tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post7962487372820699904..comments2023-12-08T00:45:09.046-08:00Comments on The Fullfillment* Centre: carlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17886258675618058752noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-78582092765842724072009-10-08T10:47:53.452-07:002009-10-08T10:47:53.452-07:00Well, not better. Just less corrupted by 'cool...Well, not better. Just less corrupted by 'cool' (remember when chat show hosts actually asked questions and then waited for the guest's answer?)<br /><br />Compare this:<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElnCI1fkfFM<br /><br />To this:<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T1pXsJp_go<br /><br />Both shit, of course, but only one fills me with resentment and regret... remember 'irony' and 'cool' were pretty big in the Weimar Republic!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-79525158678121496222009-10-06T19:15:28.802-07:002009-10-06T19:15:28.802-07:00Wogan is the product of a better timeWogan is the product of a better timeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-53660205825775365892009-10-02T03:34:05.355-07:002009-10-02T03:34:05.355-07:00Just spotted the cover to Chris Evans' latest ...Just spotted the cover to Chris Evans' latest 'book' - which apes the design of the 'Trainspotting' poster!<br /><br />Never match the class of this bloke:<br /><br />http://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Was-World-According-Wogan/dp/0752888447/ref=pd_sim_b_3<br /><br />... who I don't even like anyway! But at least he 'made his bones'.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-64192606158299353832009-10-01T06:31:19.470-07:002009-10-01T06:31:19.470-07:00... which brings me to another point: these Jolly ...... which brings me to another point: these Jolly 90s Jack Tarrs were instrumental in bringing an 'irrereverent' re-invention of racism and misogyny. The endless silicone breasts on the mag shelves and 00s boom in blatant 'mainstream' racism isn't a million miles away from Noel's comments on Glastonbury, 'Vindaloo' (one of the biggest Groucho-wanks of the decade) and Welsh's circular yob narratives.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-30435313565360005042009-10-01T06:27:42.355-07:002009-10-01T06:27:42.355-07:00in response to this "Working class heroes my ...in response to this "Working class heroes my arse - they leeched off all the hit bits of 60s 'brit invasion', calcified the pop charts and gave it a royal seal by partying with a mass murderer who made the Belgrano atrocity look like a picnic in comparison ie. scum."<br /><br />What makes a working class hero? Surely just being an example to relate to - just attitude. Leeching is irrelevant, they did what they set out to do, plain and simple. It's apolitical.<br /><br />As hard as it is to separate what Oasis are now, from what they were, I can't think of a more apt musical comparison to the Sickboy position of - “ Fuck all that shite. The Tories go on about your employer, your country, your family. Fuck that even mair. It’s me, me, fucking me..” - than Liam Gallagher.<br /><br />This rejection of the political and apparent self-centered solipsism doesn't make Gallagher any less of a working class heroAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-72536748559830486402009-10-01T06:24:21.145-07:002009-10-01T06:24:21.145-07:00I don't quite see it in Oasis - not least beca...I don't quite see it in Oasis - not least because the lyrics are cut'n'paste gibberish largely about 'nothing' (the other great theme of the 90s). Also, their 'performance' of (white, clannish, unimaginative, yobbish and smug) working class 'identity' is as culturally damaging and reactionary as The Sun's construction of 'working class culture'. <br /><br />An attitude that finds it apotheosis (apothoasis?) in Casuals United and the English Defence League. Or on a less ominous level, the reconstruction of 'indie' as a British Legion of conservative boozy white boys with guitars - such a 'closed shop' they make Half Man Half Biscuit look like Miles Davis.<br /><br />And before I'm accused of 'snobbery', let me me point out that I'm very working class (if not 'underclass'), but probably the kind of working class that is now ignored by the media, New Labour and its dancing monkeys like Irvine Welsh or Oasis; despite the continuing onslaught against access to education, affordable housing etc.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-82115174935554537262009-10-01T05:30:47.761-07:002009-10-01T05:30:47.761-07:00But Oasis were working class ...?
