heads up - Pitman at the ICA

i thought you meant Lupine Pitman...

naw, i'm waiting for the sonic boom plays the greatest hits of spectrum and spacemen3 at the ICA on ... erm ... is it 19th december? damn, i need to get suzy's ICA membership card and go get me some tickets for that, soon!

a few people from this board are going...but i dunno if anyone wants a little FAP in the ICA bar before the gig. somebody with distinctive clothing or hair should act as the anchor (thats me out then)

Mmm. I have a circa 1992 raver ponytail and am wearing a beige sweatshirt with a '20' on the front, so feel free to say hi if you see me...

i have now caught a bit of a cold and done my knee in somehow - this is just. not. right.

regardless i will be there but keeping a low profile probably, trying to infect as few people as possible - bleurgh

Steve, a few of us are going and will be in a pub on Whitehall beforehand, drop me an email and I'll let you know which one if you fancy popping along. If not (sorry you're feeling ill!!) then hopefully see you in the ICA!

ahhh too late - i went but didnt even see Mr Spack, i left straight after Pitman cos felt too crap - i did see that someone had visited ILM on the bar's internet PC tho (who's the guilty culprit?)

well ?!!
what was he *like * ?

Good, I thought. He had all the props - thermos, biscuits, Davy lamp, British Coal overalls. New songs much the same as the old songs. Very entertaining.

hah, it was fucking ace! After a bitch of a drive down we got outside the ICA for 7pm and starting getting stupid drunk. Bought some biscuits for Pitman - Mcvities digestives, with chocolate on - £1.19 for a half pack! your London prices take the piss. Smuggled my cans of Fosters in the lining of my coat, girl mates sneaked in their 99p bottle of cider, constantly got told off by the snottty ICA door staff about sitting in naughty places and then we took our position right at the front of the stage. Got shoved around by some square-jawed minger but no matter cos then Pitman lurched onstage. He looked fuck all like I expected, I thought he'd be some snappy teenager with a cap and addidas trackie bottoms on but he was a big gripper in a British Coal jacket, mining helmet and dirt on his face.

First song used some old Grandmaster Flash backing but the others were new beats. Played Pitman Says and Witness but no Phone Pitman. My mates spent the whole set lobbing biscuits at him, but he seemed pleased and gave Donna a piece of his coal. Also, I got the first ever live Pitman diss:
"What you smiling at? You could fit a pound coin between that gap in yer front teeth"
My teeth are reet though.

His set was well short, only about half an hour. He dissed the magazine folk, did loads of squats when mentioning farts and shitting and feigned banging Vera Duckworth. Yeah it was classic.

I didn't see Sean Fuck or Blueski but I don't know what you look like properly, I was the muppet in the long black coat and with the guy with transformers tattoos on his neck.

After the gig my mates saw Jarvis Cocker at the bar and while I tried to persuade them to leave him be they were having none of it and made him pose for a pic with us all, and then kept yelling drunkenly at him for the rest of the night.

BUT THEN we saw Pitman around the bar and he looked well different than the big fucker on stage, we got some pics done with him and my mate Becky blagged him to phone up our mate Caroline, which he did and did all his "You rang me mate, tosser" spiel at her. He was a full nice guy, friendly as shit and a bit surprised at the attention, saying how what he does is "just what anyone would want to do if they had the chance". And he's from Nottingham, not Manc or London, so Tag yer mate from Ladytron lied.

Other things I remember him saying:
His set at that Dedbeat festival has been cancelled.
He's been doing the Pitman shit for about 3 years.
New single out in January. Then a couple of months after that the Grandmaster Flash one is coming out.
An album is in the works.

I was leathered so can't remember much more, but here's some pics of the night for all y'all:

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitman.jpg

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanbiscuit.jpg

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanshakingbiscuits.JPG

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanbows.JPG

Pitman with my roughhead mates:



http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanwithpeabeckydonna.JPG

Pitman on phone to Caroline and her smackhead boyfriend:



http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/phonepitman.JPG

Bollocks. Are these pics showing up or not?

Here's the urls just in case:

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitman biscuit.JPG

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitman.jpg

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanshakingbiscuits.JPG

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanbows.JPG

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanwithpeabeckydonna.JPG

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/phonepitman.JPG

the URL that came out wrong has the best pic of all!

let's try it again

http://www.imagemagician.org/images/ian_spack/pitmanbiscuit.jpg

I thought it was a fascinating night. Yes on one level it was really funny and all that.

But also deeply intrigued by Pitman/tossers relationship. Everyone there was basically london hipster types, who've probably discovered Pitman through the net, or in some shoreditch bar (is there any other way of discovering Pitman?) And while his schtick is obviously not meant to be taken seriously, I don't think it's insignificant that his biggest fans are all the kind of people he'd define himself in oppostion to.

