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Before anything else, I should point out that this In which case, perhaps we should try to bring the Prime Minister
up-to-date by supplying some state-of-the-art digital terrorist effects, to
give some clout to the moment at the end of the world / film in which we
finally see the menace head-on. I'm going to make a start on these
computer-generated terrorists right here, in my own small way; after all, if
we've got the legislation to deal with a non-existent terror network then we
might as well enjoy the benefit. So starting with this first on-line edition
of the Countdown, every month I'm going to include one "message" to my
associates in Islamic extremism, just to see whether anybody in Special
Branch notices it and decides to have me quarantined. What's nice about this
idea is that under the government's new anti-terrorism laws, if the
authorities spot these signals to made-up Evil Arabs then I can be placed under
house arrest, and anyone who's aware of my usual lifestyle will be amused by
the idea that this might somehow inconvenience me (I've now been told by
two former girlfriends that in the past I've greeted them at the front
door of my house with the words 'you smell of outside', though I have no
memory of either occasion). Anyone who's interested in joining up with me
and forming an entirely spurious "network" of our own
should get in touch through the usual secret channels. We could have our
own terrorist names, in the style of porn-star names or Star Wars
names, and write our own terrorist blogs. It'll give investigators something
interesting to read, while the "real" terror network is doing absolutely
nothing, anywhere. Bagsie I get to be "Mullah Rice".
Oh, and one more point while we're on the subject: this week also saw the
first ever criminal conviction of what the news programmes call a "known
al-Qaeda agent". Assuming that this is in some way true, and "known al-Qaeda
agent" doesn't just mean "Muslim who's met some dodgy mates over the
internet"… doesn't it make you feel so much safer? That during the last four
years of non-stop anxiety, in which we've been briefed to expect bombs on
planes, bombs on the underground, bad bombs, dirty bombs and bombs that
spread foreign germs scraped from under the fingernails of Bedouins, the
only "known al-Qaeda agent" the British have found has been one bloke from
Gloucester who was thinking of becoming a suicide bomber but then changed
his mind and confessed to everything? For some reason I'm reminded of the
Pathetic Sharks in Viz. "Crapness without limit."
The best way of fighting terror, of course, is by not being remotely terrified.
Now back to the usual.
Errata and Addenda to the Last Edition
(a) Since the last edition, two separate acquaintances - on being told
that I'm going out for the evening - have asked me: 'So, will you be filling
the platypus tonight?' I feel I've created a terrible new euphemism.
(b) It transpires that Ministry of Sound's "Satisfaction", one of the
videos I covered in the Post-Eric Prydz Wanklet Round-Up, actually pre-dates
Prydz's masterpiece by a whole year. I had no way of knowing this, as in
late 2003 I was still on my Destiny's Child sabbatical. "Satisfaction" can
therefore be seen as a prototype rather than a knock-off, which may explain
why it's funnier than all the others.
(c) My claim that Americans say "Septembertheeleventh" as one word was
slightly erroneous; there is, almost always, a respectful pause after the
third syllable. It should properly be written "September… theeleventh". This
will become an issue in about four paragraphs' time.
UK Top Forty Singles, This Week's Big New Release:
You will have noticed, by now, that few things get on my tits more than
grown-ups who pretend to like crap pop music in an attempt to look knowing
and post-modern. This tendency has got worse in the last few years -
certainly, in an earlier decade it would have been taken as read that
someone like David Quantick was mentally retarded rather than arch and
ironic - but it's not an entirely new phenomenon. For example, readers /
former readers of the NME will know that music journalists go through a
cycle whereby every few years they'll "discover" the idea that pop music
(rather than alternative music) is a great thing, but then get it
hilariously wrong and champion the worst pop act imaginable. Those of my age
may recall that in the early '90s, they decided to back unacceptably
hopeless novelty band Right Said Fred, but unbelievably it can get even
worse than that. A more recent cover of the NME, which featured a picture of
Avril Lavigne and the headline "WELCOME TO THE NO-COCK REVOLUTION", may go
down in history as the Most Wrong Thing Ever. (Right Said Fred were chosen
because the paper saw them as challenging the sexuality of the mainstream
audience, which basically meant that they'd shaved their heads after their
manager told them they needed a gimmick and one of them had to pretend to be
a practising bisexual. Similarly, the idea of Avril "spunky yet
non-threatening" Lavigne being a feminist icon is potentially even funnier
than the sentence "Keanu Reeves is John Constantine".)
