Now, as longtime readers (hi Mum! I told you to stop reading, I just can’t have that boring conversation about so called “Disturbing psychosexual imagery” with you yet another time) will no doubt already have noticed, I’m something of a literary genius. Not fully appreciated in my time, no, but neither was Vincent van Gogh. Also, I’m not going around simping over prostitutes so hard that I send them parts of my body that I’ve sliced off. That is so cringe. proper beta behavior, whereas I am obviously an alpha chad. I have lots of the sex and talk to loads of women. Like, all the time.
Anyway, yes, I am a literary genius, and what I’ve done on this year’s list – one hundred percent intentionally!! – is design it so two things that I’ve already been discussing this year finally come together and interweave on my post concerning the second album from Philadelphia ‘punk’ band Riverby.
Before we criticise the gross and indefensible spectacle of the 2022 World Cup – where perhaps billions of people around the world tune in to watch a spectacle so polluted by decaying capitalism that hundreds or perhaps thousands of ill treated migrant workers have forcibly sacrificed their lives in order just to provide us global ruling classes our shits and giggles – let’s at least compare the quality of competitive entertainment to what it was a few hundred years ago. The game Aunt Sally dates back to 17th century and was played at fairgrounds in pub gardens across the middle English counties. It involves participants throwing sticks or battens at a ‘doll’ placed upon a pole. Traditionally, that doll is an old woman named ‘Aunt Sally. It has also been suggested that the doll eventually got its name ‘Aunt Sally’ because it was at one point meant to be in blackface and inspired by the character (sigh) Black Sal in the 1821 novel ‘Life in London‘. So, essentially, it was a game where drunk middle Englanders would throw things at an old black woman. But don’t despair at missing out on such good old fashioned competitive hate crimes – the The World Aunt Sally Open Singles Championships takes place every year in Oxfordshire. The first event in 2011 was attended by David fucking Cameron, because of course it was.
“Take this, you little pickaninny…”
An ‘Aunt Sally’ is also what you’d call an easily disprovable fallacy, so maybe I’ve been really clever and nothing I said in the previous paragraph is true and wouldn’t stand up to even the briefest of research. However, I know I’m safe, as none of you fat lazy slobs can ever be arsed to extend even the most minute of effort. It’s also the name of a 1938 film English film, which given those two pieces of information is also likely to be extremely racist. What I’m saying is: it’s not easy to Google the extraordinary 1970s Japanese punk band Aunt Sally.
That Aunt Sally rereleased their 1979 debut album in 2021, and provided more evidence for my reasoning to fucking hate punk music.
In a lot of way, it’s not your fault that you like shit stuff. A lot of the shit stuff you like you had no control over. Maybe the culture you were raised within normalised such abhorrence. Perhaps you just had really stupid friends growing up who liked really stupid things. I’m not going to blame you for that. You rarely get much choice who your friends are, they’re often just there because of some past and continued convenience. Maybe your friends from school are now registered sex offenders, maybe they’re big Fast and Furious fans, but either way it’s not your fault. Your parents could have maybe brought up in an environment where liking such absolute shite isn’t something to ashamed of. Is it your parents’ fault?? Am I saying that they’ve somehow failed at child rearing because of your shitty tastes??
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. But it’s not your fault. Please don’t take any of this post as me mocking your artistic choices. You can’t help it, you’re just wired that way, and me making fun of it would be like you making fun of my cauda equina. Like, dude, come on, I can’t help it. Cryemojicryemojicryemoji. You know how it goes.
You might have seen this repugnant rabble advertised recently:
We’re all friends here. This is a safe space. Let’s start this first blog post since March off by just putting all our cards on the table. When you’re from Europe, or Britain in my case (with perhaps a few notable exceptions) it’s really annoying to hear American people talk about dance music.
The inventor of dance music
Completely unfairly, of course. They can’t help it, it’s not their fault, it’s just how they were brought up and the slight to significant social differences they have encountered. I feel like criticising the majority of Americans’ knowledge about dance music is like making fun of their monster truck rallies, school shootings or cowboy hats – it’s a central and important part of their culture, and mocking it seems insensitive. It’s just… infuriating… isn’t it? Even their insistence on calling it Electronic Dance Music/EDM – while being functionally completely sensical (the vague term ‘dance music’ rarely suitably describes what most people using it are referring to) – is really annoying. Whenever somebody refers to something as ‘EDM’ it’s a quick assurance that they probably think the greatest ever electronic dance album was ‘Purpose‘, that they believe Avicii and The Chainsmokers were the legendary originators, and that they’re unlikely to even get the Blackout Crew reference I made in this blog entry’s title.
