MY OPINION: Mike Skinner on 'Later with Jools Holland'...

Watching the live edition of 'Later With Jools Holland' last night has led me to the following conclusions: Paul Weller and his band are ace, The Maccabees are pretty good live, but most of all that chav Mike Skinner of The Streets is an absolute dick. Saying that he was fascinated by being able to fit thousands of songs onto an mp3 player, he claimed that vinyl was "messy and expensive". What? In other words you just like downloading stuff for free and deleting it once you get bored of it. An appalling attitude from an utter prat. Following a clip of his dismal 'Don't Mug Yourself' "song" he went on to tell us about how he was going to be making a movie but it "may take a long time". Good, hopefully by then everyone will have forgotten you exist, you complete cretin.


Skinner appeared on Tuesday night's live edition of Later With Jools Holland to promote his new autobiography and was asked if vinyl was important to him. Saying he preferred the concept of thousands of songs being reduced to mere files on an mp3 player, he added that he considered vinyl to be "a messy and expensive affair". Now of course Skinner is entitled to his own opinions, but his attitude towards a timeless format is nothing short of ignorance. Even Jools seemed a little annoyed after his comment. It certainly annoyed me, so after publishing my opinions on the blog yesterday, I also tweeted Skinner advising him to "wise up". It turns out that Skinner is now a follower of the Mr Scott:Music twitter feed, so maybe it's time to educate him a bit. 

A vinyl LP that CAN be called "a waste of money"...

Investigating further Skinner also tweeted a couple of years ago about his dislike for the physical music format, saying "vinyl is butters. it's a waste of money. physical product is borderline unethical". Well, if it's anything by The Streets the perhaps it is a waste of money. Consider this: in 20 or 30 years time you could flicking through a wonderful record collection, each album a memory and a musical snapshot of a part of your life. Something physical to treasure. Plus artwork, lyrics, all-important credits and of course the unbeatable sound that the format brings. For example listen to James Brown on vinyl and tell me a CD or mp3 copy sounds better. Or you could have an mp3 player filled with songs, but you can only fill it with so many of those songs. So to make way for anything new you have to discard something else. The disposable nature of digital music is completely at odds with the lifelong love that true music fans have for their records. 


Plus Skinner claiming vinyl to be "expensive" and the whole concept of physical formats to be "a waste of money", he'll find that they don't cost much more than album downloads do on iTunes. This suggests that perhaps Skinner doesn't even pay for music, and he doesn't see it to be important or special enough to spend money on. Perhaps he just likes downloading stuff for free, so he can fill his iPod up without "wasting" his money, while still expecting his fans to cough up money for his awful music. Maybe he should come down to the queues outside independent record shops all over the country this weekend as we celebrate Record Store Day. Maybe he should tell all the people in the queue that what they're there for is "a waste of money". Also if the physical format is "borderline unethical" then perhaps you can give all that money back to every one of those kids that bought your CDs. Whether or not Skinner responds to this is yet to be seen, but if you are reading this Mike I think some answers are in order...