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.

They seemed so off message, their shabby tents humbled by the shiny new canvas city that had erupted around them. A crowd like this could go up at anytime. A jingoistic tinderbox in kerosene soaked gortex.  One wrong word towards the royal couple and these well intentioned maladjusteds would be torn apart. Ripped limb from limb, severed body parts and hiking boots taken as grotesque souvenirs of the big day. A terrible thought. Maybe the forces of law and order would snatch them away, for their own safety? For the safety of the state? Where those bastard freemansons really behind all this? Maybe it was all a set up, a canny stage managed assassination. Unlikely maybe, but it’s best to case out all the options.

Who am I to begrudge these people their fun? Even, if it is a warped bizarrely deferential kind of fun. I’ve been invited to Buckingham Palace myself, I met Craig from Big Brother, but that’s another story for another time. Recent investigations into the national psyche suggest most Britons favour the monarchy but then a fairly hefty proportion of the nation seem pretty cool tearing down the last remnants of the post war consensus.

Enough, now is not the time for comment and speculation, the scenes speak for themselves. A small man, with a union flag crown atop his head danced across the road oblivious to the traffic.

A great shaved head and tree trunk arm emerged from the window of a black four by four.

“Move it you soppy twat!”

He yelled, his eye bulged from their sockets with murderous rage. The dainty fellow in the crown sang to himself as he obliviously reached the pavement. Was this the revelatory image of the day or the kind of argy bargy London sees every ten minutes? We can call it a convenient metaphor and move on. We needed to move on; these strange scenes were getting to me. I needed a swift return to atomised reality. I had wormed my way into the heart of the crowd, but I barely understood what I found.

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.

Through Green Park we strolled and then out in front of Buckingham Palace, straight into the scrum. Weird atmosphere as we got closer to the centre of the madness. Expectant and excited they lined the streets; tourist decked out in Gap and Union flags, the children of middle England poking their heads out from gleaming new tents. The argument that this was a party for middle England didn’t quite hold. The crowd seemed to encompass most vagaries of age, class and races. Much of the crowd didn’t seem to be driven by deference but manic curiosity. Many banners proclaimed a desire to be one of the first to see “the dress”.  A strange and unfathomable collective lunacy had descended.

Amongst all this were the chosen representatives of the global media, most encased in monolithic temporary fortresses. Photographers and foot soldiers with portable cameras mixed with the rabble, seeking out the most eccentric and capturing them for posterity. Cameras hidden behind statues, lined the route. They lay in wait, like dormant Daleks, ready to take over the world.

The closer towards Westminster Abbey we got the stranger the sites became. The Mall had been manageable, but here were the true believers. We were squashed in as we tried to pass, even if you wanted to keep a degree of distance from the proceedings – a certain ironic detachment – you became part of the human circus; no better, no worse than all the other rubberneckers.  A small man – must have been geriatric – union flag round his neck holding a teddy bear and a replica of the ring, an American without a tent but with a sign advising us to add him on Facebook, games of Royal Top trumps, women in wedding dresses, children signing the songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber for money, one woman even had a sign proclaiming she wasn’t mad.

Were these people heroes? Individuals who dared to stray a little from centre, away from the sterile constraints of the everyday and throw themselves headlong into this baffling maelstrom? These were people who put their individual eccentricities towards the collective. But, did they need a leader – a Big Brother to follow, to claim them ? Was there an untapped power here? Could it be tapped, used for some greater good or some terrible crime?

To be concluded.

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.

Do you remember what the record was?

No.

So, what was it that attracted you to being a DJ?

I knew I could be a DJ and not just any DJ, but the best DJ on the radio. What I knew was you don’t need to know music, you need to know people. I know a lot about people. You know how I know this? I know this because I am one. I say it to myself every morning, I look in the mirror and say; “I am a person.” It’s a very spiritual thing.

Do you think being a person helped you as a DJ?

The thing those people never realized, those bastards, is that people listen to the radio. Does music listen to the radio? No, people listen to the radio. Does music have ears? No, but people have ears.

It’s not all been success though has it?

Sure, I’ve had my dark times. I have had moments that would kill the career of a man who was less sure of his personhood.

The gunge tank scandal?

