On The Death of the REAL Popstar
>> Rant #1
I’m not quite sure where it went wrong. I have suspicions, and many half baked theories, but the one which, at least in my own mind, holds more sway is that it’s all Kurt Cobain’s fault. You all hate me already. That’s good.
Anyways, this particular train of thought got me round to questioning the real legacy of Nirvana. Sure, they left two fucking amazing studio records behind(let’s face it Bleach is pretty shite), but what else? At the time, it seemed that all the cobwebs of the late eighties were being blown away and, thank the lord, bands like Poison and the like were obliterated from the face of our green earth. For that, my ears and my children’s ears will be forever grateful. However, for all the bloatedness and hyberbole of folks such as William Axl Rose and latter day Prince etc etc, it’s hard to dispute the idea that they were among the last of the real pop or rock or whatever the fuck stars. Since then, who? And it’s all Kurt Cobain’s fault.
Almost overnight it became uncool to be in your face, with opinions that would cause controversy and appearances that looked like you gave a fuck. Sure, this was all pantomine, but it was more fucking entertaining than the lame shite we have dominating the charts and popular culture these days. I’m 26 now, and I’m glad that in my youth I witnessed people and bands like Guns N Roses, Prince, Michael Jackson. What do kids now have? Are there really any untouchable stars left? So we now have the faux working class rhetoric of Arctic Monkeys, the lame shite dancing of Northern tossers , the whiney, emo inflected chart bothering of Coldplay, and people like Andre 3000 and Jake Shears making a very reserved, half hearted attempt to cast themselves in the mould of classic PERFORMERS.
That’s right, performers. Surely that was half the point. It’s all very commendable for someone like Ricky Wilson to dress up in ill-fitting school blazers and espouse meaningless bollocks about predicting riots, but c’mon to fuck. If we’re producing people like him and James Blunt, then we really fucking need a riot. Scratch that actually, what we need is violent revolution. I mean even the cunts name- Ricky Wilson? He should be a fucking darts player, not a pop star, the fat fuck. I hereby call on anyone with a vested interest in the future of popular music and culture to a) kick fuck out the Kaiser Chiefs, and b) to storm every major label office in the country, occupy it and, erm, smash it up. Maybe not exactly constructive, but at least it’s making a point.
There are maybe a couple of folk left flying the flag for rock n roll and the art of performance , but none of them are getting any younger: Prince’s new record is great; a return to form and wonderfully sleazy to boot. It’s a tailor made soundtrack to heterosexual sodomy. Keith Richards is till flying the flag of chemical meltdown , bless him, while Bobby Gillespie and his merry men are possibly the only band left in the mainstream who make records that possess any kind of leftist political vitriol. For that we should be thankful. Beyond these three and the beautiful old curmudgeon that is Lou Reed, who is there? Even Bowie looks like a content suburban grandfather these days.
I’m not for a moment advocating a campaign of style over substance, lest we end up with a million Girls Aloud clones, but I’m merely bored with reading about and hearing boring people who could just as easily be supermarket assistants as pop stars.
For a while everything seemed counter cultural and cyclical and that was great. From Elvis to the Beatles to the Velvet Underground to disco to Punk Rock and onto Nirvana and Grunge, the history of 20th Century popular music would throw up a new movement to identify with. Nirvana was fifteen years ago, and there hasn’t been a single mass movement since. It’s frustrating. Worse than frustrating, it’s hard to see where the next one is going to come from. I watched Dirty Pretty Things on Saturday past and was deeply unimpressed, but kids were going mental for it. A famous person I was talking to later in the day about them put it quite succinctly-“ There is nothing for kids to get into and hold onto the way there was when I was growing up through the stones and punk, but they’ve gotta get into something, and that’s the best of a bad bunch.” He was right, and that’s fucking sad.
Hail Hail Rock N Roll.
>> Otis B. Driftwood
I’m not quite sure where it went wrong. I have suspicions, and many half baked theories, but the one which, at least in my own mind, holds more sway is that it’s all Kurt Cobain’s fault. You all hate me already. That’s good.
Anyways, this particular train of thought got me round to questioning the real legacy of Nirvana. Sure, they left two fucking amazing studio records behind(let’s face it Bleach is pretty shite), but what else? At the time, it seemed that all the cobwebs of the late eighties were being blown away and, thank the lord, bands like Poison and the like were obliterated from the face of our green earth. For that, my ears and my children’s ears will be forever grateful. However, for all the bloatedness and hyberbole of folks such as William Axl Rose and latter day Prince etc etc, it’s hard to dispute the idea that they were among the last of the real pop or rock or whatever the fuck stars. Since then, who? And it’s all Kurt Cobain’s fault.
Almost overnight it became uncool to be in your face, with opinions that would cause controversy and appearances that looked like you gave a fuck. Sure, this was all pantomine, but it was more fucking entertaining than the lame shite we have dominating the charts and popular culture these days. I’m 26 now, and I’m glad that in my youth I witnessed people and bands like Guns N Roses, Prince, Michael Jackson. What do kids now have? Are there really any untouchable stars left? So we now have the faux working class rhetoric of Arctic Monkeys, the lame shite dancing of Northern tossers , the whiney, emo inflected chart bothering of Coldplay, and people like Andre 3000 and Jake Shears making a very reserved, half hearted attempt to cast themselves in the mould of classic PERFORMERS.
That’s right, performers. Surely that was half the point. It’s all very commendable for someone like Ricky Wilson to dress up in ill-fitting school blazers and espouse meaningless bollocks about predicting riots, but c’mon to fuck. If we’re producing people like him and James Blunt, then we really fucking need a riot. Scratch that actually, what we need is violent revolution. I mean even the cunts name- Ricky Wilson? He should be a fucking darts player, not a pop star, the fat fuck. I hereby call on anyone with a vested interest in the future of popular music and culture to a) kick fuck out the Kaiser Chiefs, and b) to storm every major label office in the country, occupy it and, erm, smash it up. Maybe not exactly constructive, but at least it’s making a point.
There are maybe a couple of folk left flying the flag for rock n roll and the art of performance , but none of them are getting any younger: Prince’s new record is great; a return to form and wonderfully sleazy to boot. It’s a tailor made soundtrack to heterosexual sodomy. Keith Richards is till flying the flag of chemical meltdown , bless him, while Bobby Gillespie and his merry men are possibly the only band left in the mainstream who make records that possess any kind of leftist political vitriol. For that we should be thankful. Beyond these three and the beautiful old curmudgeon that is Lou Reed, who is there? Even Bowie looks like a content suburban grandfather these days.
I’m not for a moment advocating a campaign of style over substance, lest we end up with a million Girls Aloud clones, but I’m merely bored with reading about and hearing boring people who could just as easily be supermarket assistants as pop stars.
For a while everything seemed counter cultural and cyclical and that was great. From Elvis to the Beatles to the Velvet Underground to disco to Punk Rock and onto Nirvana and Grunge, the history of 20th Century popular music would throw up a new movement to identify with. Nirvana was fifteen years ago, and there hasn’t been a single mass movement since. It’s frustrating. Worse than frustrating, it’s hard to see where the next one is going to come from. I watched Dirty Pretty Things on Saturday past and was deeply unimpressed, but kids were going mental for it. A famous person I was talking to later in the day about them put it quite succinctly-“ There is nothing for kids to get into and hold onto the way there was when I was growing up through the stones and punk, but they’ve gotta get into something, and that’s the best of a bad bunch.” He was right, and that’s fucking sad.
Hail Hail Rock N Roll.
>> Otis B. Driftwood
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