OK their influe...But Oasis <i>were</i> working class ...?<br /><br />OK their influence might have been pernicious in almost every way imaginable, but surely underneath all the inanity and the turgidness and the plagiarism was a more long-standing cultural identity reaching back way before the immediate nineties context.<br /><br />Most of their back-catalogue is atrocious but in the good stuff - Live Forever, Champagne Supernova - there's a deal of pathos in the sound of this older notion of working class pride/heroism eliding right there and then with its opposite ie. Thatcherism.<br /><br />Surely Trainspotting is also feeding off the vast sadness of this, with its elegiac glance over the shoulder at a world that no longer exists. Renton tries to make a go of it with his friends, but in the end decides there's no such thing as society after all. There might be a momentary thrill in his 'fuck the lot of you' decision but there's no mistaking the pessimism there too. <br /><br />There's a distinct sort of mid-nineties surface optimism underwritten with melancholy in both cases.Alex Nivenhttp://www.whatisthegrain.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-30391302340190722952009-09-30T16:38:37.490-07:002009-09-30T16:38:37.490-07:00... and the death of Kurt Cobain coinciding with t...... and the death of Kurt Cobain coinciding with the first issue of Loaded - it was a long, weird summer...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-54343661794088572492009-09-30T16:33:42.815-07:002009-09-30T16:33:42.815-07:00Another point I can't quite avoid: the introdu...Another point I can't quite avoid: the introduction of the National Lottery in the same season of Britart, Parklife, Timeless, Pulp Fiction, Definitely Maybe and Boyle's first film 'Shallow Grave' ie. the random pot of money that defeats all consideration of aesthetics, class, loyalty, sex and identity. Has the ideological impact of Major's only lasting influence ever been evaluated?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-25973487795970724212009-09-30T16:24:53.612-07:002009-09-30T16:24:53.612-07:00OK - maybe that was unfair. Maybe you're not a...OK - maybe that was unfair. Maybe you're not an idiot but Oasis truly were the epitome of all the new idiocy that presented itself as 'heroism'. Working class heroes my arse - they leeched off all the hit bits of 60s 'brit invasion', calcified the pop charts and gave it a royal seal by partying with a mass murderer who made the Belgrano atrocity look like a picnic in comparison ie. scum. Blur are/were shit too. In fact, even some of the stuff that appeared 'life-changing' at the time sounds like pretty thin gruel now ('Maxinequaye', 'Timeless', 'Dummy', 'Different Class'). The 90s 'zeitgeist' was the con that marked us with now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-89297830050622358022009-09-30T16:06:29.343-07:002009-09-30T16:06:29.343-07:00'Bipolar orientation"? You're fulla s...'Bipolar orientation"? You're fulla shit - not least because you're displaying 'your' name. Due to your failure to realise that Oasis are utterly a priori shit and a pox on anyhthing that gave life to British pop cuutlure, its clear that its nulab/neocon/neolibs like you that just don't get 'it' (by which I mean ANYTHING).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-75900303196575899942009-09-30T02:13:09.258-07:002009-09-30T02:13:09.258-07:00As regards Liam Gallagher ...