The guy clearly knows his hip hop, and being from Nottingham is probably part of that town's very tight UK hip hop scene. So he can't be particularly happy about being popular with this demographic who are white, successful, and certainly not diehard hip hop fans.

It reminds me a lot of The Streets in the sense that rap-type music about the 'reality' of urban life is very popular with middle-class white people, whereas music about the fantasies of poor urbanites is less so. In Pitman's case this is particularly apposite because he represents himself as the southern fantasy of northern working-class life which has been destroyed as a part of the demographic changes which they themselves embody.

hmm, we weren't London hipster types. My mates are Northern working class scrotes who find him funny as fuck. Slot us into the equation please.

Aight, clearly I was standing in the wrong bit of the hall.

Shows what happens when you go to a gig and don't drink - too much thinking about the significance of it all.

But I do still reckon post on ILM = hipster...

Yeah yeah, I have a touch of the hipsters but my mates, oh no not at all - they're rough as fuck and would have no qualms about admitting it. I copied some Pitman for them and they immediately thought he was the Dog's Dick. Same with all the other people at Leeds Festival who heard them. So there's a space in Pitman's fanbase for oiks who just like his insults and delivery and couldn't care less about the cool aspect of it. Reassess.

I think post on ILM = unhip, more likely. I've rarely felt less cool than I did last night; luckily I'm too old to worry much about such feelings now.

FANTASTIC !!!
that pic with the biscuits is ace !
well done at getting the first ever live diss ian.

Cheers bud. Another thing I remember him saying. He was saying how he'd like to be more successful "but not massive because that's not what it's all about y'know?" Topic worthy of discussion there, I reckon. Could he be massive? Could he truly break overground, or is he just an amusing novelty act that'll be forgotten about in no time? I'm edging on the latter but then again, I thought that about Eminem when I first heard 'My name is'.

wished i'd gone now, but whats this about manc and london? i thought it had always been said he was from notts?

i also saw Jarvis, i expected MORE celebs actually - wot no Sara fackin Cox?

And all this time I thought ILM had made MC Pitman up for a laff!

Damien Hirst was there.

I don't think he can be massive but I think he can have a hit or two. The question is - is Pitman the only thing the guy's going to do? There is probably a niche for some marriage of hip-hop and sketch-style character comedy after all.

Cor Jacob I kind of agree that there is a hipster audience for 'real' 'urban' stuff but not sure that model fits Pitman very well. That's like claiming Arthur Mullard & Hylda Baker as the authentic voice of East End deprivation.

I understand Pitman is popular amongst the UK hip hop crowd, btw, and think it may be a bit of a mistake to read too much into his audience on the evidence of a night at the ICA.

Heh the Streets were good last night too.

The Streets in the sense that rap-type music about the 'reality' of urban

The whole point of the Streets is that there is no such thing as 'reality' in hip-hop: 'you're listening to the sound of the streets' = 'you're listening to the sound of The Streets': ie offers and simultaneously withholds the promise of 'the real' and thereby re-marking both the difference between life and art (and the impossibility of recreating life in art) + the ongoing struggle of art to find ways of coming to terms with the dialectic. Most famous predecessors of this approach = Keats and Yeats. No, REALLY! I have a long unwritten FT article on the Streets which nails this.

hey Tim I was at The Streets too - he was impressive eh? i was pleasantly surprised (though i suppose i shouldnt have been) by his confidence, he had a good stage presence and seemed like he'd been doing it for years or at least grooming himself for that long

lapsing into 'Ghost Town' AND 'Hot In herre' on his tracks was a masterstroke

and the video that accompanied 'The Irony Of It All' is utterly fantastic - i'm starting to think Skinner will go into films very soon

Any mp3's of the Pitman gig?

The Streets is MY (and many others) reality, as is Pitman too - reality has many facets after all. but californians would of course find it bizarre and not real to them at all...

stevem yes The Streets were impressive... I'd like to have been able to hear more of the words but that may have been where I was standing. The films worked really well in general (I understand there's no plan to release them, sadly, they're intending to keep them for the shows). Did it seem to kick into life about halfway through after Skinner had that big swig of (what he said was) brandy and then started going a bit mad (beercan etc)?

My point about the Pitman / reality thing was that Pitman's thing isn't really geared to middle class urban edginess fantasies, is it?

Alex, yes I agree but The Streets' 'reality' bit is all about lounging on the sofa / doing nothing / going to the pub. It's a different approach to representing reality to the reality in most hip hop. Or, more likely, an extrapolation of the idea of reality from someone whose life doesn't match the reality he hears rappers go on about. (This almost makes me want to go on about following through the rhetoric of ones heroes, but I'll only end up going on about Talulah Gosh and Strawberry Story, and nobody wants that.)

