In Memoriam

July 26, 2023 — Leave a comment

A small tribute to a woman who was speaking truths before social media was invented, and before saying controversial things became cool—and damn-near a status symbol …

Starting a public controversy, and dealing with the consequences, was a very different thing before social media started; and Sinead didn’t have it easy. There was no applause, there were no tweets and re-tweets. I’m no-one to bestow the title of ‘brave’ on someone else—and she wouldn’t ask, or need, me to do it—but, I don’t throw that word around lightly and, for whatever it’s worth, I would call her brave.

I hardly ever write eulogies, why am I writing this one?

She wasn’t my favourite singer; there’s a few things about her that I didn’t like; and if we had met I’m sure she would have found quite a few things she didn’t like about me. But I’m writing this because she was meaningful to me as a human, and she was meaningful to me because of her actions.

Society says you have to endlessly praise those who you relate to and endlessly find fault in those with whom you don’t. Fuck that. Yes, I relate to her in her love of music, in having had to carry with the weight of an abusive Catholic society, and in other more personal things. But, in fact, we were quite different people from quite different worlds …

Here’s to you Sinead:

I did not always agree with you. You were not my hero, you were not someone I aspired to be like; but you made me feel like it was OK to be different and you did so because of how deeply you felt and how brave you were.
[I often hear the phrase “so-and-so made me feel it was OK to be different”; but I hear it used in a context where it really means “someone monetized being the type of ‘different’ that’s easy for me to be, and now I can be mindlessly self-indulgent and you can too”—and the entertainment industry is happy to push that narrative because it helps expands their markets and sell more products. Fuck that. I don’t mean it like that.]

I mean that you made me realize that it was OK for you to be different than me, and it was OK for me to be different than you, and it was OK for us to be different than those who use their power to hurt people. And you did that because of how you lived, not because of how you talked.

I didn’t always see genius, I often saw someone going off the rails, someone crazy; but I never saw a dumb celebrity acting crazy because it was profitable or comfortable. You’re one of the few people, famous or not, that I can think of that walked up to the edge honestly—not because it was cool, not because it was easy, but because you felt you needed to. And the times that you fucked up, don’t matter much to me because you were human.

I appreciated and I admired some of the things you did. And I appreciate that you wouldn’t want me to appreciate everything that you did. You did not try to be a false idol; you were famous but you were not a celebrity.

You were a hell of a singer. You respected your craft. You knew what you were doing when others didn’t.

Thank you for the lessons. Thank you for memories.

[clumsily listed below, in chronological order as they happened in my life …]

  • Singing Bob Marley’s War and ripping the picture of the pope on TV, I didn’t know you could do
    either. Fight the real enemy.
  • My mother being moved by Nothing Compares 2 U
  • Choosing to sing “probably the most difficult Gershwin song there is”. You were wearing yourself out in this session; I was about 14, struggling with music school … I never became a musician but you showed me how a true artist sings the tune he needs to sing, not an easier one.
  • Coming back years later to stand by your words …
  • Sampling James Brown’s Funky Drummer on your song I Am Stretched On Your Grave—definitely one of the most creative uses of that sample.
  • The Foggy Dew

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/11/rememberings-by-sinead-oconnor-review-a-tremendous-catalogue-of-misbehaviour

Too Good Monday

April 3, 2022 — Leave a comment

The more I hear the Sex Pistols, the more I hear a British band. In many ways, the reason Punk didn’t work around the world is because the rest of the world just didn’t have that Britishness (see the American invention called “punk pop” for one example) …

This song has been called one of the most conservative songs of all time, but not quite … It couldn’t have been made in this way somewhere else. If it had been an American band, it would have had specific politics and the band’s look and public life would have matched those politics; and it would have all been sold in one neat package to those who share those politics. And it would have been just another a product, just another political statement, and the art would be lost, and it would be just another loud song, with a single loud “message”, by just another loud band.

“A girl from Birmingham used to bother the hell out of me, turn up at the doorstep one night with a see-through, clear, handbag that had a fetus in it … That song is not anti-abortion, it’s not pro-abortion … Don’t be callous like that with a human being but don’t be limited to such a thing as ‘morals’ either, because it’s immoral to bring a kid into this world and not give a toss about it.”

Johnny Rotten

• Sex Pistols – Bodies

Too Good Monday

March 28, 2022 — Leave a comment

Years ago, a music journalist gave a review to what is arguably the most important album of the last 30 years; almost certainly the most important album of my generation; maybe the most important album in Dance music. An album which questions Sgt. Pepper’s, Nevermind the Bollocks, and The Chronic. THE album that put France on the world stage …

These were his genius words:

“… This isn’t exactly a good album by any stretch of the imagination. Aside from tracks like ‘Revolution 909’ and ‘Fresh,’ Homework is the work of a couple of DJs who sound amateurish at best. Just about all of the songs follow the same formula of starting off with a drumbeat for the first minute-and-a-half and then slowly bringing in other elements … If you already own Homework, best to bring it to the record exchange before it floods the second-hand market … “

Forget about whether you like Daft Punk for a minute, this is a bit more serious.

As you can see, this review reads no better than any old random twitter post by a self-appointed music critic in 2022. And this, I would say, is strong evidence that crappy music journalism was the precursor to the sewage fire that is social media.

So the only conclusion is that we should blame music journalists, and this review specifically, for social media and everything bad that it has contributed to these over the last decade: the erosion of democracy, “fake news”, “bot farms”, environmental destruction, identity politics, racism, both of Obama’s presidencies, Trump, Biden, much of the war in the middle-east up to the failure in leaving Afghanistan, the invasion of Ukraine … (I would blame China’s crimes on this review, as well, but I’m not sure what their approach to social media is, and I doubt they would allow this kind of publication.)

“ … that was the bad thing about the New Journalism. Cop a bit of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson, get a bit of ellipsis down your grammatical throat and any fuckwit could sound cool and intelligent and actually did. Despite having the sense and sensibilities of a bucket of silage, any modern music journalist with a grasp of the new prose could hold his own as a knowing counter-culture hero and guardian of the gates of fame. Tossers. Silence is, of course, the lesson. The press are frequently the most dizzyingly incompetent arseholes that God has put on this earth. The mistake is to reply to them.” — Tony Wilson

• Daft Punk – Alive

Future Thursday

March 24, 2022 — Leave a comment

You niggas made a mistake,
you should’ve never put my rhymes with Dre;
them thug niggas have arrived and it’s judgement day.
Hey homie, if you feel me,
tell them tricks that shot me
that they missed—they ain’t kill me.

• 2Pac – Can’t C Me