May 24, 2004
Jim Reid Quote of the Week:
"Sex is kind of romantic anyway. You don't have to do much romanticizing."
-- upon being informed by a journalist that he romanticizes concepts of death and sex
10 Bands/Genres In 2004 That Need To Die... Now: Reuben Ham chokes, splutters, and offers up a plea to anyone who ever read VELVET—ever...
1. YOUNG HEART ATTACK and THE DATSUNS. Back to the primitive, apparently. This is the essence of rock'n'roll. Stripped of all pretension. Three-chord, pub-fucked, ham-fisted choons with stringy hair and riiiiiipped (oh, the ecstasy!) jeans. Why, then, does it sound like 8th-grade-talent-time? Because! We're getting back to good (check!) old (check!) dumb (check!) rock'n'roll, like HENDRIX, PAGE, CLAPTON—all those thick-fingered goons.
Oh, wait...
2. THE DARKNESS. I don't get it. It's a 57-year-old guy in a leotard, singing falsetto and playing twentieth-rate covers of VAN HALEN's 'Eruption'. I don't get it. GUNS 'N' ROSES in 1987 were nasty. They were filthy, dangerous—anti-cheese. Is this supposed to be like QUEEN? Again, I don't get it. Why do we need QUEEN impersonators in 2004, when we all have access to, erm... QUEEN records? Blow, hookers, and bizarre motorcycle fetishism aside, rock'n'roll is not supposed to be a joke. It isn't about pigtails and glove-puppets and pulling your pants down to reveal cartoon-character underwear. If it was, BLINK 182 would be messianic archetypes. You think ZEPPELIN weren't serious? You think the 'deal with the devil' thing is just a laugh? Go: become an accountant.
3. FRANZ FERDINAND. They wear suits! They have sensible haircuts! People dance at their shows! Well, obviously they're the saviours of rock'n'roll! I mean—I haven't seen this sort of craziness since, well... HOT HOT HEAT last year!
4. NORAH JONES and JOSS STONE. This is like the fuckin' STEPFORD WIVES, man. Seriously—some 43-year-old investment banker created an impossibly cute, unattainable-to-43-year-old-investment-bankers chanteuse out of papier-mache, stapled three packs of Marlboro Reds and a BILLIE HOLIDAY record to her epiglottis, told all of his 43-year-old-investment-banker friends to buy her album, and shit went crazy. He did it all over again, of course, and made her blonde.
5. Whatever the fuck THE DISTILLERS are trying to do. The world needs another COURTNEY LOVE like it needs another asshole on the pre-existent asshole on its elbow. I must have missed the memo where 'rock goddess' became synonymous with getting up in the afternoon and applying foundation, having once been from The Block and 'ooh-now-I'm-clean-and-I-just-learnt-this-G-major-chord...' Shut. Up.
6. VELVET REVOLVER. Oh, man—someone stop this shit before it starts. Scott: eat. Slash: stop eating. Everyone: quit being, like, old and trying to make with the rock'n'roll. Shouldn't you have enough cash to just sit by the fireplace in a velvet fuckin' armchair and sip cognac and read Euripides and attain wisdom and do penance for youth's debauchery for the rest of your life?
7. JOHN BUTLER TRIO and JACK JOHNSON and whoever else thinks 'rootsy' or 'earthy' are words which have ever been applied to exciting music—ever, and that every video clip must consist of extravagantly goateed-and-dreadlocked dudes playing acoustic guitars at beachside bonfires spliced with stock footage of surfing competitions and Greenpeace demonstrations.
8. THE VINES. I honestly thought they'd disappeared, but no—they're back to shame my country and screaming girls in Bolivia who bought the first album and had their Craig-Nicholls-autographed areolae traced over at tattoo parlours. Now there's a new record which—thankfully—no-one seems to care about, but I still have to see Craig's 'carefully couldn't-care-less' grease-mop on my screen while watching filmclips at 2am. Not fucking fair.
9. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE. Since when did it become ironically cool to refer to him as a classic-with-inverted-commas pop-with-inverted-commas songwriter? I blame Pitchfork and other people still trying to convince themselves that ...TRAIL OF DEAD and THE RAPTURE are the musical equivalent of Picasso's Guernica. If I'm going to dig someone of his ilk, ironically or unironically, it'll be his ex-girlfriend—she, at least, can be appreciated on the level of Madonna icon. Yes, I am talking about Christ's mother.
10. JET. Just... no.
# # #
What I've Been Listening To In Order To Restore My Faith In Rock'N'Roll:
JESUS AND MARY CHAIN B-sides, naturally. Go pick up Barbed Wire Kisses and The Sound Of Speed. Never want again. Drink of me for I am the water of life and all that.
A Plea To Anyone Who Ever Read VELVET...
I feel as though I'm at a crossroads with this column. A crossroads between where and where, I don't know. However: if you've ever been inspired by VELVET to check out some previously unknown-to-you artist/band and seen your life enriched as a result, please write. I'll run responses next week (assuming there are any; fuck—this could get embarrassing; anyway...).
shadowrain@hotmail.com, you (mostly) good people...
© Reuben Ham
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