Yes, that's right- it's ol' Mr, Joshua's birthday today! The Oscar-nominted artiste is 64 today (and before you incredulously look it up on imdb, he was nom'ed for The Buddy Holly Story- and not 1999's Hot Boyz, or his role as the 'Mr Katz' in the exciting-sounding 2006 film 'Shut Up and Shoot!'). Unfortunately though this isn't a continuation post of the theme of Gaz Buze, but merely (merely!) more pop culture fluff.
The topic of hilarious band! names immediately made me think of a story I heard a long time ago; precisely 2004/5 and the aftermath of the horrific Asian Tsunami. Now, it's a good thing I started this post with the happy celebration of The Buze's birthday, but you needn't worry- the only thing depressing and tragic about the rest of the post will the manner in which it is written.
Anywayz, the tsunami prompted many fund-raising events, one of which being concerts. There was a big one in Cardiff I remember, as well as many others- one of which featured a headline act of the rather unfortunately-named punk rock band "Million Dead", with posters for the event reading, of course, you guessed it... "Asian Tsunami: Million Dead".
Grim-sounding band names have their place in insinuating fear and dread and whatnot, but in times of actual fear and dread, the band's attempts can only look wholly out of their depth. Remember the anthrax Anthrax scare/mix up a few years ago? Maybe, in today's heightened terror risk, axis of evil world we now live in (hey now...! North Korea! I see you made it off the axis list! Well done, guys!), bands now have to resort to off the wall names in order to be more P.C? "Test Icicles" surely proves this infallible suggestion (?)
Regardless of P.C. or not, I still find them quite insulting to the point where I'm just put off listening to such bands by their name alone; Does It Offend You, Yeah? is a case in point. One trend I have picked up on is that the bands young Tiffany has pointed out is that they are all British bands (right?), which kind of makes sense, in that as long as you've got a funny! name over here, it's more likely that people will buy you and hype you beyond belief, such is the dearth of half-decent music and the clamour for the next big noisy thing. It's become conversely a useful compass: decent band names point to decent sounds: The Carpenters, Bowling For Soup, The Wonders. Crap names find the needle pointing to crap music: Fucked Up, Fuck Buttons and Cribshitter- ALL true names. In summary, if your band's not called "The Cars", I won't like you.
Now, on my old pop culture radar this week: Being Old.
At work this week, I have had the dubious pleasure of having to share the burden of making coffee and loading the dishwasher with a work experience kid (or, "intern" as I have been informed of for the benefit our American audience(e)). The kid is indeed a kid, barely over the age of 16, which is hard to swallow; it's not enough that I'm worried about his overshadowing of me in a job that you have to be pretty inept to be undershadowed in, but he already has this 8 years thing on me. Eight years! He was born in 1992. I can actually remember existing playing Scatch in 1992 for christsakes! (you can already pretty much guess the tone of the rest of this subsequent post). I have already regaled to Tiffers some of the magic moments the generation gap between us has presented (i.e. "Shaggy's "It wasn't me"? It's a classic song"), but I have saved the best moment for convergences.
Whilst working, we listen to a lot of East Village Radio podcasts (and you should too, because they're great!). The podcasts are just playlists of music, and part of the enjoyment of listening to them is not knowing what's on there and finding new sounds- (...and discovering new music this way circumvents the aforementioned band name problem I have). One such podcast myself and the kid were listening to had this song on it.
I call it 'this song' because it's that song; I, you, and everybody else in the world, doesn't need to know who it's by or what it's called because we all know what the song usually signifies and what it is now forever entwined to. Well, I say "I, you and everybody else", but what I really mean is "I, you, and everybody else WHO IS OLD". For, when listening to the song, the young boy pipes up, in all seriousness, "what is this song? A remix?". "A remix," I reply, quite confused, but starting to sense inside of me that something is beginning to die. "A remix of what?". "You know, of the Black Eyes Peas song. Where's all their rapping?". I tried to tell him that, no, ha, this is the original- before the Peas came along. You must know- "it's a famous song....
...what, ha, haven't you seen Pulp Fiction?"
"No."
