The legendary rant.

OK, so last year I started a Blog on myspace and ended up only doing one article. Since I'm starting a proper one on Blogger, I thought I'd import the myspace one as a good start:

18 Oct 2007

Pub folk Current mood: optimistic Category: Music There is an occupational hazard that comes with being in a Ska band of any sort. And that hazard is that every time you play a local venue (usually pubs), there is always an old drunk guy trying to tell us young and hopeless folk how it used to be. Telling us that ska is supposed to mean something. In the late seventies, early eighties, there was a very important movement that started in popular music, and broke out into full blown politics - that most of the current generation have either forgotten about or are blissfully unaware of. I am talking about The Specials, and Two Tone Records. Though I was not alive at the time the Specials (along with a smattering of other groups) were doing their thing, I fully appreciate the importance of what they were doing. Racism was rife in the seventies and somehow the Two Tone movement gradually changed public opinion in the UK. (In theory this is supposedly impossible) - Culminating in the eventual release of Mandela, which everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten about. I feel I have to justify my intelligence on these matters every time someone asks what sort of music we play. Usually it's not a problem. I'm quite proud that we are one of the few groups who know our roots. We may play Ska Punk, which to some is a sacrilegious fusion of American Punk and evolved Ska - without the political undertones. But we still know what it means to wear that checkerboard wristband! The reason I'm getting on my soapbox and doing the myspace thing today is because after our regular Wednesday WOBBLY BOB rehearsal, Adam, Brian and I went to the Head of Steam to watch the Jazz like always. At the end a gent came up to me and asked if I played trombone (I was looking after '58's trombone). I explained about the band. He then went on to say - at great length - that we were never going to 'get anywhere' and that we were all too immature to appreciate the genre. I hate the phrase 'never going to get anywhere' to start with, so that got my goat up. It's as if to say the only reason people start a band up is to be popular. Bollocks. Anyway, it didn't seem like the guy was going to stop, so I carried on sipping my ale as he continued to berrate my band. Apparently I should "give up and start a proper rock band like the Hoosiers or Arctic Monkeys". I've got to say, it's a seriously good job Phoenix Breweries make a damn tasty ale, otherwise I would have wasted the glass all over his face. Anyone who knows me will probably know I don't exactly have an affinity with Indie (the shit definition, not the real one) music. It's not that it's wrong, I just don't think it's entertaining. I think that most people who listen to it only think it's good because the Music Industry tell them it's good. I did then manage to stop the gent for five seconds to explain that we weren't in it for the money, but this concept was unfortunately lost on him - as is the way, I fear, with most people. Let me make it all clear right now with the infuriating yet strangely effective use of my CAPS LOCK key: MOST PEOPLE START BANDS BECAUSE THEY LIKE PLAYING FUCKING GOOD MUSIC. There's nothing else to it. I wouldn't really have minded if it ended there. If he'd have said, "Oh fair enough - agree to disagree" I would have been quite liberal about the matter and gone back to my pint. But no. This knuP ensued some more. "I don't mean to burst your bubble," he said, with the blatant intention of bursting my bubble, "But Ska's been done. You need something new to bring to the public. Ska's been done. You think you'll ever have a hit like Ghost Town?!" Well for a start, Ghost Town isn't exactly ordinary Ska. It's pretty experimental. It was only because Thatcher was a bitch that it ever got anywhere! I idolise that song, but it was written in a totally different vain with a totally different political background. The guy was pissed, but something about our band obviously got to him and his opinion got to me. "You're band's obviously a bit shit if you're trying to redo a dead genre. Try something new. Be creative." He said. I hate old people. No that's not true. I hate drunk old people that decide they hate me when they first meet me. "Look," I said, "I'm not having you tell me my band's shit when you've just met me in some bar. Come and see us play next week, THEN tell me we're shit. then I'll accept it. But if you insist on insinuating that my band is a lost cause before you've even experienced any of our music, well you can fuck off." My point is, or was before I got carried away and told some stranger to fuck off like the unbiased pacifist that I am, is that the older generation that idolise the Specials are the only ones left who can inform us what happened back then. The British Isles are right back to the way they were before Two Tone was ever uttered. Well maybe not RIGHT back, but it's pretty shit. It's as if Ska never happened! What we don't need is people telling the younger generation to become slaves to the masses - to play something that's popular; to do everything your friends do; to like what the man tells you to like. The ironic thing is that this band that set the record straight twenty years ago; this band that are so idolised by the older generation, were telling us expressly NOT to be sheep. NOT to follow the crowd and sing the songs that we were told to sing. We need to have our own mind, make our own decisions - THAT is how movements like Two Tone are started. Free thinking and uncensored opinions. Not corporate bullshit and trendsetting.