never Miss a beat

Rihanna: Not Diana

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 09:01:00 -0500

HOLD TIGHT, THE MEDIA. I am about to plunge to new depths in the heinous world of “blogging”. I am about to blog about a headline without even READING the article. To be fair, the article is out in tomorrow’s papers so it’s impossible for me to read it yet. I just have to sit here pained for a whole 24 hours baited for the onslaught of aghast facial expressions I will be employing while reading – and I will be reading because I am highly intrigued. Also, I can’t talk to someone else about it because I’m doing London Fashion Week a favour by staying indoors, and currently nobody in my flat is awake so I can’t scream “WTF IS THIS ABOUT THE WORLD HAS GONE TO THE DOGS” etc. So you see, I just have to blog about the headline otherwise I’ll start shouting at my reflection in the oven door, like I’m about to re-sit my driving test or something (“You CAN do this. You CAN drive. Everyone can drive… except you”). Soz.

So, in this morning’s Times is an advert for tomorrow’s Sunday Times. Big headline: “WHY RIHANNA IS THE NEW DIANA” – to the left a picture of Di with crown, to the right a picture of Rihanna with probably more expensive and real crown. Sell: “Camille Paglia reveals the STARTLING SIMILARITIES between the singer and the late princess”. H’oh boy, “startling similarities”. I am doing major eye roll.

Admittedly, some similarities immediately spring to mind:

1. Rihanna is pretty/Diana was pretty – both highly photogenic individuals, photographed often, Rihanna mostly naked and suggestive, Diana mostly clothed up to the eyeballs and demure but still totally PILF (Princess I’d…)

2. Rihanna is rich/Diana was rich – money, money, money in a rich man’s world, Rihanna’s a gift from label pimp Jay-Z, Diana’s in the name of Prince Charles, patriarchal dollar. Except to Rihanna’s credit she does seem to earn hers, even if her hours:fee ratio may suggest she’s on less than minimum wage and is the hardest working entertainment vehicle since Shamu the whale.

3. Rihanna is “tortured”/Diana was “tortured” – Diana and Rihanna are both female victims of oppressive regimes (/promotional schedules). Both also have troubled relationships – Rihanna embroiled in an ongoing physical and mental nightmare of abuse and court hearings, Diana ensconced in an unhappy marriage which ended in a divorce settlement.

4. Rihanna had a plane/Diana had… her boyfriend’s yacht? Here endeth the similarities.

My guess is that this theory on how “Rihanna is the new Diana” (it even rhymes!) will pan out via similarities 1-3 establishing a direct correlation between the two ‘princesses’ (‘pop royalty’ versus ‘actual royalty’). Henceforth will come a moral lesson on how we are all responsible for Rihanna as we were with Diana (yep, still rhymes). The conclusion will go something like: “Let’s do something before RiRi dies, and Candle In The Wind is Number 1 again for weeks on end and Elton John has to hire a nanny!”

Thing is, I have had excellent fun with this “Rihanna is the new Diana” headline. For example, the rhyming (already mentioned twice) is divine. Also here are some excellent puns/jokes:

1. PON DI REPLAY

2. Take A Bow/Curtsy

3. You Di One

4. Shine Bright Like A Di-mond

5. We Found Love In A Hopeless PALACE

6. (Oh Dia-na-na) What’s My Name? (clue: it’s DIANA)

7. Shut Up And D… no, that’s bad taste

But here is why this theory (that I have not read yet) is probably nonsense:

1. Rihanna and Diana may seem similar in their ultimately doomed aspirations to become princesses but look closer and you’ll find they started in very different places. The Spencer clan, for example, is one of Britain’s most illustrious aristocratic families (I ripped that off Wikipedia). The Fentys of Barbados, however, consisted of a drug dealer father and an abused mother. The need to escape unfortunate circumstances seems more pertinent in Rihanna’s upbringing and suggests somewhat different motivations.

2. Rihanna makes pop songs, dominates the charts and promotes various products, including a recent clothing line for River Island and HTC phones. But no product is bigger than the overall product: Rihanna, on sale 24/7. Diana attracted public attention due to her activities as a member of a real Royal family and mother to a potential King. She may have been party to an ever more superficial Royal Family, available on mugs and teatowels, but in essence she was predominantly a person of public interest.

3. Prince Charles is many things, but he’s probably not Chris Brown. (Though has anyone seen them in a room together? The plot thickens)

4. Instagram: Rihanna willingly promotes intrusion into her life on Twitter and Instagram because she lives in a new age where privacy is less precious to some. The activities of the driver fleeing the paps in Paris the night Diana died would suggest that Di was less up for the level of intrusion into her own private world. (Out of interest: if Diana were alive today would she employ a ghostwriter to handle her own Twitter account or would she be live-tweeting Newsnight too? Who knows?!).

5. Princess Diana rarely, if ever, had long hair. Rihanna has had a host of different hairstyles. And tattoos. We know Rihanna has tattoos because we can see all of her. Also, Princess Diana was only Princess of Wales. According to Coldplay, Rihanna is Princess of all of CHINA. In all seriousness, Rihanna is not the new Diana because look at Rihanna, now look at Kate Middleton… ah yes, they are both women. Moving on.

The person who wrote this article is probably way smarter than me and must have books on shelves that people can buy and maybe tomorrow’s piece will say something vastly enlightening and I will regret this (I won’t though I’m still laughing at “Oh Dia-na-na What’s My Name?”). The point is, Rihanna is NOT Diana. She is not the People’s Princess because she is just the People (and on the cover of People, quite often). We don’t always have to make women look like tragic heroines or damsels in distress just because they aspire to succeed. To move away from the headline of the article I haven’t read yet, I guess I’m just bored of constantly being forced to consider the problem with Rihanna. Whether or not we want to focus on the apparent distress of Rihanna’s personal life, we could focus on the fact that Rihanna is dominating pop right now. She is top of her field. Yes, she could put on some more clothes now and then. Of course, it would be amazing if she posed on the cover of Vogue in a full three-piece suit from Saville Row. Absolutely, she might not want to record songs with Chris Brown and parade about in front of the media with him just begging to be psycho-analysed. But ultimately, Rihanna, for me, is someone who makes loud, irresistible club tunes. I can’t be bothered with her baggage and what she does at 3am. I can’t help her. I don’t even know her. I’ve bought her music so I can escape my own baggage. (Incidentally, Diana, I cared about even less, because she didn’t even make loud, irresistible club tunes, or own a single thing I could afford to buy.)

I choose not to theorise that Rihanna is some hounded beauty powerless to stop the chaos of the circus around her. I choose not to posit her as “the world’s most complicated popstar”. What’s certainly true is that Rihanna is the world’s most “famous” famous person yet. What’s complicated about her is us. How, given our unprecedented levels of access to Rihanna, we feel about her. We enjoy Rihanna’s prime while also knowing the extent of the damage it’s doing to her. I am only invested in Rihanna: the pop star. And I can see where this Rihanna is the new Diana theory is going. It’s going to try and make me feel guilty for raving to We Found Love in a field last summer while turning a blind eye to the context of the song in the event that, perhaps one day, Rihanna might heaven forbid meet her tragic demise. Well, if I knew Rihanna I would sit her down, I would force her to take a holiday, I would tell her to spend some time with herself. But I can’t. I don’t know her. And here’s the rub with all the Rihanna theorists: I don’t really want to.

_____________________________________________________________

Hello, OK so true to my word I have read the piece by Camille now and I’m doing all the aghast expressions.

LOOK AT THE COVER: Rihanna and Diana are nothing alike. Together they make the world’s ugliest, boss-eyed princess ever. This is the worst ever attempt to make faces mould into one another like the ones in Michael Jackson’s ‘Black Or White’ video. I think Paloma Faith and Aphrodite might have worked better for this particular branch of codshit feminism.
The headline: “DOUBLE TAKE”. Substantiated by the slugs on the pages which read “PARALLEL LIVES”. The two women are positioned on opposite pages so that they appear to be eyeing each other up. TOTALLY NEVER HAPPENED. Also, the notion that Diana and Rihanna have “parallel lives” offends me to the physical core. But let’s give it a go…
“LIKE DIANA, RIHANNA EMERGED FROM A BROKEN HOME.” STOP PRESS! Every child who experiences divorce is exactly the same. I’m going to ring my half brother and sister to let them know the news that they are now eligible to party with Wills and Harry. No other environmental or circumstantial assessment of upbringing necessary… they will get on like a house on fire.
PICTURE EVIDENCE. Next to each other: a picture of Rihanna in bra on floor of hotel sipping on champagne and enjoying a joint, and a picture of Diana on the diving board of Dodi’s yacht “a week before her death”!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS CHRIS/CHARLES COMPARISON
Then that’s kinda it… For the majority of the piece there is little case made for their similarities. In fact it’s just another dissection of Rihanna’s private life, based on the suggestion that she allows us in via constant social media updates. “Rihanna has become in effect the director and diva of her own long-running movie”. Haven’t we all. All I’m saying is, my movie, directed by me, is going to probably be more widely available (certificate: 15) and more of a rom-com and at least 4 out of 5 popcorns, if not 6. (There is an amusing and tbh original analysis of Rihanna’s Instagram work suggesting her photos have “an atmospheric eroticism that is genuinely artistic and has not been seen in decades”. *dies*)
It’s only in the conclusion that the similarity is finally suggested. It goes:

Smalltown girls
Smiled at cameras
Struggled with love publicly

OMG I’M THE NEW DIANA

What is 'Guitar Music'?

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 07:23:00 -0500

Whether for or against, people are obsessed with this phrase ‘guitar music’. When is ‘guitar music’ coming back? When is it in common parlance/ASDA? When’s it due a good spanking? Does it need its nappy changing? When’s it going to fucking grow up? BLOODY HELL ‘GUITAR MUSIC’, STOP WANKING TO BON JOVI WITH THE DOOR LOCKED AND COME AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR ONCE FFS. The idea is that ‘Guitar music’ is everyone’s least well-behaved child. It’s so embarrassing, it hardly ever does anything right. And more often than not it’s a very, very naughty boy.

Apparently the phrase ‘guitar music’ has shown up unannounced again, like Sharon in EastEnders – familiar to those who knew it before, unfamiliar and dodgy-looking to those too young to remember Oasis or Bob Dylan (who are dead alike both with their guitars and their music). Young’uns are getting excited about a load of new music (What?! You people are doing WHAT?!) and it’s so completely dull because it’s just loadsa 6-stringed instruments played in variously totally versatile ways and it’s not as good as it was in someone else’s day and inevitably the music press are going to call it ‘the return of guitar music’. HOW PREDICTABLE.

