Edge Trinkets

Written while on a dirty weekend in Manchester visiting a friend Mat

I’m sitting in Emo Park – this one’s in Manchester but every big city has got one in its centre somewhere. The teenagers that surround me are given the blanket term ‘Emo’ but I suppose some would identify themselves as Skater, or Goth, or any number of terms. To me they will always look like exactly what they are — the bastard children of every sub-culture of the last 30 years.

The boys have sweeping fringes of perfectly conditioned hair that — I bet — smells of coconuts, skin tight jeans, and over sized jackets with expensively alternative prints on them. The girls, pretty much the same. To my old, slightly hungover, eyes their enthusiasm seems borderline hysterical and the hugs they use to greet each other surprisingly tender.

It was late nineties when everything got fucked up. Bands like Rage Against The Machine, Cypress Hill and Limp Bizcuit (led by King Dickhead) started a rap/metal hybrid hastily called Nu-Metal (most trace the first instance of this sort of sound, not to the overplayed novelty record Walk This Way by Aerosmith and Run DMC, but to the album Judgement Night. A soundtrack to the film of the same name;  throwing up collaborations like Filter and Crystal Method, and Dinosaur Jnr. and Cypress Hill — I urge you to find it, it’s as wonderfully mad as it sounds). This Nu-Metal overlapped with bands like Korn, Deftones, and At The Drive In who used the same sound but bought a sincere musical and emotional depth. All of a sudden songs were about loss (see: One Armed Scissor from ATDI), memory (see: My Own Summer by Deftones) and even child abuse (see: well pretty much the whole of the self-titled first album from Korn), the most Metal-as-a-genre could have hoped for before was angry political stuff, the best of which is RATM, or songs about cars, titties, or the notion of ‘partying’.

The Metal-heads, once branded with long hair, denim, leather, and band T-shirts, could then start incorporating the Americana of sportswear (Addias mostly, but hockey and baseball shirts were OK), baggy jeans and Dreads. At the same time Goths started to wear the dayglo colours of the flourishing club kids, and fans of the punk-rave band Prodigy didn’t know what the fuck to wear.

Nowadays being ‘alternative’ isn’t a matter of not fitting in, no looking for a subcultural group that will have you then drawing a musical circle in the sand around yourselves with your own uniform and language. Now, being ‘alternative’ is a whole platter of styles and choices from a buffet of subcultures. And being sold those choices in the same ‘alternative’ shop that has outlets in every shopping centre in every major city.

My friend is next to me, sleeping off last night where he may or may not have done a hip-hop headstand on his own in the middle of the dance floor. So I have time to watch the Emo herd and I can’t help but compare.

The groups I was once part of were smaller for a start — and while the atmosphere here is friendly and even festival like, there are noticeable cool kids and losers round the edges. That is not to say there were no snobs back then, there is nothing more bitchy than a elitist punk. It’s just that even on the most bitchy days we were all one group, a bunch of people that had found each other and looked out for each other. Not just one hundred or so individuals dressed the same.

Stealing this off @kierongillen author of the amazing Phonogram: The Singles Club. Trying to kick start writing for fun, I’ve been working to deadlines and for other projects I’ve began to dread the keyboard. So am using this to shake the mud of my shoes a bit.

day 01 – your favorite song
day 02 – your least favorite song
day 03 – a song that makes you happy
day 04 – a song that makes you sad
day 05 – a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 – a song that reminds of you of somewhere
day 07 – a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 – a song that you know all the words to
day 09 – a song that you can dance to
day 10 – a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 – a song from your favorite band
day 12 – a song from a band you hate
day 13 – a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 – a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 – a song that describes you
day 16 – a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 – a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 – a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 – a song from your favorite album
day 20 – a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 – a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 – a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 – a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 – a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 – a song that makes you laugh
day 26 – a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 – a song that you wish you could play
day 28 – a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 – a song from your childhood
day 30 – your favorite song at this time last year

There is no chance of me doing this daily, don’t even look at me like that. And I’m going to do this in any order I damn well please. My Blog my rules baby.

