by
Don’t get me wrong, I have been to the gigs and I have heard the records – you can’t avoid them in Shoreditch, or in Camden where I regularly torture myself. I’ve even snogged pretty girls in fishnets, black shirts and white ties. I’ve been in the very centre of the scene and I sat there disconnected like a baby without any desire to learn the language. I’ve read more than enough one-line bite-sized quotes about how these people are oh-so-mutha-fucken revolutionary! I’ve had it with it all and I want you to pop the lid and not stop seeing what I can see ‘til the break of a new dawn. Yes I am talking about THE Str*k*s. I am talking about the Guns’n’Roses tributes, the scruffy, the can’t really sing acts like THE Shite Shites (aka The White Stripes). My rational brain has been offended by all these lazy A&R decisions to sign bands who’ve been discovered and leapt on the conveyer belt like THE Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, THE Libertines and THE Vines and THE Walkmen and THE Parkinsons and, and, and every other THE band who’s being shouted about by people with nothing else to scream out. Also, even though they don’t proclaim to be THE one and only anything, add Ikara Colt and the stoopidly named 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster to this list of doom and yawnsome-bloody-doom. It’s the snotty punk snot dead three-lyric berating, style-style-style, thud-bash-crash, sound of wannabe 70’s punks. It’s a sound like a Rolling Stones wake held in limbo where Mötorhead and the Doors are having a fight to the accidental ultimate death, over who did the most drugs. Some of them have really over-over-over done charred hooks from the 70’s, with even less production work and no meanings whatsoever to any of the incoherent scum spewing from their glycerine touched-up lips which’ve been glued onto their ugly mugs. And the chicks dig hideous rock stars - it worked for Mick Jagger for years (ask yer Mum). They’re just glorified boy bands, can’t you see that? It’s all simple, standardised crap that fits in the right holes and presses a few right melody buttons – Wyclef and A1 can even do that, it isn’t hard!
What is my problem? Apart from asking myself questions, I can’t stand how this is scene is so lifeless, soulless, hollow and not what it says on the tin!! I know it’s just the ‘indie’ way to fight back at corporate rock. I know it’s not all the bands fault, someone chose to sign them and someone else decided the record was the best thing since the last best thing a week or so ago, which is now the worst thing in the world, ever… I appreciate it’s better for da kidz to listen to real people, making real music than watching Britney’s fake baps flap like punchbags along to her songwriter's well crafted song on MTV. And Sex sells, it’s an accepted fact. The drugs and one-hit-wonders all come and go as quick as naïve groupie expectations that pouty guitarists are actually caring fellows who believe solely in mutual masturbation and knowing more than a girls favourite song before giving her 32 seconds of intercourse.
It’s the clinical passionless passion and the media-made hysteria that is selling these records, rather than the bands actual ability or fucken hell, maybe their genius. I know my problem is being a scumbag who actually expects more, no, scrap that, I demand more than this. Why doesn’t everyone else want to be taken on a voyage by music? Are the bands playing these ‘special small gigs’ because they’re too shit to play anywhere bigger? Will any of these bands actually be around in a year’s time? Isn’t a music scene meant to spread out around the country along with the STD’s? Has it?
My problem is I want music that stands the test of time to remind me who I was today. I live in the moment. I want to live fast, die young but no one is geeing me on to do anything but they often remind me, “We have a record out this week,” hardly a mantra for the devils playground. I want you, yeah YOU Mr.Rock Star, to make me laugh, cry, cum and howl. Fast music, fast everything! Don’t rape me with this shit! And no that moaning about not being cool or rich enough, isn’t enough. Tell me who I should be. Define us. Empower us. We’re all stars now, in the rock show, apparently. Show us what it is to have a soul. Show us why this stuff is so dull. Tell us God exists. Tell us you are a God if you really wish. Give us our rites of passage. Tell me the third world needs saving, rather than you named your album about your favourite belt! Entertain us, the people who keep you in sunglasses and expensive jackets, with a show and melodies and thought and everything that we’re not getting from this crop of spoilt little rich kidz who happen to know some face who knows some face. Threaten to tear off our heads and piss in the holes if you really, really, have to, but stop trying to be different by being a blander version of The Such’n’Suches. You’re debasing yourselves and all that you stand for. Take a look around why don’t you. I’m not even gonna say PLEASE because I’m just a music junkie and no band has given me an addiction to good manners, no-one is telling me anything…
Bring on the culture where people no longer scream Shock me, shock me, shock me!!! Bring it on, now…
