Monday, September 17, 2007
Monkey See, Monkey Do Do
Ian Brown is a man who spends a lot of his time thinking. Most of this thinking time is generally spent in trying to remember how to get his limbs and lips to move in a sequence that allows him to create the illusion of being able to walk and talk just like a human, but occasionally his thoughts turn to other things, which is a shame as people in Ian’s inner circle would have liked to use this time to turn his attention to the surprisingly complicated art of toilet training. Recently his thoughts have turned towards the war in Iraq, a war which, to all intents and purposes, started on March 20th 2003, so it’s only taken him four and a half years to come to a conclusion on this - even a dinosaur would react sooner if you tweaked his tail - and what monumental conclusion has all this thought and intellectual power housing led him to? That war is bad. Mmm-kay.
For pretty much everyone in the world this was either a given from the get go, or an opinion held only by bleeding heart liberal commies who should go and live in Iraq if they loved Saddam that much, it was pretty much as close as you could get to a black and white issue without getting into a discussion about Spy vs. Spy, but whichever side of the fence you fell on, you had already fallen on to your particular patch of grass about a year before the war actually kicked off, but for Ian, a man whose thought processes make glacial erosion look like Formula 1 racing, he’s taken a long time to weigh up the issues and, labouring under the delusion that the rest of the country is as slow as he is, has decided to set his thoughts to music and release it as single, presumably believing that Illegal Attacks, as his single is ‘controversially’ - in much the same way that Dave Benson Phillips could be considered controversial - titled, will bring the establishment to its knees, as opposed to the half hearted shrug it’s going to be greeted with by anyone with half a brain, or the look of disgust that will be the natural expression of anyone with even a vague love for music.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if Ian had released this when the war originally kicked off then, despite its clumsy, sub sixth form lyrics and clichéd, almost self-parodic musical stylings, it might have had some value politically, even though the anti-war movement wasn’t exactly an underground organisation with even the Daily Mirror jumping onto the bandwagon in a desperate attempt to sell a few more papers, but to release it now, with even the war’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders admitting that, with a bit of hindsight, maybe going in there with all guns blazing and not much of a real idea what to do once it was all over might not have been the best idea in the world, is the sort of lazy half-assed thinking that you’d expect from a fresher whose desperately trying to fit in with the perceived conventional wisdom of his or her new found friends. It’s like turning up to a party when not only has all the vodka long gone, but there’s not even any kettle chips left. But despite the clear pointlessness of the track, Ian genuinely believes that he’s doing something important and is pushing at the boundaries of mainstream convention. He needs to get a sense of perspective; he’s not a poet, he’s not the voice of the people, he’s not some great philosopher, and he couldn’t even hold a tune in a specially designed tune holding bucket. He was in an overrated band who did little you would actually want to listen to if your record collection extends beyond the mid early nineties and is nothing more than an aggressive thug who reckons that “I’ll chop your fucking hands off” is one of the greatest bon mots of modern times. Someone give him a reality check. Or at least a banana.
For pretty much everyone in the world this was either a given from the get go, or an opinion held only by bleeding heart liberal commies who should go and live in Iraq if they loved Saddam that much, it was pretty much as close as you could get to a black and white issue without getting into a discussion about Spy vs. Spy, but whichever side of the fence you fell on, you had already fallen on to your particular patch of grass about a year before the war actually kicked off, but for Ian, a man whose thought processes make glacial erosion look like Formula 1 racing, he’s taken a long time to weigh up the issues and, labouring under the delusion that the rest of the country is as slow as he is, has decided to set his thoughts to music and release it as single, presumably believing that Illegal Attacks, as his single is ‘controversially’ - in much the same way that Dave Benson Phillips could be considered controversial - titled, will bring the establishment to its knees, as opposed to the half hearted shrug it’s going to be greeted with by anyone with half a brain, or the look of disgust that will be the natural expression of anyone with even a vague love for music.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if Ian had released this when the war originally kicked off then, despite its clumsy, sub sixth form lyrics and clichéd, almost self-parodic musical stylings, it might have had some value politically, even though the anti-war movement wasn’t exactly an underground organisation with even the Daily Mirror jumping onto the bandwagon in a desperate attempt to sell a few more papers, but to release it now, with even the war’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders admitting that, with a bit of hindsight, maybe going in there with all guns blazing and not much of a real idea what to do once it was all over might not have been the best idea in the world, is the sort of lazy half-assed thinking that you’d expect from a fresher whose desperately trying to fit in with the perceived conventional wisdom of his or her new found friends. It’s like turning up to a party when not only has all the vodka long gone, but there’s not even any kettle chips left. But despite the clear pointlessness of the track, Ian genuinely believes that he’s doing something important and is pushing at the boundaries of mainstream convention. He needs to get a sense of perspective; he’s not a poet, he’s not the voice of the people, he’s not some great philosopher, and he couldn’t even hold a tune in a specially designed tune holding bucket. He was in an overrated band who did little you would actually want to listen to if your record collection extends beyond the mid early nineties and is nothing more than an aggressive thug who reckons that “I’ll chop your fucking hands off” is one of the greatest bon mots of modern times. Someone give him a reality check. Or at least a banana.
Labels: Ian Brown, New Music, Worst Records
