Sod’s Law

“Typical, absolutely typical.” How many times have you found yourself uttering those words, or different words to a similar effect? We all do. Sod’s Law is an ever-present phenomenon; a ubiquitous fiend, ready to make you tut, roll your eyes, shake your head and/or wind you right up. Whether it’s a real notion or in fact just a figment of our imaginations is completely up in the air for debate. In this respect, it’s similar to fate. Personally I feel that as human beings with conscious minds, egos and personalities that are all far too easily damageable, we need to find something imaginary to blame to cushion whatever bad news may have reared its head. Whatever it is, it does seem to crop up a lot of the time. Returning back to home to England from a college trip to Munich made me focus some attention on Sod’s so called law. Every day I find myself searching the same musical artists and bands on Wikipedia, in the hope that even the smallest dregs of information have surfaced on the topic of any forthcoming material. Of course, rarely do I have any joy, and I’ll often find myself having to get excited over a hurried provisional release date, or even the title of one particular track on an album. So, after a 4/5 day long holiday of sorts in Germany, in which I choose not to check up on the status of my favourite artists’ work, I come home to find a few things. Elbow have a new single, which is soon to be released. So do the Foo FIghters (though it hasn’t been pushed into the limelight yet), but instead they’ve put out one of their album tracks on to Youtube. They’d even given the record a title, the thoughtless bastards. What shocked and rocked me most of all though, was Radiohead’s back-and-forth flurry of activity. First they released a single, with an utterly surreal video to boot. Then comes the title of their album. Then they announce that they’re soon to play their album via a live broadcast from Tokyo, before turning back on themselves, cancelling the plans due to safety concerns, and rush releasing the album for download. Typical, absolutely typical.