The video for "He
Wasn't" is shot against an all-white background and on fuzzy film-stock, to
suggest the days of Blondie, and involves Ms Lavigne thrashing about in
front of her band in a grungy enough way to remind the boys and girls of the
Nirvana Years. Her defenders will probably see this as a sign of the Second
Coming. At which point the Spirit of Irony will have been so successfully
invoked that it'll be able to take human form, and begin the age of the
false messiah described in the Book of Revelations, leading us into a
thousand years of torment, horror and pestilence which will seem perfectly
acceptable because the plagues of blood and disease will be interpreted in
the popular media as fashionably retro references to the Dark Ages.
39. "Looking as You Are", M*Brace
Regular readers may recall, from the 29/08/04 edition, the Very Worst
Video Ever Created by Man or Beast: "Bedshaped" by Keane, in which Keane
proved their "serious" credentials with the story of a stooped and ugly
little spindle-man who spent the video being ignored and set-upon by an
unsympathetic world while crying plasticine tears. Incredibly, M*Brace - the
sulky, grown-up-and-gone-to-college version of B*Witched - have found a way
of taking this even further into the realms of anal self-exploration. The
video for "Looking as You Are" is the same basic idea, but since M*Brace
wouldn't want to damage their reputation by associating with a stooped and
ugly little spindle-man, this time the ignored and set-upon character is an
attractive young woman who ends the video by throwing herself at the lead
singer in a desperate attempt to get him to notice her. The message they
seem to be trying to get across here: "We're a modern, sensitive band who
understand alienation and anxiety in today's world. But we're not poofs, all
right?"
38. "Wrap My Words Around You", Daniel Bedingfield
A video obsessed with words, and full of shredded scraps of paper covered
in significant-looking pieces of handwriting, so immediately he gets
detention for copying his sister's homework. But worse, the Christians are
at the gates again. This Countdown has already documented my dislike of
supposedly "polite" religion (see the 31/10/04 edition), but civilisation's
struggle against tambourines and sloppy logic took a distressing new turn on
the 8th of January this year, when the BBC's broadcast of Jerry Springer:
The Opera led to mass demonstrations by angry Christians and a record number
of complaints. On the surface it may seem nice that the BBC is finally
offending people again, especially after the Hutton stitch-up this time last
year, yet there's a worrying side-effect here. You'll notice that I have no
trouble remembering the date on which the offending programme was broadcast.
This is because, according to the Christian demagogue on The Culture Show,
that date marks the beginning of a new era in which Christians are ready to
prove they can unite in order to fight the never-ending battle against taste
and reason. And he pronounced "Januarytheeighth" as one word, just like
Americans say "September… theeleventh".
Now, my generation grew up believing
that in this country religion was about as dangerous (and as likely to
become hip) as bath buns or Harry Secombe, but let's not fool ourselves:
American Christianity, of the type that's been roundly supported by
Britain's leading creationist and nominal head of state, is what got the
President of the United States of Electric Chair into power. Ergo, it
already has a bodycount. My prediction for the next twelve months… the
disciples of Richard Land, George W. Bush's "spiritual adviser" and a man
whose warmongering party-political sermons would seem really, really funny
to us if we saw them happening in Africa or Japan or somewhere else that
looks like it's a long way away, will tour Britain and be warmly welcomed by
the British Christian movement. This country's leading Christians will
appear on television to insist that you don't have to agree with the
politics to understand the message, even if that message happens to be
"torture wogs and bomb poor people".
36. "She's Got a Reason", Dogs
Looks good as a sentence in itself. 'She's got a reason… dogs!' It sounds
like the kind of twisted psychological motive that serial killers have in
CSI, or in the crap episodes of Cracker that weren't written by Jimmy
McGovern.