Well I for one am confused. I’m in the music press and I’m stuck because of this term ‘guitar music’. What is it about? Hard-Fi? Simon & Garfunkel? Santana? Megadeth? The Soup Dragons? Who even invented the phrase ‘guitar music’? Sometimes I think, “COR, I really want to listen to some of that there ‘guitar music’” but then I get stuck choosing between The Breeders’ ‘Safari’ (Kim Deal, such a Dame of grunge), Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Fly Away’ (SEXY AXE SOLOS IN YER FACE), Everything Everything’s ‘Final Form’ (angular, raging, EXPLOSIVE) and Joni Mitchell’s ‘This Flight Tonight’ (*tumbleweed*). So similar yet so absolutely not remotely the same in any sense whatsoever. Sometimes I get really bemused listening to Hurts because according to the Philosophy Of Indie by Dr Creation there should be guitars there and I’m listening closely but, like… I can’t hear them. I mean, they’re two white guys in a band from Manchester so what’s going on there? Then I’ll put on ‘It’s All About The Bejamins’ by Puff Daddy and there’s a riff. Must be some sort of weird human beatbox. Diddy doesn’t own guitars. Don’t even get me started on Primal Scream’s ‘Screamdelica’. Who do they think they are with their keyboards and their beats? The Chemical Brothers?!

Forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious here but ‘guitar’ is not a genre, it’s an instrument. I wonder if they had this problem in Mozart’s day. Was it all “Flute music is SO HOT right now” and “Fuck that violin shit, man”? Mmm probably not. The whole idea of ‘guitar music’ is a construct employed by people who want to a) take a break from thinking, and worse b) batter others’ enthusiasm for a tune.

Let’s fast-forward to 2013 as an example. New bands such as Palma Violets and Haim and Merchandise and Savages (there are others, this is merely an example) are spoken of in the same sentence. “This enthusiasm, this sudden collection must be so intentional,” think the ‘guitar music’ chatterers. Two are a load of boys and two are a load of girls. Is that the uniting theme? Guitars + Music + Girls who like Boys who like girls who meet boys, etc? Nah, chill out grandad.

[Chilli from Palma Violets. Yeah but it’s well boring because it’s a guitar/bass/stringed thing.]

They’re just a collective of upcoming bands who encompass a feeling of mindless invincibility. They’re young, they’re talented, they’re characters, they look amazing and they’re having the time of their lives (well, Jehnny from Savages maybe less so #indiejokes). That’s the uniting theme. The anthems. The bangers. The moment when you go, MAN that feels good, I’m going to lose my mind tonight. Frankly, it’s not about the guitars. Fuck the guitars. I don’t care if the instruments are kazoos found in old cereal boxes. This is about a feeling. Most music is about a feeling. It seems silly to bottle that. To lump this lot in with “guitar music” is to call them the same as, say, The National; phenomenal musicians who make gut-wrenchingly beautiful music, but who come up slightly short when you’re 14 and looking for something with more thrills than, well, anything by The National. Because what else is there? Maths and acne. If I was 14 now, I’d have that one off Peace plastered all over my wall, I’d dress exactly like Haim, and I’d quote Girls verbatim all day. Irritating yeah? But music is allowed to be fun. Especially when you’re 14.

[Oh look another indie boy. Kinda looks like Nicky Wire BUT it’s actually total babe Harry from Peace]

Without naming names I have read some criticism for the enthusiasm displayed towards these bands. It’s been marked out as an agenda to resurrect the flawed construct known as ‘guitar music’. And it makes me laugh. HAHAHA getting excited about a song isn’t an attempt to hatch some plan (though it can often feel like a tiny revolution). To think that young people are trying to learn new slang, decide what posters to put on their walls, understand what makes a bong, straighten their hair, wear jeans properly and once that’s all done re-create the year 1992… Who has the time? Who was alive in 1992? (I was, but it wasn’t my time). The reason Palmas and Haim and Merchandise and Peace and Beastcoast and Child Of Lov and Drenge and Wolf Alice and CHVRCHES (where’s the guitar on ‘The Mother We Share’ again?) all sound great on my iPod isn’t because of any thought process other than, Jeffing heck yes. THIS. So how should we define this new, exciting music? Who knows? Who really cares? Should we just give it all a silly name: Retro-rock. Old-wave. The Soundcloud Revolution. Shrooma… oh wait, that’s been done. It’s a bunch of bands that have nothing to tie them together except for the fact that they make you feel immortal. It’s fine not to like them and go back to watching Top Gear while listening to The Clash. But don’t cheapen a new generation and deny them their chance to one day go, “Yeah but it was better in my day,” with a similar level of malaise and nostalgia.

So what it sounds like Mozza.

tenmagazine: SMASH HITS: MUSIC PRESS GOES POP

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:10:11 -0500

tenmagazine: SMASH HITS: MUSIC PRESS GOES POP:

10magazine:

It can hardly have escaped your notice that the music press is in trouble. Circulation figures of rock and pop magazines are tumbling, especially the NME. One theory is they’ve lost readers to blogs and websites. Another, slightly more alarming theory is that music journalism is,…

The Pros & Cons of Suit & Tie

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:20:00 -0500

Justin Timberlake has released his new single, his first in six years. Apparently he has been working on a new album secretly since June (not exactly the two year secret operation of David Bowie but still… covert). That will be called “The 20/20 Experience”. Y’know like Dolland & Atchison. Or Specsavers. Here is the song “Suit & Tie”, which presumably was part of the experience of going to the optician in Prohibition era New York when you had to wear penguin suits all day to conceal heavy artillery. http://countdown.justintimberlake.com/

There are good things about “Suit & Tie”. There are bad things about “Suit & Tie”.

1. It’s called “Suit & Tie”

Pro: This harks back to the smart, Rat Pack obsessed JT. Slick. Easy. Cool. Never out of fashion.

Con: This harks back to Michael Buble, very popular among women of a certain age, but limited in terms of dance moves (Buble’s body-popping skills are quite pedestrian) and street cred. Also: it sounds like an Armani jingle. Goodbye McDonalds “I’m Lovin’ It” adverts, HELLO Marks & Sparks “As long as I’ve got my suit and tie” special January offer.

2. It features horns

Pro: Parp parp parp. Everyone loves a parp. Ghostface, OutKast, Sinatra… all the dons love da horns (that nearly rhymes).

Con: Super Mario 64 also loves horns. When you complete a level. PARP.

3. Timbaland back on production

Pro: IT’S TIMBO. One of the main perpetrators of new age hip-hop and r&b. Missy Elliot colleague and all round major genius.

Con: Timbaland went off the boil around the same time Missy Elliot went off the boil. TIMBER!

4. It picks up where I’m Bringing Sexy Back left off

Pro: I’m Bringing Sexy Back was a very weird comeback single and a challenging sound. Once you listened to it a few times it felt exciting and nuanced and sort of sophisticated.

Con: This doesn’t sound exciting and nuanced and sort of sophisticated. It sounds like it wants to be those things. Rather than channeling the bravado (and ridiculousness) of “I’m Bringing Sexy Back”, Justin seems to be saying “Yo yo whattup, I just bought MySpace, homies. Yeah I still got it”. He does “still got it”. For now… *sideways glance at Brad Pitt in the Chanel No 5 adverts*.

5. “Shit’s so sick I got a hit and picked up a habit”

Pro: This is not a drug reference. It’s Justin Timberlake’s way with words. He was before Drake’s time. Move over, YOLO.

Con: Perhaps it’s about time JT stopped trying to keep up with the kids (“Going out so hot/Just like an oven”) because there’s probably something more heavyweight he could get down with lyrically in order to be the great singer-songwriter he always wants to be when you see those videos of him sitting at pianos (Elton John, basically).

6. Jay-Z features

Pro: He is the jiggaman. He is the black Sinatra. He is 100% Jay-Z, 100% of the time.

Con: This just reminds you of great Jay-Z songs that do the whole “this is a classy jam” vibe, ie, ‘Girls Girls Girls’ and ‘Excuse Me Miss’. Both those songs succeed in being classy jams because they’re toned down, subtle, controlled. Justin Timberlake always sounds like the Disneyfied version of that. Because he is the Disneyfied version of that.

Anyway, I kinda like it. So will GQ. (I have really bad eyesight)

It's good to talk

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:04:00 -0500

[This was written before Julie Burchill happened. In Julie Burchill’s case, it’s good to take five]

It’s been a long week so I’m just going to say something quick and obvious. Well, I say obvious. Maybe it’s not.

Today a journalist left Twitter which is a shame because a) she was lovely and humble on Twitter, b) she tweeted about house music at approx 11pm which is usually the time I play bangers by Frankie Knuckles, SL2 and Capella (all I really listen to is a CD called The All Time Greatest Hits Of Dance 2) and it was nice to share that and 3) she was good at explaining Newsnight and Question Time – TV programmes that are so inaccessible to me they regularly convince me I have severe learning disabilities.

Any road, she left. She left because of what seems to have become a common consequence of being a journalist employed to write opinion. Constant harassment by dissenters, which escalated following several BRILLIANT pieces of journalism she’d written earlier this week. Now I often feel put off by the whole Troll Online Complaints Committee – people constantly and disproportionately going on about being trolled like they can’t just either tweet back “FUCK YOU”, or ignore it, shut the computer down and take a walk. As a child of a generation reared on the internet where irrational insults would be flung across chatrooms “for the LOLs” I view all online harassment as the activity of 12-year-old hormonal mimsies and therefore think it invalid. Because I once was a 12-year-old hormonal mimsy on peer-2-peer networks, illegally downloading Limp Bizkit albums while batting off reams of made-up swear words with lots of “Your mum”s. Really I think every journalist who is harassed online should just do a blanket “YOUR MUM” and it’d be sorted. “YOU RACIST, BIGOT, PRIVALLEGED (w’evs) UGLY CUNT, HOW DID YOU GET YOUR JOB LOL?”. Well frankly, YER MA.

But I’m missing the point by focusing on how I feel other people should deal with trolling/harassment because 1) I don’t have a column in a national newspaper that’s open to criticism by tens of thousands of people, this ‘Tumblr’ bullshit is read by approx 5 people (apart from that one time when it was read by 20 people and I was morphed into some sort of racist just like Hitler by one website that doesn’t get irony…) so I have no idea the level of harassment suffered by Proper Journos, and 2) the damage has been done so my thoughts are redundant. Journalists are voting about the situation already… with their feet. As this one journalist’s behaviour today proves, sometimes writers feel the only way forward is to no longer be part of a particular forum or conversation. Which is a pure shite-ing shame.

The whole notion of “free debate” has regressed because nothing anyone says can ever be right now. Nothing. Even if meant entirely uncontroversially, with good will, a desire to change or inspire people’s perspectives and a basic thirst for speaking up, NOTHING you say is ever completely right. And it HAS to be right, it can’t just be, like, a work in progress. It has to be totally convinced of its own correctness. In fact, a mere “Hello” is potentially wrong. You should probably not start conversations with “Hello” now in case it’s the wrong language or the wrong time of day or said in the wrong tone or… somehow someway inappropriate. Really why should anyone say anything at all if someone will always inevitably find fault with it? Is that what we’re saying? Amazingly, telling people to STFU has become a very important aspect of freedom of speech. The freedom to disable someone else’s speech by speaking louder and more crassly than them. But loud and crass can never be right. Just infuriatingly worthless.

Because EVERYTHING the commentariat says HAS to be completely 100% right now and pass the test of being non-challenging (challenging is NEVER a good thing), it’s a wonder why any opinion journalist would ever consider saying anything again. Maybe it was always like this but we just didn’t know back when it took a bit more effort to harangue people, back before the world could quietly lie with a keyboard in bed and ruin someone’s day from hundreds of miles away. Who knows. But I’ve seen some journos chatting about being “brave enough” to write about something, presumably debating whether it’s worth the onslaught of abuse they’ll later have to suffer. That’s cool, I totally romanticise that being a journalist is like being a heroic superhero, fighting adversity, saving the world with expertly crafted words employed in the nick of time. BUT what I deduce from this instance is that journalists are fearful of writing what’s on their mind. Which is fear of expression. Do you know where people have fear of expression? In places where freedom of speech doesn’t bloody exist. If you’re afraid to speak you’re not free, are you? Common sense.

