Separating the sweet, juicy flesh from the stone and skin of this week’s major label releases.

They say you should never meet your heroes; that they will always leave you underwhelmed and disappointed. And it’s true: we once ran into Frankie Boyle in a chip shop in Leicester.

We made numerous attempts to goad him into getting his swear on (“You’re not very funny”, “You look like a paedophilic fish”, Your jokes consist of nothing more than pointing out that someone has died or is disabled, and then swearing at them”, and “In order to give the illusion that you are in any way amusing, you have to appear on a stage with Dara O’Briain, Hugh Dennis and whoever that little blonde boy is”.)

Nothing worked, and eventually the Scottish gag-fluffer scuttled into the night with his steaming treasure, leaving us saddened that he had failed to notice that the woman behind the counter was missing an index finger, and thus deserved to be swore at.

Which brings us to…

Firstly, Emotion And Commotion, Jeff Beck. This is the man who began his musical life leading The Yardbirds, truly one of the most innovative and inspirational  bands of mid-60s rock and roll. Consider the album Roger The Engineer / Over Under Sideways Down. Consider anything by their masterful contemporaries The Kinks.

And then consider this: Jeff Beck could have shed his Yardbirds cocoon and be flying around the musical world as the beautiful butterfly he was meant to be. Instead, he decided that the larval Beck would emerge as a giant shit-moth, flapping its ugly wings to spread turgid and turdy music across the world.

Thus, the colossus who led one of early rock’s seminal bands has revealed himself as a fallible – and failed – human being. One who has scaled the Phrygian heights of rock art and decided that, frankly, it’s a bit cold and he’d rather settle himself into a comfy wingback chair in a nice little bungalow with a coal fire.

Seriously: don’t bother with this somnolent, orchestra-heavy, blue-jean-and-white-t-shirt epic of acetate masturbation. Save your money and go buy For Your Love instead.

I am taking a quick break from ironing my blue jeans and would like to hear Emotion & Commotion.

Secondly, Congratulations, MGMT. The Brooklyn-based David Bowie ‘enthusiasts’ return with an album that’ll confound fans of their previous, more hook-filled work.

It’s okay, but sounds a little like they’ve decided to just record whatever they’ve written and the listeners be damned. So, Song For Dan Treacy is a good, punky song drowning in badly-managed post-production aural confetti. Same for Someone’s Missing, which really could have been teased into being a contender for Classic Song status.

I Found A Whistle sounds like someone asked Liam Gallagher to imagine he was a tiny little bowl of jelly and sing about how he felt, while Lady Dada’s Nightmare wouldn’t cause alarm amongst its new neighbours if it were plonked into the middle of one of Rick Wakeman‘s concept albums.

To repeat, in summary: it’s not bad, but also not what we were hoping for. It’s represented by the thought:

I’m a bowl of jellyyyyyy,
In a bowwwwwlahhh.
With a cherrrrry on top,
I like to rock and rollllllahhh.

Cool. Where’s Noel? I’ll take this, and my painting of a house with a sun and a clouds, to impress him. Please love me, Noel.

I do so wish Bowie had become stuck in a timewarpy loop during the seventies. Take me to Congratulations.

Thirdly, Fornever, Murs & 9th Wonder. Hey, you. Are you kinda bored of message-light rap? Sick of guns, bling and hoes? Jolly well fed up to the back teeth with rappists who sing about being rapists, and beatspitters whose output is little but a glorification of hard drugs and harder time?

Well, what you need is to getcherself some Murs/9th Wonder inside your ears.

They’re taking rap back to its roots and strengths: street poetry. Simple, standard beats, with sparse – though cleverly-used – blips and beeps. No talk of crack or heroin unless it’s to point out the community-crushing effects of their sale and use.

And, most notably, women are objects of an almost schoolboyish desire, rather than pieces of boobyflesh to be bought and used.

Please don’t think this is the work of some kind of ethical purist: this ain’t MC Hallelujah, but it is rap taken back to its less egocentric origins. It’s represented by the thought:

OK, here we go: just waiting for the bitches. Any time now, they’ll start in with the pointless deaths over a bag of crack. Right, so this’ll be the song about a lady’s vagalulu. Well, the next one is sure to… hmmm. This is goodbeat rap, but without the titty/druggy/bullety bullshit.