Song you want played at your funeral – You Can’t always Get what you want – Rolling Stones

To any music fan this is a high pressure question, your final chance to show your musical chops to what essentially a captive audience. Anything too popular is a no no really, I’d like to think that I’m not one of those hipster twats in life, but in death I really feel the need to shun the obvious. The chosen song will forever be tied to your memory to those that attend and should capture some public essence of you. Its hard to fight the perverse instinct to be flippant, request the theme song to Button Moon or choose something that will make people laugh with the bad pun of a title, but to a true music fan it’s also a puzzle to be solved a cryptic riddle of your life that is to be solved in 3 or 4 minutes.

Or in my case 7 and and a half minutes. OK it doesn’t pack the raw emotional punch of Wild Horses but Wild Horses is a track for being in love and even though I suspect love will play a big part of my life, it talks of the needing desperate love between lovers and it could start a fight between one of my six or seven wives about who it was meant for. Also, frankly, when I heard Susan Boyle sing it it was ruined forever.

The choral start is both at once sweet, reverential and somehow a little dirty. The inferred corruption of the angelic voices in the context of my funeral, utterly relevant. The song itself at its heart is an acoustic guitar ditty that sweeps up into a giant number with piano and orchestration. With Keith Richards almost minimal and genius lazy guitar poking his head in when relevant. The song has a laid back optimism weaved through it saying ‘everything will be alright’, I like that.

Timothy Leary had a theory that the drugs that your brain released when you die mess with your ability to perceive time, that your last moments were stretched to a point that our brains could mistake as infinite. How you felt in those infinite seconds would be your own personal heaven or hell. Now Tim was full of shit about a lot of things but that is both a startlingly terrifying and comforting thought. For me, You Cant Always Get What You Want stretches into that long comfortable and ultimately hopeful forever, while leaving my loved ones that message of pragmatic optimism.

*for perhaps the best example of the lazy genius see the solo in The Stones’ other epic Sympathy For The Devil – the way he doesn’t fill the space left for the solo with needlessly complicated finger work, he just lets the piercing sound of the few notes he does play just fucking ring)

It might seem recently as if I’ve dropped off the face of the internets, swallowed by apathy and mediocre television. This is just a quick post to assure you all I am hard at work, I still do the day job, which is just getting harder, AND I am throwing myself into this – Student Birmingham yes a know the websites a bit shonky and needs tweaking massively but that’s all in hand. As part of this web venture I will also be doing a half an hour Podcast a week, recorded at Rhubarb Radio starting this Sunday.

I am so tired at the moment as I am essentially working two jobs but things should settle down soon. I like being busy *repeats to self while rocking backwards and forward* This is how busy I am, for last couple of hours I’ve been trying to push Spotify into my tiny Linux laptop using an windows emulator and a large hammer. That’s how I relax now apparently

I also have this – Dirty Bristow – running in the background which I will get round to putting my thoughts on down here soon. but, for now, here’s Jons

As for the Art Is Easy nights, I have no idea when I will get a chance to organise the next one. If someone wanted to give me a hand doing this it would very much more likely to happen, so give us a shout.

I will still be contributing to Area magazine and will be continuing my column on BIN:S real soon, using here to communicate with you guys and throwing any spare thoughts that I can’t palm off anywhere else

the song that was playing ON FUCKING SPOTIFY as I wrote this

An article of mine has recently been published and it was severely edited. This is NOT an attack on the editors more me throwing a hissy fit over my precious words. I have a succesful working relationship with the AREA team and don’t want to endanger that. In fact they published another one of mine in the same issue verbaitum. HERE

Being heavily edited feels weird, as a writer that has worked with several levels of editorial control I understand the need for it, but even lightly editing your text, to begin with, feels like somebody performing surgery on your baby. Ok it’s a relatively non invasive and necessary, like correcting a hair lip, but that’s still somebody messing with your child.

Being almost completely re-written on the other hand, feels like somebody harvesting your baby for its useful organs and presenting you with the bag of meat that is left.

Now, looking at the article, it is overlong, doesn’t always hit the tone of the magazine, and, in places, is frankly offensive. So I completely understand why they wouldn’t run it as is. I suppose I’m just being overly precious, but I worked hard to produce something that wasn’t just a usual, run of the mill travel feature. So here it is in all of its ugly glory.

Prague

Prague is lousy with history. And yes, history can be boring. History can be just a tortured list of names and dates. But, history can also be about stories. And stories are essential, our brains are hardwired to accept and are programmed to receive stories. Most guide books will tell you that Prague is ‘the city of a hundred spires’ which frankly sounds dull as shit. Now ‘the city of a thousand stories’ that’s where I want to spend a weekend.