Hounding a journalist so much so that they end up doubled over in paranoia about what they should write in the future, or worse still, silenced from writing in a particular forum ever again has foul consequences for everyone. A journalist’s decision to step away isn’t weakness, it’s exhausting to play David against Goliath every single day. There’s of course a degree of responsibility that comes with having your own weekly soapbox but a soapbox is designed to be a launchpad for fair and balanced discussion, food for thought and further debate. It’s a soapbox, not a place for public execution. And no columnist ever elected themselves Spokesperson Of The World, responsible for representing every single person’s stance on everything and liable to punishment if they don’t fulfil that role. Making those people fearful of standing up, silencing them is not winning. Without a conversation starter, without a thought or contribution, there is no longer a discussion. Similarly, battering someone who has already spoken with abuse kills discussion. Talk it through like adults. There are debates to be had about the use of language in the media. Let’s have them. Learn how to debate again. Do you want to go through life like it’s one massive boring dinner date? Because I don’t. I don’t want to live in a quiet world.

Twitter New Year's Resolutions

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:35:00 -0500

This is a list of things I’d like to be removed from Twitter in 2013. Together we can work to make the virtual world a better place y’all.

1. TROLLED BECOME TROLLS

The latest understanding of “troll” that I have: someone who tries to provoke a person they’re jealous of online to get a hard-on. If you’re being trolled that sucks. BUT STOP TWEETING ABOUT HOW YOU GET TROLLED. “Oh I hate how my trolls think it’s freedom of speech to make me read their troll-y trollings”/”someone is trolling at me”/”have you seen my troll” etc. If like me you grew up on peer-to-peer internet chat rooms/Napster you will have been brought into the world hurling abuse at people with names like giggle_star96 who you’ve never met because that’s now an essential part of growing up. So ask yourself: a) do you have over 200 followers? b) is your twitter avatar something other than an egg? c) are you actively tweeting? d) is this 2012? If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these then we can assume you are being trolled. If it’s getting to be a problem tell someone in real life - a policeman perhaps… or maybe just your mum. Stop with the “I AM VICTIM” tweets. You are actually now trolling everyone else on the planet.

2. SPOILING IT

You are on the internet. People talk on the internet. If pre-internet you didn’t want to know a football result or what happened on last night’s Blind Date you would sit in a darkened room for a day or disconnect your car radio or wear noise-cancelling headphones in the supermarket or walk around blindfolded or not pick up the phone for the weekend… YOU WOULD NOT WALK INTO A PUB WHERE PEOPLE EXIST AND SIT DOWN. So on Twitter, please refrain from #spoilers, ie complaining about people discussing television programmes, results and the plot points of classic novels you should have read by now. It is vital that we discuss these things. That is why we are here.

3. #JUSTSAYIN

Never ever use this hashtag. I’d rather you twitpic’d a photo of yourself pushing your tongue into your chin or a gif of my own mother telling me “I TOLD YOU SO”.

4. TODAY I DID X

I probably don’t know you. I follow you on Twitter because I want information or LOLs or general colour added to my feed. I don’t honestly care about where you’ve been today and whether or not it was nice unless it’s in the public interest and/or absolutely hysterical. Like… if this was a case about privacy and freedom of speech in the European Court Of Human Rights would your activity today be deemed information vital to the people of Britain? Have you, for instance, discovered a way to get even cheaper drinks at Wetherspoons or a child-free meal at Giraffe? Didn’t think so. Please don’t tell me, “Usual Sunday at Wetherspoons followed by General Curry at Giraffe and a run. LOL.” This is not a LOL situation. You are not laughing. I am not laughing.

ALSO. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PLEASE DO NOT TWEET PICTURES OF YOUR BABIES. Unless your babies are small dogs or cats. If they are small human beings they probably have legal rights protecting them from this shit and they will divorce you in the year 2020.

5. #ASKINGFORAFRIEND

It was once funny, maybe like the first time. It’s not funny anymore. #ASKINGFORME still has life in it… potentially. Retire #ASKINGFORAFRIEND before you don’t have any friends left to ask for. Just sayin’.

6. JOURNALISTS ARGUING ON TWITTER FOR LIKE EVER

This is not Westminster. There is no time for endless to-ing and fro-ing about matters the layman doesn’t really understand. Your intellectualised heated debates about the state of rock music in the 21st century, the future of print media, the relevance of the Mercury Music Prize, etc should be taken outside. Every 25 minutes spent arguing about something like this online with more and more Twitter users is time you could all spend having a gin and tonic in your local staring at each others’ clever faces. Nobody ever started, fought and won a war in 140 characters. Pipe down.

Worse still, having rants at all of Twitter on your own, ie “Do you want to know what I think about my terrible experience at [insert chain restaurant]? here goes…”. Write a blog. Your 20-part Twitter rant on your terrible experience at [insert chain restaurant] is taking up a lot of space. In fact, you are currently filibustering my entire timeline. (Also it’s [insert chain restaurant]… aka great)

7. LIFE SUCKS

Yes life does indeed suck. Twitter is an escape from that. Don’t come here to dump your shit. Stop posting about your real actual feelings or the problems you’re really having in your life. You know when a group of social acquaintances meet up and one person turns up with a glum look on their face and a tale of “woe is me”? You’re THAT person, except you’re talking at people who a) owe you nothing and b) probably have never met you in real life. For more on this, see @uokhun.

8. THE UNEMPLOYED

There is only one tweeter worse that the socially needy… it’s the work needy. It’s tough out there but Twitter can HELP you get a job. When you apply for a job do you tell people how many interviews you’ve ballsed up or how many emails you’ve had ignored this week or how desperately you hate jobseeking? Fake it till you make it, twitbluds. (I can’t believe I just wrote ‘twitbluds’. Can we please also ban sticking the word ‘twit’ in front of everything? It will be the end of Twitter. Twitanic, if you like)

9. PRIVATE JOKES/MAKING ARRANGEMENTS

There’s a lot of private jokes on public forums. This is why the DM exists and chatrooms and physical spaces like houses where kettles live and kitchen tables and sofas that your friends can sit on. Ditto making social plans with the people in your real life on Twitter (this also applies to the Facebook ‘wall’). Not on my timeline. NB: Hello real life friends. Please think twice before tweeting at me to tell me I’m late for my date at the second table at the window in the Regent Street branch of Itsu. Text me instead. You have my number.

10. PEDANTS

Iam so fastt at tyoing sometimes s I make a mistke. I know I’ve made a mistake. There was a time when I’d delete a tweet and rewrite it correctly. Then I realised this is the behaviour of a nonce. So when you tweet “It’s HomeLand. I can’t believe you call yourself a professional journalist. RT @eve_barlow “It’s Homekand time!” look at who you’ve become. What are you trying to achieve you lonely little weirdo?

I’m not going to post a link to this on Twitter because the only thing I hate more than these Twitter faux pas is people posting links on Twitter to blogs about how not to use Twitter. Actually I did link to this on Twitter didn’t I? Oh resolutions…

I like that you like HAIM and they're always in NME, it's snazzy

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:18:13 -0500

they’re the greatest

It's Hard To Explain…

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 10:46:00 -0500

[I was so afraid to put this on the internet so I kept it in my ‘drafts’ because I’m a paranoid jew and now I’m putting it on the internet because Eva Wiseman went first and it’s ok now I think I don’t know oh please help]

So I just had this WACKO dream where I was living in the here and now but (I’ve lost the plot this time) jews had become really popular?! No word of a lie it’s like I woke up and you all want to be two stone heavier, schvitzing over a hob and kvelling nachas at your son’s bar mitzvah (HYFR, Drake). Drunk hipsters are getting bagels from an old Jewish business in the East End where bagel was spelt the Yiddish way (“Beigel”). There’s a restaurant called Mishkin’s that serves the best Jewish food ever but it isn’t Kosher so it’s probably not suitable for the real Mishkin household. The credits role at summer comedy blockbuster Ted and it starts with a jew joke. There are even dreadfully named TV programmes about Jews called Strictly Kosher, Jewish Mum Of The Year, Friday Night Dinner and (wait for it) Two Jews On A Cruise that’s about a pair of Jews going on holiday on a cruise. And get this, ever since Midnight In Paris people decide they like Woody Allen again - there’s even a new New York wunderkind called Lena Dunham allegedly made in his image. There are JEWISH POP STARS who used to work at the Jewish Chronicle like Jessie Ware… and the hippest new band from LA are a trio of Jewish sisters (SHALOM, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF) called… Haim! All Jews together! My kopf, I tell you.

[NEXT SEASON’S URBAN OUTFITTERS MODELS]

It’s like I shut my eyes and was transported back to the ’80s when (so I’ve been told) people used to wear Stars of David (as in ‘people in H&M’, not the ‘chosen people’) around their necks as a fashion symbol. Suddenly we’re on top again. Freckled, slightly inflated, really frizzy jews are back in the game. This is happening. It’s like purple coming back into fashion or Kickers shoes or BOY London t-shirts. Jews are trending. The Arab Spring is out, keffiyehs have stopped selling, Gypsys never really took off and thus the passage of time has collided with a window of opportunity. IT’S #JEWBILATION…

Well, let me spiel you (you have to laugh, these jokes are hilarious now). When I was growing up Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts were quite fashionable… I think. As I recall they weren’t just t-shirts worn by Italian kids on summer school trips to London. I had a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt from Israel. The t-shirt was white with the iconic yellow/gold circle and it read “Hard Rock Cafe, Tel Aviv” with the city’s name repeated in Hebrew underneath. It was sharp. But when I got home to Glasgow and was desperate to LIVE in my Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt it was decided that under no circumstances would I wear the “Hard Rock Cafe, Tel Aviv” t-shirt in public. You can’t just walk around outside advertising your religion. Especially when you’re Jewish. And in Scotland. (This was back in the ancient times when Tel Aviv was not a holiday destination reachable via EasyJet and Madonna was still snogging Black Jesus, ergo only Jews and really religious Christians dared to go there). “You don’t ask for trouble, Eve.” Any religious symbolism would always be hidden (even though most Glaswegians would look at a Jewish hamsa and probably think it was a pendant of a Pokemon character). The idea was: the Holocaust was only 50 years before so just… be careful. That’s minority mentality for you.

[MY COOL T-SHIRT]

But it’s a mentality nonetheless. You know when someone says: “You probably won’t understand” or “It’s hard to explain…” and it’s the most frustrating thing they could ever say? It completely trounces your ability to connect with them. Well… Being Jewish is hard to explain. Much harder than, say, the concept of wearing dungarees. Being Jewish is not fleeting. It’s a religion. It demands a level of respect. It’s not a contestant in a popularity contest or an interesting case study or a season on Channel 4.

