Memorise this face. This man is your enemy. Etch it with bile into every brain cell, then tattoo it on your eyelids.
And not even for all the reasons you think. In fact, possibly for none of them. Or even the ones HE thinks. Especially not because he was part of a double act that imagined itself to be Pete and Dud and ended up more Little and Large. No, his inevitable decline after reinvigorating the dead ghost of Britpop with anarchic and spiky meandering melodies about a message that was never quite delivered; THAT is not the issue. We're not dealing with the decline and fall. The issue is what he, and Carl, did to this decade.
I've just selected Pete's face because he's an easier target and I'm a lazy, lazy writer.
As I mentioned, it isn't the decline that bothers me. Many more people self-destruct and come back subtly lessened. This waltz is so Keith Richards* it beggars belief (and if you maintain the Stones still have balls and hearts and souls...well, that's another rant for another time). No, this is at the height of his powers. This is about the inexorable rise. The legions of maenads swarming around the latest Dionysian figure extolling the virtues of excess. And I should well know, for I was one of those hordes: smashing my fingers on the crash barrier, hurling abuse and well connected punches at the support acts (fret not, they were the Paddingtons and the Towers of London and there's a happy ending: Donny Tourette didn't make it back to the stage).
And there we have it. The problem. Sing-a-likes. The issue goes way, way back along a twisted nerve that cuts through Franz Ferdinand, then that 90's playground scuffle between Blur and Oasis, all those mid-range 80's no hopers, the 70's punk to the bloody Beatles and probably beyond.
The Beatles. You may have heard of them. They were four somewhat talented scouse musicians with a monstrous ability to pen catchy little hooks and vocal melodies that would cramp themselves through your ear into your brain and then NEVER EVER LEAVE. Bastards.The music underneath didn't get particularly special until they had more money than God and were bigger than Muhammad, when they could afford to get blitzed on bargain-basement psychedelics and even then they wrote nine minute paeans to fuck all. But the four of them, after an awful lot of homoerotic tension, spawned a hideous beast. White boys with guitars. Once again, this is an area with which I am intimately familiar because I WAS THERE (well, not the 60's, but you get the idea).
Leaving America out of the equation for a minute because, let's face it, that's what British Music has been so obsessed with, and though this is a self-defeating fallacy (beware when you fight monsters blah blah bloody blah), it is pretty essential to understanding the mindset.
Before this decade, it wasn't even a problem. It resurfaced in new and vibrant ways throughout the last half of the 20th century. It gave Buzzcocks an edge. It meant that people still know who Gang of Four are. It instilled enough pseudo confidence into all those stuttering shoegaze pioneers who took it and ran as far as they bloody could in the other direction. So, really, to be a culprit you don't have to be white or play a guitar. The moniker isn't perfect, I'll admit, but it sounds nice to spit.
It wasn't an issue until it made the casual lurch to the surface again this decade. The Libertines were never looking for indie stardom. They dreamed of joining Food, Blur's label, and had their demo tapes returned, except that all the tracks had been erased and replaced with the sound of EMI A&R men cackling. This from a label that signed Shampoo. They threw themselves on the mercy of Rough Trade and I presume they were savvy enough to know where the wind was blowing, since their less than meteoric rise to fame was heralded by the purchase of Rough Trade by BMG. Whatever, let us just settle with the notion that indie stardom was an unlikely option and one far from addled young minds.
And the kids loved them. And that was that. It occurred to a handful of execs and thousands of youths with a mild case of talent infection that there was no need to experiment, just grab the formulaic requirements (drummer, drugs, lead guitar, bassist, bitches, lead singer, impenetrable
destiny density, untouchable ego) and then OFF WE GO. If you even GET a second album, don't think. Just churn out more and more and more and more and more of the same stuff. Thinking isn't cool. Riffs and shit are cool. And suddenly any chance of assaulting the charts with an eye towards novelty and soul was dead. And anything but the dead-eyed mewling of a thousand soulless eyes with five thousand soulless fingers plucking three thousand cheesegrater strings became de rigeur. And we ate it up. And we loved them for their betrayal.
Instantly disposable pop is one thing. Stumbling zombie armies that gradually erode taste are another. When you've made David Cameron's I-pod, the first thing to do is to destroy the scene and start again. I would know, I've seen so many of them on stage. Threw my money after useless idols. Interviewed them for radio. The View, Good Shoes, Razorlight, The Paddingtons, Kaiser Chiefs, The Rascals, Boy Kill Boy, One Night Only, The Dead 60's, The Wombats: in coming decades the bargain bins in charity shops will be crowded with this dross. We'll be cut away like dead weight. The overwhelming picture of the opening salvoes for independence and fierceness and naive sincerity in the 21st century will be drowned by all that dead weight. Outside of the pop arena, we'll be another 80's. If it wasn't mewling static, it was faux-rave. And that'll be that; a false picture of a false decade.
So why am I moaning? Why do I care? These people no longer represent me, or even anything original about this decade. So what if they swamp the signal, enjoy the now.
I moan because of a delicious image, flames fanned by mid-90's nutcases.
The KLF and
Sarah Records had exactly the right idea, they just should have switched to live ammo. Would it be such a dreadful thing if some scamp detonated a grab-bag of grenades in the midst of the Brits? Put semtex under the seats of the lords of the NME awards? Well, obviously it would. Who can condone murder**? And some would claim that music may well suffer for it by blanding out, but it is my profound and foolishly hopeful belief that it may well give someone, somewhere, something to kick against once more.
I don't think The Libertines should shoulder all the blame, really. They were a cute idea put together by a group where the flesh was willing but the spirit was weak. Pete Doherty once gave me curry and chips, so I can't bear a grudge.*** But they were a symptom that typified the infection, and I have to hate them a little for that despite the embers of the flame that once lit my stupid little heart for them. Because now, in the mind of Joe Futures Dredd-Punter, there'll no longer be enough degrees of separation between this...
and this...
Probably not next time: White Girls with Synthesisers. Why it's a good thing.
*Is this a synonym for "antediluvian" yet? It bloody well should be.
**Well, me apparently, as that is what it seems I just did.
*** In almost all honesty, things often get to such a state that even the most evil can buy me off with decent-ish takeaway food. I'd probably be "bezzie mates" with Mussolini for some moules. Hitler for some haddock. Salazar for schezuan. Franco for some fritters. Alright, I'll stop now...