Look the papers blew that one up. How was I know to the gunge was highly toxic? I’ve learnt to look at the big picture. Yes, three people did get some minor 80 percent burns, but how many more had a wonderful evening of light entertainment? Millions more: 16 million a week. Cilla would have killed for those numbers. I think looking at the big picture, 16 million hours of pleasure outweighs three lifetimes of pain.

Do you feel any remorse about what happened?

You shouldn’t judge someone on what actually happened. You should judge them on the success they have. I mean, I was on Who Do You Think You Are, I heard one of my ancestors may have been a slave trader. Did being a slave trader make him a racist? No, it made him a man who took an opportunity. I don’t think there’s one of us here who could honestly say they wouldn’t be a slave trader if the money was right and it was legal.

Did your troubles make you reconsider any aspects of your life?

I had to take stock of my life, so I took a break. I travelled the world. I studied all the great philosophers. I practiced all the major religions. When I got back to England  I went to my friend Paul McKenna. I said, Paul, you’ve been going wrong all these years. The trick is not to hypnotize other people; the trick is to hypnotize yourself.

How do you hypnotise yourself?

I do it every morning. I have a mirror above my bed. On the ceiling, it’s six foot long. Every morning I open my eyes and the first thing I see is my eyes and the moment I look into my eyes I say; “I am an extraordinary, successful, sexually virile man and I am special”.

Do you not say “I am a person” when you wake up?

I was paraphrasing. I’m a big picture thinker. I don’t like to get hung up on the details.

Has this spiritual awakening changed you?

It has made me more open minded. One of the most important things you have to remember when seeking success is to keep an open mind. I’ve taught myself to be more open minded about the world. For instance I used to read one newspaper. I read two newspapers now because I like to hear every side of the argument. I read The Daily Mail and The Daily Express. Sometimes I even read the Metro if one of my employees leave a copy in the office. I like to think you can learn why you are right from people who are completely and utterly wrong.

Gordon Chichester was speaking on behalf of the NO to AV campaign.

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.

It makes me feel sort of sad. Not in a hysterical sobbing way just in a Tuesday afternoon melancholy kinda way. In a self-indulgent “this were all fields when I were a lad” kinda way. I remember when I used to use livejournal there was this avatar I saw, it read something like; “Livejournal: because all the people I like live faraway”. It sounds kinda funny, it sounds kinda pathetic, from this distance it sounds kinda utopian. As if, maybe, all the lonely kids in the world would find each other online and create some new text based society.

Back when I was writing this blog everything changed. Well it changed on the internet. It changed so much they made a film about it, well the film wasn’t really about the internet, but that’s not the point. The point, if there is one, is that the internet got bigger but by getting bigger, it felt to me, people went into retreat. Centralised around Facebook the kind of people you might have used livejournal to avoid were now your friends again. Of course, you didn’t have to be friends but it would be rude not to be, wouldn’t it? Probably ruder to friend them then despairingly analyse it online.

Anyway, you put a lot of people in one place – even if that place is online – and it’s never too long till someone tries to sell them something. The big social networks are obviously the perfect tool for “delivering” “bespoke” “content” to “users” [scare quotes via hipster runoff]. Maybe that’s a good thing. I once played an online football games because it was advertised on Facebook. I then ended up buying a Playstation3 because I liked playing said online football game so much. Is that sinister or is this useful? I’m not sure.

There was a sense once that the internet was a space which people could make their own. That people could film themselves, but now Hollywood is here and it sometimes hard not to feel we aren’t all just extras in the latest corporate blockbusters.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ubxavz2ny20

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

Each Summer Jam is proudly co-hosted with The Passion of the Weiss and What Was it Anyway.

01. Los Campesinos! – “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” (4:29)
02. Ola Podrida – “Jordanna” (4:50)

Paul:

Okay, so, the thing is, I’m a little drunk, but we have to get moving on this; in addition that particular Los Campesinos! track (*key lyric: “When the small picture’s the same as the bigger picture, you know that you’re fucked” – which is pretty much the way I feel whenever the heat sets in, sadly), I mostly tend to retreat to slow, draggy, oppressive music this time of year. My bedroom doesn’t have a window and as a result the heat in here is brutal – something like Ola Podrida’s self titled debut suits me best right now because on the one hand it doesn’t require any real heat on my part in loving it, and partly because it sounds like it was recorded in an oppressively hot room. So I would kind of like to lead off with “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” and its desperation (that’s me when we get our first intolerable days every year!), and then go from there. Here’s “Jordanna”, by Ola Podrida – definitely the next track I’d think of putting on the mix. He sounds pretty exhausted, really.

