If you put your ear to the ground of the media you can hear the sound of the great stampede after the next novelty, coming along like a bag of dog mess floating along a canal.
A couple of months ago I looked at the Observer Music Monthly, which is for the unhipster looking for the latest titles to make him the ‘forty quid bloke’ at HMV. On the cover was a young woman best described as a 4/10 edging down towards a 3, pretending to laugh on Primrose Hill to trail a feature by the intensely annoying Miranda Sawyer (an aging, expensively educated hack specialising in taking money for celebrating trivia) on ‘Lily the Kid: The perfect pop star.’
I soon realised, to my horror, that the bald-headed salt tadpoles of professional waste of skin and Listerine fairy Keith FUCKING ALLEN had spread his ignorant seed and begot an artiste of similar weight to himself. Her mouthy mockney ignorance, despite a string of expulsions from pricey schools was celebrated both by herself and the charming Miranda, the tone of whose prose read like the uncritical sweaty gruntings one would associate with some impossibly submissive sex act. Lily knows nothing, and even less about music. This gives her the blank slate of credibility.
Of course, despite having a manager for the six years it took her to break out like wind from a tramp’s trousers, its all down to her profile on MySpace. Hmmmm. In American marcomms there is a great term for simulated grass roots growth – ‘astroturfing’. One would have thought that allegedly trained journalists, bombarded 24/7 by PR would see through the con. In fact, a brave post on the Observer’s blog rumbled the shit by mentioning that when taking a mobile call at the close of an ‘innit’-erview she switched to a rather more plummy tone.
A few weeks later, she has emerged like a moth of wet bogroll from her media cuckoon and is everywhere, like the smell of rotting Durian fruits down an alleyway. I cast my eyes on another odious profile by mistake and she was lauded for her giggly admission that she does not know the difference between a guitar and a bass- a distinction that could be heard easily by an educationally subnormal squirrel monkey. It’s cool to be rich, dumb and well connected. The saturation marketing for this methane is everywhere, her airbrushed face all over the tube walls like bricks. One can only hope the backlash comes quick and fast like pissfoam. Maybe we should all watch people be unsafe instead…
Friday, July 28, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Boggin boomboxen
A new social phenomena is exploding on our bus network like hot protein out of a one string guitar player’s pornopowered riffing. The latest generation of mobiles can store and play back low quality audio files with ease.
This is nothing new, but the wrong sort have figured it out. The type that regret that headphones make audio personal as you can’t share the latest bits of cynical, sugary ear excrement doing the rounds. Get on a rammed bendy bus and before you know it a clash of tinny, muffled beats, insipid sexual longings and phallocentric oaths will fill the air like the pong from rained on food waste.
It is my fantasy to don a suit of armour and strap a mid-80s bass heavy Hitachi model to my chest and board the bus banging out the reductivist sound of Detroit Booty Bass – the sound of a real street much harder than any local estate. People raised on dodgy 2-step and macho shouting would be blown away by the likes of DJ Assault chanting “ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS” over crude, jackhammer beats.
I did actually try this on a smaller scale – much to the chagrin of the lady of the house -loading the first verse of DJ Assault’s rather poor ‘Yo Relatives’ onto my handset and later when accosted by a lone chav larvae forcing out a muffled DIY CD:UK I took action. Slipping into a seat in the back opposite, I played the harsh sound of “YOUR MAMA YOUR DADDY YOUR SISTERS A HO. HO HO HO HO HO…” to see if a message was received. They turned up the crap, and I put it on repeat, bopping my head like an electroshock patient. This seemed to quiet things, though I am sorry to report that upon my exiting of the bus there was a window based exchange of masturbatory gestures. Maybe I am becoming feral too under the heat and pressure.
I’m certainly not alone. At my last visit to the Nordic temple of genteel shame (pIKEA) I noticed that one area in the kitchens section had been converted into an impromptu and very fragrant baby changing area, another had the evidence of shoplifted 15p tins of Swedish Perry consumed en masse in a moment of private pleasure. It made sense. You could start a commune in there if you had weapons to fend off the staff.
This is nothing new, but the wrong sort have figured it out. The type that regret that headphones make audio personal as you can’t share the latest bits of cynical, sugary ear excrement doing the rounds. Get on a rammed bendy bus and before you know it a clash of tinny, muffled beats, insipid sexual longings and phallocentric oaths will fill the air like the pong from rained on food waste.
It is my fantasy to don a suit of armour and strap a mid-80s bass heavy Hitachi model to my chest and board the bus banging out the reductivist sound of Detroit Booty Bass – the sound of a real street much harder than any local estate. People raised on dodgy 2-step and macho shouting would be blown away by the likes of DJ Assault chanting “ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS” over crude, jackhammer beats.
I did actually try this on a smaller scale – much to the chagrin of the lady of the house -loading the first verse of DJ Assault’s rather poor ‘Yo Relatives’ onto my handset and later when accosted by a lone chav larvae forcing out a muffled DIY CD:UK I took action. Slipping into a seat in the back opposite, I played the harsh sound of “YOUR MAMA YOUR DADDY YOUR SISTERS A HO. HO HO HO HO HO…” to see if a message was received. They turned up the crap, and I put it on repeat, bopping my head like an electroshock patient. This seemed to quiet things, though I am sorry to report that upon my exiting of the bus there was a window based exchange of masturbatory gestures. Maybe I am becoming feral too under the heat and pressure.
I’m certainly not alone. At my last visit to the Nordic temple of genteel shame (pIKEA) I noticed that one area in the kitchens section had been converted into an impromptu and very fragrant baby changing area, another had the evidence of shoplifted 15p tins of Swedish Perry consumed en masse in a moment of private pleasure. It made sense. You could start a commune in there if you had weapons to fend off the staff.
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