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| Mother Funkers: Sacred Mother Tongue @ The Twist (pic: Fraser) |
Time was when we'd start off the summer going to the park with fags and alcohol, which combined with the first stirrings of teenage lust must have made it seem an idyllic time. As Wordsworth said: 'bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!' Now I'm mythologising a bit - when I was a teenager I (almost) never had sex. I didn't know what it was. Not to break into a weak cliche like 'nowadays', but nowadays kids grow up fast. They don't know that as a child you've never had it so good. All I'm saying is, if there were such a thing as a heaven, I don't believe anyone is old there.
Could be that when we're drinking and smoking ourselves into oblivion, we're actually trying to get that buzz back - that feeling of being seventeen, I mean. That thought was what put me in mind of the film I saw recently at the arts centre about the town of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, the 'unofficial suicide capital of Great Britain,' the place where director Jez Lewis' friends from school have become dependant on booze and benefits. It's title is Shed Your Tears and Walk Away.
I met Jez Lewis after the showing and spoke to him, trying to be empathetic. I got the feeling that his filmmaking had helped him to escape from the hopelessness that invades so many of our lives - especially, it seems to me, in the small towns! The film was not judgemental - Lewis himself, being friends with some of the participants in it, eventually got involved and tried to help. Some of those people have serious psychological problems, but mostly you got the impression that it was the utter fucking hopelessness of their lives that had made them that way.
Next time I pass the drunks on the Magic Roundabout*, I will not look at them in the same way.
It really narks me off that my generation has failed to produce anything like a worthwhile pop musical figure in any way. Yes the Arctic Monkeys, but they're not that controversial or interesting anyway. Sure there are interesting bands, but they seem to be around for about five minutes (I'm looking at you, Larrikin Love). The great god (Satan?) of the music industry seems to have decided that from now on all youth culture will be dark heavy metal or multicoloured mindless electro crap. Thanks, Johnny Borell, for finally killing indie music forever.
With this in mind I headed off to The Twist to see some metal. Sacred Mother Tongue are probably not terrible if you enjoy this genre. Personally, I don't.
Incidentally, I noticed that Prince William & Kate chose Ellie Goulding to sing at the royal reception. I don't mind the royal family, as long as they stay out of the way and I never have to see them or think about them at all, so I tried to avoid this business, but when I heard about Goulding being drafted in I was surprised - she is the one bright point on the musical landscape right now, crap Elton John covers aside (like many talented people she went to the same university as me at the same time, and though I never actually met her, I like to believe we are kin somehow). This lead me to think: Wills, if I were you, why wouldn't I marry her instead? He could have any girl he likes. I give it about ten years before he sleeps with someone else and fucks it up.
Anyways, that's my final thought for now. By the time you read this the whole thing will be over, and if there's any of you left who still haven't been brainwashed we can go back to thinking about more serious things, like drawing up the petition to get the BBC to make another series of Aurelio Zen.
Ciao!
-F
*St Botolphs in Colchester
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