Wednesday, November 22, 2006
NO MUSIC DAY VS NICOTINE WITHDRAWAL
OK, so I spent NO MUSIC DAY pondering what it is I want out of music, and I came to the following conclusion; I'm well fucking angry!! I'm angry that a bunch of pink-shirted, hairgel-buttered GOWKS are driving around London in their fucking little Foxton's Estate Agents motors (with the word 'PUNK' etched on the sides) without fear of brutal, bloody assault. BY DESERT ORCHID'S ROTTING PLONKER - how the HELL have these shitbags escaped a hard, hearty kicking into the Royal Free? Listen up - all estate agents are cunts. They are the enemy. Fuck making music - get out there on the streets and SMASH THE FOXTONMOBILES!! - preferably with the smug fuckmuppets still trapped inside. I don't want to hear another perfectly segued dubstep mix, I want to hear the sweet, shrill strains of estate agent screams, imploding windscreens, exploding petrol tanks! THEN we can all go down FWD and frig ourselves bandy to Skream.
Punk used to be about ugly sexy kids fighting back. I think this is why I never really got too fanatical about The Ramones. It goes without saying that the first Ramones LP is great and all that, but even better if you play it as a 'mono' recording by flipping the balance over to the guitar channel (the bass channel sucks) and then fool about with your turntable speed belt, to get the tempo to around 37 rpm. But anyway, here everyone was in UK79 - political violence on the streets, wildcat strikes, SPG intimidation and inner-city meltdown - and what were our punk rock cousins across the Atlantic singing to us? Rock rock...rockaway beach...rock rock...rockaway beach...rock rock...rockaway beach...it's so fucking hot on rockaway beach!I bet it was, you long-haired cunts! Not that I'd know about beaches, I was only 3 at the time. Anyway, seeing 'PUNK' painted onto an estate agent's car is legitimate grounds for aiming a brick at the driver - you're acting perfectly within your rights, the very word's an incitement to vandalism!
So what do we want and need from music? Well, I can't speak for you. But I reckon the answer's more records like Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants. An album that - get this - manages to fuse proto-Big Black feedback with Burundi battle hymns and speedfreak jazz-funk; swipes Nietzsche quotes and then clusterbombs them into catchy pop choruses; liberally plagiarises riffs from Link Wray, the 'Born Free' theme tune and Ennio Morricone; bashes out songs about Joe Orton, sadistic pirates, domesticity-induced nervous breakdown, Red Indian warriors and giant ants laying waste to civilisation. Too fucking right!
What? Bollocks to that? OK, howsabout a series of winter electro / synthpop festivals, to be held in (actual) laboratories. Instead of BORING / predictable stage backdrops, (real) scientists will be on hand, doing proper experiments ( ie- putting light through prisms and creating rainbows, making magnesium strips flare up, dissecting estate agents and members of the Fratellis, etc) while the musicians perform. Art meets education, y'know. While we're hob-nobbing with the cream of the scientific elite, it might be worth discussing whether it's feasible to reanimate Screaming Lord Sutch, while putting the remaining members of The Who 'to sleep'.
"Nej!"you pandiculate? OK, how about the formation of the world's first Riot Grrrl football team? See, this is what NO MUSIC DAY leads to, a wealth of wonderful ideas - I'm clearly winning hearts and minds with this post. Oh alright, I gave up at around 8.50 pm and put on some Knifehandchop, because I couldn't see the fucking point personally. It was as if I'd gone back to the old days, when my dad used to roar at me, "THEM BANDS...A BUNCH OF EEJITS! AND YOU'RE A BIGGER EEJIT FOR LISTENING TO 'EM!" His whole argument was that bands should wear "PROPER FUCKIN' CLOTHES" and learn to play the tin whistle, because they hadn't grown up in abysmal poverty in rural Ireland. "I HAD TO WALK 3 MILES TO SCHOOL, IN THE SNOW...IN BARE FEET!" he'd yell at me over the kitchen table, reminding me that no matter how 'left' I thought I was, I'd always be a snivelling jessie, a pathetic, prissified product of the late 20th century Decadent West, never condemned to sleep in a crane cabin on a construction site because guest houses across West London had placards reading "NO IRISH NO BLACKS NO DOGS" hanging up in the windows. I suppose he had a point. Well, no suppose about it, we couldn't escape it really. My punk/skin brother had rolled up one day with some anarcho-punkoid maenad on his arm, and was wolfing down his pork chops and mash when my dad went into his "I HAD TO WALK 3 MILES!! IN THE SNOW!! NO SHOES!" spiel. "Why didn't you put some shoes on?" my brother quipped. Seconds later, he was sprawled in the hall, picking his head out of a debris of mash and broken plate. Yeah, those were the days, eh - a bit of republican folk and, if my mental case mother was around, the odd smattering of 'Country' Willie Nelson. And the rest of the musical world? Noisy, vulgar, big-mouthed eejits, the lot of them. Pooves.
