...[things that make you go AAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHtwat]...

those who know me know of my distaste where daphne and celeste are concerned. they know how i grumbled about d+c playing the main stage at reading - i didn't bother joining the disgruntled masses in pelting them with assorted substances; i really couldn't be fucked to waste my time on them at all. but this isn't exactly about daphne and celeste. it's about "punk-rock". if you read my april 18th diary entry, you'll have already seen my mini-rant about the misuse of that word. this is a continuation because it's bugging me. warning - this is likely to be a very unstructured rant, wont to go off on tangents, because i don't yet know exactly what i'm trying to say or what the hell i'm talking about yet. hopefully by the end of this i will. so where do d+c come in?

i was discussing this whole thing with a friend of mine 15 minutes ago. i grumped about the way destiny's child are labelled "punk-rock" by irony-laden music hacks and twattish balding scotsmen who inflict shite like mishka on us. and i pointed out that destiny's child, good or bad, have nothing to do with punk-rock because they are completely separate from the punk ethic of fucking things up from the inside - they've gotten to the top, and now they'll probably continue doing what they do and making money. not a sin. but nothing to do with punk. people like courtney love, who rip, slash and burn their way to the top, only to spit on the heads of everyone whose dicks they had to suck along the way, and fucking enjoy the retribution and the rewards, are punk-rock. and daphne and celeste are punk-rock. here my friend disagreed with me vehemently, saying that d+c are pop-rock and have nothing to do with punk - meaning punk the musical genre.

anyone who's read the music papers will have seen all the pro/anti d+c faffery over the past year and a half so i won't mash through all that again. put simply, i think d+c are "punk-rock" [god i hate typing that, it makes me cringe] because they have the most important thing of all. attitood, baby. in the musical forum they're completely talentless. i don't think their tunes are "fun" or enjoyable or cute or kitsch or any of that bullshit; daphne and celeste are shit. just like a lot of other shit novelty kiddie-pop acts who coin money out of the gullible/ironic masses. but here's the vital difference. westlife, aqua, et al have never walked out onto the main stage at reading, laughed at the baying crowd as they dodged flying piss, and cheerfully enthused about the experience afterwards. d+c have, knowing full-well that they were by that point hated almost universally by metal kids and indie followers everywhere, knowing the reaction they'd get. they even managed to piss brian molko off along the way [although admittedly that's an easy and tempting task for anyone]. now they annoy the piss out of me, but i can't deny that something like that took balls, and that sets them apart from the rest of the chart junk.

that's the thing. people like them take the piss. people like them polarise opinion, they're loved or hated. look at courtney love; clawed her way up from trailer-park hell to her current role as versace-wearing bastard-fronting hollywood �ber-bitch-from-hell. she's currently pissing people off by setting down rules for the brave members of her new all-girl musical project, bastard - for a start she's got plans for them all to appear stark tit naked on the cover of their album, their boobs gaffer-taped. she knows what she wants, and she doesn't mind pissing people off to get it. people see her as a bitch and she likes it that way, because it means she gets what she wants. and people hate her for it, just the way they hate daphne and celeste for daring to infiltrate the rock sanctuary of reading and parade their evil pop before us.

and this is where i actually realise what i'm trying to say, and get to the point. why are these people hated for getting what they want? they set their minds on something and went for it. yes, they've done it ruthlessly, be it by intense marketing and plugging, or by screaming at everyone until they get their desire. so what? that's how the music industry is. it's a conniving, backstabbing, dishonest fucked-up industry. when in rome n all that. like it or not, THIS is "punk-rock". this is the way punk has always been - people idealise about a punk-community, an underground nation of people toiling to make music more real. uhhhhh-huh. that's great, i'm not dissing it, but let's look at the flipside of the coin.

let's take THE punk group, the band most people think of when you say the word punk. the sex pistols. they were not a nice band. they didn't cheerfully wax lyrical about the fantastic spirit of underground community and reject fame and fortune for their ideals. they got pissed, took every fucking drug under the sun, spat, kicked and punched their way to international notoriety, and booted out a talented musician in order to replace him with the snarling, talentless, brattish and violent sid vicious - 20 years on, if you ask music fans to name the members of the pistols, a lot of them will say "sid vicious... johnny rotten...ermmmmm......". because those two, famed for their "fuck the lot of you" nihilistic attitudes, were the ruthless, succeeding epitome of punk. even in its roots, as an alternative choice for disgruntled kids, it was a dog-eat-dog culture, vicious and unfeeling to the core. hellooooo pinkie. nice guys finished last. it attracted those who thought they were hard enough, ruthless enough to fight back.

so why the hell am i cheering on this brutal attitude, this "help myself, fuck everyone else" culture? surely there must be a better way. go on then, prove it. do a courtney. get inside the system, and fuck it up all over again, make it new, turn ideas on their heads. succeed despite the shitty nature of the route to the top. you've got two choices - get in there, get your hands dirty and remodel things, be an innovator, or put the fuck up with it. you see???

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