Speaking of which, let me tell you a story. It’s late one night ten years ago, in one of the numerous Irish themed bars that, back then, must have littered the winding medieval streets like crushed coke cans. Our hero, for as we shall later find out a hero most certainly he is, Johnny Touristson was mooning a passing local. Please don’t judge Johnny too harshly, if he had chosen to abstain from mooning the local his arse would have been the only one in the room encased in trouser. And beside mooning the locals was something you just did ten years ago in Prague. Fate though is a cruel bitch at the best of times and Johnny fell, banging his exposed buttocks on the rough table. This was painful enough but johnny also received a splinter the size of the devils thumb; right in the ring.

Embarrassed and uncomfortable Johnny does something unheard of – he goes to bed early. This is truly a brave act because back then amongst the stag dos and business trips, going to bed early and relatively sober is an act so unmanly he may as well of fellated the bar staff, not forgetting the balls, in front of the whole room of roaring drunk football-shirted English stags.

Johnny waddles back in shame and no little pain, shunning the strip clubs and weaving between the herds of chanting British thugs. After some home surgery with duty-free vodka and the complementary toothbrush Johnny removes a splinter of wood he would later refer to as ‘Odin’s toothpick’. Because of Johnny’s heroic early night he wakes relatively early and because his friends only arrived back a few hours ago chanting ‘DAVE FINGERED A STRIPPER’ he set off to explore Prague on his own. The shame of last night kept him away from the the bars, strip clubs and bungee jump salesmen. And instead he wandered into art galleries, the lack of hangover meant he could look up with clear eyes and take in the amazing hodge-podge of architecture and with the money saved and lack of sickness he ate the food.

At first glance Johhny could be forgiven for dismissing Prague as just another ex-soviet eastern European shit hole. There is bad graffiti everywhere, run down shop fronts, grubby hand written signs and smoking is not only allowed indoors but encouraged, which nowadays positively seems barbaric. But the dirt and grime is just one layer, scratch the surface just a little and the rewards are amazing and spiritually more refreshing than the square palaces of glass and concrete we seem to have over here.

Johnny found the city is perfect to walk around, which is handy because the tram system and underground are reliable but frankly incomprehensible. Like any old city, it grew organically and haphazardly and its a pleasant experience just to wander around following the old cobbled streets just to see what happens next, doing what the French situationist called dérive. Every architectural style and art movement is reflected in the buildings and décor, not so much looking like a fairytale, but a hundred fairy tales all at once.

Old town is old, to give you an idea, when johnny asked how old the New Town was our guide replied “600 years”. The palace complex is beautiful and littered with statues, everyone of these have not only history attached, but stories, my advice, and Johnny would surly agree, would be to find either a really good tour guide or take a decent book and discover the place for yourself. The market square is a massive draw for tourists and during the winter months home to a market that, yes, is straight from the top of a chocolate box but is also authentic and real, a blacksmith will adjust for you his hand made jewellery, you can eat stews of a meat you would rather not know the name of, and see real handmade crafts that date back a hundred or so years. This is in direct contrast to the thousand or so little tourist gift shops that blight the area like acne on a supermodel, avoid these shops they sell mass produced crap at extortionate prices.. But, even thay are just another layer in a city of layers and a chapter in a city of stories

Johnny spread the word and ten years later the stag trade is all but dead. It helps that the prices have levelled up to the same as any European capital city and not 50p a pint.

Falling in love with Prague is like falling in love with a abused spouse, there’s not a lot of outwards signals but every so often you’ll see the bruises. A strip club, a Irish pub or even the odd sign reminding tourists that the police are armed and have no sense of humour. You end up not only respecting her for what shes been through and survived but loving her a little more for it.

And I did fall in love with Prague, and like any good relationship I can see its flaws, but accept them and it reveals good points. Of which there are many; like the architecture, the pace, and the stories.

Thank you Johnny.

