Matured in Notepad - who needs oak barrels anyway?

[alexsarll]

So I'm on the 29 bus home from the Indelicates; it's been intermittently chucking down, and I am trying my level best to read, stay vertical, and not let my umbrella drip on anyone. Suddenly, I am distracted from Three Men In A Boat by outraged shrieking. A Concerned Mother is yelling at an apparently blameless chap sat on the back seat "YOU TOUCH MY DAUGHTER! DON'T YOU TOUCH MY DAUGHTER! SHE FOURTEEN YEARS OLD! I CALL POLICE!"
She then proceeds to start hitting him with her bag. Aforementioned daughter is, as any teenager would be, mortified by the display and attempts to move further from a) her mother and b) the alleged assailant, whom she was nowhere near from at latest the point where my attention was drawn to the situation.
The bus lurches. The daughter slams bodily into your innocently reading narrator.
I wonder briefly whether the mother's English is good enough to grasp the concept 'own goal', but am mainly profoundly glad that that was the lurch of the bus slowing for my stop.
(And for the record, you dirty-minded sods - no, not with someone else's)

The Indelicates had, of course, been excellent as ever, although given some of the banter I feel the need to act as peacemaker in the needless beef apparently developing with kgillen over the lyrics to 'Heroin'. Kieron - it's meant to be a pastiche of bad indie lyrics. Indelicates - he likes lots of your other songs. Let's all stay calm here, eh?
They were supporting, inexplicably, another 'new Lily Allen' - this one anointed not only by being a female singer-songwriter with a London accent, but by famous parentage. Alas, while I respect Bill Oddie greatly, his daughter hath not the pop skillz of Keith Allen's.

And if I'm trying to keep this semi-linked, the Indelicates' masterful dedication of anti-protest song 'Julia, We Don't Live In The Sixties' to "the million people who marched through London to protest against the removal of a fascist government" brings us nicely to the depressingly predictable outrage over Sir Salman Rushdie's knighthood. My sentiments on this moronic, self-contradictory posturing and anyone spineless enough to sympathise with it for a moment do not need any lenghthy elucidation, but they do make me a little sad that I have almost finished my current bag book, Christopher Hitchens' excellent God Is Not Great; at times like this, it's nice to have an excuse to register on every public transport trip one's utter contempt for monotheism's claims to 'respect' simply by the title of one's reading matter. If you'd rather have a less hectoring Dawkins who learned a little more about prose from Wodehouse and a little less from the zealots he condemns, then this is the heretical grimoire for you. I resist the temptation to quote from it as extensively as it deserves, but shall content myself with noting that I'm still giggling at his description of one particularly witless creationist screed as "unlikely even to rate a footnote in the history of piffle".

Elsewhere in the realm of baffling ideologies: "30 masked anarchists armed with CS gas, iron bars and baseball bats stormed the stadium at approximately 11:20 pm while the Beastie Boys were performing." Are the Beasties agents of The Man now, then? I appreciate that they've gone off the boil a bit lately, but this still seems excessive as a critique of their recent work.

Comments

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

That's beautiful. Well, it would be if nitwits like Hedges weren't so lamentably present on my planet. Have you seen the Youtube footage of Hitchens on the death of Jerry Falwell?

[mylifebythesea.livejournal.com]

At the same festival the Beastie Boys were performing at, Madness were barricading themselves in their dressing room placing sofas against the door as said mob attempted to break in. This amuses me.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Which would have brought us nicely back to the start if only I'd known it, given the gig was at the Nutty Boys' spiritual home, the Dublin Castle.

[battermenow.livejournal.com]

Peace made ;)

I was oversensitive about playing on me own in Bath.

And I clearly spend WAY too much time online ;)

Julia Indelicate x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Ach, what's the internet for if not for finding people talking about oneself?

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

I love the phrase "Beef".

I'd hoped it was pastiche. Problem being, it's bad pastiche and they don't pull off the joke. It's bad lyrics mocking bad lyrics, if you will.

KG

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

BUT I DO LOVE THEM!

KG

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

And I was entirely unaware of the thing over on kgillen. There was beef and I wasn't invited.

KG

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

Er... probably worth noting I wouldn't have been as harsh in that first post if I noticed J. Indelicate was one above me.

You may note that, with these four posts, I'm procrastinating.

KG

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And this, children, is why we always make at least a brief scan of the other comments before posting...

If I'd heard that song in isolation, I would see your point. But given how well-pitched their other lyrics are, I'm prepared to trust that where 'Heroin' is, tone-wise, is where it's meant to be.

My use of 'beef' was also pastiche. Well, mostly. Part of it was excessive consumption of The Wire, if such a thing is possible.

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

I may delete it, but not now, as I've said that I may delete it. Unless I delete this too.

(I'm sure it's what they want it to be. I'm just not convinced that's a good thing to be. Which is, of course, fine and just me. God knows I can have songs I can't stand from almost every band I've ever loved)

KG

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Really? See, I know a lot of people are like that (see also: tending not to love/listen to whole albums), whereas when I really click with a band, I tend to like *everything* (though obviously still with some variation of degree), and there are very few albums I don't listen right through when I put them on.

[bremxjones.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most bands have some song making a point I just disagree with. There probably are exceptions, but... well, can't think of any right now.

KG

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

When it comes to an act I love, I can even love songs with which I disagree vociferously. I mean, some of Philip Jeays' political songs are just clunky, but there are others where I can believe for the duration of the song, or just appreciate the wordplay and the sound.
(See also: Brecht. Can't stand the plays, because plays are too long for polemic to be justified, or retain the interest. But as a lyricist, bring him on)

[battermenow.livejournal.com]

What about his poetry? The translations, like all translations, fall apart a bit... I think so anyway .

I wonder why it's called 'beef'?

JI x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I've pretty much given up on the idea of poetry in translation, tbh. My French is just about up to reading Baudelaire with a parallel text crib, but that aside I usually just end up annoying myself as much as I would if I were to try watching television through gauze.
(Obviously lyrics aren't a million miles from poetry, but there at least the music and the sound can carry enough of the meaning that, even if the words are being mutilated to fit the metre in another language, you're not losing quite so much)

No idea as to the origin of 'beef'; even Wikipedia has failed me, though the relevant article, while short on etymological detail, does helpfully list 80+ specific hip hop feuds.