Welcome to my World
Julie Burchill, Ari Up and John Lydon
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 15.48pm on 29 October 10Artrockers,
I've always been a fan of Julie Burchill, that's ALWAYS. For me she's never put a foot wrong and exists, rather like Mr Clarkson, to prick our liberal concensus and take the righteous piss out of the self righteous. She is, even now, rock'n'roll to the core, if your definition of rock'n'roll is; upsetting the apple cart, pissing on the establishment and holding a mirror up to pompous prats . It's not a matter of 'everything she says is right', but it is a matter of applauding the fact that she has the guts to say it. And where does she say it these days? In The Independent, natural home to the waffling-class - and it drives the readers nuts! Each week she gobs on a sacred cow or two and the Indinista go blue with anger - some of the comments reveal their nasty tempers and expose their hypocrisy. So I wasn't surprised to find that the comments section has been removed from her coulmn in it's on-line manifestation - not surprised but saddned, largely because I thoroughly enjoyed reading the bile that readers flung at her, exposing themselves as bigots and potential fascistic censors ('she souldn't be allowed to say that'). Today she has something to say about Lauren Booth's conversion to Islam - have a look here.
I have similar feelings about Ari Up. As a member of The Slits she had no time for cant and posturing, in fact the bare-breasted cover of Cut sent the sisterhood into a rage - too blinkered to realise that this was an act of REAL emancipation. She, and the other Slits scared the willies out of me. It was the honesty that did it, a prime component of Punk that people often over-look, shared by Ms Burchill. If you asked a dumb question you got the answer you deserved - an attitude shared by John Lydon et al. I once asked him; 'Where did it all go wrong John?'
He glanced at the double brandy I'd just bought him, then at me, laughed and walked off to climb into his limo. I learned more about Punk that night than Jon Savage could communicate in a hundred books.
Tom ArtrockerCuts For The Biz
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 12.55pm on 21 October 10Artrockers,
Today I can announce to the house where we need to make cuts in order to make good the massive debt left to us by the past stupidity of the music business.
Firstly, having cravenly handed over the crown jewels to a failing computer company who pay royalty rates comparable to starvation wages and further allowing them to create a real monopoly, we suggest that, in the interests of competition, this company be restricted to the manufacturing of slick and unreliable trinkets for people who have nothing better to spend their money on. This will entail job cuts, any record company executive who thought that this was a good idea will be shown the door.
Not content with this madness, it was decided that giving music away for virtually nothing was a good idea and that agreeing to royalty rates even more derisory than those paid by the failing computer company would solve all the problems. We were assured that this would be a service restricted to PCs, but now you can get it on your phone. This must stop. It is madness.
We will revive the stumbling Live scene by ammending the smoking ban and allowing human beings to actually make their own decisions about their own lives. This will result in jobs cuts in the w**ker sector.
We will monitor with interest the trend for music publications to offer their in-house production services, just in case this is 'paying for coverage' (surely not) which would signal the end of an independent music press. Should these suspicions be confirmed there will be job-cuts. And we will be looking out for the next step along this dodgy road, music publications creating their own PR companies so that they can PR product to their own journalists. You have been warned.
We will make it difficult for 'gap-year-rockers' to ponce about being in a pretend band 'til they go into daddy's legal business by the simple expedient of cutting their fingers off. There will be digit loss.
The PRS-MCPS Alliance will make the system of royalty collection and payment simple, straightforward and reliable, rather than wrapping the system in coils of mystery and accountant speak that, should you follow them, lead nowhere. There will DEFINITELY be job cuts.
We are well aware that none of the above will actually save the industry, but we do believe it would make us feel a lot better about it all, and at least we could toast our marshmallows on the ensuing bonfire of the idiots.