And there it is. The coffin is rolled behind the curtain. Maybe (probably) I am making too much of this, but after he said he hadn't seen Pulp Fiction, I was honestly floored for five minutes, reduced to stuttering questions at him like "what?", "is this a grey hair to you?" and "can you recommend a decent mortgage?". I was honestly shocked, but a special kind of shocked. Okay, so, he hadn't seen a film- it is 14 (choke) years old now after all. But I feel I should refine my surprised state; it wasn't like a sneering Jack Black in High Fidelity type thing I sure you know- I wasn't being some sort of film snob, laughing at someone who's filmic knowledge was considerably less then mine. My shockery was based on the fact that everyone in my generation sort of has to have to seen the film; that it was part of our co-existence that you have seen it and experienced all the culture that went with it; the soundtrack, the suitcase, the plaster on Marcellus Wallace's neck. I'm not even that crazy about the film, but it was part of my generation's culture and I'd always figured that my generation was the young generation- that me and all the youngster were all the same band of people. Yet what this Pulp Fiction brouhaha had demonstrated to me was that there was in fact now a tangible difference between another young person and myself, and that he and his contemporaries now had or will have their own films, music and trends, and that I am no longer with the young generation. My own band had broken away and moved on to talk about and be invested in different things to the youth culture, with which from now onwards I shall be further and further out of step with; for it now seems that I am getting older. Console me, please. I'll console myself- for I have a three-month cushion over a certain co-blogger should the world suddenly go Logan's Run Seven years to go, dear!
Regardless of P.C. or not, I still find them quite insulting to the point where I'm just put off listening to such bands by their name alone; Does It Offend You, Yeah? is a case in point. One trend I have picked up on is that the bands young Tiffany has pointed out is that they are all British bands (right?), which kind of makes sense, in that as long as you've got a funny! name over here, it's more likely that people will buy you and hype you beyond belief, such is the dearth of half-decent music and the clamour for the next big noisy thing. It's become conversely a useful compass: decent band names point to decent sounds: The Carpenters, Bowling For Soup, The Wonders. Crap names find the needle pointing to crap music: Fucked Up, Fuck Buttons and Cribshitter- ALL true names. In summary, if your band's not called "The Cars", I won't like you.
Now, on my old pop culture radar this week: Being Old.
At work this week, I have had the dubious pleasure of having to share the burden of making coffee and loading the dishwasher with a work experience kid (or, "intern" as I have been informed of for the benefit our American audience(e)). The kid is indeed a kid, barely over the age of 16, which is hard to swallow; it's not enough that I'm worried about his overshadowing of me in a job that you have to be pretty inept to be undershadowed in, but he already has this 8 years thing on me. Eight years! He was born in 1992. I can actually remember existing playing Scatch in 1992 for christsakes! (you can already pretty much guess the tone of the rest of this subsequent post). I have already regaled to Tiffers some of the magic moments the generation gap between us has presented (i.e. "Shaggy's "It wasn't me"? It's a classic song"), but I have saved the best moment for convergences.
Whilst working, we listen to a lot of East Village Radio podcasts (and you should too, because they're great!). The podcasts are just playlists of music, and part of the enjoyment of listening to them is not knowing what's on there and finding new sounds- (...and discovering new music this way circumvents the aforementioned band name problem I have). One such podcast myself and the kid were listening to had this song on it.
I call it 'this song' because it's that song; I, you, and everybody else in the world, doesn't need to know who it's by or what it's called because we all know what the song usually signifies and what it is now forever entwined to. Well, I say "I, you and everybody else", but what I really mean is "I, you, and everybody else WHO IS OLD". For, when listening to the song, the young boy pipes up, in all seriousness, "what is this song? A remix?". "A remix," I reply, quite confused, but starting to sense inside of me that something is beginning to die. "A remix of what?". "You know, of the Black Eyes Peas song. Where's all their rapping?". I tried to tell him that, no, ha, this is the original- before the Peas came along. You must know- "it's a famous song....
...what, ha, haven't you seen Pulp Fiction?"
"No."
And there it is. The coffin is rolled behind the curtain. Maybe (probably) I am making too much of this, but after he said he hadn't seen Pulp Fiction, I was honestly floored for five minutes, reduced to stuttering questions at him like "what?", "is this a grey hair to you?" and "can you recommend a decent mortgage?". I was honestly shocked, but a special kind of shocked. Okay, so, he hadn't seen a film- it is 14 (choke) years old now after all. But I feel I should refine my surprised state; it wasn't like a sneering Jack Black in High Fidelity type thing I sure you know- I wasn't being some sort of film snob, laughing at someone who's filmic knowledge was considerably less then mine. My shockery was based on the fact that everyone in my generation sort of has to have to seen the film; that it was part of our co-existence that you have seen it and experienced all the culture that went with it; the soundtrack, the suitcase, the plaster on Marcellus Wallace's neck. I'm not even that crazy about the film, but it was part of my generation's culture and I'd always figured that my generation was the young generation- that me and all the youngster were all the same band of people. Yet what this Pulp Fiction brouhaha had demonstrated to me was that there was in fact now a tangible difference between another young person and myself, and that he and his contemporaries now had or will have their own films, music and trends, and that I am no longer with the young generation. My own band had broken away and moved on to talk about and be invested in different things to the youth culture, with which from now onwards I shall be further and further out of step with; for it now seems that I am getting older. Console me, please. I'll console myself- for I have a three-month cushion over a certain co-blogger should the world suddenly go Logan's Run Seven years to go, dear!