1. Prague is, in places, as close to historic as you can get outside of a theme park, this means most of the streets are cobbled and uneven, which even to the strong and hardy can be hard work.
2. The exchange rate to Euros at the moment is not a preferable as it could be, and most of the time you get looked at like a raping Russian soldier should you ask to pay in the Euro. The local currency is the Koruna and accepted everywhere
3. the Czechs generally have a really sarcastic dry humour and don’t smile a lot, even though they’re having a good time. Just because your new Czech isn’t smiling doesn’t they’re not having a good time. While I was there I was taken to dinner in a typical Czech restaurant that to my eyes looked like a particularly harrowing Alan Bennett play – this is how they cut loose.
4. I was offered drugs by strangers every time I went into a public place; to be fair I would pick me out of a crowd too. I wouldn’t trust these guys and if you do I suppose you kinda deserve everything you get.
5. The beer can be a little expensive but also deceptively strong, on the first night we got so drunk that at least four intelligent journalists got flummoxed by a door.

During winter, bmibaby will fly from Birmingham International Airport to Prague up to 4 times a week on Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday. There will be extra flights added on Tuesday and Wednesday during the busy Christmas period.
- Fares start from just £19.99 including taxes and charges.
- The airline also flies from Birmingham to: Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belfast International, Edinburgh, Faro, Geneva, Glasgow, Ireland West Knock, Malaga, Murcia, Nice, Palma and Prague.
- Please visit www.bmibaby.com for more information.

By ‘Our’ I mean mine and Matt‘s, and by ‘New’ I mean ‘we only just found out about them’ and by ’09′ we of course mean last year. And yes I this is yet another list in a time of year where the internets is full of lists.

Balti Towers – The Ballard Of Five Bad Cats

The only midland band on the list. I like to think of the music scene in Birmingham as the cocktail barman of the country – taking bits and flavors from every genre and culture expertly blending them and then giving the result a funny name. Balti Towers are a great example of this, traditional guitar indie tinged with Rockabilly, Skiffle and layered with Dhol drums.

These guys have been gigging solidly for the last six months and plan an album in June of which The Ballard of Five Bad Cats should be the first single. A leering sly track, that changes starts with slow beats and explodes into a massive jump up and down chorus.

Alan Has A Massive Hat, Yes He Does, He Really Does – Greener Grass Than Blue

When I first saw these guys on YouTube I was disappointed by the lack of hats but was soon surprised and smitten by the huge sound produced by the trio of solid Lancashire men. Punky stadium rock with intelligent lyrics roared at you by a man that resembles a small bear.

This years highlight of the Alchemy Festival in Prague, playing two encores much to the chagrin of Bruce Springsteen who called them ‘Loud, preening tools’ in Mlady Svelt a local newspaper. Greener Grass has an important political statement I’m sure but I’m to busy slam dancing with my cat to care.

Quinoline yellow E104 – destroy destroy DESTROY

destroy destroy DESTROY is pure Frenetic sugar pop but what else would you expect from a band named after the most notorious e-number that for a short while had hysterical parents running downs supermarket aisles like it was AIDS infected raccoon shit?

But I digress, E104 sound like what would happen if L7 gang raped a children’s TV presenter and brought up the offspring listening only to Bis, Sesame Street and Slayer. May be a little intense for mainstream success but being an all girl band dressed like a Retro Future St Trinians will go in their favor.

Third Liquid Suicide – Drinking Perfume

With the explosion of J-pop and J-rock this year it would be remiss not to have at least one band. Sacrificing the choppy and structured form that seems to dominate Japanese music for a looser more spontaneous sound. Some critics would say the music sounds entirely improvised and generally they would be right but entirely missing the point.

Drinking Perfume is titular track from their third album and is a crashing ear fuck that sounds like the Editors falling down a spiral staircase, in a good way.

Bumping Ugly – John Holmers Odyssey

Using synth, slap bass and samples from seventies porn films this band lie somewhere in the middle of a Venn Diagram with overlapping circles marked ‘Groove’,'Funk’, and ‘Mad Electro’.

They make it on the list for the track John Holmers Odyssey. A sleaze funk epic that I played non-stop over the summer fooling the restaurant downstairs into thinking I either had a weirdly obsessive taste in music (I do) or an incredibly strange but active sex life (I also do).

Peter and the Wolf – Cry Baby

2009 could’ve been the year that intelligent breaks bounced back. The year when intellectualism wasn’t frowned on. Alas the idiot masses welcomed Dup-Step as the background noise to their chemical intake. But as bleak as it looks, thinking isn’t dead. Brighton-born breaks duo Peter and the Wolf snatched a small degree of mainstream success after hammering away in nasty, dirty clubs for over a decade.