Ian

03. Saint Etienne – “London Belongs to Me” (3:58)

Ian

This Ola fellow, he sounds pretty beat. Is this fear of summer a Canadian thing or just a you thing? Over here in England the summer is a weird, unpredictable thing. May was gorgeous but now halfway through June the sky seems to be permanently grey. It’s funny you say you have a bedroom with no windows. Mine has, let me count them, four. The next song for the mix is a counterpoint to the heavy, heavy sounds of Ola Podrida. Saint Etienne’s “London Belongs to Me” sounds so light that on a couple of occasions it almost floats away. It captures the feeling of getting the tube on a warm summer night and being hit by a blast of cool air rushing its way up from somewhere deep underground. It feels like coming up without touching any kind of chemicals. It feels like someone has opened a window, let the light in, let some cool air in. In its own blissed out way – even as London skies, in their usual way, turn to granite – says “this is gonna be the best summer ever”.

Paul

04. Spacemen 3 – “So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears)” (2:39)

P,

Fear is the wrong word – that implies some level of the unknown. I know what summer here in Guelph is, and I fucking hate it. It is indeed unpredictable – it was cold enough here last night that I needed a hoodie! – but we can look forward to (and have already experienced one of) these periods of just blastingly intense heat and humidity. I forget if you guys use proper temperatures or what, but with humidity it can hit 45 degrees or more here, outside (to say nothing of my room – that’s around 115 for the Americans, by the way), and given that we’re also used to seeing temperatures dip into the -40s with wind chill in the winter (which works out to around -40, funnily enough), suddenly having that amount of heat trapped between the blue-but-solid sky and the fucking pavement is just ridiculous. It also doesn’t help matters that I am, as John Cunningham once told me, a pale, easily burned motherfucker. Standing in the direct sun for even a minute makes me feel like my skin is being cooked off, it’s ridiculous. I liked that St. Etienne track, but it’s like you say – because it summons up not summer for me but that blast of cool air that means a fan, air conditioning, a cold snap. The other solution, of course, is to go swimming – as Jason Pierce sings in my next pick “I just want a river, just want the ocean.” And it’s called “So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears),” which is thematically appropriate at least. The slow motion crawl of the track makes me think of summer, Pierce sounds pretty oppressed, and while he may be talking about heartbreak, when they sigh out “so hot….” I can easily turn the song into a lament for a Guelph summer, at least in my head.

I

05. Lindstrom – “Music in My Mind” (4:51)

I,

I think, in a sense, I agree with you. Summer, as an idea, sometimes seems oppressive. The feeling that just because of a metrological shift one should suddenly be happy. I like the Spacemen 3 song, did J Spaceman use that tune again on a Spiritualized album? I certainly know a version of it. Yes, it’s track 4 on Pure Phase, that’s one hell of an album. Opiated, beautifully sad summer jamz from a parallel universe. Enough of this heartbreak! Let’s have some disco. Yet even here, amongst the flashlight and explosions, we can’t quite let go. Lindstrom’s “Music In My Mind” is certainly a lot more lithe and – let’s be honest – sexier than J Spaceman’s blues. But, it’s fueled by the same fever. It’s there, just under the surface, somewhere between the beat and bass. The vocalist, she sounds cool but listen closer: “your eyes kill me”: she seems to be surrendering. There is no cold snap here, no summer breeze: the beat goes on. You can’t argue with caprice of metrology. Here, as oppression and exultation entwine – much as it did for J Spaceman – we see, sometimes, summer makes masochists of us all.

P

06. Scannerfunk – “Cosy Veneer” (6:39)

P,

Well shit, don’t let me convert you or anything… and yeah, I forgot Jason recycled that one, but he did. I think I prefer this version, actually, and it does make a surprisingly good segue into the slinky as hell “Music in My Mind.” Damn, that tracks burns – but in a way that makes me think of summer nights, which I much prefer to summer days. It’s a bit cooler, the sun can’t burn you – but some nights it’s still sticky and close and you just want to jump out of your skin. Or at least I do. But you can’t always manage that, so the night just goes a bit hazy instead, everything slides, indistinct, you wake up the next morning not quite sure where the hours went. That’s the kind of night where I pull out the Scannerfunk record, precisely because of tracks like “Cosy Veneer.” Fuzzy, shifting, low key – it makes a decent afterparty for the Lindstrom track, but it also takes us deeper into the muggy night, away from all that inconvenient solar radiation. You can still feel that heat, though, and it even sounds a bit mournful in places.

