There’s a very primal urge surrounding the whole concept of shedding your clothes, a return to basics you could say. An act of liberation, shedding off all those layers of obedience and morality that society imposes, or maybe you just want attention, it could be any of these, but no matter what the purpose, whatever your statement behind the whole thing may have been, it guarantees attention.

Brain damage and metal seem to be the two things spoken of most often in one sentence. At any heavy metal concert, you have everyone getting wasted and walking about like they want a fight, if only they could focus on one spot before throwing up. The whole evening is drowned in swirling your head, which would make even Frankenstein’s monster clutch his screws in shame. Until you wake up the next morning, with a very stiff neck and a throbbing headache which just won’t go away. You could blame …

Ever had a tune stuck in your ear for such a long time that it felt like auditory suicide? The same beat thrashing against your mind, again and again and again ad infinitum, ad nauseum. You would be lucky that catchy song went away for a while, a day maybe, two whole blissful weeks! Smug with relief, you turn on the radio and Here it goes, Here It Goes, HERE IT GOES AGAIN…….AW HELL HERE IT GOES AGAIN, SHOULD HAVE KNOWN………….

In the last week or so, music blogs – at least those that weren’t deleted by Google for posting copyrighted content – have exploded over “zef”, an energetic hybrid of rave and hip-hip with a self-consciously white-trash aesthetic [the word itself refers to the South African redneck subculture] typified by bands such as Cape Town collective Die Antwoord.

Who would have thought bad singing could get you killed?
Apparently, in the Philippines, it can: according to the New York Times, at least six karaoke singers in the past ten years have been slain during renditions of Frank Sinatra’s 1969 classic “My Way”.