Breakthrough track ‘Cry Baby’ is an assault course of sound tempered only by the limits of current sound-system technology. Utilitarian synth stabs and perfectly placed wubs run alongside a bassline that’d trouble sufferers of arrhythmic heart conditions.

It’s a lesson in well executed beat alchemy that doesn’t fall into the traps of over-production or pandering to the masses.

The boys have got gigs lined up across Europe this year and are set to rock Brazil’s Cavalo Pequeno festival in the summer. This is the future of dance music and you will sit down and damn well listen. The intelligentsia will win in 2010

Bad Tranny – Leave Me

The US gets Lady Gaga, we get Bad Tranny. Imagine your dad squeezing his late-middle-aged bulk into a PVC horror corset and applying the smeared lipstick and mascara of an old Hollywood soak. You now have an impression of Tranny’s live act, just a hundred times less upsetting. It’s more Benny Hill kitsch than kooky glamour but let’s not complain too much.

The visual horror of Bad Tranny, alter ego of Swindon-born ex-civil servant Rupert Rollins, risks distracting us from the musical genius beneath. Buried deep inside the monstrously made-up behemoth is the voice of an angel. Moreover, the man is a one-stop musical alchemist.

Leave Me brings back old school vocal Chicago house (and not too soon), bastes it in electro and roasts till the juices run clear. It’s a soulful thumper that demands a make-shift podium and tidy attire.

After doing the rounds as a self-pressed white label, the track has spark interest from the bigger boys as it’s spread from sweaty underground grind-holes with the ferocity of a venereal disease that’s new to science. It looks like there’s no cure for this infection. 1998 has returned.

Mui Cosa Tumbi – Sunshine Track

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got, and taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. But this doesn’t have to mean drowning your sorrows in a rusty bucket of vodka.

The infectiously joyful Afro-pop of multi-instrumentalist Mui Cosa Tumbi provides the perfect panacea for all modern day worries. Lost a friend to cancer? Become a casualty of the recession? The answer’s in music: just grab a giant maraca and shake the blues away. It’s incredibly fun as well as cathartic.

On Sunshine Track, Ghanian born Tumbi blends traditional drums with uplifting, if unintelligible, lyrics and a smattering of surf-style guitar. Think the Lion King meets Fela Kuti meets Vampire Weekend.

Released on Cosa’s indigineous label, Akwaaba, the tracks been a regular play of Gilles Peterson for the past few months, but with only limited underground recognition has only just begun to see the light of day. But maybe that just as well the tunes emergence at the end the end of 2009 is pretty apt.

What with all the war, the tidal waves and financial woe, Sunshine Track is the perfect tune to put a lid on what’s been a pretty shitty decade.

New Man – Safe in here

Few music fans will permit an act to stand at the front of the stage and personally head-count the entire crowd. Few gig-goers would stand for sporadic violent outbursts and unprompted high-pitched vocal tics. Few artists however, are as gifted and unpredictable as up-and-coming synth genius New Man.

Safe in here, New Man’s springtime offering was a haunting, minimal, tormenting piece; a flickering strip-bulb of dark electronic pop – the catharsis of a locked in soul bashing against a wall of bone and skin.

As a view into the mind of it’s composer it’s mercifully brief. A second over the 3.45 track-length could break the strongest of minds. As a live tune, it’s usually played as two sections, opening and closing the gig. So far, there have been no casualties.

The shocking live antics, audience-testing eccentricities and psyche harming music, it’d be easy to write New Man off as attention-seeking pretension, but if you do anything, bar eating and defecating, see New Man live. Make sure to do it soon. At 25 years old, he is a genius destined for the 27 club.

Griminal Massive – Das Beat

In the year that Dizzee went bonkers, and the rest of scene went house and pop, it looked like Grime had breathed its last respectable breath. Enter Griminal Massive, a South-Lincoln outfit who’ve set out to save UK grown hip-hop from a fate worse than a Saturday night stabbing..

The trio’s Nu-Grime sound comes like a bass-powered pneumatic kick in the guts, searches your pockets for valuables, then leaves you spread eagled and confused on the concrete. It’s hit and run music, a refreshing return to form for a scene that’s become a clichéd and inbred parody..

Debut track, Das Beat, is already well-entrenched in the national psyche, blasting out angrily on mobile phones for the past year or so. Unfortunately it’s December release was overshadowed by the Rage/ X-Factor fisticuffs..

