Britpop Survivor

This blog’s inaugral single of the week is an accidentally topical one, considering it’s the week the government finally relented and announced they would make it constitutionally acceptable for me to be King. Finally!

It’s called ‘Here Come The Popes part 3′, and is by London anti-folk ne’er-do-wells Sergeant Buzfuz. It’s a loping party tune – cheers and whistles included – about the assorted naughty hi-jinks of the past leaders of the Holy Roman Church. Concubines! Whores! Prostitutes! Women of generally easy virtue! Murder! Hypocrisy! Listen to it here. It’s very cheery.

What I appreciate about Buzfuz is they have, so far, written FOUR songs about the papacy. And there’s plenty of material left, given there’s two thousand years for them to get through. I think they’re only up to about 1292. I look forward earnestly to Here Come The Popes part 27. What rhymes with Popemobile?

I think more bands should follow Buzfuz’ example, and find more interesting topics to write about. Most songs are about love and what have you. This is not a problem in all cases – Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Euros Childs has been writing songs about girls, summer, the sea, and girls by the sea in the summertime for fifteen years now, and long may he continue.

But for the less inspired, this could be the way forward. For example, Coldplay – instead of writing vague paens to the shallowness of your own souls, why not tackle the military/industrial complex? Hey 50 Cent – why not write some songs about the Suffragettes?

It’s just a thought.

I need to take my washing out of the washing machine, but before I attend to that pressing task let me tell you about my Sunday night. I went to see the Coal Porters play in a pub garden in Leytonstone. They’re one of my favourite bands, combining bluegrass and ranconteurism to excellent effect. But I went straight from work, so was late, and when I arrived they’d already started playing. I could barely see them, and I was stuck right at the band surrounded by children and the ignorant. For a few seconds, I hated everything. Stupid people, with their flappy mouths and poorly conceived (of) offspring, I thought. Why aren’t you all shutting up and listening to this wonderful band?

But then something magical happened – I didn’t care. I was just happy to be under the evening autum sky, surrounded by people having a nice evening, while a bunch of guys on a makeshift stage tried to make themselves heard despite the lack of amplification. I felt benign. And slowly, people started to listen. The middle aged couple behind me started singing along, even though they didn’t know the words. “This is dead good, this is. It sounds Irish” said the man. The woman silently agreed.

The atmosphere had changed. Kids strained to be put up on their parents’ shoulders so they could see where the magical noise was coming from. Football shirted skinheads stopped talking about football and nodded along. And by the end of their set they had everyone singing along to, yes, a bluegrass cover of ‘an old Irish folk song’ – Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.

During the chorus, I looked around me, and saw old soaks clasping their guinness and singing along to a Bob Dylan song I should have known. I looked to the darkening sky. I felt quite wonderful.

I asked them to play my wedding.

And that evening, I came home and wrote my first ever song.

Earlier this week I read a blog post in the Guardian’s music section. It was very much a ‘I must somehow churn and then stomp on this unintestesting news story until it becomes a tenuous discussion piece’ affair, but its suggestion that the Arctic Monkeys are somehow representative of Sheffield riled me. So here’s how I responded (which means this is a blog about a comment on a blog. The internet will eat itself).

—

Hello,

I’m having one of my many clear-outs: one of those melancholy delves into the flotsam and jetsam you pick up over the years. The past, they say, is a different country: to me, it’s more like a parallel universe. All that’s missing is the pointy beards.

Music-wise, I have thrown away lots of old copies of the NME, as well as crap CD singles and freebie albums. Here are three things I’ve noticed:

1) The internet has destroyed the free-postcard-with-album/single artwork phenomenon. I found some lovely old Hefner ones. The Greedy Ugly People one is best of all.

2) I still have my old gig tickets. I might one day write a blog where I write about my memories behind every single stub. But of course, I never get gig tickets nowadays – just a code off the interweb.

3) No-one makes me mix-tapes any more, and even if they did, I don’t have a tape deck to play them on.

Here are the covers to two of the best yet worst tapes I ever received. Best, because they came from brilliant people and are beautifully put together, and worst because the music on them was, in the main, awful. Euro-house anyone? Shania Twain? No? Ok then.

On Monday night I did something I hadn’t done since the year 2000: I went to a gig on my own. It is, I hope, something I will not be repeating again for another eight years, though by 2016 I suspect that the entire music industry will have fallen in to the sea.

