An exercise in “Gonzo journalism” on the subject of the Royal Wedding.
We passed by the peace camp at Parliament Square. They seemed diminished in number, had the forces of the state come down on hard on those resistant to the celebration? Their messages were scrambled. Their signs read not just of wars for oil but of conspiracies of freemasons. Could these be the sanest people here; Dedicated fighters for unpalatable scrambled truth amongst flyby night well-wishers? I was worried for those guys.
An exercise in “Gonzo journalism” on the subject of the Royal Wedding.
The night before the royal wedding me and a friend, in a spirit of inquisitive apathy, decided to walk from Bond Street underground station to St James’ Park underground station. Down through Mayfair we joined the strays being pulled toward the strange heart of our nation. The signs of hysteria were there already, the wedding themed window displays weren’t the twee irony of East London, this was full blooded celebration. When you’re spending hundreds and thousands on your baubles playfulness isn’t really an option.
I haven’t been commuting into work this week so I have been missing my daily dose of PR guff and news wire churn that I get from The Metro. To fill this gaping void inside of me I have been forced to create my own 60 Second Interviews with fictional characters. Today, meet Gordon Chichester a TV personality and former DJ. Any resemblance to any real TV personalities or former DJs – especially ones with beards – is purely coincidental.
Gordon Chichester is one of Britain’s best known entertainment personalities. Famous for his hit TV shows and his time as the nations no 1 favourite DJ personality.
Many younger people know you as a TV personality but you started in radio didn’t you?
Yes. I began my career as a DJ. People said to me; “Gordon you don’t even like music. You don’t even own any records.” They were wrong. I owned a record.
It’s been nearly three years since I last wrote here. A lot has changed. Some things have changed. Nothing has changed. Pick a couple from each column. I could now put “Social Media Professional” as part of my job description on my Monster profile if I felt so inclined. I am not sure if this is a sign of maturity or desperation.
For our summer mix, Paul Scott and I decided to have a conversation, or maybe an argument, thanks to one inarguable fact: I hate summer. Paul decided to take a stab at changing my mind, and so we volley competing versions of the hottest summer at each other along with the songs. We also got started a bit late, and after jokingly discussing which one of us would get to including a Los Campesinos! track first, I got the ball rolling by declaring “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” the opener. Events preceded, or degenerated, from there. –Ian Mathers
The warmest summer I can remember was during a war. Of course, we still are at war. The War on Terror is not something you can put on pause and forget about. No, fundamentalism will not indulge itself the luxuries of your Attention Deficit Disorder, it will not obey the caprice of your liberal individualism, it will not lay down it’s tenets as you explain “we are all the same, we all want the same things, we all want to be happy”. Theoretically. It’s all theoretical. They are over there and so far away. We have our focaccia and sun-blushed tomatoes: nothing can touch us. We have our skinny jeans and rock ‘n roll: nothing can touch us. We can’t be touched and we can’t touch. This does not mean we aren’t happy. We are happy in our worlds. This is not false consciousness. These webs are not trapping us, we really are happy, there is nothing outside.
There are other webs, though. Some webs are made of rock and stone: flexibility does not come easily to them. They gnash their teeth, we all roll our eyes and in unison ask: “is it wicked not to care?”, I try to raise my voice, I try to declaim; but all that falls to earth is a sigh. Not even a long drawn out sigh. Nothing as dramatic as terminal apathy, we do care, really we do. Just, not that much. Our principles lack fundamentals, they are liable to change; this might make us stronger, we won’t be susceptible to tyrants promising stability at all costs. That’s the hope. Audacious. Very audacious.
A pop video by a band called Terris
Gavin Godwin was the last man. The last man in history. He was the lead singer of a band called Terris. I am not sure if this is another story, but it needs to be told. He was the last British pop star to care, he was, of course defeated. Blindsided by privilege and indolence he was left looking stupid. He was brave, he said things that mattered; things that mattered so much that a younger me underlined them in magazines. His finest moment was “Fabricated Lunacy” a clenched-teeth kiss-off to the rock ‘n roll era. “Condemned to Rock ‘n Roll” with a groove. It spat half thought passion like a school talent show Joy Division. It was as anthemic as prime Bon Jovi, yet failed to chart. Then came the war and no one wanted to rage against anything anymore. Gavin went home to Wales and, I guess, that was that.