Dance music has one of the most popular and successful genres in Europe since the early 90s at the latest and even well into the 80s. Growing up in that era (a ‘Cultural Boomer’) in Europe meant dance music being a constant background And absolutely not just critically- sure, there were always the likes of Orbital/Chemical Brothers/Faithless/KLF/Leftfield who married critical praise with moderate to huge commercial success. And the superstar DJs like Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold, Eric Prydz and Armand van Helden, who would combine huge influence and talent with the odd number one single. But we also had the true sign of full cultural integration – the terrible dance acts that would clog up the charts and pollute local radio stations. Before you criticise an American’s perceived ignorance on dance music, remember that they likely grew up in a world without either The Venga Boys or 2 Unlimited.
And, yes, while, being English, my obvious and natural response would be to condescendingly smirk at those silly little colonies, raise an eyebrow as I take a sip of Earl Grey through pursed lip and drily remark how I very much doubt that most Americans even have an opinion on A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld, but we really have no room to talk. Perhaps the US had less time for the likes of Urban Cookie Collective because it was, y’know, inventing and popularising hip-hop, a genre which I’d argue didn’t properly break through in the UK until (seriously) Puff Daddy’s 1998 number one I’ll Be Missing You, a tribute to one of the most notable rappers of all time in the US, whose only charting album in the UK peaked at number twenty three. And we completely skipped grunge, Nirvana might have had a couple of top ten singles and some festival headliners, but otherwise rock music refused to truly comeback in the UK until Oasis started breaking records in 1993. There have since been attempts at revisionist history in the UK music press, arguing that Nirvana were as big a deal here as in the US, but… no… We try and pretend otherwise now, but we were all about Oasis. I’m sorry. When Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ historically and meaningfully knocked Michael Jackson’s ‘Dangerous’ (it was just an album title back then, not an official legal status) off the top of the US charts in January 1992, the UK charts were topped by very much our Nirvana – Wet Wet Wet, with their legendary third album ‘High on the Happy Side‘. So are we really so culturally and morally superior?
Yes, we are. But it’s still interesting innit?
And I’m referring to the general American consensus here. The USA is a big country – more than a million people – and there has always been pockets of massive dance music fans, as well as America contributing some (perhaps… most??) of the most influential and important dance music producers and DJs of all time. There’s an argument that San Jose’s DJ Shadow’s 1996 album ‘Endtroducing‘ is the most influential dance album of the 90s. New Jersey… sorry…Nuu Jooooysie‘s James Murphy – electronic music’s tramp sage – is among the most notable electronic producers of the modern era. And, holy shit, our blinkers here are so discriminating that we’re failing to see what a complete revolution to music that hip-hop was, especially on the electronic means of dance music, from Grandmaster Flash through Timbaland, The Neptunes, Tyler the Creator and countless other notable names. And, pretty much unanimously cited as the most important DJ of all time, the sadly departed Frankie Knuckles is, as the ostentatiously cool name suggests, from Weston-super-mare
sorry, I mean The Bronx. Which is in America. Not sure which part. Maybe in the middle somewhere. In fact, the very foundations and practices that define everything that the world recognises as ‘Dance Music’ (and the US as EDM) came from the gay scene in Chicago (that’s in America), the black suburbs of Detroit (that’s also in America), clubs in New York (in America) and New Jersey (also in America. The Sopranos live there). Unarguably, America invented dance music. It just then decided to ignore it for a few decades. The first dance album to go platinum in the USA was – and you’ll like this – the soundtrack to the 1995 movie adaptation of the popular computer game Moral Kombat. The hip American daddios who have been into dance music these past few decades, who were sweating out their Quaaludes down next to the speakers in Chicago clubs in the mid 80s, might be similarly kissing their teeth and rolling their eyes at wider American culture’s laughably belated appreciation of dance music. Or maybe they’re just happy that the sort of boundary pushing artistic revelations are now finally being widely appreciated? But that seems needlessly unresentful to me. Are the Americans not into needless spite or something?