Believe it or not, the tune is a tribute to the German-born great-grandfather of trio member Dippy-P, who went down on a U-boat in 1943 – a brave move for a brave new band who could well come to dominate in 2010..

In a few days time, on the 4th of November, a film will go on general release that is set in a scary and terrible world. It’s a world where young girls are traded to settle arguments without bloodshed, resources are scarce, your identity is tied to arbitrary numbers, and wearing the wrong colours or wandering into another person’s territory could get you beaten, killed, or worse. This is a world were seven year olds have access to guns, and being shot is a badge of honor.

 

Although I could be talking about any dystopian sci-fi Video Nasty from the early eighties you may have already guessed I’m actually referring to areas of Birmingham. Not LA, Rio, or Africa, but the city you live, right now. OK Not the areas you may live in obviously. But short bus journeys away. Its where children have to deal with these rules and joining gangs not only seem the only option but a damn site preferable than buckling down, scraping a few GCSE’s and one day, maybe, becoming lower middle management in an office job they hate.

Ever met a kid in a gang? I have, they’re not showy or quick to anger like most of the young people from the same areas. They are closed, almost to the point of autism. School doesn’t bother them, not in a rebellious way. They just don’t even entertain the notion that teachers or school authorities have any influence in there world. There eyes are dead and distant and they look right through you, not dismissively but rather that they regard you as a ghost, a person that has no more impact on there life than the dream they had last night. Gang members mostly don’t get into trouble at school because they’re above the childish rebellion and dealing with far more serious and potentially life and death situations, or they simply don’t want to pop up on any more radars than is absolutely necessary, be it school, social services or the police.

 

It’s likely that you think you have met gang members. Birmingham police estimate that there are less than one hundred and fifty boni-fidi gang members in Birmingham. The kids you have met, been mugged by, or been intimidated by on the back of the bus are not gang members. They aspire to be gang members. They are so seduced by gang culture that they commit, what the police force refer to as ‘low level crime’ and generally alienate themselves from society until they are ripe for recruiting.

 

And why wouldn’t they? The gangs themselves have grew in the same cultural Petri dish as you or me, they are as aware of the benefits of self aggrandizing, branding and advertising as we are, in fact maybe more so. Because gangs have something to sell, not a product, but a lifestyle and they have a medium to do it. Type almost any north Birmingham post-code into YouTube and you will see short films made by and for the gangs of that area. Most have MySpace pages featuring talented young men and women who most gangs consider ‘trophy members’. These are gang members that have a higher profile than your average street grunt; they are the most sought after members of gangs and treated as commodities. If these are good looking girls they can, and often are, swapped and traded like Panini stickers, never given a voice or opinion. Boys could be talented rappers or even budding sportsmen. These Prestige members often intimidated into joining the gangs are belong to a situation and culture that fool them into thinking that the gang is the only option or family they have. Tragically it’s the young people that have the brightest prospects of leaving that are the ones actively sought after and ‘recruited’.

The film is called ’1day’ and is set and filmed around Handsworth, all its cast, apart from a few key actors are from the area, and inevitably members of the gangs they portray. Although I have yet to see the film I suspect a lot of the elements that I have mentioned here will be discussed in the narrative and the more depressing points hid behind the same sort aggrandizing and protagonist empathy that the real message will be lost. No one will realise that these problems are real and happening to people’s sons and daughters every day.

 

Another, more practical worry is that it seems that only members of one gang were chosen to appear in the film. Which to all intents and purposes becomes an elaborate version of the YouTube adverts and contains many of the ‘trophy’ members of that gang. Or, if you like, the gang members that do appear in the film will quickly become so called ‘trophy members’. This, many suspect, will draw a lot of negative reaction from the rival gangs, and the negative reaction will not just translate into poor box office figures and stern letters to The Guardian. There will be violence, and I suspect a lot of it. Now a lot of this probably will not be reported in the main press, partly because the police ask local press to not run gang related story’s in fear of giving them the sort of reviews they would be proud of or inspire revenge attacks. And partly, for the larger press, there is nothing novel or newsworthy about gang violence.