I

07. Air France – “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” (4:34)

I,

Through the night and out the other side. I’ve been working night-shifts. The sun starts to rise between four and five: if you’re in a negative frame of mind Radiohead’s “Lucky” sort of captures it. That guitar part mimicking the first oppressive break of the horizon, the histrionic proclamation of “it’s going to be a glorious day”, lacquered with bile: it’s almost apocalyptic in its portent, a summer morning recast as the rapture. But, I’m younger than that now. Yes, the sun is rising, yes it may be oppressively hot later in the day, but for now it’s perfect. It’s not too hot yet, the sky is turning from grey to deep blue and the cynics have yet to get out of bed. “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” by Air France captures this feeling exquisitely. “It’s all like dream” a little looped voice chirps and it is. It’s indistinct yet somehow lucid, there is a certain clarity you just don’t get at any other time of day. Then the main theme swoops in, the curtains are flung open, the horizon breaks: “this place is amazing”. You can say “it’s going to be a glorious day” and mean it. You can go to bed now safe in the knowledge you’ve seen the best part of the day.

P

08. Stina Nordenstam – “Crime” (5:41)

P,

Yeah, Air France captures that poignant clarity of the early morning quite well, I’d say – but I tend to see that time of day because of insomnia, not the night shift (you’re making it harder and harder for me to play the curmudgeon, but I’ll do my best). “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” works perfect for going to sleep that night, but what about when you get woken up an hour later and have to go to work? Strangely, it’s the kind of precisely placed minimalism you find in Stina Nordenstam’s “Crime” that most sums up how my head feels at those times, waiting for the sun to hit (hmm… some Slowdive later, maybe?). Except for the opening “Whatever made me cold, it’s gone now” nothing in “Crime” speaks directly to the summer, but there’s this desire, the obverse of Thom Yorke’s plea for invisibility in “How to Disappear Completely”: “You know it wasn’t really me, you know I wasn’t really there” – please, just forget that you saw me. Let me stay down here, out of the sun. The necessary, for me, postscript to “this place is amazing,” at least when it’s muggy out.

I

09. Christopher Cross – “Sailing” (4:17)

I,

That song is cold. Really cold. There’s a motif at the beginning that reminds me, somewhat, of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing”, albeit with all the blood, all the warmth drained out. So, lets put some colour back in. It’s cool but it’s not cold. It’s a groovy kind of melancholy; this man is, as someone once said, swimming in sadness. He’s alone out on that endless ocean with nothing but his memories and the breeze. Where Stina shuts the curtains across and hides from the heat, Christopher – the not-so-rugged-individualist – slips on a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of loafers and sets sail. Perhaps, instead of curling up and hiding from those rays, the trick is to face them head on, curls those fingers into a fist of pure emotion, pour a margarita and man up. In the smoothest possible way, of course.

NB: Please see the following video for more on the creation of this piece of music.

P

10. Steely Dan – “Time Out of Mind” (4:13)

P,

Using Christopher friggin’ Cross to chide me in terms of ‘manning up’ is a bold move indeed, and if “Sailing” wasn’t so smooth I might even take offense. Of course, as the supplementary material shows, even that song isn’t all sunshine and puppies. It did make me think of Michael McDonald, though, and Michael McDonald and summer make me think of one thing: Steely Dan. Especially Gaucho, their most “summery” album (because it’s their LA album, and I’ve never been there so in my mind it’s always summer down there). McDonald only provided backing vocals on one track there, the heroin ode “Time Out of Mind,” but what backing vocals! Becker and Fagen’s evident relish at making the smoothest possible backing for what are fetid, misanthropic tales of human folly and suffering is kinda funny – at least if you’re still drawing those curtains, like I am. Perfect for air conditioned night clubs where everyone disappears to the bathroom twice an hour.