To the wider culture though, much like punk music finally broke America in 1991 – when the Dead Kennedys played Too Drunk Too Fuck at the Superbowl halftime show – dance music finally got noticed in America with a similar multiple decade delay, though the exact year isn’t agreed upon nor easy to pin down. Some time around 2010, there were numerous mainstream dalliances, largely through hip-hop artists tipping their hat to the genre. Beyoncé herself (I am getting round to her eventually, I promise) played a notable role, with her 2011 banger Run the World (Girls) sampling both Diplo and Major Lazer, two contemporary and soon to be huge dance acts. A huge, huge, huge figure was David Guetta, whose collaborations with the likes of Nicki Minaj, Fergie*, Kid Cudi, Adam Rickit and Akon did much to popularise the genre. And, sorry, but we have to acknowledge Deadmau5 and Skrillex as being notable figures in dance music’s evolution’s both commercially and – I’m sorry, you’re going to have to admit it – artistically. Some might point to the humungous drop in Justin Bieber/Skrillex/Diplo’s 2015 Where Are U Now as a particular high watermark in terms of commercial notability (and artistic quality. Come on, don’t be pathetic, it’s a fucking banger). It’s also impossible to talk about the genre’s emergence in the USA without mentioning the importance of Daft Punk. Personally however, as a true line in the sand, I think the ultimate turning point came in late 2011, and was assisted by some 30 year old jabroni born in Dumfries. Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s We Found Love isn’t just one of the most perfect and gorgeous hit singles of the last twenty or so years, but it is 100% and unmistakeably a dance song, featuring all the tropes and features of the type of banger you’d be chewing your cheeks off to down the front at Manumission back in 92. The build, the drop, the repetitive but exhilarating synth beat – this wasn’t a hip-hop or R&B artist taking cues from dance music, this was a dance track that Rihanna provided vocals for. She was playing the same role that Loleatta Holloway performed on Black Box’s Ride on Timetwenty years earlier. Except of course Rihanna was considered attractive and famous enough to appear in the video for We Found Love. Also, she wasn’t dead, which Black Box mistakenly assumed Loleatta was. It’s a long story. Oh, and We Found Love was also the biggest thing ever, so that was nice for everyone involved, and in my opinion truly inspired the (possibly racist/homophobic. Much bigger issue, no time to discuss it now) levee that America had built to suppress dance music’s wider acceptance to finally break, and the outpouring still continues to this day.
(*as in the legendary former manager of Manchester United Sir Alex Ferguson, not the Black Eyed Peas singer, with whom he is often confused)
In 2022, America, God bless them all, seem to have discovered House Music. The aforementioned Frankie Knuckles (born Francis The Echidna) would have been overjoyed to see his country embrace the genre so quickly, just forty years after he invented it and eight years after he fucking died. The increased interest in the genre even inspired Rolling Stone, who generally believe ‘Songs of Innocence’ to be the most recent and noteworthy musical evolution, to compile a list of the 200 greatest ever dance songs, which – uuuurgh – I’ll get to later. Lot’s of people started bringing up Kaytranada, the Canadian born in 1992 who apparently invented house music. The renaissance
was instigated by two of the legitimately biggest musicians/celebrities/celestial beings in the world, Beyoncé and Canada’s perma-pursing feels navigator Drake, both released previously unannounced hugely house music inspired projects so close to each other. Drake released ‘Honestly, Nevermind’ on June 17th, and Ms Carter’s seventh studio album was released two days ago. Two days ago when I’m writing this, I mean. If you’re reading this next week, then it was released about a week ago. If you’re reading this in 2056, then it was released a long time ago. July 29th, if you’re using this post to conduct proper research and plan on citing it in your thesis. Which you all absolutely should. Before I talk about the Beyonkadonk album, we may as well quickly compare the two projects and say who comes out top in this unexpected House Off:
And, yeah, Beyoncé. It’s not even close. Firstly, I don’t think either album is a radical reinvention of the artists’ sounds. Both have frequently incorporated dance and house music influences on their records in the past, even more so than the natural shared lineage of hip-hop/R&B and dance production. Is there a track on ‘Renaissance’ significantly more house music influenced than something like Blow from Bee’s incredible self-titled 2015 album? Also: Ha! I’ve only just noticed that song is called ‘blow’, that’s fucking amazing. Also… is there a song… significantly… better…? We’ll get to that discussion soon.
Artistically, and just in terms of general quality, ‘RENAISSANCE’ far outperforms ‘Honestly, Nevermind’, but let’s just put that to one side. One major difference between the two artists’ homage to sweating themselves out at The Warehouse in 1992 is the differing understanding – or perhaps a refusal to understand – of house music’s central conceit, and what I would say is the genre’s main aspect of importance.
