Sprezzatura

I hate the 1975. If you follow me on Twitter you already know that, but it's been a while since they've done anything and it always bears repeating. The only good attempt at a defence of The 1975 I've read came from, I think, Steven Hyden: the 1975 are important because there need to be big, fun, hateable rock bands. I see the logic in that: people have to play SOMETHING at parties, and weirdo kids like me need SOMETHING to rebel against. But do them Wilmslow cunts fit the bill? Big - probably the biggest in England, only Arctic Monkeys could really fight them on that. Hateable - my lord, yes. But fun? If I'm remembering rightly, two of the first three songs on their recent album Notes On A Conditional Form  are a plodding orchestral overture and a song where Greta Thunberg tells you to stop littering. Not exactly Van Halen- or Aerosmith-esque party animal good times. And I'm pretty sure Guns 'n' Roses never released an eighty-minute double album full of UK ...

There is a famous anecdote that during a Conservative Party policy meeting, Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, “This is what we believe.” Oof, it's been a while. It's been over three years since I wrote an intro to the blog - technically my second post, but the first post where I thought about what the fuck I was doing on a long-term basis. I've gone on a lot of tangents since then, and taken a LOT of breaks, but since I'm going to try and get back into writing on a more consistent basis around here I thought I'd go back and check what still rings true and what's no longer important to me. Let's see how I did. I'm going to do things in a weird order, but hopefully it will be clear why once I have finished. 2. On Sprezzatura The key to this entire blog is not JUST Sprezzatura. That gets first billing because it's a particularly snazzy name. The key is what I'll...

tl;dr: In Colour  is a 6 or 7/10, South London Is Dead, Long Live South London. How did Skrillex happen?   It's all very simple, really. You just have to start in Jamaica in the 1950s, as you do with most things.  "Must you explain ALL music the way Grandpa Simpson explains buying a new heel for his shoe?" Yes. Yes I must. See, they had been getting this music imported from America called "jump blues". It sounds kinda like this . There's a strong shuffle beat and a horn section, among other things. It wasn't the sadder rawer kind of blues from the country - your Robert Johnsons and so on - this was blues made for dancing and general post-war jollity. However, you can only import so many 45's before the US vendors just plain run out of new songs. So the Jamaicans decided to make some jump blues themselves. They REALLY emphasised that shuffle beat that was already present but subtler in the American stuff and this emphasis would become the basis for mo...

"Nobody knows anything." --As the late William Goldman famously said in his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983). Many others said it before, I'm sure. It's an open secret to Hollywood insiders. But amateurs still need to learn it. https://t.co/n1SVABmgAE — Lizabeth Felti (@LizabethFelti) February 9, 2019 I cannot stress this enough: no one knows what the fuck they're doing, least of all companies. Real truth about it is, no one gets it right . Yahoo! consistently makes the worst decisions imaginable and yet somehow still exists. Leeds United are just one of countless examples of brands that tried to update themselves and their image for the modern day and lost the plot. And once Nirvana broke, no label had any idea what they were doing. There's a ridiculously oversimplified narrative that says "indie did not exist, and then Nirvana released "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and then everything and everyone was suddenly indie." Thi...

Welcome to the blog. Here are some things you'll need to know. 1. On Multicultural London English I'm going to use it all the time, and I'm not going to explain what anything means. I'm serious. No more linking to Urban Dictionary. Yes, it's incredibly exclusive and insular. No, I don't care, it's praxis. One's locale is everything. Specificity is everything. It's right there in the Communist Manifesto - "The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature." I know that sounds utopian and good but it's actually terrible, I promise. Accents and sports teams are pretty much all we have left to differentiate ourselves, and I intend to use them both to their full extent. You get me? Safe, lad. That's what the "do sul" in the blog name is by t...