So Solid Crew - new Beatles or new Pistols?

SSC = UK Wu-Tang, i.e. one reasonable-ish album, lots of questionable solo projects (esp. Lisa Maffia, Megaman) and then laurel-sitting topped with some drug overdoses and stretches in HMP Brix or Wands.

So many reputable people on ILM rate SSC and I still can't really like him. Sure Mr.Jawbreaker, who I would love to see get his bollocks kicked in, doesn't help. But I guess the problem is far more basic in that the chorus to '21 seconds' was well...bobins (yes, my Welsh mate has alerted me to the greatest English word evah.)

Andy's got a point. ODB, Tupac, Death Row, etc. that's all on a mythical plane. Jawbreaker is just sad. So said the Stones fan. ;) I still think Frankie is the model, just enough tunes and headlines to make an impression and then it's over. Those Beatles/Pistols moments are a thing of the past.

Right on the money about this washing away shite-on-a-plate 90s prog-lite like Radiohead, Coldplay et al.

SSC are already a phenomenon though I liked the comparisons to FGTH... I can't really see people looking back in a few years time and saying 'After the So Solid Crew everything changed'... course the people who said that about the beatles or the pistols were wrong, but I digress.

I don't like them, I'm 40 years old and socially well adjusted. I'm not supposed to like them and I just look sad and pathetic if I claim otherwise. The white-bread music press I read has looked either shabby (Beaumont and Dalton in the NME) or just pointless (Reynolds in Uncut) when dealing with them.

Whether by intent or not it's making kids excited and inspired and involved that characterised the Beatles and the Pistols (and didn't really characterise FGTH). I think SSC may at least be beginning to generate some stimuli, though I only regret it wasn't a reaction to violent bully.

But actually thats a signifier. That there hasn't been much of an outcry about the breaking a girl's jaw (even if she was "asking for it" and "knew what she was there for"). Thats what has changed. That's what shows somethings happening..

Sid Vicious represents everything sad and stupid about punk to me. It's a shame he's come to symbolize the UK punk movement more than Lydon, Poly Styrene, Strummer, or even bloody Paul Weller, annoying retro-twat that he is. Sid himself seemed like a likable dope playing the 'tough rock star' role - everything punk never was.

As for the Beatles, like every great pop phenomenon, they were a one- off. They will never happen again. Just like there'll never be another Elvis, another Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Pistols, Nirvana, Frankie, Public Enemy, whoever. The next big phenomenon will be nothing like any of them, so what we should really be asking is "Are So Solid Crew doing something new?" rather than "Are they today's equivalent of the Beatles?" So many people said things like that about Oasis and that just looks embarrassing today.

I think Alexander is right: this is *important*. I would agree with him that there are depressing reasons for this (people not giving a shit about breaking someone's jaw, decaying standards of personal morality and respect for others) but I think there are also good reasons (cultural hybridisation, irrelevance of tradition). That is its importance (although at its best it's a damn good record) and it perhaps suggests one of the great paradoxical truths of modern Britain: that we are Worse because we are Better.

It has so little to do with any environment other than its own - London 20 years ago, Pembrokeshire or Cumbria now - that I'm not sure whether I'd even call "They Don't Know", the album, pop music. It contains little or no serious analysis of the social circumstances that formed So Solid Crew and made them what they are, but it matters more than you think it does when you first hear it, and it means a lot.

(PS. When you've got a group of twenty+ members, the chances of one of them being a dangerous sociopath are comparatively high. Skat D seems a bit peripheral to group's creative core anyway (unlike Asher D, Megaman, Lisa, Romeo or Synth) and could easily be thrown out without anyone noticing. It's just a shame that he wasn't).

I wonder if SSC coverage would be pulled if Skat D had broke the jaw of an NME journalist. I'm just thinking of Dave Simpson vs. Blaggers ITA in MM years ago.

The *thought* of anyone on this forum, even the Pinefox, liking Go West's "Don't Look Down (The Sequel)": it could turn my stomach were I not in such a happy mood. Nothing to do with this thread, but I just had to mention my incredulity.

Something like that...I actually know the guy who helped manage or co- manage them at the time. He was duly horrified by what happened.

Then of course C86 (or Sounds exiles?) took over NME and the whole thing got backseated anyway.

I dunno. The art vs. the artists debate again. Big question and one to which I don't have an easy answer.

Re. Norman's comment about "would the NME have let them got away with this in the '80s?" - well, they did. See Stuart Cosgrove on Schoolly- D

Goddamn yer absolutely right. I had completely forgotten about that, despite actually buying said album (the description of the beats sounding like underwater depth charge Xplosions got me curious, y'see) Also, the "Yo-Boys" feature issue, which IIRC that schooly d feature was in. So, I was wrong about thee old NME. All mouth & no trousers (or all fur coat & no knickers, as me old gran used to say) back then as well? Other than that, I still stand by what I said above otherwise.