I’ll let Padiheh Aghanourny and Unathi Nkhoma – two people whom I will uncharacteristically accept know more about the subject than me – explain it in more detail, but the importance of house music to LGBT history cannot be overstated. Was Drake aware of this? Is this why the video of the lead single sees Drake marrying forty women at once? Was he aware of the homosexual connotations and so really wanted to prove to the world that he’s definitely not a gayer? Look, everyone, I’m so straight that I’m fucking, like, all the women! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ‘Drake’s ‘No Homo House’ can’t help but feel a little listless.
Beyoncé, however, does not shy away from the obvious connotations, and fully embraces house music’s gay as a window origins, and ‘RENAISSANCE’ sounds like a legitimate and faithful celebration of both house music and the queer black culture that was so central to it. A really faithful celebration. A admirably legitimate commemoration. A respectful homage. An assiduously studied pastiche.
Sigh. I’m sorry everyone, but I might just have to shit on this album a tiny bit. I know that a lot of people have taken this record to their heart. I know that Beyoncé’s paean to hot girl summers and careless partying has resonated with large sections of the populace. The album’s wholehearted urge/demand that the listener do anything and ignore any barrier between them and embracing pleasure. Lead single BREAK MY SOUL implores the listener to ‘Release ya job’, which really resonated with a society suffering under the decaying effects of late stage monopoly capitalism, and will I imagine be partnered with Ms Carter redistributing her $450mil wealth to support all of those workers to seize the means of production. A lot of the response to the record has highlighted – occasionally as the album’s main selling point – how much ‘fun’ Beyoncé is obviously having. Which is a valid point. She is legitimately one of the most powerful people in the world. I imagine it’s rather straightforward for her to have ‘fun’.
Remember ‘Lemonade’? Six years ago, Beyoncé released what I honestly believe will forever be remembered as one of the most important albums of the century. I named it album of the year. Later, I named it album of the decade. Looking back, I probably prefer Hotelier’s 2016 album ‘Goodness‘, but that’s neither here nor there. It was an event, it explicitly referenced and celebrated African American history, culture, and highlighted aspects of the struggles they’ve had to endure over the past, y’know, few hundred years. It did all this – all this sociological analysis and cultural celebration, presented alongside quotations from Malcolm X and underground black American poets like Warsan Shire – while still spinning a narrative of a betrayed woman learning to heal herself and her relationship after infidelity. Fuck, man, shall we just drop everything now and go and watch the ‘Lemonade’ visual album again?
This is the follow-up. Six years later. And the central message, the important memorandum that the artist wishes to impart on the listener and the world, is
just, like, party down my dudes, yeah? Live, laugh, love. Hashtag #GirlBoss, ammi right? Oh! But there’s a song called AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM, so I bet that’ll talk about some hot button issues like… Ah, no, that’s just the name of the sample from Kilo Ali’s 1990 song Cocaine (America Has a Problem). It’s actually about how loving someone is, y’know, a bit like a drug, which is an analogy I don’t think anyone has ever used before, so props for originality.
‘Originality’ is the main problem with ‘RENAISSANCE’. In the sense that there isn’t any. Perhaps it’s a matter of age. I am two years younger than Beyoncé (Ha! In your FACE, you old hag! Sorry, it’s very rare that I write about artists that are older than me…), we’re both old enough to remember a lot of this stuff first time around. A lot of her fans are a) younger than me, and b) more American than me, so unlikely to have grown up surrounded by Show Me Love and… erm…
It looks like I’m arching my back, but I’m just that fat
Right Said Fred…? Weird flex sampling I’m Too Sexyon Alien Superstar, but OK. I know all these samples, I’ve heard all these basslines, these piano chords soundtracked thousands of popular songs all through my youth. Beyoncé repeats them, she centres them respectfully, she samples and builds around them, she pays repeated homage. She adds nothng to them. A lot of reviewers are hearing celebrations of black joy and subtle politics in its musical emphasis and reaffirmation of the queer beginnings of club culture. OK. It’s art. You can read whatever you want into it. All I can say is that such topics are barely evident in the actual text. ‘RENAISSANCE’ is a very decent album. It’s also slight, uninspired and would likely be forgettable if it weren’t released by the biggest pop star of the 21st century.