I

11. Bill Bragg – “Lovers Town Revisited” (1:18)

I,

It’s getting so smooth here, it’s almost decadent. I never suggested “Sailing” was “all sunshine and puppies”, it’s about dealing with the pains of summer not denying them. Now, another coping strategy. We’re still in the club, or perhaps outside, but we’re a hell of a long way from L.A. Billy Bragg’s “Lovers Town Revisited” crackles with a parched, nervous energy. The shards of solo electric guitar sound like the tense heat of a summer Saturday night in some provincial British town centre. This is not the Dan’s world of coke and hipcats, it’s ale and skinheads. And, there in the centre of it all, the young William Bragg. He’s weighing up his chances, just before he makes the great leap. He really is looking for a new England, but the savagery of a Summer night – “boys outside preaching genocide” indeed – is almost enough to make him just forget it, just turn and run away from it all. It’s the antithesis of The Smiths “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”, yeh it’s the same shitty provincial Britain but Bragg wants, though he knows it is perhaps impossible, to “save the world”. Unlike moz though, he is unwilling to just give up, but at this moment he could just give in. It’s a sublime moment of faith in doubt. These things, Ian, are sent to try us.

P

12. Jason Molina – “Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go” (6:40)

P,

Really? Christopher Cross is sailing into some sort of yacht rock fantasyland, not sure how he’s dealing with the pains of summer! Bragg definitely is, though. Such a sublime depth of effort and pain packed into less than 90 seconds. But if I think of a man and an electric guitar, standing outside of a bar after a fruitless night with a stifling, moist heat in the air, I’m more likely to turn to Jason Molina and his claustrophobic solo album Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go. It was recorded by dint of the man hiding himself away in a small studio for three days, and you can tell; the subtly cataclysmic title track alone makes it feel like it’s at least thirty degrees in the room. It’s actually a little less sparse than the rest of the album, what with the muted drum machine in the background. For about a week here, between the punishing heat and the way rapidly rising gas prices made our broke asses unable to travel anywhere (oh, for a mass transit system like the UK’s!), this summer felt like the end of our comfortable way of life, in a small, overly dramatic way. Which is exactly what this song feels like.

I

13. The Jazz Butcher – “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)” (4:58)
14. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – “Casino Royale Theme (Main Title)” (2:38)
15. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – “Casino Royale Theme (Vocal)” (2:21)

I,

Maybe C. Cross isn’t really coping, but he’s dealing with it. Perhaps, it’s only denial. The Molina track is making the walls close in just listening to it. Heavy, heavy vibes. The skies over London have gone grey and I’m blaming you. If there’s one thing that typifies the reality of the English summertime it’s afternoons like this, wasted holidays spent indoor looking out as the rain drizzles down. That’s probably why our beaches fill on days the average Australian or Californian would describe as “a bit on the chilly side”. It’s like our national football team (soccer to you guys?); we don’t win very often – sometimes we even fail to qualify – so even the smallest victory becomes a momentous triumph. It’s that same spirit that fuels The Jazz Butcher’s “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)”, sure he has no truck with the Hollywood ideal of summer (“Oh, look- in California, everyone’s got a swimming pool in their backyard / Well-Me and Max and Davey Jones- we think you ought to get out there and stop it”) but he’s still hoping, still reaching for something. It’s the archetypical eighties indie tune: jangly guitar, proto-shoegaze swirly guitar, organ, bouncy momentum and most of all a lyric that speaks of a desire to connect. It comes from the same place as The Smiths’ “Ask”. Sure, Mozza may have been “spending warm summer days indoors” but he was still “writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl Luxembourg”. In their own wayward ways the OG indie kids were after pretty much the same things as everyone else in the universe: it was just that the thoughtless “fuck you” hedonism of the yuppies and thatcherites was giving contentment a bad name. It’s a song about getting out there, a song that put its faith in the theory that thousands of people have got to be O.K. He’s thwarted by distance, by reality – but he’s putting the words out there, ‘cos well someone might just listen. It may be using 7 inches of plastic, fanzines and the letters page of the NME – no internet in those desperate, desperate times- it doesn’t matter, it’s all communication, just different ways of getting out there. Meeting people can be easy! And hell, if not having to put on three layers makes it easier to get out there, then all the better!