Surely, the boorish...As regards Liam Gallagher ...<br /><br />Surely, the boorish, petulant, nursery-school existentialist side has been emphasised enough? The orthodox view is of a moronic, working-class scrapper (much like that awful neo-snobbish notion of 'Chavvery') hence Welsh's defence comes as a rare encomium.<br /><br />The bargain-bin Lennonry ('I'm free to be whatever I choose') was only ever half the story with Oasis. Looked at more sympathetically, their whole raison d'etre was predicated on very un-Sick Boy notions of community and togetherness - the whole essence of their art contained in the lines 'maybe you're the same as me / we see things they'll never see'.<br /><br />Obviously, it was N. Gallagher who actually wrote the lyric. But Liam sung it, and sung it well. Maybe he's not a working-class hero taken on his own (and he certainly very quickly became something like the antithesis of one) but surely Oasis in their early days were the epitome of working-class heroism because of this bipolar orientation, this passionate iteration of the 'two-ness' embodied in this (symbolic and real) grounding in brotherhood?<br /><br />See also 'Acquiesce' - 'we need each other / we believe in one another'. Whether or not you think the vast anti-Thatcherite social resonance of this sort of thing excuses its lack of eloquence, this is very far from individualism/atomism that Renton ultimately sides with, and surely worthy of 'heroic'.The Grainhttp://www.whatisthegrain.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-41111490500990208952009-09-27T15:35:11.770-07:002009-09-27T15:35:11.770-07:00We should get JK Rowling to get her cash card card...We should get JK Rowling to get her cash card card as a stimulus package. I'm sure China's getting sick of bailing us out.<br /><br />Howard could also do his bit for the economy too - he could solve the youth unemployment problem by selling stoned drop-outs on the groovy career path of your daddy putting you through Oxford, hanging out with a plethora of gangsters and secret agents, avoiding most of the shit that comes with the trade, then boring the nation for twenty years with tales of your exploits. oh wait a minute... he already has... <br /><br />Subcommandante AnonymousAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-19993484773099806362009-09-27T15:23:50.746-07:002009-09-27T15:23:50.746-07:00Perhaps we could get JK Rowling to write it. She&...Perhaps we could get JK Rowling to write it. She's very talented.<br /><br />"Howard Marks and the Muggles Of Doom" or something.<br /><br />He deals drugs in a posh private school run by wizards and a suspiciously Scottish Robbie Coltrane.<br /><br />I dunno, shit happens. With dragons. Super Furry Animals are the school band.<br /><br />There's a poignant gay vignette to show that this is diverse and modern and not really from the pre-liberal 1950's.<br /><br />Stephen Fry does an appalling cameo.<br /><br />Et voila!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-59659835893484912332009-09-27T15:20:00.629-07:002009-09-27T15:20:00.629-07:00Anyone displaying one iota of charisma in the abov...Anyone displaying one iota of charisma in the above masterpiece can look forward to having Daniel Craig kicking him to death in 3-D for fifteen minutes in the next Bond movie, all the while hoping he can beat Johnny Depp for the lead in the forthcoming Ian Brady biopic.<br /><br />Professional philistines Mark Commode and Johnny Woss will hail the scene as the iconic moment of the decade.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-54295921279411129552009-09-27T15:12:18.901-07:002009-09-27T15:12:18.901-07:00We wouldn't make a fortune, cos we've had ...We wouldn't make a fortune, cos we've had loads of brit film flops featuring Groucho club circle jerks - the 'public' isn't interested. Of course its all about the tax breaks, innit?<br /><br />Would need some rewrites from Richard Curtis: so Ken Stott saying 'och ye wee cunt, where's ma fuckin' smack?' can become Simon Pegg saying 'I jolly bloody well fucking could do with some fucking drugs right now' (cue for laughter from the three taxpayers in the audience). <br /><br />Of course Dylan Jones and Michael Gove will hail it as a renaissance in British cinema.