The C word.

Fashion Battleground One- The Jacket

In one corner we have Team A blazing a fashion trail with the BLAZER. In the other we have Team B trotting the beaten track with the DENIM JACKET.

Last season everyone joined the Rebel Motorcycle Club by wearing a Leather Jacket, embracing the Bikie look in way perhaps now less favourable. The must have item for this coming winter is without a doubt the 80s inspired POWER blazer. Team A is looking back to the golden days when your shoulders were so big even they thought “greed was good”. Soap-opera Dynasty, Prince and Princess Diana are inspiration.

The blazer is best worn in a single-breasted man-style: long and oversized with shoulderpads to give the illusion of a tinier frame. Shoulders now are also less the rounded pads of American quarterbacks and more angular, sharp and pointy as seen in Balmain A/W 09.

Remember the 80s are there for inspiration not reproduction so for 2009’s blazer stick to neutral colours like Black, Grey and Beige and don’t replicate the jewel-bright reds and purples of the past.

It’s also compulsory for the blazer to be too short in the arms. Roll or fold the jacket sleeves up to adapt the blazer to more casual situations. On the celebrity front Gwyneth Paltrow and Mary Kate Olsen have worn the blazer well by teaming it with short dresses, leggings, skinny leg jeans or harem pants. Wearing the blazer with a matching tailored pant or skirt set is a faux pas unless you’re a flight attendant.

The Satorialist also caught a stylish street example of the new-blazer recently.

If you want to push the proverbial fashion envelope further, try a Lazer (leather blazer) like the Balmain A/W 09 one below.

Another captivating spin is the metallic sequinned blazer like the Alexander Wang A/W 09 or Camilla and Marc 09 ones below.

These suit a night time cocktail look. Team with a tightfitting black bandage dress in an athletic cut to set off the jacket’s tailoring. Avoid wearing with a sequinned dress unless you’re a disco ball.

The Denim Jacket

In direct opposition to the structured tailoring and high power connotations of the blazer, exists the staple of Team B: the denim jacket. An item that has always been the benchmark of casual wear and rebellion, the DJ is worn beaten up and faded. Originally worn by the working class as a cheap sturdy garment, the DJ will always be viewed as a truly American piece of clothing.

A symbol of membership and allegiance to a group identity, it conjures up images of the first days of teenage subcultures of the 1950s. It’s kept its casual status, but taken on more rock n roll nuances.

Team B like to maintain their street cred by wearing a vintage DJ like Levi, Lee or Wrangler like rock princess Pixie Geldof below.

On the catwalks Alexander Wang has a lot to answer for with this trend. He’s set the 2009 bar for Denim Jackets that are faded, boxy, oversized and man style.

The DJ trend also followed through at Australian Fashion Week. Team the DJ with casual wear or to dress down a partydress. Absolutely do not wear with any other denim item on your person unless it is black. Denim shades of blue are notoriously difficult to match and a head to toe coordinated denim look is out unless you are under 5 or over 60.

Interestingly, TV took a different path in their 09 show with a wine-coloured two-piece denim set but it’s not necessarily a fashion code i’d be following unless you’re a nanna spiffed up for a date.

May 19

Mini trend- The Flanno

The dreaded ‘flanno’ so popular last winter is still hanging around. The flannelette shirt is a throwback to the early 1990s days of the Seattle grunge scene, made popular by Kurt Cobain.

Mary-Kate Olsen was responsible in recent years for making it ultra-cool and alternative among hipsters after she paired it with a pair of stockings in what the blog Go Fug Yourself teamed as a college style “walk of shame” look.

In 2009 the flanno is seen on the backs of your favourite tradie and celebrity fashion icon teamed with Louis Vuitton alike.

If you must wear one, I recommend purchasing a man’s one for $6.95 at Lowes and forgoing the $59.95 price tag that General Pants Co or Sportsgirl will employ.

May 6

“You are what you upload”

A recent video released by the Victorian Privacy Commissioner suggests teenagers should think twice about posting images and information about themselves on networking sites or risk job opportunities, job loss and social shame.

http://www.privacy.vic.gov.au/dir100/priweb.nsf/content/AAFC731C1B055D91CA2575A80009DC4A?OpenDocument

But is it realistic to expect individuals to censore their social lives or just evidence of kneejerk over-reaction to new technologies?

