Remember when I used to do these posts right after I did the albums of the year? So it’d be the Necessary Evil albums of the year, the scientifically proven best album fawned over at length, the stats, and then we’d be officially done for another year?
Boom! You just been Mandela Effected, boyeeee! I actually only think I ever did that schedule once, for Necessary Evil 2019. I’ve always been far more often waaaaaaay late with these statistical breakdowns. What I actually used to do really early is (pfff!) do the stats just before the number one album! I could never (be arsed these days! These days the writing of the list itself is such a huge emotional toil that it takes me a long time to even consider thinking about these fucking albums again. Also, it’s getting harder and harder to think of puns on the word ‘stat’.
But these posts are basically just pictures, so I may as well just freakin’ do it. Let’s glance back at the wonderful year od 2022 when we all collectively thought, as always, “Well at least the next year can’t be as bad as this one…”.
All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown
I’ve been doing this dumb blog that nobody reads since my first post on the 1st December 2014 called the latest Pixies album an “especially grievous dirty protest”. 2024’s list was the tenth I’ve written in excruciating detail on the blog. The intelligent thing to do would be to call it a day after that. But then again the really intelligent thing to would have been to never start it in the first place. As a stupid person, I’m definitely conflicted. My (recorded) albums of the year go back to 2007. I’m not wanting to put too fine a point on it, nor am I at all pompous enough to ever overexaggerate my importance, but I think it’s fair to say that I am objectively the paramount and most respected voice on music of the last 15 years. And before that too, I just didn’t have a blog then.
But what about the artists themselves? They sometimes play a part in the psychosexual agitprop magic of this blog. We can obviously consider the artists whose work has appeared most in my year end lists, but that’s obviously going to be the Manics (eleven + one very decent JDB solo record and one dreadful Nick Wire one), Prince (eleven, and eventually all 42 of the fuckers) and Nick Cave (I think around eleven, over a variety of projects). Like, duh much? We can all agree without any argument at all that these are the three most important musical artists of all time. It’s like if someone says their favourite food is “crisps”. Like, of course it’s crisps. Crisps are amazing. Everyone loves crisps. But what does that tell you about them as a person?? No, we need a different gage to work out the real stars of Necessary Evil.
Did you get that? ‘Flipping’, yeah? As in, the PG-friendly expression of mild annoyance you use when your whole body wants to say ‘fucking’ but you remember at the last minute that this is the only hour this month that the court says you’re allowed to talk to your three toddler aged children. But also, like, the review of the flipping flippy dippy wrestlers flipping themselves around? Yeah? Fucking genius. You bunch of cunts. No, please don’t take my kids away again, I promise I’ll behave!
“Oooh, look at that cheeky smile! What have you done??”
[EDIT: I started writing this on Saturday the 2nd September. That night, or perhaps early Sunday morning, a new part to this story was added which is now going to require some furious editing:
The photos are going to be a lot better. But, I dunno, lacking some of that charm, you know warra mean? Not as legitimate somehow? Like, sure, you’ve got your complex autofocus tracking and your high-ISO capabilities, but where’s the heart, y’know? Hey, Isa, if you’re reading this, you’re the real star. And, also:
There’s gonna be a lot more complaining. The Wembley show was an absolute triumph (as I write this intro, I still haven’t watched the PPV broadcast that I’m about to review), but most of the build-up, decsions and angles leading up to it were weak as The Weeknd covering that Skunk Anansie song for seven days straight. Shut up, that line worked perfectly. The card was borderline piss poor on paper, I would suggest that there were maybe (maybe) three matches that fit the historic hugeness of the event, and they were all rematches. OK, maybe four, but Grado v Jeff Jarrett was on the pre-show so I’m not counting it. Hey, I’m a wrestling fan, all we do is complain. If you’re ever forced to go undercover to infiltrate a terrorist group of fat, middle aged wresting fans, make sure you never say that you enjoy wrestling: it will blow your cover immediately.
In fact, I’ve written so many complaints, that I’ve had to split this post into two parts. Here, we’re getting general pre-show thoughts, then the events of Zero Hour before the main show began. Net, I’ll just review the matches, I promise… I kinda promise… and that post will come out over the weekend.
Because I don’t write about wrestling that much on a blog that mainly concerned with psychosexual fetishization of suicidal ideations music, so when I do I tend to write under the delusional idea that non wrestling fans might read it. Hence I often have to stop and explain what an ‘Irish Whip’, ‘Tope Suicida’ or ‘Singlet’ is. I’ll be forced to translate carny sentences such as ‘He ribbed the worker and their shizon with the gimmick before taking a bump himself, a total shoot’ into the proper English (‘He murdered his wife and their seven-year-old son before hanging himself at their residence in Fayetteville, Georgia’) to make sure the normies could keep up. Well, screw the normies: I’m preaching to the perverted in this post and assuming at least a base knowledge of AEW in this post. It’s going to get pretty scary, but we’ll all emerge from the other side as better people.