I went to see the magnificent Manda Rin, of 90s pop sensations bis. I loved bis, they were proper good, all shouting, slogans, and mildly incoherent but exciting sounding manifesto based around the Teen-C revolution. I never quite worked out what the teen-c revolution was, but it was great and I was definitely part of it. All they really needed was for a large number of people to actually like their music, and they’d have been huge.

I spent part of the day emailing the lass in question, arranging an email-interview for the Star, as she travelled on the train down from Scotland. I made a joke about helicopters that seemed to go down well, and I inwardly marvelled at my ability to exchange casual emails with probably the greatest Scottish shouty-pop singer of all time. I was feeling pretty tired and wasn’t sure about the gig, but then at the last minute realised that it was better than just sitting in my flat staring at the wallpaper peeling off the wall. So I went. And it’s always really brilliant when you’ve got stuff to do, isn’t it? Whooosh, I’d better put some clothes on, and clean my teeth. Hurry hurry hurry, I’ve got places to go! Can’t hang around here! Amazing.

I got there and it was horrible. It was full of people who knew other people, and they were talking to each other and drinking and having a brilliant time, and I felt affronted and specifically left out and like the biggest loser in Christendom. So I spent my time scribbling lots and lots of notes into my notebook, which is full of excellent observations like “Manda was born in 1977 not 1987 which is why this launch party is taking place at the fly on New Oxford Street rather than at the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing as she deserves”. I don’t know if I got her year of birth right, but I’m really impressed at my Bird’s Nest Stadium reference. Slightly out of date cultural reference points are my stock in trade. In that sense I’m the Kaiser “a fat Blur in hats” Chiefs of music journalism.

So. The support act came and went, and they sounded exactly – but exactly – like Radio 4, as in the band who did ‘Dance to the Underground’, not the radio station. I shuffled over to buy as much Manda Rin stuff as I could, and utterly failed to talk to her because I was too flustered by being on my own. The guy before me was wearing a very faded bis t-shirt, was also on his own, and was clearly planning/hoping to follow Manda home after the gig, gut her, and stuff her, if only he could get over his crushing shyness. I felt like she probably thought I was the same. I managed a very formal ‘thank you very much indeed’ when she signed the single for me, and utterly failed to mention I’d been emailing her earlier and had made a hilarious witticism about helicopters. I then ran away.

So, the gig. How was she? Ropey at first, very ropey. Her singing has never been amazing, and it took a couple of songs for her to warm up. Also she couldn’t hide behind her keyboard, which looked just wrong. Manda should be jumping about like a lunatic behind a keyboard. But she soon warmed up, and her band, who I’m just going to assume are her children were ace, all fresh-faced and as eager to please as teenage lovers.

I even started dancing at one point

So yes, the thumbs up for Manda solo. Think B52s / New Young Pony Club / a cheery ladytron. It has synth breaks and disco bass stabs to die for, if you were the sort of person to lay down your life in front of a pop tank. Metaphorically speaking.

My blogging empire grows and grows. Soon all blogs will be written by me. Muhahahahahaha.

This one is for me to write about music from the perspective of someone who will always think that Parklife and Different Class are the perfect pop albums ever, and who will generally be umimpressed by music made by people who have the temerity to be younger than he is. Also it serves as a gateway (but hopefully not a gateway drug) to the stuff I’ve written for the Morning Star, the world’s greatest newspaper. But generally the plan is generally to ramble on in a really opinionated and uninformed fashion about stuff that’s happening at the moment.

Tonight was the Mercury Music Prize, which is generally considered by the tastemaking elites who control our opinions (they live in a special bunker and have meetings around futuristic tables and convince us to buy Adele albums) to be much more important and relevant than the Brit Awards. I have only heard three of the albums on the shortlist, and have heard only bits and pieces of the rest, but let me just say right now that Neon Neon were robbed. I heard someone on 6music earlier say that they couldn’t win because “it’s a bit too fun” to win an award. Surely pop music is supposed to be fun? But then the same person did say, of the holocaust-denyingly overrated British Sea Power’s shortlisted album: “This is by far their least interesting album. It sounds like the Arcade Fire”, which made me laugh.

Anyway, well done to Elbow. I have never listened to their album, but Guy Garvey seems like a nice chap, and they’re better than Doves. Are Doves still going? I think Doves, Elbow and Badly Drawn Boy should all merge and form a Manchester supergroup. Or has this already happened?

I should probably have done more research on this. But as far as I can make out, Neon Neon’s album is a concept album about the life of car-maker and conman John DeLorean, whereas the other albums aren’t. So Neon Neon should have won.