So when it becomes a season on Channel 4 it’s like all this hard work we’ve been doing in the past 70 years to divert attention, keep it behind closed doors, pretend like we’re exactly like everyone else, re-brand Chanukah the “Jewish Christmas” and Passover the “Jewish Easter” etc was undone. It’s like SHIT THEY BLEW OUR COVER. We’re all paranoid and a little bit strange and we do ‘customs’ that make no sense and now everyone knows who we are and where we are and… IT’S ON NATIONAL TELEVISION!!!! And for what? Fifteen seconds of fame? A chance to be in with the cool club? What? Switch on to Two Jews On A Cruise, for example, and you’ll see some Jews preparing for a Jewish festival called Succot/Succoth/Sickoot/w’evs. “On this festival it’s customary to buy a bunch of leaves and a £220 citrus fruit imported from Israel…” says the narrator. Yes, it’s customary to buy foliage and spend £220 on a lemon. Well when you say it like that… *runs towards the bacon*.

Not only is this too much exposure, it’s too embarrassing to watch because it’s a hall of mirrors. It makes me question my own upbringing because it looks bloody MENTAL. And above all, it’s going to come back and hit us right in the polkes (that’s Yiddish for legs, I don’t know the Yiddish for face) when something new and weirder and even more ‘exciting’ comes along. Or maybe we’ll be booted off the TV if the Middle East rears its ugly head again and Zionism reappears as Public Enemy #1 implicating all the Jews by proxy. And by that stage the whole world will already know how crazy and nuanced we are and I’ll have to go back to pretending I’m ‘vegetarian’ when out in public to avoid telling people I don’t eat non-Kosher. (Excuse my crescendo of paranoia and anxiety now, it’s so Jewish and typical of me, how awesome).

“People will be afraid because you’re different,” they used to say. I don’t want to be different. I don’t want to be singled out by a t-shirt or a symbol or a dietary requirement or a TV programme. I just want to integrate. I want to be secular. I want to be a Brit who happens to be a Jew every season.

[FYI these are particularly cool Jews. They’re like the “Jewish Hanson” LOL (I’m copyrighting that) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEwM6ERq0gc ]

I LV ISRAEL (FOR BETTER OR WORSE)

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 05:33:00 -0500

The news is so hard. Psychopaths are on the loose, greed is destroying economies, poverty is rife, people are disgruntled, politicians are lacking, confidence is depleted and things you thought were safe often turn out to be monstrous. All bad news. But not hard news. Not for me anyway. We’ve become accustomed to a culture of paranoia, negativity and dour reporting. It’s par for the course when you switch on the TV in the morning. Like any rational human being I process the information, more often than not I have a reasoned opinion and then I’ll move on out the door. But today the news is so hard because it makes me totally irrational.

I gather that when most people read updates on news in the Middle East they react one of three ways:

1. Soooo far away/sooooo not my problem/oh no the cat’s done a wee on the carpet again gtg; OR

2. HOT HELL THIS IS THE START OF WW3/RELIGION IS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL AND CAN SUCK MY BALLS; OR

3. I wish I knew what was happening but it’s just soooooo complicated/Is Hamas related to Hezbollah?/Is ‘Palestine’ still a thing?/‘Cholla’ is just the type of bread they eat, right?/What does all of this have to do with the plot of Homeland…

I, however, don’t follow this pattern because I have this hangover as regards anything Israel related. I don’t know quite where the hangover started or if these effects are really worth whatever made me this way in the first place… but whenever Israel is reported in the news I feel edgy, vulnerable and hot. I know I should try and rationalise the situation, weigh up the scenario, see all the angles but everything I think or say or feel is usually panicked, wrong and senseless. Basically every time there is a story about Israel in the media I go completely insane.

I have grown up impregnated with a loyalty to Israel. At times it makes me deeply uncomfortable. At other times it can make me proud. Sometimes I’m just a bit chin-strokey. I speak Hebrew. I visit the country. My mum volunteered out there, living on a kibbutz during the Six Day War. My dad trained in a hospital there. I have cousins who serve in the Israeli Defence Forces. If there is a need for more reserves in the Army, my friends will have to go to war. I once knew a boy who took a bus there and wound up murdered by a suicide bomber.

This is my experience of the “problems in the Middle East”. I suppose it’s a consequence of being jewish… to a degree. But I’m not a religious person. It’s more consequential of the frankly SHIT HOT times I’ve had there over the years; the family holidays, the tours I’ve taken with friends, the people I’ve met, the kisses I’ve shared, the raves I’ve endured, the stars I’ve gazed at in the desert in the middle of nowhere, far removed from any ‘normality’. And that’s the problem… it’s all just so personal. It’s like – if I’d grown up on Glastonbury and went every year and was completely ingrained in that culture and then Reading Festival (whom I had zero experience of) wound up embroiled in a complex, highly volatile conflict with Glastonbury I’d mindlessly support the big G just cos. It’s that insane. I recognise my impregnation and I try to will it away. I worry most don’t do the same. In fact, I know they don’t.

It’s my observation that a lot of other people go completely insane too. I’d go as far as to say that all the people in the “diaspora” who engage in the debate go a little bit mad. Some - big up David Aaronovitch - seem to remain totally authoritative. But most don’t. Especially your average person with an interest. My Facebook is currently awash with infographics. They’re all about rockets. How many rockets have been targeted at Israel in x amount of months versus how many attacks Israel have taken out against the Palestinians. Banners are everywhere about the right to defend yourself. Pro-Palestinian posts feature images of dead babies with similar infographics about how many babies have died versus how many rockets Hamas has used. Lots of infographics; whichever side they’re supporting they’re all crass as hell. It’s as though they’re trying to validate one side of the argument or another with “fact”s. Numbers always help. I wish someone would just come out and say it: whichever side you’re on there are no “fact”s to hide behind when your strongest justification is, in fact, a gut instinct. It’s all about FEELINGS. My Facebook feed is really intense right now.

My FEELINGS are this. It’s far too complicated. I will never understand it. Imagine having to be a journalist reporting on the whole thing. Nightmare. People try and convince you that they know. They’ll talk about treaties, territories, 1948, 1972, 1994, 2000, Intafadas, walls, peace processes, Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Theodor Herzl… Dana International. But really, they just can’t know everything. I realised this when I was in Jerusalem in 2008 and visited a national park which boasted incredible vantage points over the entire city. Up on this hillside, away from the hustle and bustle of the boiling streets, there was an eerie silence only ever interrupted by the calls of Muslim mosques, Armenian churches and Jewish synagogues. When the calls died down there was utter stillness. The West Bank Wall wrapped its way around the whole city, Palestinian settlements side-by-side with Israeli towns… the feeling of stark calm before an unthinkable storm. And in that moment I decided I wasn’t going to form opinions about the rights and the wrongs any more because I wasn’t the one having to live among that anxiety. In that moment all I cared about was that the places I loved remained and the people brave and committed enough to live there would be safe. In that moment I knew that when it came to Israel and news from the Middle East I would never understand.

I guess I’d like to justify my leniency towards Israel but the truth cannot be explained: I love it. I would live in Tel Aviv in a heartbeat if it wasn’t far too hard a life. I entertained the idea of being anti-Israel on Wednesday when the headlines went mad just to see what matters looked like from that angle. But it was JUST AS INSANE. The people on my Facebook with all the infographics yesterday have gone back to Instagramming. The ones who are actually in Israel are being heroic. Inviting people into their homes, sharing information on air raid shelters, trying to make it through the night. It’s akin to the New Yorkers on my feed when Hurricane Sandy hit. Exactly the same mentality. All that’s different is the aggressor – for the man in the street any aggressor in the Middle East is as preventable as a natural disaster. The level of animosity to the aggressor is at a basic human reactionary level: unite or fall, survive or die. All that changes is which side of the problem you’re on.

So as far as peace goes… it looks tough. Certainly so long as people can’t separate their minds from their hearts. They say religion and money are the root to all evil. I think maybe it’s LOVE. Some people love Israel, some people love Palestine. Love is bad and love makes us crazy and love is totally without compromise. Love is also the greatest thing the world has to offer. It’s hard to put those feelings to one side.

NB: Writing this blog made me a bit (EXTREMELY) nervous. I don’t know if it makes any sense. Like I said – insane.

WTF is “WOC”? Weapons Of Colour?

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:57:00 -0400

I started writing a book about myself yesterday but then I stopped because I realised it wouldn’t have any Chinese people in it. That’s a problem, right? That my book about myself wouldn’t have any Chinese people in it… Because there are Chinese people in society. And I’m not reflecting that. I am not reflecting the real world where Chinese people exist.

Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I need to take a bigger look at my life and ask WHY EVE… WHY are there no Chinese people in your life?!!! Is it because you are not living in the right environment where you have the ability to meet the biggest cross-section of society and mingle with all different races and ethnicities and minorities, including even the odd person who still likes Downton Abbey? Only then can you write the book about your life and your experience of living because only then will you have the right to comment on the world. But now you are just ignorant of how life’s experienced by EVERY PERSON of EVERY RACE and EVERY ETHNICITY because you do not currently have any Chinese people in your life. When was the last time you knew a Chinese person? Was it really as long ago as University? THINK ABOUT IT. Have you buried a deep-seeded racial prejudice against Chinese people and never noticed until now when you sat down to write your book and realised you couldn’t write it because you couldn’t be the voice of your generation while not knowing everything about every minority?! Didn’t you realise that writing a book about stuff means you’ve elected yourself the most proportionally representational House Of Commons OF THE WORLD?!

[Note: I’m NOT being racist against Chinese people, I’m just exaggerating shit to illustrate some nonsense that’s been going on regarding criticism of Lena Dunham’s show Girls and its apparent “racist” agenda with it’s lack of casting ‘Women Of Colour’. Don’t get all weird on me now.]

Your Political Correctness hasn’t just gone mad, it’s gone counterproductive, it’s become insulting. Here I am thinking about how to actively not be racist by being hypersensitive about people of other races purely because they are of another race. WTF. When I went to see Rob Delaney on Friday night he joked about multiculturalism. Something about how it would be really weird to actually walk into a pub reflecting the perfect microcosm of society where a white girl, a black dude, a gay Muslim and a transgender Japanese person would be sitting round a booth together all drinking a pint of Stella. That would look a bit… staged. Whereas if the diversity is allowed to just actually happen all by itself it ends up totally random - say three Ukranian women with two black New Yorkers. It was funny. I laughed. I recognised the authenticity of that situation.

Of course, sometimes diversity doesn’t happen or isn’t apparently staring at you in the face because it just is. We don’t need to constantly pat ourselves on the back for living in a multicultural world, we can get on with enjoying it, enjoying being humans together. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we all are - humans. That’s the thing we were trying to progress towards with all this positive discrimination stuff - recognising that we’re all merely the same weird facial expressions, awkward hand gestures and weird knobbly bits on our feet.

But no. We are still going over it. Highlighting our differences and searching for our own “type”s in everything we consume. And because Lena Dunham hasn’t included black people in her TV sitcom she has been actively racist against the black community by denying them a voice in her statement dramedy. As someone who got on the school bus once and was met with the comment “YA DIRTY JEW” I fail to appreciate where the racial slur lies here. Maybe it’s too subtle for me. When I think about all the subtlety of this racist act some more, I begin to realise… I guess I never related to Will Smith in Fresh Prince Of Bel Air because I was white. I guess I related more to the characters in Skins because it was a salad bowl picture of youth in all its various races, genders and sexualities even though it didn’t have a realistic plot or make any sense to me whatsoever. I guess I only ever related to Monica Geller in Friends because she was the only girl that was Jew-ish. WRONG. I related to Phoebe the most because she was CRAZY.

