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Sunday 29 September 2013

Day 29: Any old Iron, Any old Iron, Any any any old Irony... (Or, Please, Younglings, we've already made these mistakes.. save yourselves...)

A change of pace from the last two Blogs which painted me as some kind of arrested development mankid... now one that will sketch me as a curmudgeonly old bugger grumbling about 'The Kids Today'

Well kind of... I'm going to be complaining about their music. Well, not their music.. it was our music actually.. but anyway I'm getting ahead of myself and overcomplicating things... So I'll leap back to the start.

Since I couldn't go to the Sleepover at the Natural History Museum (A friend did offer me a lend of their child, but sadly it was too late for me to do anything about it) I decided to find a club night. Something light hearted. Somewhere I'd never been. I settled upon one, and made my way down to East London to attend it.

It was quite fun. Much like the 'Preacherman' episode of Nathan Barley, but with more drag queens. So Far so much fun, but the problem soon became clear, in a crushing attempt to lay irony on with a trowel they had seemingly restricted their record box into novelty Hell...

Confession time: I am an Ex-Music Snob. Yes I was one of the worst. One of those annoying douchebags who has a narrow idea of what music actually 'is'.. and therefore anything that doesn't match that, therefore, SIMPLY Cannot be music. I was wrong of course. Music is simply noise designed to elicit an emotion, and that can be a Symphony, a Jazz Solo, Children Singing or the fucking We Buy Any Car Jingle... You may not like it, but it's all music isn't it...

Anyway, I'm much better now. I have grown up and loosened up. I have 99 Red Balloons and Luft Balon on my ipod, I very publicly requested Toxic by Britney on a 6music show about Pop that Stands up (Many friends contacted me within 45 seconds of my name being mentioned), I actually like the song 'Wired for Sound' and I have been known 'throw shapes' to some of the cheapest pop there is.

So that's the context, Reformed Music Snob goes to Irony heavy club night. And soon enough I was getting irked. Yes Yes, it's all very well to do 'Cheesy Pop' and 'Retro Classics', but at least keep it consistent. I mean, there were plenty of good tunes from the 80s and 70s, Prince, New Order, Go West, Duran Duran, Technotronic, Inner City... sounds lovely doesn't it. It was, they were the diamonds sparkling away.

Sadly though, the vast bulk was pop from the 90s and 2000s, basically from my era. This selection represented us. All these kids (And I use that term advisedly, as many of them were younger than my vinyl copies of the records we were listening to) were going wild, but to what tunes?.. Well we had Everybody (Backstreet's Back).. Not once, but 3 times. We had 'I just can't get you out of my head', a nice enough little pop tune, but we had it 4 times over the course of the night... The Mashup with new order twice, the original twice.

...and this was common incidentally. Many of the songs were repeated, and often the worse ones. It seemed, that because they were trying so hard to be quirky and funny they seemed to be desperately avoiding anything that could be even remotely be construed as serious (from which the older songs are immune, cos 'They're like.. retro yeah?'... By doing this they had closed the box on all the best pop of the period.

We didn't get Missy Elliot doing 'Get Ur Freak on', which would have torn the roof of the place, we got the fucking Vengabus for some sub-Butlin's arm waving, we didn't get Timbers doing 'Sexy Back', we got Reach for the Stars... and they did. They reached. I've already used Sub Butlin's. This was Sub Pontins.

I just wanted them to try harder. You can be poppy without being repetitive. You can be Ironic without just slinging The worst on Offer, you can be 'Camp' without being Shrill... I wanted to tell them that these are all mistakes I've made earlier in my clubbing life. We went through this so you don't have to.

Mostly I was just embarrassed that they will now think that's all the 90s/2000 pop acts were. They weren't. even for the snob I was at the time, I heard a few Bangers.

But I didn't let it spoil my night. I would just smile to myself and walk through the crowds of happy young people Reaching for The Stars like a playmobil version of Rave Culture and look in the other room to see what music was on in there...

Usually it was Everybody (Backstreet's Back....)
Alright?

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