Would you want your prospective employers to see pictures of you drunk? high? passed out? half naked? to read the comments you make to close friends that taken our of context might appear rude, racist and derogatory?

If you have a Facebook or Myspace, then your employers probably already know all about it.

Recently the media has brought our attention people who had lost their professional livelihood because of comments they have made on their private social profiles.

Photos of Mercedes Corby being a ‘party girl’ and ‘doing drugs’ as posted on her Myspace were brought up against her in Court to suggest Channel Seven hadn’t defamed her.

Another teenage office worker was sacked for calling work ‘boring’ on Facebook.

I basically think companies are going totally over the top with this crackdown. There has always been a division between the private and public job spheres of an individuals lives and; despite the new online medium, this respect for privacy should be maintained.

Why should aspects of an individuals life be taken into account when assessing them for employment if they are a) not relevant, and b) simply private.

Just because one posts something on the internet does not mean that they are inviting the public at large to view this information.

Alternatively, some suggest, that the recent employer reaction to employee online profiles is simply an OVER-reaction. Quite simply everyone has done things that conflict with their public working life. The difference is, that now these actions are accessible and known because of online mediums. Robert Todd suggests that in 10 years time, pictures of ALL prospective employees drunk/high/half-naked will be accessible online so the playing field will be even. Basically as human beings we are not private, and never have been, so there has been no change of circumstances, just medium. IE, there is no such thing as secrets.

“Privacy zealots might prefer we live in a state of silence as small unconnected
islands. Living in a bubble of isolation.
But that is not reality. The challenge for not only us here today but also the law is
to develop so that we can live in a state of connected curiosity. A state where we
find connections and intellectual challenges.” (Robert Todd, Public Right to Know Conference 2009)

Beyond that- the individual is also responsible. Sure, we’ve all got drunk and there is evidence of it on facebook, but this is where it ends. There is a line that can be drawn between what is put in the public sphere and what remains; and will ALWAY remain, PRIVATE. If you put evidence of you doing something ILLEGAL or DEFAMING your employer on a social networking site, then that is your foolish prerogative.

So;

NO: I do not want to know the precise minute you are laundering your undergarments.

NO: I do not want to know if you just had sex and it was ‘really fukin good man’.

NO: I do not want to know if you just ate a bad sushi roll for dinner and the consequences.

So YES, there is a line that can be drawn between the public and private spheres. The line pushes the boundaries of what we’ve defined as ‘public knowlegde’ in the past. But there are still some things that it’s unacceptable to place in the public sphere.

May 4

The Fashion Wars- Excess Power-dressing VS. Dirty Grunge

The Global Financial Crisis has hit the fashion pack with a bang like a destructive meteorite, scattering them frenzied into two distinct and contradictory camps. Thrust into this brave new world of reduced consumer spending and designers threatened with obliteration, they must respond and fast. The camps’ recession lovechild embraces one of two reactionary look-backs.

Team A channels 1980s power-dressing in a denialist pipedream of excess, glamour and booming success. Princess Di and The Carringtons are rolemodels from the past.

The old-school fashion elite like Kate Moss lead the pack now. Ignoring talk of the “R” word, their catchcry is a celebratory “What GFC dah-ling!” as Moet sloshes and sequins confetti the air. The look is OTT, space age, down the rabbit hole and playful.

Kate Moss in Balmain A/W 09

Team B has responded to the economic meltdown with a throwback to the contrived nonchalance of early 1990s grunge. “Embrace the GFC bitches. Poor is the new chic”. There’s something mass home foreclosures and rising unemployment that makes gross consumerism more gross than usual and thus suddenly uncool. Ofcourse the aim is still to spend $4000 on a handbag as always, but to the handbag should look as if you casually picked it up for $3.99 at Vinnies or found it in a garbage dumpster. Vice Magazine with thier DOs and DONTs (but really do) inspires with hip streetsers as below.

The nouveau riche and uber cool Brat Pack lead the way: Pixie Geldof, Jethro Cave, Lily Donaldson. This mode thrives on reality. The economy has gone to shit but they’ll be swilling vodka and wearing black as the fashion industry crumbles around them. The look wears its black heart grimly on its sleeve and is dark, young, punk and androgynous.

Rock Royalty and 'It' girl Pixie Geldof

son of rocker Nick Cave

So Fashion has decided it’s either on cocaine: over confident, self indulgent, exclusive, fabulous dah-ling. Or it’s on crystal meth: it looks like shit and doesn’t care.