And listen, the reason I rarely do reviews so close to the release date is because I seriously don’t believe a couple of days is anywhere near enough time to properly absorb and understand a piece of musical art. Even if you have listened dozens of time as I have, musical art needs days, weeks, months to truly ingest into your soul. If you’d asked me to review the latest Kendrick Lamar record on the day of its release, for example, I would have told you it was a dull as dogs cock overlong and overimportant dirge. Now, I’d say it was… fine, I guess. I dunno. And like Kendrick on ‘Big Pumpin’ the Big Sleepers‘, or whatever it’s called, on ‘RENAISSANCE’ Beyoncé could be facing up to her status as a cultural icon and expected preacher. Perhaps this mantle of cultural spokesperson that has been thrust upon her is the ‘job’ that Beyoncé is so keen to ‘release’.
Again though, the main difference is that these allusions are actually present in Kendrick’s lyrics, while with Beyoncé we might just be searching for distinction in a text that so often seems shallow and superficial.
No way are they too sexy for those shirts
It’s the first part of a trilogy, which I am unbelievably excited about, and I have full faith in Beyoncé’s artistic ability to believe that it will all make mistakes at the end. And I can truly imagine that the love for this album amongst certain sections of society may lead to something magical and it could really be looked back upon as an important and notable cultural moment. But on it’s own terms, artistically?
I’m sorry, but #188 is ridiculously low for Snap’s The Power. That shit owned 1990. Yeah, I was six years old, so what? I still fucked to that song (metaphorically, please do not inform social services)
Brown Paper Bag by Roni Size as low as #183?? Listen, dudes, either place it top 50 at least or just don’t put it on the list and pretend you’ve never heard it, you chose the most embarrassing option
Argh!! OK, so Back to Life’s importance and influence on black soul and dance music in this country might be me talking through a British lens, but simply taken artistically #182 is actually a hate crime against one of the greatest songs of the late 80s of any genre
Either you don’t consider One Nation Under a Groove as dance music, or you rank it much higher than #178 (personally, I’d favour the former)
We Are Your Friends should probably be higher than #174, but… I’m not that passionate about it. Higher than fucking Back to Life though?!?!
Little Fluffy Clouds at #169 (dude) is wrong. It’s, like, #84, or something, easy
Nobody has ever called Smalltown Boy (#163) a ‘dance song’. Are we just gonna count all 80s pop music?
Soft Cell (#170), Human League (151), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (#123), Madonna (#91 & #11), Grace Jones (#84), Pet Shop Boys (#65)… Yeah we’re just doing that. RS are retconning the 80s to try and prove that the USA was into dance music way before it actually was? I’m going to start say that Alexei Sayle’s Ullo John Gotta New Motor actually proves that the UK was into hip-hop way back in 1982
Losing My Edge(#155) is a little hard done by, did I just imagine how big a deal that was in 2005?
Alright, respect for including Squarepusher’s Red Hot Carat #153
I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to be all respectful and culturally sensitive, but putting 3am Eternalas low as #147 is actually emblematic of a rot at the very core of that nation’s society
No, I’m sorry, I’m not letting you have YMCAby The Village People (#139), nor Stayin’ Aliveby the Bee Gees (#129), nor the fucking Weather Girls (#88), nor Diana Ross (#42), nor Gloria Gaynor (#42), nor Sister Sledge (#34),nor Chaka Khan (#27), nor James Brown (#15). And Michael Jackson (#57). For, erm, various reasons…
However, possibly hypocritically, I am absolutely letting you have Erotic City by Prince (#135). Fucking b-side that, by the way. God, I love Him so much.
As previously alluded to, I think Where Are U Now is a little more important than its #111 placing would suggest
Fuck, not even into the top 100…
Firestarter doesn’t even make the top 100 (#110)!?!?
I’m the bitch you hated, filth infatuated. Just thought I’d let you know
OK, we all agree that Get Ur Freak On is one of the most wonderful pieces of art that has ever been presented, but a dance song?? The criteria for this list is all over the place. And on any list you decide to make, it should be top ten, not #92.