[I saw a group of people just like this on Primrose Hill earlier today]

THIS IS ALL TOTAL BULLSHIT. I can’t understand why Lena Dunham writing about what she knows makes her a racist. It’s beyond my comprehension. Surely encouraging someone to write about their life but *hold on make sure you have a token few “WOC”s in there* is a far more discomforting affair. It’s augmenting someone’s experience, altering someone’s reality to make it more reflective of some Platonic multicultural society we desperately want to remind ourselves is working. What’s more, this is an issue that’s existed since television, nay THEATRE began. It sounds to me like the world has seen a prodigal, female, forward-thinking brainbox who has made a cool, relevant sitcom that’s actually saying something about my generation and decided to offload this centuries-old issue upon her in a bid to DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY. Well world, screw you. You don’t deserve Lena Dunham. Or Fresh Prince. Or Star Wars. Or Woody Allen. Or The Godfather. Or Destinys Child. Or even The Flintstones. You deserve Affirmative Action policies to be applied to all TV sitcoms so that they look like United Colours of Benetton adverts. What was that show called? Oh yeah, MTV’s The Real World. “Realistic”.

AMAZING SCENES

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 04:36:00 -0400

Look, I don’t want to draw a massive line between the riots and the London Olympics because that’s all a bit too easy… Actually SCREW THAT. Last night Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford BEING IMMENSE in the Olympic Stadium gave the entire nation the most thrilling night of sports, nay drama, on our BBC ever. Who shot Phil Mitchell? Who cares. This was real. And what was also real – unnervingly, eerily and miserably real – was the atmosphere in London on this exact same weekend last year.

[This is on my fridge now along with the local taxi number]

Tonight I watched the Olympics from the same spot in the living room that I watched the tragedy of Tottenham unfold, where I sat up all night following activity on Twitter in near darkness the next evening practically clutching my passport in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other as the riots spread and crept their way along Camden High Street, down Chalk Farm Road, up Haverstock Hill to right outside my front door. The sound of helicopters was deafening. The atmosphere was H G Wellsian.

I remember the morning after that night I walked to work, workmen were huddled around vans on the streets of Belsize Park listening to the radio for updates on What The Hell Was Going On. There was an overwhelming sense of distrust in the air. As I travelled on foot down Tottenham Court Road, a man walked towards me, eyeing me up and down with a sneer, with a look on his face that said: “I can loot you, too”. Maybe this was disproportionate fear on my part but the paranoia was rife. It seems surreal to relate this now, such was the oddness of the ambience that infected the capital and other parts of the country.

[WE CAN DO SPORT, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?]

Yesterday, taking a break from the TV (I needed milk on Golden Saturday… I KNOW) I walked past Evans cycling shop – which, along with the Sainsburys Local and Domino’s pizza, was one of the worst hit, reportedly beyond recovery at the time. I flirted with the idea of buying a bike following our massive achievements in the Velodrome over the last few days (I could totally cycle in a circle… with my stabilisers on). I didn’t buy a bike because I’m the only person in the history of ever that’s actually forgotten how to ride one… but the possibility was there. That felt like something. It was there because we made sure the riots didn’t have a lasting legacy. It was the way London pulled together after the incidents that made you swell with pride. If the buzz phrase for the Olympic athletes is to “Inspire A Generation”, this Olympics has proven that beyond what happens on the big stages, we ourselves have definitely got it in us (RIO 2016… WATCH OUT I’M *bangs into lamppost*)

[FRICKING AMAZING]

Last Friday it was the sound of the Red Arrows in the living room that was deafening. The helicopters in the sky this week are capturing shots of this glorious capital city, which is undoubtedly having its moment. London, all eyes on you; the coolest place on Earth, with the best athletes (shit off, China/America… apart from Missy Franklin, can we steal her?). The inequalities in the city, the deprivation, the racism and general ignorance all still pervades. There is a great deal of work to be done to redress the causes behind last year’s events. But what’s resoundingly clear is the way we’ve united as a Great British nation to support a group of extraordinary individuals competing in the most bombastic event in the world; an event we understand about as much as the second verse of God Save The Queen. It’s an event none of us expected to be this great (HELLO! LOOK! WE’RE THIRD IN THE MATHS TABLES!). “We WON The Olympics!” squealed Kat Copeland reflecting on winning Gold for Rowing yesterday. It’s THE quote of the fortnight. London 2012 has taken the wheels off our city and put brand new shiny, bionic ones on. And although the Games must end (*sad violins*) we should hold onto that feeling; it’s a winner.

I Saw BLUR

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:32:03 -0400

I Saw BLUR

What I wrote about Latitude Festival

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:02:00 -0400

What I wrote about Latitude Festival:

Look. It’s what I wrote about Latitude Festival for Drowned In Sound. I don’t really know where it’s headed for the first paragraph. But then it gets going. If you read my blog you’ll be used to that style of WTF-Am-I-Reading writing.

Olympics: Make An Effort

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:25:00 -0400

I’m just having the best time. It’s because I’m in love. I’m in love with The Olympics. It is a truly immense feeling. It’s like being a child again and not questioning why people celebrate Christmas or have birthday parties in ballponds… you just blindly go along with it because it seems disproportionately fun. And there is never a reason to NOT have fun. (UNLESS YOU’RE A MASSIVE ANTI-OLYMPIWANG and you’re still going on about the CHAOS and DISRUPTION that the Olympics we are hosting “for other people from other countries to enjoy at our expense” is causing. PUT A DONK ON IT).

[CHAOTIC SCENES on the first day of The Olympics, Stratford]

I don’t have the patience to watch sport. I watch Men’s Tennis regularly because it’s very dramatic (look up Fernando Verdasco on Google Images if you don’t know what I mean). But at under 60 seconds per Thing and constantly switching between events, London 2012 (or London ZOR) is perfect broadcasting for my sports attention deficit disorder and I’ve become an expert. I have been glued to the screen for 12 hours today watching SPORTS! (Move over Trevor Nelson… whoops my bad, you already have.) Here are some things I’ve learned:

1. In Judo, they talk about Ippon a lot. I think it refers to the amount of times the contestants play with their dressing gowns but I didn’t stick around long enough because over in another part of London there was…

2. Archery. It’s exactly the same as darts, except really massive. And outdoors.

3. A Road Race is like a mini Tour De France. And we WIN because of the home advantage (rain).

[ROAD RACE GOLD!]

4. Team GB are amazing at Beach Volleyball because there’s a beach near Downing Street. BoJo kept that one quiet.

5. Zara Philips actually does shit other than getting married. Here she is finally using her horse!

6. Team GB are strong on manicures. All medalists have patriotically painted nails. It’s Tom Daley’s hands I’ll be ogling on Monday afternoon [*Sky Plus ALERT*: Men’s Synchornised Diving from 3PM. Not Safe For Work].

7. The award for innovation in Olympic outfits belongs to Men’s Swimming in the action-packed Aquatics Centre (my favourite place in the world) where swimmers enter the Olympic-sized swimming pool in a similar fashion to Dolce & Gabbana runway models. The outfits ensure maximum speed in the pool to aid such talented athletes as Camille LaCORRR (not sure of spelling).

[Camille - definitely not a she]

8. Clare Balding knows about all of the sports and all of life. And if one day we are attacked by Martians and the very core of our world’s existence is threatened and Clare Balding is taking a well-earned break in the Seychelles because BTW she gets the Tube to and from the stadium every day, then we’re all DUST.

9. As with all sport, there are always losers. So far: the Daily Mail who wrote a racist review of the Opening Ceremony and attacked grime (“a form of awful electronic music popular among black youths”) for not being Robson & Jerome, the haters (Hahahahahahaha what you gonna do now you’ve ostracised yourself from EVERYONE? How’s it feel to hate smiling and sunshine and WENLOCK, THE WEIRD INCISOR-SHAPED MASCOT THING?), Americans who, in the main, still don’t *get* us. It’s a curious (GREAT) thing being British. Americans think we’re “eccentric” and “twee”, which is a back-handed compliment that translates as: “For three hours you were the coolest, most intelligent and f*&^ing brilliant country ever. SHIT.” Well yeah, we can’t all be perfect (ie, British).

[WENLOCK doing an air punch because he’s British and GREAT]

10. Regardless of how many medals Usain Bolt wins, Danny Boyle is Champion Of The World. During Friday’s Opening Ceremony (when is it coming to cinemas in 3D? can we broadcast it every weekend on outdoor screens and take hallucinogenics together?) Boyle delivered the best history lesson of Great Britain imaginable. It started with the set from Postman Pat and went on to establish why GB is the best WHILE THE WORLD WAS WATCHING. Danny Boyle basically went into a meeting room at some point and said: “I want to praise the industrial revolution but also Wickerman, I want that band from Sheffield to do that song, I want Mr Bean and I’ll show you that people do like him, I want Beckham bossing the Thames, I want Soul II Soul and Fuck Buttons in there somewhere, I want a tribute to the NHS performed by people of the NHS in front of the anti-humanitarian plebs who are destroying the best thing ever invented, I want the construction workers to come on, I want Muhammad Ali to stand up on his own feet and make the world have an emotional breakdown even though I’ll have already sent them over the edge with a choir of Great Ormond St children in pyjamas signing to God Save The Queen… oh and I like birds/butterflies/moths/winged creatures but I’d like them more if they were cycling.” This sort of ingenious visionary madness is something that should inspire us all to try that little bit harder and not fear our adversaries (and also start a Kibbutz where everyone gets equal amounts of Doritos and we watch the Olympics on 3D TV all day). Having been through the shitter with Afghanistan, Iraq, 7/7, Northern Rock, the recession, the riots and non-stop Parliamentary scandal, this was a sort of Obama moment in the sense that it reassured us, the so-called “Broken Britain”, that we are amazing. Can we get the Queen and James Bond entering the stadium via parachute? YES WE CAN.

…Sorry, I’m getting away from what I’ve learned about SPORT over the past 12 hours. (Forgive me, it’s my Olympic lovebug). Thing is I’m not learning much. And I’ve decided that’s because The Olympics isn’t really about sport. It’s about community and it’s about trying to give it a go. Just have a look at Tracey Emin running with the Torch without a proper sports bra last week. Or, if you can bear it, re-watch Macca at the Opening Ceremony attempting to sing Hey Jude… *eternal sad face*. The Olympics is about collective effort. When Team GB marched out onto that track on Friday night to David Bowie’s “Heroes” and Chris Hoy wept (*breaks down again*), it was a song for all of us. The event is a platform allowing ALL of us to feel proud of our nation for uncontroversial, universal victories. And if you don’t put any effort into it (besides moaning), you won’t get anything out of it. Rebecca Adlington tonight said she spent TWELVE years preparing for one swim. The least we can do is sprawl in front of the telly for two weeks, cry everywhere and cheer on our team (actually more emotionally draining than it sounds… PASS VALIUM). The least we can do is appreciate the magnitude of it all. It’s happening here. The most ridiculous sporting event in the history of time in our own back garden: London, the greatest capital city in the world.