April 25

Chubby is the new skinny

New York Fashion Week 2006

Australian Fashion Week 2009

Recently there has been a lot of talk lately in the fashion world that zero toothpicks are out and curvier full figures are in. No longer is the focus on size zero models and whether they are too thin for the catwalk. Magazines such as Cosmo and Cleo have been featuring ‘real life’ full figure models for years now. The difference now is that the GFC has seen the attitude change breaking into the both high fashion and alternative underground fashion. Victoria Beckham’s skeletor is out and Kate Moss’s new ‘chubby’ figure is in.

(Perez Hilton edit)

The UK Sunday Times suggests “After 10 years of maple-syrup diets, ashtanga yoga, low-rise jeans and rib-counting, something utterly unexpected has happened. “Fat” is no longer the ultimate fashion insult”.

Harper’s Bazaar featured a plus size model in their May fashion shoot. They presented Crystal Renn’s full figure size 16 as a covetable role model.

Even underground subculture Vice magazine did a recent fashion shoot ‘Dear Anna Wintour you are wrong: this is what we really want’ featuring full figured models.

Looking at the past, there is a direct link between times of worldwide economic recession and the idealisation of voluptuous figures. It’s the eternal paradox that we always want what we cannot have. The idea has always been that because the general population is living hand to mouth during economic hardship, those who can afford to do otherwise set the standard for a covetable plump figure of luxury. Since the days of King Henry VIIIth, being chubbier was seen as a desirable indication of having the resources to stay afloat during hard economic times. During the 1930s depression when people in first world countries struggled to feed themselves, fashion models and actresses like Mae West had curvy hourglass figures.

The problem is that since then, a low socio-economic status and a low BMI have been de-linked. Rather the reverse reality exists with those struggling economically more likely to struggle with obesity given a culture of cheap fast food. Australia is now the fattest country in the world with 62% of adults overweight. Given the reality of this severe health risk, is it appropriate for the fashion world to be idealising and validating a body shape that is simply unhealthy? As always with fashion, it’s on extreme or the other with no happy medium.

April 20

Gig review - Kings of Leon - Entertainment Centre

Only those holidaying in Uzbekistan would have failed to notice the “new” bad-boys of rock and roll The Kings of Leon. Except that Only by the Night – the highest selling album in Australia in 2008– is their fourth album. Their sold-out concert confirmed the band once dubbed part of the “new rock revolution” has joined the stagnant ranks of top-forty mediocrity.

Opening with Crawl, the band gave the impression of wanting to get through the contractually specified motions as swiftly as possible by barrelling through old favourites; Taper Jean Girl, California Waiting, Knocked Up, Charmer, and newer hits; Use Somebody, On Call, Revelry. Far from ripping it up, they played with little enthusiasm or pleasure. Perhaps they too, were sick of hearing the songs. Those who paid $90 to hear the song voted number 1 in Triple J’s Hottest 100 2008 went crazy to the emotional depth and lyrical complexity of “Yeah. This Sex is on Fire”. Everyone else was relieved that this would be the last time they heard the song overplayed by 2day FM and Purple Sneakers alike.

When stage presence fell short and the audience was barely acknowledged, I couldn’t help feeling the experience could have been emulated in my living room with a visit to their Myspace. The Kings of Leon have diluted the unique mix of Strokes-style garage and yodelling Tennessee bluegrass that stood them apart. With 500 000 copies of Only by the Night sold in Australia alone, they’re not likely to care. Perhaps one needed to be as drunk as the band apparently were during the show to locate a grain of their old raw soul and not find their performance underwhelming.

April 8

Blog presentation

Web Publication: GoFugYourself

www.gofugyourself.com

- GFY is a humorous blog that satirises celebrity fashion by picking new celebrity images and posting commentary on their fashion

- current- the two authors update with 3-5 posts per day, they don’t blog about any celebrity pictures that are more than a week old

- Blog concept revolves around the word ‘fugly’ which is a contraction of ‘fucking ugly’ or ‘fantastically ugly’

- They say: “in honour of the fact that these days fugly seems to be the new pretty, we’ve created a blog to honour all the visual atrocities of the world”

www.gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/go_fug_yourself/2009/04/fug_n_cold.html

History

- The blog was started in July 2004 by Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks who were working as recappers for the website Television Without Pity http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php

- They didn’t start it as a serious endeavour or money making enterprise but just for the amusement of themselves and their friends

- Heather :“we figured it was an inside joke that we’d just have fun with it for a while before getting distracted somewhere else, but then Defamer (http://defamer.gawker.com/) found us about a month into things, and some friends of ours from Television Without Pity threw us a link here and there in their recaps. Our traffic started ticking up from there. We got really lucky with the whole word-of-mouth thing.”

