Teddy Bear

It’s probably some DNA memory inside us all that sucks us into the festivals year on year, a congregation intent on getting out of the loop for a while and exploring new ways of living...y’know, sitting round fires, making a racket and drinking mead, furtive ground for forming new social ideologies... if only we could remember. The notion of hedonism has been hijacked and capitalised so y’all don’t have to worry none about anybody else or that weird politics stuff neither. With the G20 protests looking more like some ironic poll-tax re-enactment, people filming people , filming one person putting a window through , only a triumph for news anchors and digi-cam sales; politics in music has never seemed such an unlikely proposition.  It’s not without exception as even Lily’s having a pop (‘fuck you very much!’), but I’m not holding my breath for a Fascist Groove Thang  dubstep re-rub and as far as festivals becoming a forum for exploring real social change, I fear we’ll still only be one nation under T-mobile.

Back To The Future (Again)

Despite thirty odd years of post-modernity - y’know, the cultural pick’n’mix mash-up from wherever and whenever to make summat new – over in the ‘dunces corner’ of criticism are frustrated calls for ‘something original’, mumblings of ‘theft’ and the purity of real music, as if some genius will emerge from the lab , holding aloft the musical DNA for a new, untouched genre. Hooray!, but for the fact it goes against the real creative ebb and flow, cross-pollinated and  irreverent way music is born. Magic. Indeed, if you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future, which is why Lady Sov is doing The Cure, Flo-rida re-rubs Hi-NRG and ‘chicks-wiv-synfs’ queue up for pop glory, a vague obsession for the 80’s hot on the heals of last seasons obsession with ermm... the 80’s. No change there then and nowt wrong with a bit of pop fun, no matter how it ends up on your DAB. 

You Look Like A Dick

On a recent trip to the continent I was described by one promoter as ‘cool’, not that it’s a problem, but a little flag popped up and kinda got me thinking, on account of the fact that I mostly look like a 65 year old man in the wardrobe of a 19 year old twat. So, it dawned on me that it’s been a long time since any concerns of being, looking, sounding or smelling (?) ‘cool’ have been anywhere near my to-do list.

  As much as self-deprecation is a comic buffer to the ego, ‘cool’ is the symbiotic parasite to creativity, one can’t seem to operate without the other. A mountain of Art School applications and cheap Strats lie on the path to that unobtainable, untouchable edifice of the ‘id’. Not to say that nothing good ever came of taking a trip along that particular primrose path. Tonnes of great art and music has been spewed from cool’s daft gaping maw, but it’s claimed more casualties than victors. Brandishing their tools – be it ‘the six-string phallus’, paintbrush or pen, they hose their audiences down with hot arcs of liquid creative riffage and attitude, in the vain hope that some of it will stick enough get them beyond the velvet rope and into the knickers/underpants/consciousness’ of the masses.

  Of course it’s all completely subjective as one cats’ cool is another dudes’ fool but there are unspoken rules, the first is a bit like Fight Club and not to talk about it, unlike the Coolbrands website which is all they do (top of the list? – Aston Martin. Urgh).  Second is to ‘Not Give A Fuck’ or at least look like you don’t, but beware you don’t protest to N.G.A.F too much or the audience will ultimately N.G.A.F and your efforts will fall on deaf ears.

  Other tools to consider along the way are sunglasses - disarming accessories that detach you from the punters enough so they can’t see that you’re actually bricking it or just have wonky eyes. Cigarettes always seems to do the trick if you can handle the Emphysema, repeat prescriptions of Ventolin and short life span of course...which neatly bring us onto death. Oh Death!, you don’t have to N.G.A.F as legions of historians and journo’s will do it all for you and the grander the exit the better. Car crashes rate fairly well, but overdoses and especially suicide, adds gravity. You could even end up a legend. Imagine that!

   I like to think that stuff’s ‘good’ rather than ’cool’, art that succeeds in its attack will always flaw vanity and preening, but if there’s a few good songs along the way, I couldn’t G.A.F.

P.S. ...in a note to the Editor, if my column is to ‘straddle’ a feature, could you pop the photo of me at the top of each page so that I will be engaged in an endless kiss with myself. Now that would be cool.