(I got bored of putting scare quotes around the word reality btw).

jacob is right, pitman's audience is a spectacular backfire; ppl seem to be ignoring that behind all this northern transference thing is staid befuddled old skool hiphop reactionary trying to get his MESSAGE across. but i'd say hiphop hating indies turning up to just to see bling bling get ripped on and i dunno, some mention of tetley's or something when they would just as soon enjoy the same treatment delivered to ultramagnetic MCs and kool g rap rather than nelly or puffy is a far greater fuckup than slebs and media liggers

the best thing he ever did was that "dub mix" pisstake of roots manuva on the back of witness

What MESSAGE do you mean, Bob? That MTV isn't as good as it was?

Also !gasp! possible Pitman fans who aren't hard core hip hop heads! At the ICA?! He's a goofy novelty act in a proud tradition and I think it's possible to get a bit too worried about his demographic.

I suspect that if there are hip-hop-hating Pitman fans they're most into hearing Jamie Oliver dissed, and the hip-hop related slaggings pass them by.

yeah exactly, i agree. I don't mind that that's his demographic!! but my point is that i think he will mind for all the silly reasons that you said above

Tim -- I don't know about the Pitman / boho tie-up, to be honest. I downloaded Pitman and LCD Soundsystem at the same time, and they both seemed to be urban style elite turning in on itself in angst at its own arseyness.

The other key plank in my Streets thesis is the use of Arthurian mythology throughout the album: the comparison / contrast between ordinary time and mythological time can't simply either elevate the ordinary to the mythic or debunk the myth. The 'art' of the Streets bridges this gap, but also thrives off the tension: both the nostalgia and the sense of empowerment that the album has develop here.

Bob: Oh OK I misunderstood, sorry.

Sweet lord I hope he really believes he's a standard-bearer for hip hop credibility, that would be the funniest thing ever. My suspicion is that he's more of a chancer having a laugh, but I do hope you're right.

Alex, I don't think Pitman is of the urban style elite, although it / he may be used by the USE, obv. His targets aren't the USE targets really: much more everyday and hip-hop related, I think. (I no nowt about LCD soundsystem)

Re: a sense of the mythic in The Streets: take chemical alteration into account please.

Yeah no I realised writing that post that 'Weak becomes heroes' becomes the key to explaining romanticism.

Tim - on wednesday Pitman performed a song called "the twatfarm" which was all about the London USE (and some hip hop targets too, to be fair). He also spent most of the between-songs time berating the audience for being tossers.

I think he'd be calling people tossers wherever he was - if he thought they wouldn't mind. The Pitman persona is one of Meldrewian misanthrope not crusader for hip-hop values, surely? This hateful MC sitting in his pit with his thermos, only emerging to go and buy biscuits - when does he ever say ANYTHING nice about anyone save himself?

heh the PA at the ICA was such that I couldn't really hear what he was saying during the songs, and I assumed the song you mention was a more general diss. I'm not really sure what difference that makes. I think what I'm trying to get at is that you don't have to be part of the USE to get the comedy. In fact you don't even need to *know* about the USE to get (at least) 90% of it.

(I picked up on Pitman via the UK Hip Hop route and bought that first single at Bongos, so my impression of him is coloured by that: he makes most sense to me as a joke of/by/on/for UK hip hop. I think that's me agreeing with Ian)

BTW, bearing in mind the hall remained mostly full for Blak Twang (maybe 1/4 of the audience left), do we draw draw the same conclusion about his / their fanbase? What are we assuming about their reasons for liking BT?

i cant take Pitman 'seriously' at all, and i dont want to. whatever else he does is unlikely to be as entertaining or even interesting - even if it turns out he is quite good at the lyrics and delivery. but southerners/londoners shouldnt be offended even if he does hate them - in fact the more vitriolic his jibes at students/hoxtonites/mediawhores/public school twats who try to act as if they're from 'the ghetto'/whatever the better really - it strengthens the image as much as the hat and thermos do. it wouldve been disappointing if he hadnt worn the costume and he'd been a savvy london-based muso, fortunately it looks like he's not.

it was predictable that Pitman would mock and berate his audience - i enjoyed this more than when he actually revealed cracks of cheerfulness and friendliness at a few points in the set, esp. at the end where he did the whole 'you've been great' etc. - part of me kinda wished he'd sneered and spat constantly throughout the performance

Why does discussion of class in music criticism invariably break down into hipsters vs. proles? Is that really all there is?

I need to hear Pitman; I could spin entire essays around him

God i'm glad i missed this thread

Ian, your mate with the dreads and fuck off bright tattoo looks well rough ba

what are you on about maelstrom?

pitman in time out this week:

"i felt it was my duty as a human to say a few things that might wake people up a bit- too much poor music getting made... it's proper hiphop.. i'm not after success... i'd be happy if people stop being fake"