Yo. I diss the current rap trends of misogyny and drugs. Sho nuff, muddyflapper. So take me to Fornever, homeboy. Else I’ll bust a crap out of your arsehole, or something.

That is your Mango. We hope you enjoyed it, Mangons, because there’s a bit of a pre-summer lull coming up. By this time next week, you’ll be slitting your wrists and praying to Peter Andre for some sunshiney tunes.

In the meantime, we’d like to extend a hand of musical good taste towards the world’s PR people: if you have any albums you’d like us to listen to, do please get in touch here: thegibbo[at]gmail.com

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It’s our favourite time of the year – the time when the shortlisted nominees for next year’s induction to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame are announced.

Why is it our favourite time of the year? Because we know that from hereon in, it’s going to be a whistlestop pedal-to-the-metal seven-month funride until the bands eventually chosen to go into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame get properly inducted. Seven months. Seven poxy months that we’ll never get back. Fun.

So who could be going into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame next year? Why only Run-DMC, Metallica, The Stooges, Jeff Beck, Wanda Jackson, Chic, Little Anthony And The Imperials, Bobby Womack and War. That’s War the concept of organised military disputes between feuding nations and not War the 1970s jazz-funk fusion band responsible for hits like Why Can’t We Be Friends, by the way. That struck us as weird, too.

Of all the different ways that the Rock And Roll Hall Of fame can make you angry – like the awkwardness of reuniting bands or the desperately bad musical tributes or the inescapable fact that none of it actually matters in the slightest – we think we’ve found a new one.

It’s exactly the same every year. Every year Chic get nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and every year The Stooges get nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and every year neither of them do because of the long-winded and confusing multi-stage voting process. Do you know what it’s like knowing that you’ve got to write exactly the same thing about Chic and The Stooges every year? Do you? It’s bloody awful.

However, this year we’ve got our fingers crossed really tight for both The Stooges and Chic get inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. We think they will, as well, because most of the other nominees this year are crap. But first we’ve got to wade through seven months of bureaucratic nonsense. Reports Reuters:

Artists become eligible for the Hall of Fame 25 years after the release of their first single or album and are represented in an exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. More than 500 music industry professionals will choose five of the nominees for the 24th annual induction on April 4 in Cleveland. The inductees will be announced in January.

So who’s been nominated for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? Here’s our rundown.

Run-DMC - Rappers responsible for hits like Walk This Way. DMC actually stands for Dog Muck Clodge, after the time that Reverend Run once made a fanny out of some dogshit.

Metallica – Heavy metal group responsible for hits like Enter Sandman. Now more famous for their film Some Kind Of Monster where they all sat in a circle, wanked each other off and then cleaned bugs out of each other’s fur with their fingers than for their music.

Bobbie Womack – Responsible for hits like Let Me Kiss It Where It Hurts. Legally changed his name to Bobbie Womack from the original Boobie Woman in 1974.

Jeff Beck – Responsible for hits like Rock My Plimsoul. Actually invented the guitar – before him, people just used tennis raquets and their own mouths.

Chic – Responsible for hits like Freak Out and Good Times. One of the most influential bands in history, Chic’s fingerprints can be felt all over everything from No Surprises by Radiohead to Here Comes The Bride.

Wanda Jackson – Responsible for hits like Funnel Of Love. Having studied at RADA, Jackson’s first achieved fame with her role in Ken Russell‘s Women In Love before becoming a household name with her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I of England in the BBC’s 1971 blockbuster serial, Elizabeth R. Now a Labour backbencher representing Hampstead and Highgate.

Little Anthony And The Imperials – Responsible for hits like Shimmy, Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop. Named ironically, since the band were all medieval peasants and Little Anthony was actually Megatron from Transformers.

The Stooges – Responsible for hits like Search And Destroy. Recently reformed, The Stooges now play concerts exclusively at wakes and pet bar mitzvahs.

War - Responsible for hits like Spill The Wine. One of War’s songs was performed at the end of Lethal Weapon 4. For allowing this to happen, everyone in War is legally a twat.

You’re welcome.