- They quit their day jobs in 2006 to pursue the blog as a full time job

- The blog is now linked to (and probably owned by) the website Celebuzz- a celebrity blogging publisher that sources from existing celeb blogs

www.celebuzz.com

Layout

- Simple and basic user-friendly site in traditional blog format

- I think it needs a makeover- the same layout and navigation-banner with really old pictures have been in use for years, boring pastel colours, not striking

- Not really any new technology features- the site hasn’t really evolved layout wise

- http://web.archive.org/web/20050121033431/http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

2005

http://web.archive.org/web/20060101000748/http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

2006

http://web.archive.org/web/20070105175923/http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

2007

- Side bar lists hyperlinks to favourite celebrity fugs if you want to go straight to them, there is also a search bar

- Advertising bar on right is noticeable but fairly discreet except for the past week they sold out the background of the whole blog to an enormous add for The Hills- first time I’ve noticed this

- Use of images is eyecatching and central to the posts but they don’t overcrowd the screen with endless celebrity images indiscriminately- everything included is selected to fit in with their specific aim

- User activity- in the past you could comment on posts but authors say they closed it off because they didn’t have the time to moderate it and they didn’t want the comments getting a life of their own

- Features- Yearly Fug Madness awards- authors choose a pool of celebrities who go up against each other in daily brackets, it’s geared to user voting in rounds over one month to find out who is the biggest ‘fug’. Layout wise this is messy because it’s mixed into the blog with all regular posts because everything appears chronologically and you can’t go to a section that just has Fug Madness awards

Popularity and Success

- Attracts 4 million readers per month

- technorati.com measures blog authority/influence by looking at how often a blog is mentioned by other blogs, in 2005 GFY was ranked 83 out of 18 million tracked, now it ranks 656

I don’t think it’s lost popularity but it’s maintained the same while other new sites have come along and overtaken them innovation/reader wise

http://technorati.com/blogs/gofugyourself.typepad.com?reactions

GFY stats

- http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gofugyourself.typepad.com

Where people go on Gofugyourself.typepad.com:

· 100.0% gofugyourself.typepad.com

Gofugyourself.typepad.com users come from these countries:

· 63.3% United States

· 8.1% Canada

· 8.1% Germany

· 3.6% Finland

· 3.4% Australia

Gofugyourself.typepad.com traffic rank in other countries:

· 40,691 Australia

· 22,009 Canada

· 10,298 Finland

· 89,212 Germany

· 180,197 India

· 43,264 Malaysia

· 19,540 New Zealand

· 19,119 Singapore

· 82,435 Spain

· 72,773 Sweden

· 31,910 United States

·

Celebuzz stats

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gofugyourself.celebuzz.com

·

Where people go on Celebuzz.com:

· 22.6% celebslam.celebuzz.com

· 19.5% celebuzz.com

· 14.7% socialitelife.celebuzz.com

· 12.8% gofugyourself.celebuzz.com

· 5.4% kimkardashian.celebuzz.com

Celebuzz.com users come from these countries:

· 54.6% United States

· 3.9% Canada

· 3.7% United Kingdom

· 3.4% Germany

· 3.3% India

Celebuzz.com traffic rank in other countries:

· 675 Australia

· 2,516 Austria

· 3,351 Brazil

· 782 Canada

· 637 United States

- Price of add space- $300 to $1000 (on Perez Hilton it’s $2000-18,000)

Traffic comparison between GFY and Perez Hilton

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gofugyourself.typepad.com+perezhilton.com

Traffic comparison between GFY, Perez Hilton and Celebuzz

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gofugyourself.typepad.com+perezhilton.com

- critical acclaim- praised as “viciously funny” by the Hollywood Reporter

- 2005- 50 coolest websites by Time magazine

- 2006 in Entertainment Weekly’s 25 favourite entertainment sites

- 2008- 50 most powerful blogs by Guardian

- Vanity Fair named as “site they can’t get enough of”

Why is it successful?

- Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson said to them in interview: “what works about it for me…is that it’s actually grounded in something concrete and specific. You’re not doing just another hanger-on, traffic-whore, mention-whoever’s-being-Googled-today celebrity thing. It’s about the fashion and, more specifically, about what you have to stay about the fashion”.

- Heather: “I do think having a specific focus helps us, for sure. I can’t imagine trying to compete directly with the bajillions of breaking-news sites out there…I think we were very fortunate to have gotten into the blog thing early in the game, and there aren’t a lot of sites out there that SOLELY cover celebrity fashion the way we do, so that has helped us a lot”.

- I think GFY works and is popular with readers because it established a specific niche and narrow focus in celebrity blogging, stuck to it and delivers a small amount of quality witty content rather than constantly updating with crap- people go to them for unique content they can’t get elsewhere

- Success through branding of their blog- phrases like ‘Fugly’ and ‘Fug’ have become like a label that they have a blog patent on- Heather: “it’s hard for me to say how much of the fact that the blog has done well has to do with the fact that it has a catchy name. If it had been BloggingAboutCelebrityFashion.com, people would have been like ‘yawn’.”

- The two original authors personalities are a big presence in the blog and it relies on their opinions and self-referential style of blogging

- If they turned into celeb goss powerhouse would probably alienate fans and become indistinguishable from other celebrity blogs/news sites

- But there is a limit to their content and thus hits/time spent on site because there is only content form the two original authors: this may explain their declining market share of internet readers and inability to maintain high-rank in blog popularity

March 18

Review - Russell Brand ‘Scandalous’ - Enmore Theatre 17th Mar

That the megalomaniac hair-do that is Russell Brand thrives on scandal is evident. The British comedian is a former heroin and sex addict, 3 time winner of Shagger of the Year and who recently called George Bush “a retarded cowboy” on live television. Last October, 18 000 people complained to Brand’s BBC2 Radio show about his on-air “obscene” prank calls to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs about having sex with his granddaughter, resulting in Brand’s resignation.

Brand’s egotistical comedic style revolves largely around anecdotal public confessions of his most embarrassing moments and thought processes. He charmed the audience early-on with his familiarity, creating an intimate atmosphere part AA meeting, part dnm with your best mate. Comedic highpoints were witty and hyperbolic parodies of the tabloid media, death threats against him and his politically incorrect VMA hosting.

Brand’s conviction that no topic is off limits made clear the very fine line between edgy humour and straight-out depravity. When Brand descended into extreme crudeness, it seemed to be for his own amusement not audience entertainment. Topics included orgies, the etiquette of “bumming”, his preference for blowjobs that choke girls and a Freudian imagining of a sexual encounter between himself as a child and MILF Helen Mirren.

Any misapprehension that Brand’s public ‘sex-god’ persona is mere rhetoric was soon rectified for us ladies “lucky” enough to go backstage. The drinks flowed in the impromptu meat market as a detached Brand pointed out his selection for the night to his bodyguard. Far from embodying his self-appointment as new-age revolutionary and liberator of women, Brand was - without the distance of comedy - a sad and lecherous mid-30s sex addict.

March 14

Album review: Peter Doherty’s Grace/Wastelands

He won Best Solo Artist at this year’s Shockwave NME Award’s but Pete Doherty is known more for a private life that exists very publicly than his song writing and musical skills. He is a household name because of a high profile tumultuous relationship with ex-girlfriend supermodel Kate Moss, his expulsion from band The Libertines for bad behaviour, his drug addiction, confrontations with the law and jail terms.

On March 13^th, the infamous Pete (or rather Peter) Doherty released his first solo album Grace/Wastelands.

Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, plays on all tracks except ‘Broken Love Song’ and singer Dot Allison performs co-vocals on the track, ‘Sheepskin Tearaway’. Peter’s Babyshambles band mates, Mik Whitnall, Adam Ficek and Drew McConnell also play on the album.

The resulting album is not what one expects from Doherty’s public persona as the violent, out-of-control, rude bad boy of rock n roll.

In contrast to expectations, in interviews Doherty appears charming, quietly spoken, shy and gentlemanly. As interviewer Jonathan Ross suggested to him in 2007 “what’s charming about your work so far, is that there’s a kind of innocence to it”.