Holy shit, not only do they include Blindby Hercules and the Love Affair, but the stick it in the top 100 (#90). Forget anything I’ve said, all is forgiven, I love this list
Wha…? Bu…? How…? The motherfuckers put Born Slippy (Nuxx) as low as eighty nine?!?! This. This was my main takeaway from first reading the list. Is America really so confused as to not automatically consider this verified classic a top ten (or even… number one…??) contender?? I’m not angry, I’m not upset, I’m just… confused… One place below It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls
The Chemical/Dust Brothers absolutely need to be in there, but are Chemical Beats (#32) andSetting Sun (rooooow, wa-doo-wa-da,rooooow… Fuck, and I can’t remember what number it was. Eighty something?) really the two greatest examples of their talents? No Block Rocking Beats? No Hey Girl Hey Boy? No (gasp! Be still my beating bosom!) Private Psychedelic Reel??
The Rolling Stone website is an absolute fucking mess. It’s not easy for most computers to handle 50+ music videos on one page you absolute turnips!!
Sure, Red Alert by Basement Jaxx is a bit of a tune, but the songs it’s ranked higher than at #80 just baffles me
I don’t care if I’ve probably already argued that it shouldn’t be eligible, Buffalo Stance is such a fucking choon that seeing it at #71 just makes me happy
OK, guys, listen, either you don’t consider Planet Rockeligible, or you rank it top five. #67 is a joke
The top 50 is making me less annoyed… I can’t decide what I think about Azealia Banks at #42… I guess that cunt gets an eating?
OK, putting Turned Down for What as high as #27 is actually a bit of a flex, and I appreciate it. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but the size of its influence…? It’s a debate starter. Good on you, Rolling Stone, contributing to the marketplace of ideas.
Nobody has ever called Can’t Get You Out Of My Head a ‘dance’ song. Interesting take, RS. Marketplace of ideas etc.
Controversy by Prince at #19? Probably breaks all of my rules, but I don’t care, it deserves to be everywhere.
‘Waterfowl’ is a pretty perfect rock album. I spent an inordinate and unnecessary amount of time just now trying to decide which subgenre to place it under, but it’s such a varied and ambitious record that it near enough encompasses all of them. It dabbles in punk, takes brash detours through folk rock and indie, skids its way through shoegaze and math rock, and even chooses to dabble in post-punk and grunge. I ‘reviewed’ it back in February, then because I don’t think I’d properly got across how good the album was, I wrote another post in March just to make sure I was clear how freaking good this record was. Come on, if there was any 2020 album you don’t need further convincing of its quality, it’s this one. It’s actually quite worrying how much I have to spoon feed some of you people. Sort your lives out.
“By removing art from capitalism while allowing capitalism to thrive elsewhere unfettered we are in danger of removing any benefit of speaking in the first place so the artists may as well remain speechless. From afar, I guess. Yeah, that works”
This Blog, This Post, just now
(it was suggested that these pieces should link to the album at the start rather than the end. So here it is, now please stop sending me those abusive text messages)
I’m old enough (late, late, late late* twenties) to remember a career in arts being at least a quasi viable life choice. Nobody would kid themselves that they would make it to be ‘Goo Goo Dolls Big’, where you would earn enough money to finance a daily trip to Mars to wave stacks of Molybdenums in the seediest strip clubs of Tharsis’s Northern Edge and get yourself some of that sweet, sweet Martian poontang (John Rzeznik really lived the dream in that sense), but you’d be able to comfortably exist composing your Romo paeans to Garry Flitcroft without too many people getting on your case. You’d likely do a handful of Peel Sessions before you even released that song about his fringe. I mean, sure, people would still get on your back about getting a ‘real job’, but that’s just because back then a ‘real job’ meant a job that you absolutely hated and that made you seriously consider taking a sledgehammer to your knees each morning just as an excuse not to subject yourself to one more day to the joyless and soul destroying churn of capitalism. Y’know, the same as today. You created something, there were more options for getting people to experience that thing you created, and if people liked that thing enough they would pay you a bit of money to experience it whenever they want. Maybe they’d never been able to hear it, but it had received such good reviews from the reams of art review magazines (that they’d already paid £2 for) that people decide you’re worth the risk and buy your Flitcroft Fantasies CD single backed with a Groove Armada remix and acoustic cover of Lisa Loeb. Hopefully they’d buy the next thing you created as well, maybe the next thing after that. Maybe not the next thing after that, because let’s face it that was absolute pants, but the next thing after that would be hailed as a return to form so they’d jump back on board.
Right now. Now. This time. The space in which we orbit. This particular mark along the 4th dimensional axis. This time. Now. Here. Right now. Right now is the best time ever to be a music fan. Fight me.