Perhaps I have convinced you summer ain’t so bad, perhaps not. Hell, the amount of sunny days I’ve spent indoors. Doesn’t really bear thinking about y’know. Not that you have to go outside to have fun. I mean wasting Bank Holidays watching Bond films you’ve seen a few hundred times before isn’t the worst way to spend time. And, with that rather ungainly bit of shore-horning out of the way, my final song: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass performing Burt Bacharach’s “Casino Royale Main Theme”. A piece of music that very possibly drove some hepcat to invent the words “groovy” and “swinging” simply to describe the riotous collision of easy listening kitsch and blockbuster bombast. I’ve included both the instrumental version and the none-more-ridiculous vocal version performed by Mike Redway. After all that heat, angst and indie moping it’s only fitting to end with a track that manages to be at once sublime and not in the least bit serious.

P

P,

James Bond films! Herb Alpert! Herb Alpert doing the theme to a comedy James Bond film! I’ve tried hard to be the negative one here, but I can’t say no to that. Well, your music and the relatively cool weather we’ve had here recently. I give up, it’s not so bad – I’m going to go listen to “Don’t Falter” by Mint Royale (“when you’re with me, it’s always summer”) and pet my cat. We should try this again in the winter… assuming you don’t like the cold. It’d be nice to be rooting for the season next time.

I

PS. Is the rest of the Air France album as good as that track? I’m a little in love.

Total running time: 59:53

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?

A pop video by Del Amitri.

Wait, what?

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.

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.

Britain’s key pop-cult figures seem like tragic warnings of wandering too far from these prescribed paths. The likes of Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse sometime seem like characters from those schlocky “Evil Reefer” public information films. Grave warnings to any youngster naive enough to believe that a 9-5 with no lunch and some binge drinking on the weekend may not be a design for life.

It surprises me to say this but I found myself cheering on Johnny Vegas last Friday. Surprising, only because of this rather gruesome story about his behaviour towards a young woman, which made me take rather a dislike to him. No it was his behaviour on “Tonight With Jonathan Ross” where with he showed the a hilarious lack of respect to the aforementioned Mr Sugar. The look on Siralan’s face was brilliant, trying to take it all in good humour but obviously massively pissed off at not getting the ass kissing he so obviously felt he deserved. Sometimes it’s good to remember that being rich doesn’t automatically mean you should be respected.

So as a thumbed nose to the new yuppie age we are living through here is a selection of songs that suggest that being a walking sales pitch is no way to live. Songs that luxuriate in a good natured laid back slackness that transcends the suits and the cynics.

Madder Rose – Swim

I have a version of this -labeled “Madder Rose – Madder Rose”- that, by getting rid of the guitar, manages to be even more slack.

Joy Zipper – 1

I said the following about this song nearly two years ago:

This is so perfect a deployment of American alt rock tropes that it’s hard not to just sit here listing all the bands whose influence is hidden within: The Pixies, Pavement, The Breeders, Archers Of Loaf… all these and more slink somewhere just beneath the surface. The chugging rhythms, guitars that teeter between lazy strum and all out amp attack – yet would never be so crass as to do so, the lead male vocal that radiates the kind of laid back slacker charm that seemed to have been absent from rock since Stephen Malkmus decided being endearing didn’t suit him, the sun blushed female backing vocals. Then the two voices become so perfectly intertwined, their repetition of “the one” takes on an almost mantric quality and our suburban romantic and the deified object of his affections, “the sun was in her hands” apparently, spiral off above the streets and Joy Zipper too spiral away, off and above, transcending their influences and sounding like no one but themselves.
[10 out of 10]

Hey me two years ago, you are still on the money.

Mariah Carey ft Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Fantasy Remix

Totally loved up meets totally don’t give a fuck.

The Lemonheads – My Drug Buddy

I would really have preferred to have used “Rockin’ Stroll” which celebrates the myriad pleasures of going for a walk. This on the other hand celebrates the myriad pleasures of drug abuse but it’s still pretty blissful.

Lush – 500 (Shake Baby Shake)

Sometimes a small car is better than a big one.

Snoop Dogg – Gin and Juice

Not sure about slack but so laid back it’s pretty much horizontal.

Pavement – Range Life

“Out on my skateboard the night is just humming…”

See Also

I am not gonna link “Fools Gold” (Stone Roses), “Teenage Riot” (Sonic Youth) or “Freak Scene” (Dinosaur Jr.) but y know they all really fit as well.