32. "Wires", Athlete
You would have thought, wouldn't you, that you couldn't get much more
offensive than a group doing bad pub-band versions of Coldplay and writing
lyrics about running down corridors as if it's an expression of humanity's
innermost moral turmoil. But after objecting to Athlete in last month's
edition, I now discover - and I'm detecting a theme here - that they're also
Christians. A Christian Coldplay; to me, these words have the same kind of
resonance as "ebola has just gone airborne". There really is far too much
religious tolerance in our society these days, isn't there?
31. "Bastardo", Charlotte Hatherley
Video features guest appearances from Simon Pegg and the thin one out of
Little Britain, and is a parody of a girl's magazine photo-story, of the
kind that Viz did every month in the late '80s. It helps if you think of
this as the "recycle bin" of popular culture.
27. "Galvanize", Chemical Brothers
In addition to everything I insisted on saying about this last time, I
might also mention that I quite like it. This isn't exactly a big point, but
since I've been rude about virtually everything else for the last two
months, it's only right that I should make a note of it when something fails
to offend me.
26. "Cradle 2005", Atomic Kitten
I'm sure I can't be the only one to have wondered whether banality is a
set quantity (you know, like the speed of light) or whether it's possible to
cut it down if you try really, really hard. This came to mind again after
accidentally stumbling into a carefully-rehearsed-fly on the
carefully-staged-wall documentary about Jordan, although the argument works
just as well for Atomic Kitten, and I feel the question has serious cultural
and ethical implications. There doesn't actually need to be an Atomic
Kitten, when you think about it. But if you took Atomic Kitten out of the
world - if (for example) you went back in time and chose to avoid the usual
touristy time-travel thing of assassinating Hitler in 1933, but instead prevented the
birth of whatever manager put the band together - then would something
similar take their place? The obvious point to make is that somebody will
always fill up the Top Forty, since the gramophone wouldn't have been
invented if there hadn't been a clear human desire for discs that make
noise, but how many "definite" spaces are there in popular culture and how
many people are surplus to requirements? Kate Thornton is sadly necessary,
in that bad entertainment television is inevitable and someone has to
present it. Atomic Kitten aren't necessary. I've reached the conclusion that
if you started leaving infant minor celebrities on hillsides for the wolves,
then when you got back to your own time there would be less minor
celebrities around… but that if you got rid of too many, then other (even
less-qualified?) minor celebrities would start appearing to fill in the
holes. So what's the optimum, functional number of celebrities per culture?
Is there a method of working it out mathematically, and has anybody ever
even tried? I'm serious about this, you realise.
15. "Almost Here", Brian McFadden & Delta Goodrem
Wait a minute! Are these two shagging?
13. "Let's Get Blown", Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell
I really have been very well-trained in speaking the American language,
and it doesn't help that I keep using it whenever I'm trying to sound
sarcastic. I can just about get away with threatening someone with 12. "Like Toy Soldiers", Eminem
Yes, I did like "Toy Soldiers", thanks. God, I used to fancy Martika
when I was seventeen. You've got to remember, I wandered into puberty -
later than everyone else, because I was always rubbish at sports - in the
year that Britain's idea of a sex symbol was Samantha Fox and the closest we
came to a Channel 5 late-night line-up was that Madonna video with the
indecently young boy and the strip-club. I'm not entirely sure, but I have a
terrible feeling that my first sexual thoughts may have been about Stefanie
Powers; thankfully, this phase didn't even last a weekend. Not a
great selection of love-icons, from a fourteen-year-old's point of view, I
think you'll agree. Flip forward two or three years, though, and my hormones
are on what feels like a permanent caffeine buzz and neither Fuzzbox nor Transvision Vamp are making
enough videos to keep me distracted. And suddenly, along comes this
dark-haired Cuban girl with a face like one of those heads on Easter Island,
who doesn't look good in anything except black and who has the mysterious
power of never quite showing you enough skin to let you lose interest. She
brought out a record called "I Feel the Earth Move" just before California
was hit by the worst 'quake in living memory, she brought out a record
called "Water" just before Britain got flooded out, and if there's one thing
I can't resist it's a bird of ill omen. I wept when she ended up working
with Prince. It felt as if she'd been defiled.