Could someone write, perform and get released a song like “Fabricated Lunacy” in the 2008? I don’t know. I really don’t know. Could someone write, perform and get released a song like “Nothing Ever Happens” (Del-Amitri) in 2008? These are the questions that in a just world would be troubling the great thinkers of our age. Have we become so flexible we can’t imagine anything above and beyond flexibility itself? Anything else is gauche and naive right? Or else you’re just Have Your Say, and no one with half a mind wants to Have Your Say, right?
Simon Reynolds is one of the best music writers I have ever read. His ’80s work, as compiled in Blissed Out, is possessed of a feverish intellect and energy. An energy which, even if you aren’t really bothered about what he’s actually talking about, is amazingly infectious. His extensive blogroll on his blog (linked in the last sentence) is a testament to his ability to get people writing. Unfortunately, this evening I’m writing for the wrong reasons. Looking trough his old website I found his round up of the decade we now like to call the nineteen nineties. Dude goes through his faves of the decade: he likes a lot of ’90s dance that I’ve not heard but is probably very good, he likes himself some Hip Hop as well. Then we get on to his unfaves. And this paragraph about Notorious BIG . A paragraph which takes wrongness to new highest:
The Notorious B.I.G.
The odd nifty catchphrase and deft rhyme, but c’mon, this man was a pig—Notorious P.I.G. more like; Piggy Smalls, heheheheh-and with a little help from his buddy Sean he almost singlehandedly set rap down its current path of spiritual bankruptcy. And he had the most unappetising vocal timbre in all of rap- asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up and fat-fuck wheezy all at once.
I could go through this throughly and point out what – amongst the fat gags – is wrong about the paragraph, but I think it would be best to let the great speak for himself:
The Notorious BIG – Juicy
“Spiritually bankrupt”? Goddamit man, this guy went from “negative to positive”. Sure, sure he maybe -in a sense- celebrating rampant material acquisitions over spiritual wealth but c’mon how you can begrudge the man his “super nintendo, sega genesis”? The guy claims to have grown up with only “sardines for dinner”; it’s hard to deny him a little joy at the rewards his “fat-fuck wheezy” voice has brought him. I mean sardines, man. And if you think BIG sounds “asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up” rather than like the coolest fucker in history with a voice which -in this case- manages to infuse brag with wisdom and charm then, there is a very real possibility you are in fact deaf. Or insane. Or listening to an incorrectly labeled mp3.
Whilst this blog may occasionally seem mainly preoccupied with verbose pontificating and righteous dismay, one has to occasionally step back and admit that, yes, viral videos of people farting are really, really funny.
Ha, ha, ha the naked man did a guff! Scientists have found that the sound of babies crying is at exactly the right frequency to irritate the human ear, sometimes, I wonder if it is simply some inescapable fact of biology that makes the sound of air being released from the anal passage so incredibly amusing…
In 1999 Luke Haines sang “I had a dream in black and white, the futures 1955″, on a bad day I’m pretty sure he was right. An everlasting 1955; perpetual stasis in squaredom. Today’s icons are self-made men (and sometimes women) with no time for idleness. I’m thinking of yer Gordon Ramseys and yer Alan Sugars. The Apprentice seems to me like a search for the ultimate conformist, the person whose lie dream is strong enough to make their very life a sales pitch. What does this country produce? We are no longer a nation of shopkeepers but a nation of salesman. From the heart of the city, to the shaky bottom rungs of the property ladder; no energy is created but the pieces are moved, the pieces are sold. It’s the stolid entropy of a sham nation. And we celebrate those who manage to heave themselves to the top of the heap. Well done, well done and you, you can to it too! There’s room at the top they’re telling you still.
It’s not that great, unfortunately – not deadpan enough, too zany, straying a little too far toward Star Stories territory – but still funnier than anything, possibly excepting Harry Hill’s TV Burp, on British TV. Then again the standards set by the “I Keep Forgetting” episode are kind of high. I maintain Dr Dre saying: “That’s gonna be some good ass banana bread” is the funniest thing anyone has said this decade. Anyway this has everyone’s favourite Scientologist Jason Lee making a cameo as Kevin Bacon of all people and the story behind the writing of the song Footloose.
RT @londonisfunny: oh yes, this is beautiful RT @robinb: Guy puts his number on Facebook asking people to call him he's bored, result: h ... 2 days ago
