The Daily Tonic: Underwear Piracy

Tara Reid saw in the New Year of 2007 in Australia. While there, she and her entourage wandered into a small Byron Bay DVD rental store one afternoon, where she went up to the till and asked “Do you have any house music?”

The shop clerk looked confused and told her that they didn’t sell CDs, they were a movie rental shop – so she should try down the road.

“No, but do you have any HOUSE. MUSIC?” she tried again. When he shook his head, Tara left. A few minutes later one of her people came back into the store and pleaded with the clerk for some house music, before leaving in despair.

That night the DVD guy was recounting his story in a local bar. He was told that another DVD store nearby sold drugs on the quiet, and that “house music” meant you wanted some ecstasy.

We could hardly have asked for a more 2007 rock star than Towers Of London front man Donny Tourette.

One night when the Towers played a small bar in Hoxton, a drunken fight ensued where the bar was trashed, the cops were called and the band were taken to the police station. When the time came, Donny was entrusted with the band’s phone call.

Did he call his lawyer? His mum? His manager? Er, no. His call was back to the bar to ask the barman to get the phone number of the girl he’d been chatting up all night.

Bungalow 8 had a reputation for being the most exclusive, celebrity-friendly club in New York and in 2007, it opened its London outpost. The club held a big launch party to make its mark on the scene – and the starry cast of A-listers it had in attendance?

For most of the night it was Caprice… and Howard from the Halifax adverts.

Over the last 20 years, there’s been a lot of talk about the perils of music piracy and the untold cost that it has burdened the industry with – but you rarely ever hear the positive side of it.

For example, the art-punk band Wire received a nice paycheck thanks to their song “I Don’t Understand” being used on a Victoria’s Secret advert in 2007. How did it come about?

Someone at the lingerie company’s advertising agency was trying to download a pirated episode of the HBO series The Wire from a file-sharing site – and accidentally ended up downloading a copy of Wire’s Read & Burn 01 album instead.

“The Spice Girls were the original Cheeky Girls” – George Galloway

“I once tried to chat up Kate Winslet. She either didn’t hear me or she ignored me” – Will Ferrell

“I grew up watching Lindsay, and it made me want to do what she does” – Alison (sister of LiLo) Lohan

“My daughter had a birthday, I spent weeks planning it, and they did an article saying I killed the neighbour’s dog” – Heather Mills

“Whenever I feel depressed I just talk to my rabbit” – Captain Sensible

Ten songs plucked from the UK Top Ten in 2007, filleted for their juiciest parts and then macerated into one 2’30 mix. All you have to do is figure out which fragments come from which songs and who did them.

You get a point for each correctly identified title and a point for each artist too.

[Play it here]

An oral history of Chris Morris’s Four Lions
[Read on Vice]

Want to see what other people’s YouTube suggestions look like?
[Their Tube]

Smells Like Teen Spirit in classical Latin
[Hear on YouTube]