 

The film angle will be attractive to your average journo so, who knows. Watch this space I guess. In the mean time, the gangs will continue to control the lives of young people, some young people will aspire to have their lives controlled by gangs, and anyone who knows what goes on will continue to stand at the sidelines and try and solve an unsolvable situation with the little resources they have

The trouble is, a place like this is DNA encoded with its obsolescence. Like a deformed water headed baby kept on life support and doomed by its own genetics. And if this place is too survive then the option ain’t pretty

The next generation of rock music fans have split loyalties. And why shouldn’t they? if saturated by information and options its seems an act of a crazy person to belong to one group. A new study shows that current teens see know problem in belonging to more than one tribe; the signs were all there, raving ballerinas, straight edge punks, and vegan infantry in the army already exist.

The future is grim. when sub-cultures are worn and discarded like fancy dress, places like this will become a theme-park for scene tourists wearing pull on tattoo-sleeves, and foam studs glued to their immaculately made up faces. In a world of empty glamour and style-over-content authenticity is revered but never aspired to.

The true trappings of the ‘alternative’ lifestyle were always the things that permanently marked you as apart from the crowd, tattoos, piercings, and the Mohawk are stylistic signals of civil disobedience. But as the allegiance of any group is going to be split amongst many tribes and tried on for the weekend these symbols will eventually lose their potency. I cant think of one signifier that started in the subculture that hasn’t at some point been co-opted by the mainstream, faux-hawks, tattoos worn by any passing starlet, even Harrison fucking Ford got his ear pierced.

I see a future where, along side bars that offer ‘a taste of Latin’ and 80 theme bars, are built ‘rock dives TM’ where the waitresses wear leather jackets and serve amusingly named cocktails, spray on cobwebs adorn spotless clean wall that are interrupted only by an artful aged band posters, and the music is always well within government safety guidelines.

Or we could be lucky and wiped out by a giant fucking tidal wave.

I’ve been listening to the classic album ‘Pearl’ by Janis Joplin. The theme of this weeks radio show is ‘japan’ and, yes, the songs tend to be THAT tenuously linked.

I love Janis Joplin’s voice and it started me thinking how an unknown Janis Joplin would fare in todays X-factor. You see Joplin’s voice is completely the opposite of what Cowls cohorts expect or want from the chattering masses willing to swap dignity for their alloted 15 minutes. Her voice isn’t note perfect , AND it doesn’t hold the up and down vibrato on sustained notes which is the staple singing trick preferred by contestants on this random game show.

The Ground Zero of this loathsome substitution of any real singing prowess was the cover of ‘I Will Always Love You’ by everybody’s favorite crack fiend – Whitney Houston. The original, incidentally, is three times the song that got wedged at the top of the charts for ten weeks (back when the charts used to actually matter and didn’t spring fully formed from the thighs of coke deranged PR agents thighs) The difference between the two versions being not only did Dolly write the song, but lived it and re-lived it every single fucking time she sang it. You can literally hear her heart breaking. The sentiment of the Whitney Houston abortion being second hand, borrowed from the movie it accompanies.

This notion of accompanying sentiment in place of actual emotion is evident in the X-factor – their voices contain no real emotion so they choose to accompany any entrant they can with a sad back story – so we, the sophisticated reader of the televisions, make the leap of overlap, hearing meaning where there is none – mis-judging our own pity echoing in our heads as emoting in the singing.

Joplin’s voice is hoarse and damaged from what sounds like a month of crying and whiskey and this is not far from the truth. Plagued her entire life by low self-esteem, she allowed herself to bounce around from destructive relationship to destructive relationship, cuddling up to, the appropriately named, Southern Comfort and the blanket of heroin. Every note sounds dragged over her scarred heart and voice and she frequently stops the live shows to plead with the audience to give each other the love and respect you feel she so sorely missed.

X-factor singers pantomime emotion. I’ve never bought the suffering artist shtick but singing, good singing, has to come from a place of honesty, not faux regret and the right warbling note. X-factor is a sideshow distraction away from our inevitable death and good for only hangovers and sneering. A good singer connects the souls of all that are listening and makes life a less lonely place.

My favorite bit of any Janis Joplin’s song are just two notes. At the end of ‘Mercandes Benz’, her last ever recorded song. Just after she finishes the playful accapella with a off hand ‘Thats it’ there are two notes. The last two notes she ever put down on tape are not singing, but the beginning of a laugh. I love to hear this – it reminds me about hope and love and joy. Just two notes, fuck you Simon Cowell, fuck you.