Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

There are cer­tain move­ments in cur­rent pop­u­lar youth cul­ture that really set my teeth on edge: the “Emo” sub-culture with its diluted mish-mash of goth/punk/mod cleanly lam­in­ated and pret­tily pack­aged in its access­ible, easy-to-replicate format and dished out to sec­ond­ary school young­sters with more fre­quency that the Morn­ing After pill. [Punk? This lot have never even heard of Sid and Nancy, let alone The Clash and The Damned…].

Then, there’s all these skinny North­ern upstarts with their floppy side-swept fringes, lout­ish shouting/talking-singing style, drain­pipe trouser-wearing, Jar­vis Cocker–esque dan­cing¹ and homo­gen­ized gui­tar play­ing, where every song has the same poxy riff.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know Jack-Shit about play­ing a gui­tar. I am not afraid to admit this. I do how­ever, have two fully-functioning ears on the side of my head and I am telling you that every bas­tard song churned out by these out­fits sounds the sod­ding same.

I reg­u­larly visit someone who exper­i­ences a large part of each day to the tune of the MTV2 play-list/chart. There are months in-between my vis­its to said person’s flat and yet each time I go, not only are the same songs play­ing, but I spend my time going: “Who is this again?” or “Oh this sounds like so-and-so…Oh no, it’s not them, it just sounds like it could be one of their’s” or “This is blah-blah song, isn’t it?…Oh wait, the title isn’t what I remem­ber, must be a follow-up that sounds the same”.

It’s mind-numbing, it really is. I would give band names, but to be hon­est, they’ve all sort of meld­ing into one giant Genetically-Modified, lanky, bended-kneed, strut­ting Lan­cashire lad with greasy hair that he keeps flick­ing out of his eyes whilst bleat­ing about his “mardy” something-or-other into a vintage-style mic that he’s car­ry­ing about by its stand. And behind him: podgier, similarly-styled lads with braces on their “Grandad” trousers, per­form star­ing down stead­fastly at their gui­tars like they’re hav­ing trouble pla­cing all of the three chords that make up their debut EP, whilst bob­bing their long, side-parted mops that poke over their ears and into their eyes.

But noth­ing, noth­ing gets my goat like this seem­ing wave of whingey, driv­el­ing, acous­tic gui­tar strum­ming indi­vidu­als that strike me as being more akin to home­less tube sta­tion busk­ers than “Rock Stars”, “Pop Artists” or “Male Solo Vocal­ists” or whatever it is they’re sup­posed to be these days. You know, woss­is­name — miser­able git in the woolly hat who’s “had a bad day”… *Googles*… Daniel Pow­ter, that’s him! I swear I passed him sit­ting in Har­low Town Centre once with his dog on a bit of string and his gui­tar case full of cop­pers… If it weren’t him, then the fella with the dog bet­ter start rub­bing his hands together because I reckon there’s def­in­ite grounds for a law­suit regard­ing copy­right there.

The press have been doing their conkers over this mediocre mob of what can only be described as the aural trans­la­tion of aged, beige and khaki knit­wear that’s stretched to ele­phant pro­por­tions in the wash. They’ve been banging on about the “hunk” (and I use that term as loosely as the afore-mentioned jumper) James Blunt and his being in the Army, as if that some­how excuses the agony that is “You’re Beau­ti­ful”. Quite frankly mate, you’re not and it isn’t. Sorry.

It seems I’m not alone in my frus­tra­tion, as fel­low blogger-cum-online-ranter has already likened him and his music to that of a potato, no less.

Off­line, the people of Essex have also seen pro­gress, as I was rather enter­tained last night to read that the county radio sta­tion Essex FM, have in fact banned the music of James Blunt from their playl­ists, indef­in­itely.

Accord­ing to a Mr. Chris Cot­ton, a pro­gramme con­trol­ler at Essex FM:

“…the num­ber of spe­cific com­ments about James Blunt were more than we have ever seen for one par­tic­u­lar artist…The amount of feed­back is enorm­ous, so it looks like there’ll be a pretty long-term ban…We encour­age other radio sta­tions to take the same step.”

You can read the source art­icle in it’s entirety over here.

Dur­ing an unre­lated inter­view, Blunt reportedly sniped:

“To all those bas­tards who don’t like my music — you’re all adults, you can switch your radio off.”

Erm, do you want to tell him, or should I…

1. Don’t get me wrong, there is noth­ing wrong with Jar­vis Cocker, I like Jar­vis Cocker. I do how­ever think that the world needs only one. Not to men­tion, when Jar­vis Cocker dances, it’s cool, when other people dance like him, they’re just prats. [back]