The Hit Parade Issue Number Two - by Joey Sarajevo
Ok, ok, apologies first. Alert readers of last week’s inaugural column will probably have the following questions:
a) If the charts are as irrelevant to the general health of popular music as I claimed, then why do I bother giving up my free time to write a column called ‘The Hit Parade’, a large portion of which is dedicated to pithy put-downs of the week’s Top Ten?
b) If I was going to slag off the producers of ‘new’ TOTP for lacking a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve and how to get there, should I not have ensured the column itself negotiated easily-avoided confusions like the one above?
c) Do I really expect anyone to care that I got dumped three years ago and that someone at work clearly doesn’t fancy me?
The third question is the easiest to answer (‘no’, basically, heavily qualified with ‘but I’m going to whinge about it until people want to sew my mouth shut anyway’). As to the first couple, well, the fact is that I’m still getting over the gross physical damage caused to my brain by spending a year and a half drunk and just aren’t as clever as I used to be. Also, I haven’t written much of anything for a while for the same reason, so I’m out of practice at niceties like ‘being interesting’ and ‘having a point’.
So, to make things clear from the start, the message of this week’s nasty little missive is ‘Justin Quirke of the Guardian’s Guide section talks a load of bollocks (except about Luke Haines being an underappreciated genius)’, which is itself part of a larger theme carried over from last week: ‘people who bang on about how modern music sucks are usually wrong, and I could prove it if anyone would actually fucking listen to me, or if I was a good enough writer to make them want to’. Up to speed so far? Alrighty then, let’s get on with it.
Quirke, whose status as a paid writer for a national daily newspaper in no way inspires some kind of bilious jealous fury in me (just in case you were thinking this is personal) devoted a great deal of space last Saturday to pointing out the irony of Liam Gallagher criticising the ‘current crop of indie darlings’ when the Libertines’ ‘average guitar music, appalling social climbing, tedious drug habits and slavish devotion to the past’ could be a perfect description of his own band circa 1994, going on to attack bands for fetishising The Clash whilst ignoring punk’s forward-thinking appropriation of reggae production and rhythms.
Basic factual errors first: for all their faults, it’s monstrously unfair to castigate either Oasis or the Libertines for a ‘slavish devotion to the past’. Both bands have/had their limitations – Oasis’ are more cruelly exposed with every passing album – but in their prime both brought disparate elements of British pop history together in fresh and, initially, exciting ways. Lyla might legitimately be described as ‘as the sound of 1967 in 2005’; Definitely Maybe was the sound of 1994, no qualification necessary. There’s also something faintly stupid about the idea that failing to cross-pollinate guitar music with every new genre under the sun counts as treading water; a rock/grime hybrid would probably end up as unlistenable shite.
Obvious brutal irony second: you can’t really have a go at people for being nostalgic by saying ‘well, in my day bands weren’t nostalgic’, especially not when you’re guilty of applying your own gloss to historical realities - the Clash were castigated in their own lifetime for London Calling’s supposedly retro elements despite the fact that, generally, they really sucked when trying to do ‘contemporary’ (and I’m one of the few people who actually likes The Magnificent 7).
What counts, as always, is having something to say and working out the best way you have of saying it – could Oasis have bettered the fizzy rush of Beatles melody and T-Rex thump that characterised their early singles? Would anything else have fitted their desperate scally euphoria? At the end of the day it’s not about looking forward or back, it’s about whether you’re any good.
And on that note, here’s our take on this week’s Top Ten:
10. Crazy Frog: Axel F - I recommend fire, and lots of it.
9. MVP: Rock Ya Body (Mic Check 1 2) - I’m not wrong about the closet thing, right? I mean, doesn’t anyone else find it suspicious how vocally homophobic most rappers are when they seem to spend the bulk of their time oiling up and doing press-ups? Has anyone out there ever seen any softcore gay porn – and if so, does it look like a 50 Cent video?
8. Charlotte Church: Crazy Chick - If this were the fifties, we could strap her down and electrocute her for being ‘crazy’. And they call that progress?
7. Kelly Clarkson: Since U Been Gone - I still haven’t heard it; but I’m also still bitter about getting dumped three years ago, so all possible Kellys remain bad and this song continues to suck.
6. Paul Weller: From The Floorboards Up - Buy a Best of the Jam-style album and listen to Beat Surrender and A Town Called Malice instead.
5. Daddy Yankee: Gasolina - Has a title that calls to mind the kind of swooping surf-pop epic The Pixies used to write circa Bossanova. Isn’t. This upsets me.
4. 2Pac feat. Elton John: Ghetto Gospel - I didn’t think anything to come could annoy me more than this grave-robbing shitfest, until I heard…
3. Lee Ryan: Army of Lovers - … and was left hiding under a sheet mumbling “The horror… the horror…” like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
2. Mariah Carey: We Belong Together - People - would you just listen to the records you shell out for, for once? She. Can’t. Sing. Ballads. Because. She’s. A. Selfish. Emotionally-stunted. Cow. It really is that simple. Now stop buying it!
1. James Blunt: You’re Beautiful - It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Chris Moyles, but he’s right about this; it’s shit. Also, this is apparently about James Blunt seeing his ex-girlfriend with another guy. Jesus, dude, strap on a pair, would you? Get drunk, make some abusive ‘phone calls, go to a strip joint – please, do anything other than bleat platitudes at us over music so bland it makes gently contemplating the colour beige seem like an experience for risk-taking life-on-the-edge thrill-jockeys.
This Week Straw Donkeys Have Been Listening To:
Joey Sarajevo: David Holmes’ 'Let’s Get Killed', the Afghan Whigs’ '1965' and Love is an Unfamiliar Name by the Duke Spirit. Honourable mention: Gruff Rhys from the Super Furries’ absolutely fucking blinding DJ set at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach
Liam R: Limp Bizkit's 'Three Dollar Bill, Y'all' - yes kids, back in the day Limp Bizkit really did 17 minute long instrumental chill out numbers
Dr. Pope: Plump DJs 'Saturday Night Lotion', The Arcade Fire 'Funeral' & Supergrass 'Road to Rouen' which fucking sucks.