Alf Harris: The Libertines Must Die

“You can only listen to people who don’t know how to play for so long. With most of them, it becomes apparent that they don’t have any talent and should just quit.”

James Chance, 1980

Good Christ Jim, did you hear The Libertines are getting back together? The radio told me about it this morning and I couldn't quite believe my ears. I hopped out of bed and there it was, on NME.com, Guardian.co.uk and strewth, now it's even on Artrocker.TV!

I guess it must really be happening, because Carlos is letting the radio play his bat pellet of a solo single this morning too. Honestly, what's he up to - trying to write a new theme tune for the Des O'Conner Show or something? Those trumpets are the pits!

Anyway, I wanted to write into Artrocker.TV to express my opinion on The Libertines, because every website in Britain seems to be leading with articles wafting palm leaves in their faces. Some sites are generously allowing comments to be posted along the lines of "oh - but they're doing it for the money!" but mostly it's "welcome home lads and let's toast to the legend of Biggles!"

Now I'm gonna let you down gently, but in my opinion The Libertines are the anti-Christs of 21st Century music. Swear to God, they actually screwed up music rather than doing it any favours! And here's why: they played terribly because they were bamboozled on drugs, then an entire generation of kids went "Oh! Maybe it's great to be crap!" And then even the bands that could play their instruments professionally started pretending to be crap, because of bloody Barat and Doherty making it in vogue! Now that is a crime against humanity.

Before you start, I'm not some grumpy old minstrel - I can see that Doherty at least had a half decent poetic mind and they had a few good pop tunes, but this hysteria is frankly hysterical. Some people are suggesting that the band had it all planned from the start: they were gonna split up, watch the stock market grow a softy fatty, then chip in their bucks and party on a yacht. I don't think that, I am a moderate. I merely think they are guilty of crimes against humanity.