Tom ArtrockerGary Numan and Star-Struck Tom
Filed in Welcome to my World at 12.37pm on 13 October 10Artrockers,
I'm not a big fan of conducting interviews by phone, but last night I spent a most enjoyable hour talking to Mr Gary Numan . And I can report that the 'Numan' is very 'Human'; chatty, disarming, humble, amusing, wistful, honest and perceptive. Not what I expected at all. What did I expect? Awkwardness, mumbling, an unwillingness to answer questions, a guy, in short, troubled by Aspergers and apart from the world. I couldn't have been more wrong. When will I learn? Every time I have to speak to somebody 'famous' who's music is important to me I go through all sorts of horror-scenarios involving them throwing a glass of something over me, walking out on the interview and having me beaten up by their inevitable heavies. And it's never like that, the 'stars' are generally polite, patient and grounded. I arrive a bag of nerves and leave thinking: 'What a nice person!' And I reliase that no matter how long I'm around this crazy business, and take it from me it's been a while, I never get over being 'star-struck'. I'm just a great big teenage fan flapping about, winding myself up about actually meeting the folks who have soundtracked my life.
I hope I never get over it, every time the 'big' interview comes up I become 16 again, and short of the fountain of youth or a time machine I know of no better way to re-discover the
adolescent me in his poster lined bedroom, the fan, surrounded by the images of his heroes.
If I ever lose that feeling I'll give it all up and never write another word about music, but I can't see it happening. I'm hoping to talk to Phil Oakey and John Foxx soon and I can assure you I'm already bricking it. Maybe they'll throw their drink over me...
Tom ArtrockerSpotify & Boring Cities
Filed in Welcome to my World at 17.02pm on 28 September 10Artrockers,
First, an apology, Jonas, John Power, Charlie, Daniel and about 50 others all noticed my 'deliberate' mistake last week - yes indeed, George Michael was sentenced to eight weeks in jail and not, as I stupidly claimed, eight months. And many pointed out that he'd been canned not because he was a toker but because he's a danger behind the wheel - which is certainly the case, he does seem to like driving under the influence but hey, it must be some awesome weed 'dude', wherever he gets it I can tell you for a fact that it isn't South London, there hasn't been anything worth rolling round these parts for months, just nasty rubbish that seems to have been sprayed with a perfume called 'Vaguely Like Skunk'. Yuck! But I did get this response which makes it all worthwhile: 'Very moved by your excellent piece on the jailing of George Michael.
'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?' indeed. Thank you. -BP Fallon [bpfallon.com]
Thanks BP.
I saw an advert for Spotify on TV last night, still offering free membership, which prompted the question once more: Why would I buy music? Now they're advertising it on TV I guess we might as well pack up and go home. I have yet to have one person explain to me why Spotify is a good thing for the industry or the artists - can somebdy enlighten me please?
And news just in: London gas failed to make the top 50 of the most liveable cities (whatever the hell that means), the top 10 are; Vancouver, Canada- Melbourne, Australia - Vienna, Austria - Geneva, Switzerland - Perth, Australia - Adelaide, Australia - Sydney, Australia - Zurich, Switzerland - Toronto, Canada - Calgary, Canada. Which is a major coincidence because that just happens to be my list of the most boring cities in the world, so by 'liveable' they must mean 'incredibly dull', plus New York of course, or at least Manhattan which carries off the prize for going from 'most exciting city in the world' to 'most boring, smug and middle-class city anywhere in the universe'. Why do people go to NY? To shop. Cultural hot-spot to shopping destination in one generation - quite an achievement.
Tom ArtrockerGeorge Michael - Butterfly Upon a Wheel?
Filed in Welcome to my World by Tom Artrocker at 17.54pm on 17 September 10Artrockers,
The first mistake George Michael made was not employing Pete Doherty's legal team. After all, serial court attender Doherty has spent a total of four days in Pentonville Prison, George Michael however has been sentenced to eight weeks in Pentonville for harming nobody but himself. Sure, he crashed his car into Happy Snaps and was a bit wasted when he did it - but eight months? Is this a case of breaking a butterfly upon a wheel? Forty odd years ago Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were sentenced to jail in the Redlands drug case. At the time William Rees Mogg, hardly a bastion of the counter-culture wrote in The Times: "If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity. It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr. Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr. Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man."
And here we are in the 21st Century doing it all over again. If anything drug laws have gone backwards, the enlightenment has not happened. A naturally occurring weed is still the harbinger of destruction. And this time there's no Rees Mogg to talk sense. Optimists might have seen the Jagger-Richards case as a break-through, a precursor to a new found weed liberality - how wrong can you be? The laws, and their enforcement by the police are more aggressively enforced than they were in 1968 - as George Michael's case proves.
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? We do.
Tom Artrocker
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