I'm the Duke of Earl? (BSDA #3)

I was listening today to my latest iTunes download, La Carotte Bleue by The Ghost Of A Sabre Tooth Tiger, which is the project of John and Yoko sprog Sean Lennon and his girlfriend (don't worry, it's actually brilliant), and fulminating on what it was I liked about the band. Was it their slightly ridiculous hipster name, their sometimes French language lyrics (always a necessity for the higher echelons of pretension society), or the fact that at least 98% of the people I know won't have heard of them. In fact, it is option D - I love their sound, which is, it seems, simultaneously marijuana-fuelled aristocratic garden party and disturbing noirish horror flick, while at the same time is drenched in a foam of echoing vocals and soft organ (you'll never read this sentence again, you can be sure of that!), which, at the simplest level, I like.

The above paragraph oscillates tremendously, because I'm really a terrible writer, but I suppose the conclusion I'm trying to steer the semantic ship towards is that while I'm generally a fan of obscure music, it isn't that quality of such bands I like, rather their music - which is, it would seem, not always the case with some people. You must be aware of the guys who always drop the most unknown names into a conversation merely to seem better than you; against whom a brilliant tactic is to simply put together two random words and try to pass off the result as the latest undiscovered Belgian sensation.

What the hell am I talking about? This is what happens when you sit down to write a blog without a plan and just spew. Which is all the time.

Anyway, part two - in which I talk about the opposite to obscure hipster chic, the humble twelve-bar standard. So Hank Green recently made a video showing the waiting world how many different songs have been written around the so-called Ice Cream Changes, I-vi-IV-V, including Reel Big Fish's ska classic She Has A Girlfriend Now, the Police's stalker anthem Every Breath You Take and even Justin Bieber's Baby.

Delightfully, however, he started at the dawn of musical time with the Penguins and Dion & the Belmonts, and, a magnificent singer of whom I had never heard called Gene Chandler, whose lovely Duke of Earl is a beguiling satire on the interbreeding of the British aristocracy. (Late April fools... or something. It isn't, anyway; that was a poor joke, which is what you get when you write blogs after 11 in the evening. Soz.) So afterwards I had that song's refrain in my head ALL FREAKING DAY, after which it slightly started to lose its sparkle, I'll be honest.

There was a point to this blog, but it has temporarily escaped the author's mind. Something to do with the difference between obscure and well-known music and how it ultimately comes down not to the label you give a song, but to the musical quality it has of itself.

Yeah. Kinda got away from me.

Follow me please, or a thousand thousand slimy things will crawl upon the slimy sea. (Coleridge, now. Anyway now I'm off to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Who the hell do I think I am?) 

TEACHER ATTACK!!!! (BSDA #2)

In which an embarrassing but true story is recounted.


Random acts of violence are a part of my life. Rarely a day goes by when something isn't amusingly stolen from me, necessitating the most vicious and vindictive of reprisals. However, the other day - I took it to the next level.

Let's set the scene. Four guys clustered, seated, round a table. Three on the south side, one on the other. I the middle one of the three. Atop the table - a few books, a ring-binder folder, and a pencil case with a zip, currently opened, inside which sits an innocuous grey hole punch. And, unusually, a teacher, standing, conversing, immediately to the right of the solo sitter.

The solo sitter, who for the purposes of this blog we'll call Will (cos that's his name), enjoys stealing things from me, to which I conventionally respond with mock violence. Today he does just that. He reaches forward, takes from my case a pen, leans back with it solely in his grasp. The teacher continues talking, slowly, achingly slowly, the time  before I can lunge for the pen stretching away far into the distance. Eventually I can bear it no more - I must have it now! I know the best way to recover it, I decide: smack Will's arm with the pencil case. A foolproof plan, I think. I seize the case and lift up my arm to strike.

I thump the case down violently; Will retracts his arm with lighting speed; the case hits the table; and, horror of horrors, the hole punch jumps free and whacks the teacher hard on the hip.

The shriek of pain she gave could have awoken the very hounds of Hell. The world is over, I think; Lucifer and all his friends have come for me - I'll burn my books! (Yes, I make obscure Kit Marlowe references too.)

In actual fact, this story has a happy ending. When the pain had thankfully receded, the teacher took it in good spirits; laughed about it, as did my friends for the next three freaking days. (And counting.) But the emotional torment it created within me may never go away, for, you see, dear friends, I punched someone.


(Come on, you knew that pun was coming, right?)


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