I am a hypocrite. No, let me try that again. I am a complete fucking hypocrite. You know those people who moan that 'this bloody country' is dumbing down, getting stupid, lazy and contrite? That's because of me and people like me. I am a louse, a weed in a coat. A one-man surrender unit. I should be brutally done away with. It's only a million hypocritical shitguards like me who prevent me being found face down in a landfill 2000 years from now.
I have a job at Manchester University's weekly student newspaper as a music editor. I sub-edit, and occasionally write, copy - dealing with the dozens of gigs, records, interviews and other sundries the mega-conglomos deign to send us (I remember Sean Paul's management sending signed string-vests a few years back).
Last week, I reviewed the new Alice In Chains record. It was predictably duff. Here is what I said about it.
Grunge was over-rated. It grunted, griped and groused without grace, gumption or guile. At best it was a regional scene fussed over to a ridiculous degree. What began as disaffected outsider musing became backward-capped rock for middle-class jocks to blast in SUVs on the ride to the mall.
Alice In Chains were also-rans in the Great Grunge Boom of those early '90s, their shtick being a heavier, oblique take on the genre; hits included the indulgent dirge 'Them Bones' and the dirgily indulgent 'Rooster'. Variety and fun? Not in their navy!
Black Gives Way To Blue is their first full-length release in 14 years. Original vocalist Layne Staley may have shuffled off this mortal coil but he remains curiously present, not only in terms of subject matter, but because hired hand William DuVall can do an uncanny impression of the dearly departed.
There's no reason a fan of the original line-up should dislike this; it's as self-regarding, bloated and rigid as the group ever was. 'A Looking In View', the first single, serves as overture; plodding, over-produced and hopelessly irrelevant. Of course, it's immaculately performed and technically very adept; musicians as smug and macho as this demand it at the expense of any form of recognisable human expression.
The chainsaw-speeding-up-and-slowing-down riff to 'Check My Brain' is wasted on a song that doesn't get anywhere. The circular melodies and understated harmony on 'Private Hell' begin to mark it out as a diamond in the rough until the instincts to rock out – whilst kicking absolutely no ass whatsoever – take over.
The sad thing about this florid review is that it is absolutely nowhere near the truth of this despicable piece of shit. What I wanted to write was as many furiously hate-filled synonyms as I could, perhaps outlining some manifesto wherein bands who make systematically cynical and god-awful music as this could theoretically be sent to some kind of musicians' gulag for crimes against the human ear.
But then I started to think about the spurious notion of 'decorum' and how my inate sense of British politeness prevents me from being completely ruinous. Invective is poor show, old bean, pithiness is the way ahead.
Then I started to think about the press company that sent the record in good faith; they may be in the hot air business, but they're just normal men and women in jobs, trying to do their best for the lazy rich gits that appoint them to do their bidding.
After that I started to think about the newspaper itself; what if the press people stopped sending us records? It's not like they need to send shit to us anyway, we're basically just a student paper when you boil it down - students being the most likely to steal records, much as they are likely to steal other intellectual properties, such as entire fucking essays - so why bother marketing to the most morally corrupt of the demographics? We can't review fresh air.
And don't think that record execs and their nabobs can take the joke. The saying - 'any publicity is good publicity' - you know that one? Utter shite. Polydor refused to send a Robbie Williams record to us in the past because I'd slated another one of their acts weeks previously.
Then I started to think about the editor, and my fellow music sub-editors. They willingly entered into social contract with a normal person, not a person who thinks that an appropriate punishment for Mika for his crimes against music would be to suffer a similar fate as the man in the glasses in the video below. I like the relationships we have.
Other thoughts spiralled; what if I have a career in this and I ruin it by getting a reputation as someone who only stokes up controversy and bad relationships? Should I engender a better relationship with readers by slowly dragging them into my 'style' and then bring out the 'real opinion' later? What do I really think anyway? Do I even fucking know anymore?
By now, the copy is so imbued with outside concerns, second guessing and your basic level of flim-flam that it's basically as compromised as the godawful music it covers; lobotomised, hampered and kneeling. Why don't I just give them five stars and a hearty pat on the back for all the self-censorship it has endured?
Of course, this is the reason that everyone apart from the terminally insane is hypocritical to some degree; instinctual decisions in developed humans do not exist. All our decisions are to please someone else, or to present a version of ourselves that is more pleasing. The amount of times you could have left the house wearing a 'Macho Man' t-shirt and shorts, smelling of fetid kebab meat, only to think that someone you fancy might be around and potentially showing interest, marks you too out as a walking compromise too.
(Have you honestly heard such pointless cock in your life? Fucking plodding sex-free, humour-free US flag arsewaving...I could go on)
It is possible to live with yourself, to look in the mirror and be fine, because it is a natural state of living; deeds at odds with words. What really marks a person out as special is if they can cohere the two when it matters - and this daft rock record isn't one of those times.
Issue two out on Monday.
