Yellow Snow

Something didn't smell right about Snow Patrol. Maybe it was the Sony rep who bounced up before they came on to pimp, and, it must said, hand out, his wares. And the support act sounded like some monstrous cloning of the The Corrs.

Now, we did not hold anything against Snow Patrol, even if, as we are still trying to recall, they supported 18 Wheeler at a gig at the Point in Oxford that we had the misfortune to catch in 1998. We do seem to have thought until last night that it was the 'Wheeler that were using the ill-advised samples. But then on come Snow Patrol, who sound lovely and rich until we notice that the Budweiser has robbed us of the ability to care when there isn't a string section on stage. Ho-hum. For what it's worth, the first songs were joyish, and damn me if the singer isn't a charming brute. But later on they seemed to get bogged down with overwrought ballads, which we can never bear. But Gringcorp would be the first to admit that we essentially blindly approve of the AC/DC and Supersuckers policies on ballads - "throw them down the well, so we can be free". So, better than Travis, but we still suspect that one of members has had a kid or something, and his wife's started talking about things like mortgages. That'll have you talking to the nice man from Sony, sure as Bruce Ratner builds terrible malls.

Anyway, we just flew back from DC, and our brain's turned to goo. There was a fair amount of turbulence and some impressive rudeness from the US Airways check-in staff, as if the Chapter 7 unwinding filing is a foregone conclusion. We also read the entirety of both New York and the New Yorker, but will probably take overnight to process them.