If your argument is that there isn’t as much good music around these days then, with all due respect, what the fuck are you talking about, you ugly sack of piss? There’s more good music in 2018 than there’s ever been before, and with more possible ways of hearing it than previously thought possible. Perhaps you want the days again when you’d read about The Mock Turtles being given record of the week in NME and then excitedly rushing off to Woolworths in Dorking to spend your 25p on the plexi vinyl, and the exhilarating trip home on the bus before you raced back to the record player in your bedroom and finally found out it was dog’s pish. Fair enough, but firstly that’s the world that you don’t like as much these days, not music, and secondly you can still take a trip out to Asda or somewhere and spend money on a record you’ve never heard that’s likely to be shit. ‘You Know I Know’ by Olly Murrs is number 10, they’ll probably have a copy of that and it’ll almost definitely be shit. Fancy doing that?
Language is very much like that green growth on my left testes, in that it keeps growing and changing in occasionally unpalatable ways, no matter what we intend and what efforts we take.
Words rarely mean the same thing for too long. ‘Faggot’ used to be a derogatory slur of homosexuals, but now it apparently just means someone whose opinion you politely dispute online. ‘Gay’ used to mean happy, and it seems now many people are so against this shift that they attempt to make gay people’s lives as unhappy as possible. That’s brilliant! I love irony! Sherlock Holmes ejaculated over Doctor Watson many times in the 19th century, and though he would also do so countless times in early 2010s Benedict Cumberbatch fanfic, the meaning was not quite what Conan Doyle had originally intended. There have actually been over a dozen officially recognised semantic shifts that have happened since dawn this morning. At 6:46 GMT it was decreed that the word ‘viscous’ now refers to Beijing Opera. At 8:12 GMT we received news that ‘tableware’ was actually a derogatory term for people of South Vermont. We heard at 11:02 GMT that dogs were now called cats, cats were now called mice, and mice were now called Total Network Solutions. Most confusingly, we were informed at 11:53 that we could no longer call a spade a spade, but a digidigdigdigdigdigdigdigggytron*
(*I had a… different joke there… but I chickened out… Feel free to tell it if you can tell what it would have been, but give me full credit. It it’s funny. If it’s racist, then that’s your fault)
Stewart Lee apparently likes to ensure his tour posters always contain the absolute worst reviews his act receives (mostly, it has to be said, culled from the Daily Mail). So if you were to see his latest tour advertised at your local ballroom, you wouldn’t just see the usual praise emblazoned across his photoshopped visage- not just the ‘Top of his game!’: Guardian, or ‘A melting chucklepot full of witty grits!’: Evening Standard, or ‘Blimey, he’s so much more clever than me!’: Independent- but also some of the kickings he receives that arrive chiefly from the other wing:
‘Is the joke that it’s not remotely funny’ Daily Express
‘We get it, Stew: you’re far more intelligent than us and by including such scathing reviews from the right wing press you’re attempting to draw concrete lines between you and ‘them’, and you’re intent on making your whole act about how much better you- and the audience smart enough to hear your dog whistle poster- are than the scum who read the Daily Mail and voted Brexit, and how the most important thing to do now is create unbreakable barriers between the two sides and create eternal disarray among the human race, we get it! Can we have our money back now?’ The Sun
‘Was he always that fat? He definitely didn’t used to be that fat, did he?’
A revolution doesn’t mean that things are being changed for the better. It just means that things are being changed
It’s for this reason that Donald Trump
is probably the most revolutionary American President in generations.
Barack Obama certainly wasn’t revolutionary: he was a notable and genuinely inspiring representation of the progress made in perhaps considering the possibilities of equal opportunities in the country (and by extension the western world) but aside from the colour of his skin his rise to power (best at school – notable stint at very high paid but extremely dull job – moves into politics – doesn’t do anything horrendously embarrassing for about a decade – gets good at public speaking – becomes president) and pretty much the entirety of his term in office was generally a cut and paste job from near enough every democratic president in history (Republicans are nearly exactly the same, except they claim their family owned a farm, wear cowboy hats on distinctly more occasions, and actually talk about guns rather than change the subject in fear of losing votes). He was smart, he said the right things, he wore the right suits, he never slagged off Will.I.Am on Twitter for declining record sales after he stopped working with him. Hopefully Obama’s time in office will encourage far more non-white feasible presidential candidates in the future, but right now the most revolutionary thing to come out of his presidency may be the future popularity of drone strikes.
necessaryevil.blog 