For the vast majority of human history, everyone was mainly just into the same shit, and had the exact same cultural references. You think in 5000 BC, when you and your fellow Sumerians were starting your little agricultural society based around the cultivation of dates, people would have much time for your niche appreciation of tomato crops? They’d be like “nah kevin we all about the dates right now fr”. It was essentially a monoculture though, so everyone would at least be aware of the tomato subculture, even if they weren’t fans themselves. Everyone went bananas for dates*, and everyone knew that some weirdos like fucking Kevin inexplicably preferred tomatoes. For thousands of years, we have had the superstructure and the subculture, with a clear distinction and easy to judge distinction between the mass support of dates and the dangerous, fringe interests such as tomatoes.
‘Das Gespenst’ is German for ‘The Titty Master’
(*but, crucially, not bananas)
Which brings us, naturally, to professional wrestling.
There are statistics to argue that professional wrestling is as big – or even bigger – now than it ever has been. Or at least as big as it’s been in the modern era, biggest since 943 thousand people somehow crammed into the Atlanta Omni in the 50s to watch George Hackenschmidt put Toots Mondt in a headlock for 97 minutes. Live gates are huge, merchandise sales are huge, the world’s Problematic Fave WWE are making billions upon billions of dollars in increasingly morally dubious ways. Sure, TV audiences are a fraction of what they were during the first (Hogan) and second (Austin) WWF/E boom periods, but do you know why that is? Because no fucker actually watches TV anymore! I asked a Zoomer what their favourite TV show was, and they didn’t actually know what I was talking about, had never heard of a ‘TV’ before, and actually refused to speak to me any further because they’d assumed I’d made a transphobic slur. Wrestling on TV may only get fourteen people and one ferret watching every week, but it’s one of the only things that gets any sort of repeat viewings, so stations like Fox will still throw a billion dollars at them in the hope of securing at least a handful of people to show Dominos Pizza adverts to (also eggs. Ferrets love eggs. You should always do market research). Attendances, money made, CM Punk clout farming (the three most crucial elements to measure cultural integration), wrestling might be bigger now than any point in my or anyone reading’s lifetime.
In the UK we get all kinds of music festivals when it creeps up to summertime. You’ll get your big heavy things like Download and Bloodstock, then you’ll get the indie poison of choice like Reading and Leeds or Parklife. Then there’s the original hippy gathering with millions injected into it; Glasto. Then you’ll get your niches like Bluedot.
But do you remember the original Woodstock? Probably not, you’re too young because so am I.
I remember Woodstock 99, does that count? [Alex]
So what the UK is missing is an old school hippy fest with a twist…
Yes, I know, this wasn’t all wrapped up in the time I originally planned. I was initially planning to call it the DISABILITY DECADE CELEBRATION WEEK, so thank goodness I didn’t promise that much. Did I actually say that it was going to be a week though? I can’t remember. Let me ask my subeditor.
[I’m handing over this post 100% to the incomparable Kitty. Do they have explanations why it isn’t appearing until now?? Damns rights dey do!]
Pre face – This interview was recorded in April and intended to be released in early May. I’ve been asked to write the story of why it’s late since it’s more “Kit bull” and apparently that’s entertaining.
In early May I finally got sick of my house with its hole in the roof and black mold and decided to hand the keys back. With no plan. My landlords are not good people and that’s putting it VERY lightly. Having no plan I got rid of 90% of my stuff – furniture, the lot gone into a skip or charity or wherever else. Then I got on a coach to Brighton just so I didn’t have to think about Manchester problems for a few days. I took part in a photoshoot for a mental health campaign. I went in the sea. I sold nine of my paintings while sitting near the pier. I then booked a train and gig ticket for Reading as I knew The Gulls and Cam Cole were doing a South West UK tour which I was ecstatic to go and see once again so I could once again put my head in the speaker and dance for three hours. This has lead to opportunities I’ll keep to myself for the moment. I then got a tent and the various bits to go with it and ran as a crew and roadie known as “The Gate Pixie” for a ska/punk festival in Oldham called Strummercamp which was an absolute blast.
As I write this I’m currently home/cat sitting for an artist friend of mine before I once again pack up the tent again for 5 days to head down to Stonehenge for the solstice.
Not just because I was such an obnoxious writer back then. My own experience and feelings obviously still troubled me so much that I caked the whole experience under layers and layers of pop culture references, intentionally pointless tangents and terrible jokes. Seriously around a third of this book may as well be a fucking Family Guy episode, and you should never take such serious accusations lightly Later on, I obviously got a lot more depressed while writing it, and it actually improves markedly when I’m far less happy. In the end, I do think that it’s a really good book by the end, and if 40’000 words were cut it might be brilliant.
But it was mainly a mistake because reading through this book again was really traumatic. I don’t just go through the agonies and trauma of this one experience, but touch on the absolute worse moments of my life. It’s been horrendous for my to revisit it. I really feel this book finally getting published represents the end of something. I haven’t quite decided what that end is yet. This is such a startling outpouring of everything that I seriously don’t know what to do with myself. I lacerate myself and bleed all of myself into this. And it’s painful. And depressing. Fuck. I am considering what there is left of my brain to ever even communicate. My everything is now all out there. I know I’ve considered/threatened this before, but Necessary Evil 2023 will be the tenth year end list on this blog. And it mightbe the last.
Anyway, here it is, 130’000 (mostly…) unedited words. It’s out there now. And now I don’t know what to do.
Necessary Evil 