This posting is coming to you live from
LEITH, where the after-show parties for the MTV Europe Awards are currently in full swing. Exciting, eh?
Tonight the lovable, grubby, dog-eared, troubled, unpretentious port where I’ve had the joy of living for the past ten years has been The Entertainment Capital Of The World, they say. ‘They’ being the sort of people who say that kind of thing.
So what’s the buzz at street level here in this thrilling, happening, global-impact metro-zone?
Well, one or two banners have been put up on Leith Walk. They have large concrete bases which make it tricky to walk along the central reservation, as I found out today at an inconvenient moment.
Yesterday the guy who contributed to the old Ask A Drunk as ‘Guru Stygron’, ‘I-can’t-stop-please-help-me’ and ‘Rapidly-losing-the-will-to-live’ bought me lunch in a pub near the docks. It’s normally crowded, but there was almost no one there. Presumably everyone thought there was no point trying to get a table because all these thrusting, glamorous, muzik-meejah people would be milling around demanding devilled stoat’s eggs or whatever it is they eat.
And, as they used to say in Private Eye, and still do for all I know: ‘Er…that’s it.’
But the people on the telly assure us the city is bursting with Famous Faces. They showed us some of these Faces. I recognised none of them. That may not signify much, as I lost track of the pop world long ago and am terrible with faces anyway. But none of them looked very interesting. It was hard to believe that squillions of people really do care obsessively about them; but we’re told they do.
Forget faces, though – let’s try names. I admit to knowing a little about Sting, though there’s been plenty of time to learn as he’s one of the only three men in Britain who are older than I am. Kylie Minogue used to be in Neighbours and Madonna once wore a teeshirt with her name on. Isn’t she supposed to have an important bottom, or is that J-Lo, or is J-Lo the name of an orthopaedic bed company?
Christina Aguleirialaleia? Know the name, vaguely. Vin Diesel has appeared in a film, I believe, and possibly is bald. I think Michael Stipe may be the lead singer of something. Didn’t he come out recently, or was that everyone else?
Pink, The Darkness, Sean Whatever-it-is – can’t help you with any of those. And then there’s Beyonce, or Beyoncé, or does she spell it Beyonce and pronounce it Beyoncé, or is it the other way round? Well, here she is, anyway, and I’m sure she’s a perfectly acceptable person.
Indeed, I don’t mean to be rude about any of them. Knowing nothing of them, I have no grounds for rudeness. And unlike so many Britons old and new I don’t believe it’s clever to be ignorant. My lack of information on this particular subject derives simply from my lack of interest in it.
But I suppose what I’m sort of harrumphing about is this weird assumption by some people in the media that we all live in the same sludgy global monoculture, knowing and caring about the same individuals, art forms and issues. Cultural pluralism? Schmultural schmuralism.
Incidentally I was delighted to find that my oldest friend (same age as me) had never previously heard of MTV. And he’s not only a secondary teacher but the head of the music department. What a hero.
The other half-formed question that’s been whirring around in my brain like the microscopic surveillance robot implanted there last year by Lynskey is: ‘Well, OK then, Mister Rex – Mister Posh*, Opera-Loving*, Stiff-Collar-and-White-Tie-Wearing*, Incunabula-Collecting*, Prole-Non-Fancying*, Dance-Charts-Hating*, Wanting-To-Inhabit-Gated-Development* Rex –’ [* These statements are not true]
‘what if it were up to you? (Or do I mean ‘down to you’? Never quite grasped the difference. Bit like Noh drama and cricket, really.) What alternative list of performers and guests would put a spring in your step, a song in your heart and a discreet corset around your ever-burgeoning midriff?’
Er, um. Not easy, this one. The problem is that everyone who comes to mind is either dead and/or on the Z-list. Frankie Lymon? Chet Baker? Sean Maguire? Stuart Sutcliffe? Danny Foster? Billie Piper? Vivian Stanshall? Cab Calloway? Alistair Whitty?
No, this is ridiculous. And that’s where you come in. Suppose Ask A Drunk were mysteriously put in charge of the biggest musical event in Europe: who would we try to rope in? Shirokuma, of course – that goes without saying – but also…?
― Rex (Rex), Friday, 7 November 2003 02:59 (twenty-two years ago)
First, I want to say to
Jarlr'mai that the idea of having Slag-Off Awards is the worst, weakest, most childish and chowderheaded idea since the Tory Party elected whatsisname to replace whosis as the chief purveyor of rotten fruits, vegetables and nationalistic fetish objects to a once-proud people who've had their finger in for umptididdly years, if you know what I mean. Congratulations.
Next, I want to say to Dude-Steel that I never wanted to attend said awards, based on the certanity that the audience would be filled with the worst assortment of pasty-faced, sequin-minded, fatuous, poor excuses for human beings that ever played Ducks and Drakes with the lapdog press. That scroll you unrolled was a copy of the guest list, along with the names of the cabinet, shadow cabinet and assorted front and back benchers, at whom I thought to take a well-deserved poke.
Lastly, would like to respond to Rex. Beyonce-Beyoncé is properly pronounced "bouncy-bouncy". That she does not acknowledge this obvious fact is immaterial. And while there is no reason to take pride in your ignorance of such trivialities, I agree there is no reason for shame, either. There is more importance in knowing the correct way to scald a pig than in improving one's ability to attach unpronouncable names to the images of such overcelebrated jigglers and clothes horses.
If their music should last, their fame shall be secure, regardless of their looks. The medievals understood this fact better than we do. They would slap any old phiz on a "Madonna and Child" or a "Christ Crucified" and be content they had done their duty well. I have it on good authority that Saint Sebastian stood 4' 10", had a paunch and an enormous beezer, and was as bald as a cue ball, yet all that matters not, so long as the arrows are plentiful and gory. Sting could take a lesson.
― Aimless, Saturday, 8 November 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)
five months pass...