Not that i was too bothered about it, or indeed bothered at all, but I missed the Brits because I was away on holiday, and the Oscars for more or less the same reason.  To make up for this lack of exposure to back-slapping awards shows I saw the NME Shockwave awards on TV tonight.   What I liked about the NME awards was that there seems to be no attempt to stop it being a shambles.  In fact I think the organisers are a bit proud of it being a shambles.  And it was held at the Brixton Academy, one of my favourite venues.Other reasons to enjoy the awards were:

• Charlie Brooker presenting an award
• Damon Albarn & Graham Coxon playing together onstage
• Franz Ferdinand doing a cracking cover of Call Me
• A nagging, lingering affection for the NME despite having not read it for years

Like all such events it does fall into a ‘usual suspects’ trap.  Just like the old Brit awards used to feature Annie Bloody Lennox every year regardless of whether she had done anything, the NME awards are rather too reliant on having Radiohead, Oasis, and Muse in the running for everything.

Still, it passed a bit of time, introduced me to Friendly Fires, prompted me to go onto Spotify and listen to Florence & the Machine, and it closed with the godlike genius award being given to the Cure.   They were never a favourite band of mine, but I’ve never disliked them, and always regarded the videos they did in the 80s as being some of the best music videos ever.  I did see the Cure at the Chelmsford Odeon in 1979 in their pre-Seventeen Seconds/Charlotte Sometimes days when they were still a more straightforward band.  Who would have thought they would turn out to be so influential and still be going strong 30 years later?