In London, we’re all trying. Trying to arrive. Anyone born elsewhere who’s dreamt of living here recognises that feeling. It’s the sense you get the first time you go to Trafalgar Square to hear the story of Admiral Nelson; or when you take a spring afternoon to lie in Regents Park among abandoned bicycles and Ernest Hemingway books; or when you weave through Covent Garden after a night of excess, down to the Savoy, along the Strand and stand on Waterloo Bridge; or when you feel all cool and dangerous at Notting Hill Carnival; or when you feel all uncool and in danger on Kingsland Road; or when you spend a night in Infernos in Claph…, sorry when you decide never to spend a night in Infernos in Clapham ever again. The streets of London, both overground and under, tell a thousand stories and it’s a dream to be part of a chapter. When we won the bid, my first thought was: “I’m bloody living in London for The Olympics.” And here I am (APOLOGIES, ALL).

The Olympics lets us all be part of something truly special. When you’re like me and not au fait with sports and watch Nike adverts that tell you to BE INSPIRED thinking they’re instructing you to go for a run, the last thing you expect is for a couple of track and field events to inspire the hope of a nation. Yet, the unification of Britain’s many and vast communities during Boyle’s ceremony was soaringly palatable – unapologetically proud together for once. Who in holy hell wouldn’t put a smile on their face and let the Games begin?

[I love Team GB]

Something I wrote last 23rd July

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:17:00 -0400

I wrote this last year and it’s really cheesy but I was :-(

I still can’t actively listen to Amy Winehouse. When I hear Back To Black, I can only say “Shit”.

*****************************************************************************

It was expected. Like when you’re sat on the Tube and that woman’s voice informs you: “The next station is…” It’s all scripted. It’s predictable. You know it’s coming. And yet sometimes - as when you’re semi-comatose, or half-drunk, or totally engrossed in the paper’s lonely hearts’ column and about to miss your stop - you need that reminder to wake you up.

Saturday, 23 July 2011 and I’m on the Northern Line returning home. “The next station is Euston, Charing Cross branch.” I’ve been out all afternoon ignoring my mobile. I finally catch-up what’s going on: “four messages received”. One’s the bi-daily update from mother: “The internet’s broken again…”

“The next station is Mornington Crescent.” A friend has been in touch with details for tonight. It’s already 18.34. I better hurry home. “The next station is Camden Town.” Another message from mum… she’s probably deleted the ENTIRE internet this time. It reads: “Did you hear? Amy Winehouse is dead”. The doors tear open: “This station is Camden Town”. I read it again: “Amy Winehouse is dead”. The warning siren of closing doors pierces through my now muted perspective. Camden Town - the singer’s home stop - I took in that much…

As with every time I pass through Camden Town, my mind starts replaying imagined scenarios of an Amy spilled onto a kitchen floor somewhere above Camden Road playing The Shirelles over and over, penning the darkest lyrics to Wake Up Alone…

Back To Black: the album that got me through my uni finals, the songs that me and my bez sang at the top our lungs in her Nissan Micra driving to Pizza Champion, the sleeve that encouraged us both to be heavy-handed with Rimmel eyeliner. Unlike Amy, I didn’t have a Blake Fielder-Civil. I had a book on Property Law containing a mortgages chapter that claimed three weeks of my life. So as Amy tore into Me & Mr Jones, I’d stare at the 12th draft of my 100-page condensed revision notes on equitable trusts (no, me neither) and demand alongside her: “What kind of fuckery is this?! ”

Even on my first listen to the title track (“I tread a troubled track/My odds are stacked”) there was a fear that one day I’d pass Camden Town and Amy Winehouse would be gone. In my head, she’d been gone five years. Yes, it was expected. And yet here on the platform, those dark predictions now reality, somehow I’m floored. It’s a surprise. The images of ‘Wino’ in theHawley Arms pulling pints behind the bar, stumbling down red carpets, papped getting a kebab in Stables Market on a night out had become pop culture’s background radiation, everyday scenes.

Even in the flesh - save the occasional gig where she somehow managed to recall her own brilliance - the shine had faded. One night in the Hard Rock Café, I’m exiting a toilet cubicle and find myself faced with an Amy Winehouse impersonator, informing all loo goers that her dress is from a Japanese stall in Camden Market. I wash my hands, I catch her eyes peering at me in the mirror. I peer back. Scarily direct, yet somehow timid; a bit lary, yet altogether warm, and I realise this is no impersonator.
One girl congratulates Amy on looking “better”, asking what life has in store for her in the safe-haven of Barnet where she’d been briefly relocated - “Bugger all darling, that’s the point,” she quipped. Yet for Amy, there was nowhere like home. And, like a moth to a flame, to Camden she would have to return. It was written.

The untapped potential, the predictable tragedy, the awful mess of it all - every one of these clichés said while she was still, in a sense, “alive”. In a sense, because that night in the Hard Rock Café I myself had mistaken her for a parody. Already a part of the meaningless transience of the here and now, Amy Winehouse had become a caricature. Where once there was a girl, now there was just another face on a T-shirt, another wig in a fancy dress shop. The hyperbole and the headlines had overtaken the human being at the centre of this clutter.

And now she’s gone. In the rush to document ‘27 clubs’, lost albums, the curse of addiction, we should concentrate on recalling the real person who deserves to be celebrated. Amy Winehouse: the old soul trapped in a young singer’s body, the charming lyricist who’d slyly punch you in the stomach, the troublemaker, the girl who could well have been the real deal…

We only said goodbye with words. If only we didn’t have to.

PLENTY MORE FRANKS IN THE OCEAN

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 06:31:00 -0400

Frank Ocean is gay.

Who?

Frank Ocean. He’s the biggest star you’ve never heard of (correct this imminently). And he’s gay.

[WHO HE?]

Why does this matter? It matters because he’s an African American man who has risen to prominence through his former connection to a hip-hop outifit called Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and latterly a downloadable mixtape of his own called Nostalgia, Ultra that has its roots firmly in R&B, funk and electronica. In short: he’s black and he’s gay. He creates in a world that is stuck in the Jurassic era when it comes to homosexuality, that still looks upon gay and lesbian people largely with ingrained hatred, that still doesn’t appear to have its own David Bowies (or Stephen Gateleys) even though it really could (Kanye babe, come on down to Acapulco already).

Despite all that, Frank’s taken the no doubt ENORMOUS courage to come out to the world. And while we liberal, Coronation Street watching Brits will welcome him with open arms, many in Frank’s urban underworld will not. Whether or not you’re aware of Frank, the blog on his Tumblr in which he bares his struggles is simply a wonderful, heartwarming piece of poetry. GO READ IT HERE http://frankocean.com/. It’s the first post that looks like a Microsoft Error window. It really is an amazing thing. And yet I hope what he’s done is not a Microsoft Error…

[The GAMECHANGER that shook Weatherfield - Nick kisses Todd on Corrie]

People will argue that Frank Ocean’s coming out is A GAMECHANGER. While it’s certainly encouraging on the tolerance of homosexuality in the black community front, it’s not Frank Ocean’s homosexuality that changed the game. Frank Ocean changed the game. Frank is an artist who falls between the cracks (no bum jokes, how old are you?). He eludes pigeonholing both musically (and apparently now personally), his Nostalgia, Ultra collection was unlike other electro-funk R&B not just sonically but lyrically. His voice seems to observe from a distance, it’s not blinging you down with its own self-centric importance. It’s romantic (not in the R Kelly sense), ambient and sentimental. It’s not 50 Cent rapping about what he’s gon’ do to you after he gets all the ~~pubes~~ bullets removed from his groin, it’s not Usher crooning about dem babies he makes with women around the world… it’s atypical from any artist this century (or EVER) in the R&B/rap market. His revelations today are a solid start. But when a Fiddy comes out… that is when all the sexual politics go apeshit.

Let’s get back to the music. Listening to Frank’sNostalgia, Ultra this morning, I recall an album that has floored me over the past year with its twists and turns, surprising me with every new chorus, every interlude, every sample (including Nicole Kidman’s monologue from Eyes Wide Shut… I shit you not there was dialogue in that movie). Then I get to Novacane (“All the pretty girls involved with me/Making pretty love to me/Pretty pity pity/Can’t feel a thing”) and the penny drops. Well of course! This is about a gay man! Stupid me for presuming it was about sexual ennui and the torture of being a successful young black man in the music industry. It’s named after anaesthetic FFS. He is properly numb to the charm of the ladies, not because he’s bored but… BECAUSE HE’S GAY! Throughout the mixtape Frank samples Coldplay, Radiohead and The Eagles. He does an entire re-work of Hotel California. Why would a young black dude be referencing this stuff, revealing he listens to weepy white guy music, suggesting he’s a bit of a dweeb? Maybe now I could insinuate he was trying to identify with other genres of music that are less ego-maniacal, less HOE I’M’A DO YOU, BITCH (though on the MGMT-sampling Nature Feels he does sing “I been meaning to fuck you in the garden”).

Besides the tunes, there’s Frank’s career decision to “disappear mysteriously” from his Odd Future clan, notorious for their homophobic lyrics that may be in jest but nobody really knows… The nonogram puzzle has revealed itself. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.

…

This “it all makes sense now” chat is what the world needs to NOT do. While it’s important that people can identify with/hero worship someone who knows their struggles, sometimes there’s something even bigger going on and it shouldn’t be speedily labelled as “hyper-emo, gay-friendly sensitive soul” or whatever the case may eventually be. According to reliable sources the new Frank Ocean album is stellar: “psychedelic electro R&B” reported one colleague who added this morning, “I don’t want people to hear it only as an Album By A Gay Man”. Of course it’s always difficult to hear music devoid of context but I get what he’s saying. Frank’s music is a wondrous entry point for a sonic stratosphere where there are no limits, where everything is open for interpretation, fall down the rabbit hole with him and lord knows what you’ll find.

While the new record could (and should) be a torch for an under-represented community of Frank fans and while that blog post this morning is brave and hugely important (really, I don’t want to understate that, it inspired me to come out this morning as someone who still doesn’t get Odd Future) the release should mean even greater things to the mass music-consuming public. Frank Ocean is about to change the game. And not just that way.

