A version of this rant appeared on the sadly now defunct Profane Beefs website, a short-lived affair dedicated to desecrating the sacred cows of music.
What happens with music is what happens with everything else the poor possess.
What happens with music is what happens with everything else the poor possess.
Music scenes pretty much always start amongst the poor – a
new sound emerging from the forgotten corners of urban life. This sound spreads to local
clubs and DJ’s. Soon money gets involved, a buzz is generated around an ever
hyper-ready media and then record companies, scared of missing the boat, flood
the scene with cash – copycats are suddenly abundant, the scene is diluted,
finished.
Same thing happens with where they live. People will hear that a certain part of town
is vibrant and exciting and so the hipsters will move in, wanting part of this
scene, driving rents and mortgages up. Soon the local café, the local pub, all
those things that created that atmosphere in the first place is choked with
moneyed strangers, incapable of seeing that they always kill the things they
hoped to keep.
Sanitise what the poor have and sell it to the middle
classes. Football, music, fashion – it’s
all just grist to the millenial mill. These parasites have always existed but
the internet has made their breeding uncontrollable. You used to have to work
hard, shop around, put the hours in looking for that new thing you wanted to
hear and make yours. Now a click of a mouse and suddenly everyone knows about
the Big Beat revival/that obscure French director/that little old fashioned tea
rooms tucked away in a forgotten side street.
The poor love their drink, you killed their pubs. They love
their football; you priced them out of the game entirely. Everything that the
government does already had a mandate from anyone with a buy-to-let mortgage or a stupid
haircut. Their chips, their clothes, and their run down cars – you took them
and resold them to the rich as artisan street food, authentic work clobber and
vintage runabouts. The working class has been shafted, so what the fuck you looking at.
That band you and your mates used to follow back in the day.
The local heroes. Made one album, split
up. Now they’ve had a song used in a Coke advert. Now there’s a reunion tour.
Better still, they’re playing your hometown. You have to book a ticket online
but you’re stuck in a queue and the next thing you know, the thing’s sold out
to a bunch of micro brewers with massive beards who just chanced upon an article on
Pitchfork and decided that it sounded fun, ironic even.
Sometimes it feels like you’re being laughed at. Everywhere
you go, people are dressed like you used to only somehow now it costs a fortune.
The pub you frequented as an underage lager lout has changed its name, got rid
of the jukebox and sells sandwiches that cost more than your bus fare to work.
The telly’s full of people pretending they speak just like you despite being
called Julian or Sebastian.
Your dead end job just about keeps the wolf from the door.
All your friends are either in the same boat or have fallen overboard. Your
kids share classes with kids with first names that make them sound like they
came out of a 1930s pit village. Alfie, Bertie, Sid – all being dropped off by
the au pair.
Sometimes you want to run away, run home. But home’s gone.
That estate, that run down hellhole of your youth, they did it up nice. Saw that
there was a view of the sea and decided that the poor didn’t deserve this. They
packed them off to live in a car park near the landfill. They renamed the
estate after a local hero who grew up round here and who promptly vanished the
first chance he could.
Everything on the telly makes you feel worse about yourself.
Shows with people buying second homes when you haven’t yet bought one and
having the cheek to be stressed about it.
Public school educated comedians pretending to be just like you and generating
canned laughter and a stadium tour just by saying stuff that you would say in
an exaggerated version of your own accent.
And that’s the laugh you hear in your head whenever you hear
the opening chords of the song Parklife by Blur, that “Oi” and those sitcom
music hall fucking key changes. It’s
doubly annoying because the single Girls and Boys had been such a celebration
of pop music, dance music, holidays and sex that you thought Blur might
actually be on the verge of doing something special, something magical. But
they weren’t. They were just doing what all the other middle class bands do,
picking your pocket with one hand and buying you a drink with the other.
You play the entire album once. It disgusts you. You take it
to a charity shop. You walk home and a pigeon shits on your head.
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