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-3918578008997487772009-09-27T14:23:06.947-07:002009-09-27T14:23:06.947-07:00How about a film about Howard Marks, scripted by I...How about a film about Howard Marks, scripted by Irvine Welsh, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Rhys Ifans, Hugh Grant, Stephen Fry (as his gay Oxbo tutor), Bill Nighy, Anna Friel and Keith Allen, with wardrobe by Dylan Jones, music by Kaiser Chiefs, Primal Scream, Graham Coxon, Lou Reed, Maximo Park and Badly Dressed Boy VS. Lily Allen with some special walk-on parts for Damien Hirst, Gordon Ramsey, a member of The Clash and Roy Chubby Brown?<br /><br />WE COULD MAKE A FUCKING FORTUNE!!!!<br /><br />(feel free to add any essential names I missed)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-45984579040771750062009-09-27T12:42:49.461-07:002009-09-27T12:42:49.461-07:00Can't believe Howard Marks is still shopping h...Can't believe Howard Marks is still shopping himself around in this way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-85655611032944796142009-09-27T12:40:00.847-07:002009-09-27T12:40:00.847-07:00you're definitly jealous, but you're not J...you're definitly jealous, but you're not JUST jealous - you're ALSO RIGHT <br /><br />Re: pop culture and wider politics as corrupted - I agree and instinctivly sense something similar - not corrupted, but devalued...<br /><br />Did you see the recent GQ awards? Best director - Guy Ritchie. Best politican - George Osbourne. Chosen by Dylan whatsisface the editor of GQ - a soaring mediocrity to rank with the 90's best. It's not overAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-55059969977065180602009-09-27T10:23:07.734-07:002009-09-27T10:23:07.734-07:00Just remembered another 90s 'hero':
Howar...Just remembered another 90s 'hero':<br /><br />Howard Marks! How the lad mags loved him! He makes millions dealing ('nice') drugs, but he's posh and (supposedly) didn't nail anyone to the floor while applying a blowtorch to their scrotum! He's involved in single issue politics! He hangs out with rock bands! He hardly paid any tax! He 're-hashes' his grubby career at festivals! He brands himself 'Mr. Nice'! He was in 'Human Traffic' AND and upcoming (flop) Welsh adaptation! HE'S GONNA BE PLAYED BY FUCKIN' RHYS IFANS IN A (flop) MOVIE!<br /><br />He's the epitome of cool britannia - rich, dull, Oxbridge but bit of a wide-o, rich, self-branding, peddling his tired bod boy schtick.<br /><br />But maybe I'm just jealous.<br /><br />(his enlightened, wise self the Dalai Anonymous)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-26925439447108670222009-09-27T10:03:25.259-07:002009-09-27T10:03:25.259-07:00This is the truly wise and enlightened anonymous, ...This is the truly wise and enlightened anonymous, who was traumatised by the mindless worship of money and power for its own sake in 80s playgrounds, which itself sowed the seeds for the culturally and spiritually bankrupt brand/celeb/bad credit/whoremongering/tech-fetish culture we now suffer today. <br /><br />Who funnily enough also used to argue for the virtues of hiphop while the other kids refused to consider it 'real' music like Whitesnake or Big Country. Who now thinks that hiphop's all-pervasive influence on popular culture has proven disastrous - which combined with the year zero of 'Thriller' turned black American music (once the pinnacle of popular culture) into a dead-eyed wing of fashion advertising. Who isn't even certain if Beyonce is a human being, rather than a robot arse with a CGI pretty woman attached to it (despite having a computer programme istead of a voice, she still sounds crap). <br /><br />In this milieu, artistic worth is impossible to gauge. If you can hold a microphone and rant about how your gonna shag my wife and/or miss your mum for five minutes and then be called a 'genius', the only worth is money, which ironically enough has proved to be rather worthless anyway!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-29979475093168723892009-09-27T03:31:49.900-07:002009-09-27T03:31:49.900-07:00This is the allegedly intelligent anonymous.
