25 years after Elvis's death and the estate has released a new compilation from the by-now seriously slimmed down icon in an endeavour to raise funds for the upkeep of the depleted floral arrangement around his grave at Graceland. Ever generous when fronted with a crisis, Australians have given unstintingly to the cause resulting in a spanking number one debut for the erstwhile living human. While millions starve, it's good to know we live in a country where tens of thousands can afford to waste 30 bucks on an entertainment experience staler than the cheeseburger that's still waiting on the kitchen bench for Elvis to collect. People should have to declare their intentions upon entering a record store. If their money is not going to go towards a decent record, it should be thrown into a bin like a pair of scissors banned from boarding a plane and go towards a fund promoting regime change in the United States.
Meanwhile The Rolling Stones' latest compilation makes a stirring debut at number 3. This makes 2 dead artists in top 5, a great result for the organically challenged. A quick reading of the remaining top ten provides a bleaker insight into the human condition than a Schopenhauer book. What are people doing buying Bounce by Bon Jovi (10), Laundry Service by Shakira (7) and Let Go by someone called Avril Lavigne (2)? Hopefully not buying McLeod's Daughters (8), a putrid cross promotional scam that comes complete with an air freshener to assuage its vile stench.
This weeks highest Australian release comes in the form of You Am I's new album, Deliverance. It's in at 12 with the bullet. Some time during the week the bullet will makes it's inexorable passage through the body, severing a major artery and badly damaging organs, thereby ensuring next week the album topples like an overacting stuntman off a chipboard building façade in a bad western. Australian albums, more than any other releases, often manage their high debuts courtesy of some highly proactive chart massaging. They rise like a mercurial half forward flanker in the goal square only to fall awkwardly, fumble the mark and dust themselves off ruefully as the ball is swept down the other end for an opposition goal.
Elsewhere, the chart is littered with the charred wreckage of failed attempts to get airborne. Its lower reaches look like the perimeters of a Soviet rocket launching facility, heavily pockmarked with the detritus of unsuccessful missions. Superheist's new album exploded on the launch pad and crashed out after 2 weeks in the top 50. Attempting re-entry is a tricky operation and anything less than the perfect 3rd single will see the stricken craft bounce off the chart's atmospheric skin and career headlong into oblivion.
It's starting to look as though the hard rocking new Zealanders once known as Shihad may as well have changed their name to Come And Join Us In A Holy War On All Americans for all the good the switch to Pacifier has done them. Remember when Coke changed the time-honored formula of their popular drink back in the eighties? Embittered loyalists were soon spitting the cloying new formula onto the footpaths outside a million milk bars. The new album booked itself a one-way ticket out of this week's top 50.
At number 31 Vanessa Carlton has paid a heavy price for the injudicious use of a double negative in her album title. Australians are nothing if not pedantic on the matter of grammatical correctness and are notoriously short on patience when it comes to titles this stupid. Be Not Nobody is a shit album that I haven't heard but am prepared to frame an assessment on nonetheless. When at least 45 of the other 49 records in the Top 50 are aural turds seeping through the sewerage system of commercial radio, I figure the odds are in my favour.
Head to the ARIA website, http://www.aria.com.au/albums.htm , if you feel the need to update yourself further with this powerful register of commercial achievement Future archaeologists will discover copies of this document and find all the evidence they need to explain why our civilisation dissolved into pitiless flames.