Punk used to be about ugly sexy kids fighting back. I think this is why I never really got too fanatical about The Ramones. It goes without saying that the first Ramones LP is great and all that, but even better if you play it as a 'mono' recording by flipping the balance over to the guitar channel (the bass channel sucks) and then fool about with your turntable speed belt, to get the tempo to around 37 rpm. But anyway, here everyone was in UK79 - political violence on the streets, wildcat strikes, SPG intimidation and inner-city meltdown - and what were our punk rock cousins across the Atlantic singing to us? Rock rock...rockaway beach...rock rock...rockaway beach...rock rock...rockaway beach...it's so fucking hot on rockaway beach!I bet it was, you long-haired cunts! Not that I'd know about beaches, I was only 3 at the time. Anyway, seeing 'PUNK' painted onto an estate agent's car is legitimate grounds for aiming a brick at the driver - you're acting perfectly within your rights, the very word's an incitement to vandalism!
So what do we want and need from music? Well, I can't speak for you. But I reckon the answer's more records like Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants. An album that - get this - manages to fuse proto-Big Black feedback with Burundi battle hymns and speedfreak jazz-funk; swipes Nietzsche quotes and then clusterbombs them into catchy pop choruses; liberally plagiarises riffs from Link Wray, the 'Born Free' theme tune and Ennio Morricone; bashes out songs about Joe Orton, sadistic pirates, domesticity-induced nervous breakdown, Red Indian warriors and giant ants laying waste to civilisation. Too fucking right!
What? Bollocks to that? OK, howsabout a series of winter electro / synthpop festivals, to be held in (actual) laboratories. Instead of BORING / predictable stage backdrops, (real) scientists will be on hand, doing proper experiments ( ie- putting light through prisms and creating rainbows, making magnesium strips flare up, dissecting estate agents and members of the Fratellis, etc) while the musicians perform. Art meets education, y'know. While we're hob-nobbing with the cream of the scientific elite, it might be worth discussing whether it's feasible to reanimate Screaming Lord Sutch, while putting the remaining members of The Who 'to sleep'.
"Nej!"you pandiculate? OK, how about the formation of the world's first Riot Grrrl football team? See, this is what NO MUSIC DAY leads to, a wealth of wonderful ideas - I'm clearly winning hearts and minds with this post. Oh alright, I gave up at around 8.50 pm and put on some Knifehandchop, because I couldn't see the fucking point personally. It was as if I'd gone back to the old days, when my dad used to roar at me, "THEM BANDS...A BUNCH OF EEJITS! AND YOU'RE A BIGGER EEJIT FOR LISTENING TO 'EM!" His whole argument was that bands should wear "PROPER FUCKIN' CLOTHES" and learn to play the tin whistle, because they hadn't grown up in abysmal poverty in rural Ireland. "I HAD TO WALK 3 MILES TO SCHOOL, IN THE SNOW...IN BARE FEET!" he'd yell at me over the kitchen table, reminding me that no matter how 'left' I thought I was, I'd always be a snivelling jessie, a pathetic, prissified product of the late 20th century Decadent West, never condemned to sleep in a crane cabin on a construction site because guest houses across West London had placards reading "NO IRISH NO BLACKS NO DOGS" hanging up in the windows. I suppose he had a point. Well, no suppose about it, we couldn't escape it really. My punk/skin brother had rolled up one day with some anarcho-punkoid maenad on his arm, and was wolfing down his pork chops and mash when my dad went into his "I HAD TO WALK 3 MILES!! IN THE SNOW!! NO SHOES!" spiel. "Why didn't you put some shoes on?" my brother quipped. Seconds later, he was sprawled in the hall, picking his head out of a debris of mash and broken plate. Yeah, those were the days, eh - a bit of republican folk and, if my mental case mother was around, the odd smattering of 'Country' Willie Nelson. And the rest of the musical world? Noisy, vulgar, big-mouthed eejits, the lot of them. Pooves.
# posted by Martin : 1:35 PM <%=MakeComment("116420525168810194","beyond the implode:NO MUSIC DAY VS NICOTINE WITHDRAWAL","http://seagullscreamingkillherkillher.blogspot.com/2006/11/no-music-day-vs-nicotine-withdrawal.html")%>