(UPDATE 10/07/2012 So I just heard Channel Orange twice - Frank’s debut LP where he marries Songs In The Key Of Life with Moon Safari, delivers falsettos to give you chest pain and grabs some help from Pharrell Williams and Andre 3000 - not that he really needs it… thank you Frank, you have given 2012 an album)

LISTEN HERE - http://frankocean.com/

David Cameron: not a special guest at Hackney Weekend

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:06:00 -0400

Young? Bored? Generally unchallenged? Lost the will? Bugger all to do? Whatever it is you are in Britain right now you’ve probably got five minutes… If you put “David Cameron hates…” into Google, it automatically fills “the poor”, “john bercow”, “muslims”, “young people”. On the other hand “David Cameron loves…” produces “Angry Birds”. The world’s words, not mine. Quite a fun game, nonetheless. Or so my Twitter agrees, my interactions tab’s suggesting new versions of it, such as “George Osborne…” (“looks evil”) or “David Cameron is…” (“a pri… Oh sorry time’s up! Back to work. Keep calm and GET A RUDDY MOVE ON. We’ve all got to do twice as much now because the country’s not going to get itself out of this mess all on its own…

Prime Minister David Cameron has lost us all. He’s a figure of public ridicule. Noel Edmonds seems relatable in comparison - and he’s got a bloody good banker. Nobody has any “respect” for “LOL, DC”. But then nobody has any “respect” for anyone now, right? That’s why the riots happened last summer. Young people are only interested in themselves, their Nike Airforce Ones, ROFLcopter and the latest installation of Halo on the X-Box 360. In Cameron’s head this is what DA YOOF of Britain are saying today: “OI! If you can’t rap Ill Manors and fly a BMX off a high-rise building while eating Chicken Cottage in a Kappa tracksuit, you can’t tell me what to do, innit?” As Cameron’s government continue to punish Britain’s young it’s really starting to feel like N-Dubz and Vicky Pollard are the Tories’ gauge on the demographic. But lack of respect is a by-product of a deeper issue – a communication problem. We’re not connected with each other and we’re not connected with government. Any attempt at reaching out by politicians seems a ploy for poll points and newspaper headlines and totally disrespectful of us, the electorate. Their actions never just seem consequential of a job in public service. And it breeds a culture of US and THEM. US at our desks Googling “David Cameron eating pasty” and THEM trying to work out what LOL stands for.

And onto today. David Cameron’s planning to create even more hurdles for the most vulnerable portion of British society (DA YOOF) by removing housing benefits for the under 25s. Goes without saying that this is total catpiss. And for me, reading this story when I got home from a massive time at Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend, it just destroyed my buzz. My buzz got Sudden Death Syndrome. My buzz had been built up over 48 hours of urban pop insania and general celebration of life. Everything I was excited about in my twenties – basically San Miguel and Rihanna getting her sound thingy re-attached to her hotpants by random fans in the crowd – fell flat. Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend went far beyond my expectations. Imagine, the “antiquated” BBC investing in an event to give something back to Hackney and its youth. I’m not going to go into the debates about the pragmatic issues involved in ensuring Hackney dwellers were the main beneficiaries, etc, because I don’t have a 1st in Poli-Sci from Cambridge. All I’m going to say is, as an observer, Radio 1 collected one of the most impressive line-ups I’ve ever seen at a two-day music event in terms of Huge Superstar Pull, they did it in a place far from a branch of Nobu and people, young people who it was dedicated to, went completely bonkers… in a (mostly) really nice way. (My mate did sort of a wee bit get slightly headbutted in the face during Niggaz In Paris but apart from that it was EXACTLY like Wimbledon).

Florence And The Machine, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Nas, Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye West… global phenomena, all in Hackney, all speaking to the crowds, all showing an interest. Some to the point of hilarity – Jay-Z and Kanye were talking to the audience on Saturday night like they were ambassadors addressing an underclass in New York City (perhaps an insight into how the riots were interpreted on an international scale). The BBC should feel proud. It was a great party and everyone behaved. The youth en masse were provoked by euphoric beats and strobe lighting and some of them drank beer while sporting OBEY baseball caps and nobody got hurt. WTF, Broken Britain? It’s just typical that when you do something good nobody’s there to bear witness or offer encouragement.

David Cameron must’ve heard about Hackney Weekend – it was on every bus and billboard throughout the Capital for weeks. Also Lana Del Rey played. Dave’s fave! Google it if you don’t believe me: David Cameron loves Lan… oh there it is, another real fact about David Cameron. He should’ve been there watching her undress her noirish songs about “fucking hard in the pouring rain” while many a gay couple stared longingly into each other’s eyes before devouring each other’s faces. This was the perfect opportunity for DC to see the youth in their natural habitat even if it might’ve cramped everyone’s style (bar Tim Westwood who does that all by himself: “BIG UP ALL MA LAYDEES WHO AIN’T GOT NO BABIES” – still, age 54). But DC wouldn’t have come. DC doesn’t really love Del Rey, does he? DC doesn’t really play Angry Birds, does he? DC doesn’t really know how we all live, DOES HE? DC’s got no idea. We’d all have been in a tent jumping to Rita Ora’s Party And Bullshit and Cameron would’ve just panicked and abandoned us all there in the bar. Like he does.

The specifics of housing benefit scrapping aside, it’s Cameron’s general message to young people at the moment (ie, “I’d leave you all in the pub if I could, you useless mongrels”) that’s getting on my tits. Politicians abuse the youth, using them to score street cred near election time and then dropping them in favour of pleasing the REAL PUBLIC (ie, all the grown-ups and the few exceptional young people who are “doing the right thing”). It’s all fluff to make us think they’re one of us, to recruit more people to the Young Conservatives who haven’t been carrying black leather briefcases around school since they were 12, to look “cool”. Who gives a shit about that? I don’t want a “cool” PM, I want one with substance. This isn’t America. We don’t get a black President who can sing and isn’t actually Morgan Freeman (but could someone please make sure that tiny Diversity kid does a GCSE/O-Level/Thing in Political Studies just in case?). Churchill wasn’t “cool” but he completely owned the Nazis so that’s probably a more lasting legacy. A good Prime Minister communicates with politics and diplomacy, not iPod playlists.

[DC’s fave Lana, famously said FUCK live on air at BBC 6Music just after 10AM one day]

And about the housing benefit shitstorm. I don’t want to paint the picture of the loner who still lives at home with his mum in his late 20s (socially inept, depressed, drowning in a haze of weed and Wayne’s World) because for some living at home with your parents is not that drastic – it wasn’t for me when I was in need (I watched High Fidelity instead of Wayne’s World). I just had to put up with Coronation Street back-to-back with EastEnders most nights, doing my share of the cooking (NO GARLIC OR CORIANDER, THOUGH. Don’t bring your fancy “university discoveries” round here) and living a bit of a quiet existence for a while. It wasn’t ideal but without that time I’d NEVER have been able to entertain a career in the media. I was privileged. Privileged and lucky. And nevertheless petrified.

It was during that time that Peter Mandelson was encouraging the sorts of parents who would be able to support their children under their own roof throughout their 20s to do the opposite: chuck their kids out. That would be for the so-called “Boomerang Kid“‘s own good. Tough love, etc. Either way, it’s a language that wants to pin blame on young people, demonise them – WE ARE THE PROBLEM. How to deal with us depends on who’s shown up to Westminster this fine day.

For most people I know moving back home to live with their parents post-university is a problem. Where is this anecdote about the engaged couple saving up for their wedding in the parents’ houses from? Emmerdale Farm? The term “family” means so many things in the year 2012 – and that has a direct impact on “family home”. Not everyone has the Tory utopia, the 2.4 children. What about all the children of divorce whose parents got remarried and for whom home is a battlefield of complications? Or all the children whose room doors are now branded with the name of a new child or an older relative, perhaps a grandparent who’s been left alone? What about all the children who do have traditional set-ups but want a choice when it comes to their independence? What about the children who have absolutely nowhere to go? While bygones ago people might’ve stayed at home right up until they got married, the circumstances of family home life has changed – for better or worse is another debate. People have new expectations, the world has gotten smaller and potential has grown bigger. It just doesn’t work the same any more.

The government are faced with the prospect of an entire abandoned generation, our futures lost by their terrible parenting. But David Cameron just doesn’t get it. There’s no connect. He’s stopped trying to get down with the kids. David Cameron doesn’t need us any more. I hope Jay-Z has a big house…

RIP Twitter

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:19:00 -0400

I was hard at work going to the girls’ loos, getting a can of Sprite from the vending machine and then visiting the kitchen to see if anyone wanted a chat, and when I got back to my desk I thought I’d have a quick Facebook break… “IS TWITTER DOWN?” read a Facebook status. What does that mean “DOWN”? “DOWN” like Will Smith was “DOWN” in 1998? Or “DOWN” as in “upset”… as in, Who’s died now? There’s such phenomenal outpouring of grief when people die on Twitter and it makes me feel “DOWN” for the rest of the day because nobody can make cheap LOLs out of mundane situations because, you know, SOMEONE’S PROPERLY DEAD.

Oh… gimme a second – I’m just finished watching this @GwilymGold video (here’s the link: http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/new-music/blog/watch-gwilym-gold-live-in-the-boiler-room-100028) and I need to fix my iTunes to play that new Two Inch Punch EP I keep banging on about. So good. Released tomorrow. I tweeted it earlier. PLEASE RT. Or don’t. Makes no difference to me. Was just trying to help @TWOINCHPUNCH out. Whoever that is.

ANYWAY, I just clicked on my Twitter tab and it hasn’t updated in 26 minutes. The last tweet I have is from @HuffPostUKPolitics as retweeted by… *narcoleptic episode*. I ignore all the tweets from umbrella accounts. Can’t stand them. People like @MusicWeek are alright cos they have a sense of humour and don’t just bang on about what’s in Music Week this week which I know about anyway. I’m following you on Twitter for EXTRA kernels of info, not just links to your website, you knobbers. I was reading all that in the first place.

Ooooh work are playing the new album by ~~obscure indie artist~~. (Sorry forgot, I can’t say because of embargo and I’m under strict instructions by work – no tweeting about that one, Eve! NO TWEETING, EVE!)

Back to Twitter. It’s actually broken. I keep clicking on refresh. F5! F5! Nothing… we’re stuck on @HuffPostUKPolitics. I think, If this is Twitter’s final word, then SHIT A BRICK what a tragic way to go. What an amazing career Twitter’s had and here it’s gone so sudden, without warning, mid-conversation, on the verge of something brilliant but it just couldn’t get it out fast enough before it was run over smack bam in the middle of the Internet. As Joni Mitchell says on Janet Jackson’s Velvet Rope album, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” *Deep exhale*.

I click on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ and it’s the same it was an hour ago. Nothing has changed. The “LATEST:…” tab on the top of the page is reporting flooding at Isle Of Wight Festival. I mean, Twitter was talking about that about 90 minutes ago. Where am I going to get my news from right now? As in THIS second? More to the point, as pointed out by my mate @chris_mandle commenting on Facebook where I’d updated my status to “OHMYGODTWITTERISBROKEN” – Where is DIGITAL SPY going to get its news stories from, eh? I (AND DIGITAL SPY) WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. Even if it’s just in @MooseAllain’s head or @planetjedward’s hotel, I must be informed of what is going on. 24/7. Need desperately to know.

I return to the Twitter page. It’s serious. There isn’t even a FAILWHALE. I miss FAILWHALE. At least FAILWHALE reassures you that everything is going to resume to normal (not sure about that weird robot with all the hands though, she can fuck right off back to… wherever RoboCop comes from).

I can’t help but wonder about things like Carrie Bradshaw: what happens to all the people I talk to on a daily basis who I’m really fond of but who I don’t know “IRL”? My self-made community of loveable mentalists? It’s not like I have their numbers, or even know their full names. I can’t find them on Facebook. If I walked past them in the street I wouldn’t know it was them. Nice knowing all you guys. No, really. We should have maybe met for that lunch or drink rather than joked about it. Or not. I don’t know. Sometimes meeting people IRL is downright awkward. Erase and rewind.