Where were we? Oh yes. 2005,
and now Eminem's sampling "Toy Soldiers". I'd like to pretend that this will
result in Martika being resurrected as a major recording artiste (it worked
for that Didostein girl, remember), but the problem is the same as in every
other recent "product" from Eminem, and we've been over it at least twice
now: he has nothing to talk about except his life as a rapper. This time
it's particularly bad, because to rub in the "soldiers" idea he's trying to
rap over a military-style drumbeat, i.e. a drumbeat which is - by
definition - designed for people with no natural sense of rhythm. Not only
that, but the words don't make sense unless you're familiar with an enormous
splurge of back-story about politicking in American rap. Unfathomable words
are acceptable in most pop music, de rigueur in rock and a positive boon in
"The Ketchup Song", but in a supposedly heartfelt statement about the way he
feels responsible for the lives of those around him… sod it, I don't want to
talk about this. I want to think about Martika for a bit.
11. "Don't Play Nice", Verbalicious
Other things I've been doing this month: realising that I'm completely
incapable of reigning in my actions, finally admitting to myself that the
memory lapses and bursts of erratic behaviour are not only too noticeable to
hide but positively embarrassing, and reaching the conclusion that I'm no
longer capable of pretending to be fully-functional as a human being. In short,
this is the month in which I've finally had to accept that I'm clinically
depressed and need to seek medical help; not something I've ever wanted to
acknowledge, since as a diabetic I already have to religiously monitor
how well my internal organs are working, and if I'm "clinically"
anything then it just gives me another reason to start obsessively measuring
bits of myself (much like when you're on a diet, and keep getting on the
scales every couple of hours to make sure that no surplus fat from the
atmosphere has soaked into your body since the last time you looked). Sadly
this has come in the same month that I ended up accidentally shaving my
head, which means I have to reassure all those close to me that I'm not
about to go all Robert Carlyle and stab the new Doctor Who. Still, at least
being clinically depressed gives you the moral authority to complain about
certain things. I'd like to begin by complaining about the Vodaphone
adverts, with their catchy slogan, "How Are You?". This is obviously
designed to make the company seem caring and humane, but to a depressed
person it just looks like taking the piss.
To attempt to un-digress,
however… in this month of general sourness, Verbalicious' "Don't Play Nice"
has turned out to be the only thing capable of cheering me up. I suspect it
works like fast food, since this is the CD version of a hot, greasy
meat-and-pastry product, full of satisfying fats and simple proteins.
Even the lyrics seem to be telling me "the club will be shakin', there will be
bacon". It's
"pure" pop music the way it should sound, all pummelling squelchy
basslines and urgent adolescent haranguing, and the big surprise is that
Verbalicious - a seventeen-year-old who can only be described as
"funny-looking" - is not only technically a better rapper than just about
anyone else in the Top Forty but also turns out to be a startlingly good
singer. Nobody hip will ever take her seriously, of course, but if Eminem
had made this record then it'd be his best work since 2001 and only the lack
of swearing would surprise people. Except, perhaps, for the fact that "Don't
Play Nice" has a proper chorus instead of one that's been sampled from
another record. But the problem here is that whatever management company
happens to be pulling Ms Licious' strings, they don't seem to have looked at
any popular culture in the last fifteen years and have decided to market her
as what-music-executives-thought-teenage-rappers-were-like-in-the-late-'80s,
although I imagine I'm the only person still living who remembers Leila K so
the comparison's not worth making. This means that the video is quite
ridiculously awful, dressing Verba in a back-to-front baseball cap and
chunky trainers, turning her bedroom into a nightclub with a colourscheme
that looks like children's television circa 1987 and presenting us with a
"plot" which involves her dad banging on her door to find out what all the
noise is about when she's supposed to be revising for her exams. Imagine
Michaela Strachan doing the Beastie Boys, and you get the overall idea.
If
the people responsible for this had bothered turning Verbalicious into a pop
star from now, rather than from the year of her birth, then this would
(rightly) be number one and the fifteen-year-olds of the land would give up
on Britney Spears in disgust. Instead it's stuck outside the Top Ten - a
shocking result, in today's anybody-can-do-this charts - and we have
to keep pretending that 50 Cent is in some way talented. There, I've turned
my depression into righteous anger again.
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