May 17, 2004
Rock Star Quote of the Week:
"It's about livin' forever, innit."
-- Liam Gallagher, upon being asked what the OASIS song 'Live Forever' is about
Fook The World: Reuben Ham cues up recent Britpop documentary LIVE FOREVER, ponders the maddening attraction of the red/black roulette bet, and accepts a heartwarming message in song from JET…
John Dower's new 90-minute documentary LIVE FOREVER is not an encyclopaedic (or even satisfactorily informative) history of the mid-to-late nineties phenomenon known as 'Britpop'. Neither is it the grand socio-political thesis that it seems to think itself. When not expounding parallels between nonsensical BLUR lyrics and Tony Blair's policy on horticultural taxes, however, it falls back upon pricelessly candid soundbites from the foul-mouthed, burnt-out, still-drunk stars of the Britpop movement and gloriously, suddenly glows, perhaps still more intensely in the DVD's collection of deleted interview scenes.
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Jarvis Cocker, frontman of PULP, is interviewed in a dank bedsit (is this where he lives now?), cross-legged upon a mattress, stringy-haired, cigarette-fingered, as he recites his own vermouth-dry De Profundis: 'I got what I wanted, I suppose… what I'd been after for the majority of my life, and then… the actual reality of that… I thought, what rubbish. My way of dealing with that situation was just to get as hammered as possible.' There's more, of course. It all adds up to the Pulitzer Prize for Pathos, and amounts to the perfect foil for OASIS vocalist Liam Gallagher's soporific Zen Master of Fuck-All—[he remembers nothing of his band's crowning outdoor performance before X-thousand people; he learns what 'androgynous' means; his early hero was the Hulk: What did he like about him? 'His greenness'; he is John Lennon reincarnated, and has had the out-of-body experience to prove it]—and motormouthed brother Noel's admission to pilfering the chorus melody of the STONES' 'Shine A Light' for his own 'Live Forever', and impish dismissal of BLUR frontman Damon Albarn as a 'condescending cock'. (Albarn himself appears spectacularly depressed, chainsmoking and picking aimlessly at a ukulele in a deserted pub somewhere, coming off as the guy who attended his highschool's ten-year reunion against his better judgement, and now feels even worse.)
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So: the film as a whole is a directionless grab-bag, a damp scrapbook slashed with half-morsels and almost-snippets of bizarre song choices. But, hey… one must walk the boulevard of broken dreams and all that to experience the good stuff, right? Shut up. Don't burst my rockstar bubble.
Start with the LIVE FOREVER disc's extra features, and roll the opening credits six beers in. Even if you never liked Britpop, you'll experience something of that feeling of being invincible, adored, the vanguard of the vanguard, on the edge of making-over the world.
Come to think of it, cocaine is mentioned quite a bit…
My Roulette Neurosis; or No, This Really Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Anything; or Well, Being A Vice, It Isn't Entirely Out Of Place In A Rock'N'Roll Column
I only ever bet on red or black. Something about this symmetry drives me mad—fifty/fifty, double/nothing, one/zero, on/off, life/death… See, if you bet on a single number, or indeed anything other than 50/50, you've already spoiled your fun—the outcome is either improbable success or probable failure. Only half the mystery is left. If you lose—so what? You already know mathematically that this should happen. If you win—wow! You beat the mathematics! This dichotomy is easily prepared for: you've already blown your excitement-wad in your mind (and on the table, by masochistically stacking the odds decidedly against yourself), even before the little white ball comes to rest. When betting 50/50, though, it's almost as if there are no longer any mathematics, or at least any mathematics that are able to mentally comfort or oppress the punter as the ball traces its endless arc. Rather than silently rocking between hope on one side and despair on the other (as when betting 35-1 on a single number), the gambler must grapple with a hope-free, despair-free, equally gaping blank-facedness on either side. I know ½ is a piece of mathematics, but all I feel is that unscratchable itching void.
I realise that I sound ridiculous here. Mathematicians—feel free to demystify the red/black bet. Tell me why it's just the same as any other punt, and no more glamorous or ineffable.
The last word must go to those crazy JET boys and their new ballad:
'Take my photo off the wall / If it just won't sing for you'
RH: Done.
© Reuben Ham
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