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The Naughties?
or
What a load of knackers!
by Dr John Bigot
And so to the music journo's (spit) other preoccupations - The Naughties and the future, well 2010 anyway.
With the desperation of a virgin at an orgy the music papers have spent January trying to put the music of the past ten years into some kind of historical context. This context building is of course as thin as Kate Moss and as irrelevant as a chocolate crack pipe because as far as popular music is concerned HISTORY is dead. And long may that deadness remain!
In 1976 when I was fifteen Rock and/or Roll did have a clear and defined HISTORY and went a bit like this:
The 1950's: Bloody Bill Haley and the twating Comets, Fuckin Cliff "pretty boy" Richard and Elvis Soddin Presley (Bob Monkhouse was right he'll never catch on).
The 1960's: The tea swilling mop tops, the blues robbing Stones, the jingly jangly pychedelic acid dropping university knobs.
The Early 1970's: The long haired up their own arse prog rocking twats, the metal muppets, the glittery laugh a minute glamsters.
Then 1976 someone said burn it all down!
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS that if you wanted the "music of the past" and didn't want to face ridicule you only had two places to go, Woolworths or Littlewoods. And there you would find your music clearly marked MUSIC FOR PLEASURE.
Today with constant re-releases, anthologies, remixes, anniversaries, reunions, reformations, revisiting and re-enactments music can no longer be calibrated into periods of time, not with any great accuracy anyway. The historical compartmentalising of music is long gone, it died during the early nineties, and it was a bloody good thing too, but no one seems to have told the music press and so they plod on trying to understand something that doesn't need to be understood. Was the naughties the decade of Pete Doherty asks the NME? Oh God what can you do with these people. In the music game longevity is everything; genius lasts, but for everyone else, you've just got to keep on hanging around.
For me the "Naughties" did throw up one surprise; a hype so monumental, so spectacular, it even eclipsed the hype that created those dullards U2. Yes I'm talking about the HYPE and mass market delusion that was The Artic Monkeys - I never thought I'd live to see something so thin made so large again, how wrong I was.
Finally the NME and others have been hard at it in January telling us what's to come in 2010 (like they know!). These dicks must never get caught in traffic or loose at cards or worry about the future cos they truly are seers with a rare and divine gift. However here's the rub, the gift is also a curse, unfortunately because they intuitively know what is going to happen in 2010 they are destined to live a prejudged, hollow and predictable life - we should feel sorry for them really.
Finally Ed, I must ask, a lot of these kiddie mags have "SOFT PACK" as top act to watch out for in 2010, you saw then back in March last year, how come you never said anything?
Ed: Sorry John they only registered 2.7 on the "clapometer" when they backed up Franz Ferdinand in 2009. But now they've had their name bandied around a bit I'm sure the same punters will be able to upgrade to uncontrollable hysteria.
One thing is for sure John, there will be plenty of "product" available in 2010, read on..................