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SHIT POP

Oh man. I’m watching the Brit Awards. I do hope nobody minds too much, but isn’t music crap these days? I mean, its always had its moments, music has always been shit, there’s always been boybands, and there’s always been crap rap and stupid, fey indie, but this really takes the biscuits.

Right Now, two jazzheads are doing an appallingly crap abortion of The Cure’s “LoveCats”, two people who look as if they’ve never even heard of the original song until some Marketing Cunt at GlobalInterMegaNationalRecords decided that The Cure were like, retro enough, like Punks very own Pink Floyd, and hey, wouldn’t it be hip to do it like a jazz song? Except The Cure already did it like a Jazz, twenty one years ago, and who are these two crap singers? I don’t know. But I can tell you three things. Rock n roll, music, artistic integrity, is about not wearing a suit and tie like a fucking office drone when you don’t have to, it’s not about ripping off the past because you haven’t got a vision of your own, and sure as hell isn’t about being a bland, boring feel good piece of shit who makes music just to have like a good time man.

Music is art. It isn’t some fucking lifestyle choice, or some crappy trend, or some thing that people take up as a career because they don’t want a day job. Music is a thing You Do Because You Have To. Because the Music Pours Out of My Soul. I love music, not because it offers me a career, or a lifestyle choice, or a bunch of bootyassed chicks, but because I Need It It To Keep Me Sane. Music isn’t just the soundtrack to me getting crazy right now.

So when I see the Brits and they’re so called Best Urban Act it just drives me mad. What is this music meant to be? The soundtrack to your Chav Scum souped megabass white fucking Fiesta, pumping out bass thudding out on street corners and at traffic lights as you drive in circles, up and down your tiny main street? Is that what this music is?

Maybe its just me. Maybe I’m the one whose fucked up. Maybe I’m the one whose wrong. Maybe people shouldn’t aspire to anything : Maybe music should only be good for one thing, maybe it should be only that noise in the background of your suburban bump’n’grind fantasies, maybe all music is good for is getting laid, getting paid, and getting wasted.

When did it happen to music? When did it become crap? Or maybe it’s me. Honestly, maybe it is. But when I see the latest selection of White Trash Chav Scum Anthems on CD:UK or TOTP or whatever other acronym it is, I just feel numb. Seeing teenagers in school uniforms whinging about being Grounded, or seeing guys driving big cars with lots (and I mean lots) of skinny black mommas wearing next to nuffin shaking their booty at ‘em, man, it just leaves me cold. Isn’t there more to life than gin and juice and girls and cars? I mean, really?

There’s nothing Urban about that. NOTHING. What’s Urban music? Urban music is the sound of concrete and trains and buses and planes and grotty, poor suburbs. It’s not the sound of spotty seventeen year olds in Chavmobiles gunning down the high streets and hanging round on street corners with girls with Croydon Facelifts and Pramfaces. Urban music is the sound of people trying to get out, trying to escape, living a kind of grim, dull life that can only be caused by a mixture of poverty and hopelessness and acute awareness. That’s what urban music is.

If you want music that’s about cars and girls and stuff then there’s plenty of stuff like that out there. Plenty. It isn’t Urban : it’s metal. If you want Girls, Girls, Girls, then believe me, there’s always Motley Crue. The Darkness. Zodiac Mindwarp. Even the Mighty, nay, the unstoppable Jovi. That’s as Urban as all your 50 Cents, and your Eminems, and your Whomever they are with their pathetic guns, girls, and niggaz with triggaz fantasies. Trust me. Besides which, I’d rather hang out with a bunch of skinny white boys with guitars than 50 Cents : there’s less chance of getting shot in a bust gone wrong.

And before any of you talk shit about racism, let me tell you this : I don’t know of one crappy Urban metal band that proudly shows off its bullet wounds, or funded their early records by selling drugs out of the back of a car, or helped fund the black market and gang warfare. Nor, if I remember correctly, did anyone from BadMetal Records™ dangle a rival artist out of a window during negotiations to secure a record contract.

No, music isn’t about living out a fantasy – its not about pretending to be rich or to be having a million girls at once, or driving a big car with a fantastic stereo and wearing lots of bling : my idea of Riches are your brains and your friends, not anything else. My idea of good music isn’t just some monotone 4/4 beat and some guy rhyming “it’s your birthday” with “it’s your birthday”. Hell no. I want music that’s smart – clever – funny. Music that isn’t afraid to go with Big Ideas and do interesting things, and be more than just the soundtrack to some Boy Racer living out 2 Fast 2 Furious : Walsall Street Racer fantasies with Shazza from the Estate in the seat next to him.

Think for yourselves scuzzballs. Life can be beautiful. All it takes is a little wit, a little style, a little more than merely accepting what life gives you, and striving for more. You heard me : take your dull, crap, boring rock and rap and come back to me when you have something interesting to say.

Maybe then I’ll listen.

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