Expa...This is the allegedly intelligent anonymous.<br /><br />Expanding on my point about quality, I'm wondering if there is some kind of ontological connection we can make with regard to artistic quality and credit (money), and perhaps politics and credit (money).<br /><br />I tend to suspect that there is a connection between e.g. Kaiser Chiefs and IKEA. i.e. one makes "landfill indie" and the other makes landfill furniture (furniture that is designed with a stunted useful life). It would seem to me that demand for both these poor-quality phenomena is dependant upon cheap, easily-obtainable money.<br /><br />If we went back to the levels of demand common in the 1960's, an LP record would have made a substantial dent in the average wage, and so the very least that any potential purchaser would expect would be for the band, to a fairly proficient degree, to be able to play their instruments. A certain patina of professionalism would therefore be an attractive trait. Similarly, with very little access to credit, the average worker would want a piece of furniture of sufficient build quality to be worth the investment of their labour.<br /><br />However, if someone obtains money cheaply (liar loan or house price inflation, for example), the sense of having to make a sacrifice in order to purchase a good means that there could well be a reduced fastidiousness in choosing what that money is spent on. The purchase becomes more instinctive, less considered.<br /><br />This obviously feeds back to politics, as for all the supposed ideological baggage that neoliberalism is thought to carry, I think ultimately it is a fancied-up form of procrastination i.e. it is really the politico-economic process in which clapped-out Western countries avoid making productive but painful structural reforms to their economies via the means of ever-degrading lending standards.<br /><br />This satisfies my own instinctive sense that contemporary pop culture is corrupted, or at least indicative of a corrupt wider politics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-39410014037015801342009-09-26T15:20:13.122-07:002009-09-26T15:20:13.122-07:00TO comment on the auto-tune - useless in the studi...TO comment on the auto-tune - useless in the studio bands - this is palpably true. A casual look at the charts nowadays reveals a dearth of even the most basic song craft and talent...contemporary r and b music, for instance is almost like punk all over again - they can't sing, and they're music is made using the most basic settings/lopps/quanitizations on music programs a child could use...not in itself a bad thing, but when this technical inability is married to a lack of any original ideas, things get bad.<br />What was the last good pop record?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-76336845986711937532009-09-26T15:10:28.634-07:002009-09-26T15:10:28.634-07:00THis is the stupider anonymous - although - is thi...THis is the stupider anonymous - although - is this really the case?<br /><br />If you read back what I was saying, what I was saying was that it seems that the blogger (and others) can't seem to criticize certain people without bringing their money into it. They're not WRONG because they're jealous. But the obvious overtones of jealousy are worth noting and criticizing in themselves, distinct from other more substantial criticisms.<br /><br />I can safely say I never accused anyone of insulting Stallone because he was rich and they were jealous in a play ground in the 1980's. So perhaps it was more common at your school.<br /><br />To the far more intelligent than either me or the other anonymous anonymous above - I think I agree with you - there was a real sense in the 90's (and now) that a degree of lowest common denominator popularity exempted art from criticism. The broadsheet culture guides (OMM music monthly etc) expanded on this with the whole 'Girls Aloud must be interesting because they're popular' approach, the overtone being that dismissing them as just a load of shit would be to identify yourself as some kind of namby-pamby, pretentious intellectual. Hip-hop is the greatest exemplar of this process - witness many many talented artists being ignored in favour of Lil Wayne, rappers such as Eminem (who is admittedly ery talented) being lionized at the expense of other equally talented artists, having pieces written on him by the princess of patronisation Zadie Smith. In fact, Xadie Smith's another one - literature for people who need to read a magazine article about a book before they read the book.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31416501.post-88383702949104975692009-09-26T14:44:03.205-07:002009-09-26T14:44:03.205-07:00Anonymous #3 here again.
I kind of suspect that t...Anonymous #3 here again.<br /><br />I kind of suspect that the real problem with the '90's thrusters we've already mentioned is an underlying post-modern prioritising of "lifestyle" and novelty over craft.<br /><br />I've seen it remarked very often (for example) about how contemporary bands are especially useless in the studio - at how autotune is now almost <i>de rigeur</i> and how the dense production style (and consequent reduction in dynamic range) is partly there to hide multitudes of musical sins.<br /><br />The idea of spending years on the treadmill honing your craft has become deeply unfashionable, Daddio, but I think that that ineffable sense of lacked-quality, while often difficult to pin down on individual works, has a more pervasive presence in the macro-culture.<br /><br />I'm not quite able to fully put my finger on this yet, but I think there is a underlying process in which post-modernism devalues skill, which then opens the door to artistic chancers, who then justify their mediocrity by an appeal to democratisation, which in itself has to be rooted in working-class, or pseudo-working-class past.<br /><br />It's the victory of "authenticity" over authenticity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com