Then I thought, Maybe this is a reality check. I was at a gig in Dingwalls on Monday night (Haim - tweeted about it loads so won’t mention @haimtheband again #ff). I met a guy there who thought we’d met somewhere before. We couldn’t work out any common ground. Then I casually said (OHGODKILLMENOW), “Do I know you on Twitter?” He laughed: “You’re … what… is that a joke? You’re not being… serious? Oh. You are. Wow.” Fuck. What a weirdo I’ve become. Or have I? Does he just “not get it”? What has Twitter turned me in to? I think I should go back to how I was before. Without Twitter. If I take anything away from Monday night (besides WOW HAIM - AMAZING), it should be, Check yourself, Barlow. Stop with the… Oh hang on a minute… Twitter’s working again. Twitter’s not dead! Rejoice! It was just another stupid Twitter death hoax! Yipedeedoodah!

So, this blog is what I’ve done since Twitter’s been down. In case you were worried you missed something. Imagine missing something.

STOP. BEING. TITS.

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:30:00 -0400

I’ve never knowingly flashed my boobs in public. I mean I’ve flashed my boobs on BBC live telly while I was on a stranger’s shoulders during Plug In Baby at Muse’s headlining set, Glastonbury 2010. But it wasn’t done knowingly. I was wearing a strapless top and I was very, VERY excited having taken in a few hours of previous act Scissor Sisters and some other things. So I was on some guy’s shoulders, my hands were in the air, my boobs were somewhere below, my best friend was on some other stranger’s shoulders (her top had straps), we were holding hands, I guess the camera just loved it (my tits). But as I said before, it wasn’t a knowing flash. I didn’t know about the flash until I got back to my work PortaKabin backstage to be greeted by an “OMG! YOU AND YOUR BOOBS WERE ON THE BIG TELLY. WELL DONE!!!!!” (I quickly deflated the situation with a “really, right, I see… but how SHITE were Gorillaz last night” and that didn’t work). My life (One big actively happening accident).*

*(And yes it’s the flashing my boobs unintentionally and not my inability to shake off a Muse obsession that I’m embarrassed about).

In short, I’ve never intentionally flashed my tits in public because so far in my life I’ve never really had an urge to or the balls. I suppose you could say I have the balls to REFUSE to flash my tits because this weekend I realised that that is truly a Thing…

So I was sent to Download Festival. I know. Culturally diverse. In my defence, I heard recently that Lady Gaga is obsessed with metal and that heavy metal – ie, Pat Benatar – influenced all of the Born This Way album. Also, I listened to Andrew Weatherall the whole way there and nothing the whole way back because I was worried one more deep bassline might make my bowels go all Journey To The Center Of The Earth. Above all, I was paid for my sins… Anyway all that aside, I had a tremendous education in the maximum minimum time I spent at Download and mostly I’m impressed that it did away with all my unfair, narrow-minded, stereotypical impressions that most heavy metal is for long-bearded, anachronistic, misogynist biker morons… My days at Download, which included my first ever listen to Metallica’s Black Album (played live by Metallica backwards because the latter half is proper shit) were fun, so much so that I willingly* joined in on a “circle pit” and was voluntarily injured in the neck and bum (*forcibly by a superior colleague). Download was a hoot. BUT.

This weekend in Donington (aka the Middle of Nowhere) I saw more boobs than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And I’ve seen the whole of Game Of Thrones: Season One and been to a stripclubso I’m DEFINITELY not a prude. There are zero – perhaps minus number – boobs in Game Of Thrones in comparison with Download Festival. Hand on chest, such was the boob situation at Download I was actually concerned at one point that most women there had their bras confiscated from them on entrance to the site, or worse still that they didn’t own bras for fear of the judging hands of M&S/John Lewis measuring ladies and that’s why they’ve ended up in a dark abyss of listening to speed hardcore and Slipknot and that maybe I should set up a temporary clinic to advise them on bra purchasing and pass on the torch of knowledge (and an N*Sync CD) to as many poor souls as possible. The situation, however, was beyond my powers of salvation.

There is this “system” at Download whereby any women who finds herself on a pair of shoulders and targeted by a roaming camera filming the crowd during a monstrous rock set by a ROCK BAND (such as Steel Panther, Butcher Babies or MEGARARGHRAGHRAGHDETH) must reveal, squeeze and then jiggle her assets. I’m not going to paint a picture of rapey tragedy - some of the girls were up for it (if you consider Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo up for it) but many looked hesitant, almost reluctant and caved into flasherdom at the very last second. The peer pressure was mammoth (as in 100,000 people mammoth). As one particular sent-in text featured on the big stage screens so astutely put: “SHOUDLERS EQUALZ BOOBIES. YOU GOTTA PAY THE FERRYMAN, BIATCH!!!” This whole “tradition” made me feel odd and sort of fucking uncomfortable if I’m honest. Especially as male comments ranging from “I have bigger tits than those” to “YARGH I’M GONNA COME ON YOU” were encouraged by everyone around me. And nobody batted an eyelid. Even one lady in front told the “hilarious” tale of the year a girl flashed her tits only to be booed by everyone. “Hahaha what a loser, ” she reminisced. “VIRGIN FO’ LIFE”.

So… having spent an entire weekend watching women haphazardly flash their nipples to thousands of strangers out of rudimentary force of habit because a camera landed on them, contrary to popular opinion I was ELATED to see Madonna flash one nipple while on tour in Istanbul this week with real purpose.

Although Madonna is 53 (I can’t believe I just wrote that… I mean WTF is wrong with being 53 and having nipples FFS, the fact they’re there and not on her kneecaps should be celebrated), she’s still HAWT. I just came back from seeing this show in Tel Aviv seven months after seeing Rihanna’s S&M-centric show in London and I can say that Rihanna looks lame and plastic next to this. This far into her career the woman is still doing a full striptease to Human Nature. She knows that the times have changed, that her sexual onstage antics, her plays with interracial love, her panting lyrics (“I wanna have your babies”) don’t carry the shock factor they once did. It’s not about shock now. Her whole show is her marking her territory, celebrating the immense, frankly miraculous career she’s shared with the world over the past 30 odd years.

[EXPRESS YOUR TITS… Madonna: “And I’m not strappy”]

But when it came to the nipple flash, many dissenters/ungrateful pillocks attacked her. The affable Piers Morgan, for instance,said the move was the, “Most embarrassing, cringe-worthy, desperate moment in the history of music.” He obviously never heard X Factor loser Marcus Collins’ attempt at Seven Nation Army.

Readers, brace yourselves: Piers Morgan is WRONG. What remains “embarrassing, cringe-worthy… desperate” is certain corners of rock music’s tendency towards an array of on-display “titties” regardless of whether or not the female party is having a good time. The fact that those tits are 30 years younger than Madonna’s is completely irrelevant. Seeing them made me nauseous because I knew that their owners weren’t getting anything out of it (besides the heckling and a marginally better view of a croaky, leather-faced Dave Mustaine).

Madonna taught us a lesson I have now realised some of us still need by flashing her nipples the right way (if there is a right way): WILLINGLY. She’s once again restored my faith that everything is going to be OK and we’re absolutely not going to regress into the Viking times. This here nipple exposure was a blessing. It had nothing to do with tit currency, it had nothing to do with her nipple and the world’s approval of it, it had to do with her own satisfaction. You can see that on her face. (NB: This satisfaction, however, died by the time the show got to London’s Hyde Park :-( ) She went there because she wanted to (hopefully till she’s 180). If you’re MADONNA and you’re doing that much cardio a day and you can’t flash a boob (and now a bum, FYI – this nipple story is totally old because the whole arse came out yesterday in ROME… *updates dictionary meaning of the phrase “When In Rome”*) then WHO THE HELL CAN? Apart from Madonna, who the hell really wants to.

Jessie Ware: Fucking Amazing

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:49:00 -0400

I don’t blog every time that South London soulstar Jessie Ware bestows a new SoundCloud upon the world, aka the second greatest gift in the universe. (First greatest gift in the universe: Geri Haliwell judging on The X Factor - pray be Kofi Annan or George Michael at Judges Houses). That would be obsessive and creepy and a bit off. So that’s why I blog it every other time. *Oooh sorry my phone’s going… It’s Brixton Police, I’ll put them on hold*

In my defence though, Jessie Ware IS fucking amazing.

Evidence:

1. Jessie Ware has vocal chops. Sistah can sing. You know when you listen to Sybil’s When I’m Good And Ready and you clench your fist and scrunch your nose and channel that divatastic style of from-the-gut belting that says “I’ve just eaten a proper crunchy roast potato and YEAHHH OOOOH NO YOU NEVER GONNA GET IT” (sorry went a bit En Vogue there)… but then you discover that your fella/mrs/dog was in the same room as you the WHOLE time? Well, Jessie Ware doesn’t have that problem because she has a smashing voice. Trust me, I’ve road-tested it live (at two gigs in the same week).

2. Jessie Ware doesn’t act like she really knows she’s amazing. Jessie’s not getting all up in your grill before she’s even had a Number 1 chattin’ shit about life and/or the other females in the green room at Alan Carr’s Chatty Man and she’s not doing dagger eyes at her stylist who better not be getting any ideas (probs Jessie doesn’t even have a stylist… just naturally amaaaazing style). Jessie Ware is a Nice Human Being (she came across that way when I interviewed her for MOJO but the magazine doesn’t come out for ages so I’m pressing this issue now). Therefore, it’s easy to wish her all the success in the world. (Also she’s totes a Member Of The Tribe* and we like to stick together, don’t we Babs?).

[Babs aka Member Of The Tribe* and would-be fan of Jessie Ware if someone just gave her the YouTube link: “Hey Mr ARRRRRNSTEIN”]

3. Jessie Ware makes good music for once. It’s not just Jessie’s demanour that says “I’m not trying to force you to LOVE ME” (which means you defo will LOVE her - a bit too Glenn Close in my case), her music is classy (not showy), smooth (not in-yer-face) and subtle (ie, it sounds nice the first time and by the second listen you realise what you’re hearing is QUALITY sound that has been loved and cared for over a course of time). By the third listen you will take your headphones right off and wonder why you ever bothered with Bruno Mars (SRSLY? Why are you bothering? ~~He’s shit and~~ Usher is on form again).

4. Jessie Ware is cool. Like Katy B before her, Jessie is representing the South London massif. She’s sung for SBTRKT, Sampha (who produces the track I’m about to force you to listen to) and her most astonishing vocal to date in my official and correct opinion was for Joker on a track called The Vision (to say I had “a vision” that Jessie was fucking amazing for the first time listening to The Vision might sound like a coincidence but it’s a true story). I know that if you don’t know what the “Boiler Room” is (still a concept silghtly beyond me, tbf), you probably don’t know WTF I’ve just said in this paragraph but… these are all good things.

Now that we’re done proving that Jessie Ware is fucking amazing, I am now going to force you to listen to What You Won’t Do For Love (a version of a Bill Caldwell track which - if you were born after 1985 - is really called Boy You Knock Me Out by Will Smith protegee, Tatyana Ali). Jessie Ware even sings the lyric “Boy you knock me out” at the end of this cover. Ware is 27 years of age, which *gets calculator out*… yep 1985. Fucking amazing.

(*Member Of The Tribe - MOTT - is a cryptic way of saying that someone’s of the Jewish faith. It’s what we Jews say because we’re still afraid that everyone in public is a secret member of the SS).