, Killers of the Flower Moon, sadly.

*Repost from the Brown Note Movie Review channel

My yearly list of the best albums, in a pretty decent but not great year in music, in a particularly poor era for music journalism. Movies to follow.

Emperors New Clothes award for most inexplicably, universally praised album of the year - Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You

*Originally posted on the other channel - The Brown Note Movie Review

Full show with music - https://www.mixcloud.com/julian-brown/top-25-albums-of-2023/

I can't read English Premier League side, Everton, being docked ten points for one count of financial irregularities as anything other than a shot across the bows of global soccer titans, Manchester City, currently accused of one hundred and fifteen counts. Though the right thing to do, with the global money men from FIFA to Saudi Arabia, looking to break apart football for their own interests, what will the impact of major punishment on the world's most important club be?

Why is it that every now and then a right wing populist scores a stunning election victory and their opposites on the left - like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn - never do? It's simple - far from being revolutionaries, tearing the system down, the right wing populist, from Argentina to the Netherlands, represents the global elite economic interests, just much more colorfully. You will see them coming after immigrants and the welfare state but never tax breaks for the rich - funny that.

With nearly everyone a loser in this Western-backed horror show, one person has come out an undoubted winner - Vladimir Putin. After a year of unrelenting demonisation, sanctions and international pariah status (at least to the West) due to his war in Ukraine, suddenly the whole paradigm has flipped. It's now impossible for Western nations to both support Ukraine and Israel at the same time, without the unbearable hypocrisy of those contradictory positions being the main story for the rest of the world, whilst letting all air out of Western support for the war in Ukraine. He's also one of the only major leaders to be friends with both sides of the latest conflict. Christmas just got a lot rosier for Vlad.

Despite the USA having gone through the most tumultuous period of their modern existence, with an actual attempted overthrow of government and half the country openly flirting with fascism, the Democrats still have only one play in their book - rely on Trump and use Biden. Like last time. They should've lined up a batch of potential new leaders, instead they've no one and have spent the last two years chasing both a new cold war and a resurgence of the disastrous Middle Eastern conflicts that defined the first decade of this century. Disgraceful stuff.

Western governments, by their relentless, one-eyed and punitive take on the latest conflict in Gaza, are doing more to fuel a new outburst of global antisemitism than anything else - by refusing to ascribe any of this conflict to a Netanyahu government deemed an extremist global pariah a year ago, they are helping place that burden on the Jewish diaspora globally. And by denying the population of Gaza humanity, helping fuel Islamophobia.

The ex-Liberal Party staffer, Bruce Lehrmann, recently involved in one of Australia's highest ever profile rape cases - the infamous Brittany Higgins rape trial, which collapsed due to jury misconduct, before a retrial was cancelled due to Brittany Higgins perilous mental health, has now been named as a person facing two new rape charges. Which on the face of it, I would have expected to generate a bit more media coverage than it has.