This boyish if addled charm was also hinted at in the truly bizarre home video of him and fellow trainwreck Amy Winehouse playing with baby mice.

It is this side of Peter Doherty the man not Pete Doherty the tabloid creation that is reflected in Grace/Wastelands. Perhaps as Doherty himself suggested in the 2005 Documentary ‘Who the Fuck is Pete Doherty’, “tabloid is something to avoid otherwise you’ll find a different type of void right there in your gut, something empty and meaningless and false incidentally”.

Grace/Wastelands retains aspects of Doherty’s original indie garage rock and combines them with a neo-folk vibe. There’s still a strand of the dark clashing indie rock that we heard from his ex-bands The Libertines and Babyshambles who were part of the early 2000s garage revival with the Strokes, The Vines and The White Stripes.

Grace/Wastelands shows a softer more melodic side to Doherty’s music with wistful romantic lullabies like ‘Sheepskin Tearaway’ that recall the intimacy and sincerity in the candid home video of his improvised singing to Kate Moss.

His lyrical style is personal and confessional with his tone forlorn and nostalgic as he sings about lost love. At times it’s a bit 1970s rock n roll glam with Doherty drawing out the syllables of his lyrics, accentuating them OTT Mick Jagger pseudo Cockney style.‘1939 Returning’ reminisces about a time past and recalls the slow paced crooning of 1940s love songs. Its sound is pared back with simple guitar strumming and violins crackling and distorted as if played through a gramophone.

‘The last of the English Roses’ is the album’s highpoint with Doherty’s uplifting chanting, tambourines and uptempo drumbeats. On ‘Sweet by and by’ and ‘Palace of Bone’ the jazz piano and haunted house echoes lend a blues and soul vibe with Doherty almost scatting. This is a project that could only come through the hazy spectrum of drug addiction. Doherty’s voice is ethereal and otherworldly and sends you floating. Grace/Wastelands has the sort of sweet nothings and nostalgic somethings you imagine him improvising in serenade under a fellow trashbag’s window at 3am. Or, lyricising romantically to you as you lie in a field of daises wearing a sundress and smoking a joint. No? Ok, that’s just me then.

But the sound does spin the illusion that there is just Doherty and his guitar improvising and not a manufactured and mass-produced album. This guerrilla style has always been favoured by Doherty but it’s realised in a more freeform way in this album. It’s like Doherty is oblivious to the microphones and this translates to the album working well as chill-out music for one-on-one listening. Reportedly this does not translate well to a live concert with a live audience. One reviewer suggested recently, “without the noisy support of his band, Babyshambles, most of Doherty’s songs are reduced to the acoustic guitar sketches on which they were based. This is pleasant enough, and fine for a hushed pub back room, in which the cute witticisms of his lyrics can be properly digested - but silly in a vast hall filled with 5,500 people”.

Unfortunately Grace/Wastelands also somewhat provides ammunition to those who dismiss Doherty as rambling, slurring, muttering and tuneless. Whether this reality casts Doherty as a talentless imposter or a tortured poet relies on personable opinion. A recent poll on the UK guardian online saw 70.2% of voters deeming Doherty a ‘national treasure’ with 29.8% finding him ‘overrated’.

Critic Paul Morley has probably hit the nail on the head: “the problem with someone like Pete Doherty is that it happens too quickly now because we’re all so self conscious about it. So even before the Dohertys of the world have had a chance to really develop their art, their entertainment, their personality, their history, make a few albums, a few songs in the margins, that create a kind of solidness, they’re plucked now, too quick almost, out of the NME world into the tabloid world, the glare of the news of the world and the new of the world world has found its victim, it’s found its target and then it starts to hound and persecute”.

Doherty said recently that, “I don’t want to be remembered for drugs and Kate Moss – I want to be remembered for my songs”.

It is a pity that Pete Doherty’s salacious and high profile public persona as the ex-boyfriend of supermodel Kate Moss and heroin addict extraordinaire will always overshadow Peter Doherty’s genuine skill as an artist. Because of this unfortunate reality, Grace/Wastelands probably won’t bring Doherty much money or mainstream popularity but I’m not sure if he’ll really mind because he seems to be writing for his own enjoyment rather than public validation.

Disclaimer: I have an unhealthy obsession with Pete Doherty and thus cannot be held accountable for my highly biased views.

To read an excellent in-depth interview with the man himself, I recommend the March one in the Guardian.