So there I was in the garden, petrol can in hand, Nirvana albums on the bonfire, when I realised that the hairy beardy character plugging the National Lottery ‘reboot’ wasn’t Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, but makeover fop Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Should have guessed though – Grohl is regarded as one of rock’s good guys (even baiting the rabidly homophobic Westboro Baptist Church recently) and unlikely to endorse such consumerist nonsense.
However, a musician has to make a crust and there are worse things to advertise, I suppose – even if the lottery still rakes in cash as a private enterprise. (Remember that Richard Branson offered to run it not-for-profit, but mysteriously lost out to Camelot).
But the most heinous thing about LawBo / Grohl’s mug on the page of every national paper wasn’t the association with starter gambling, or even Katie Price alongside him. Oh no, it was the third donkey of the consumer apocalypse – Piers Morgan. A man who surely knows where the bodies are buried, the TV ‘personality’ has somehow still managed to worm his way back onto UK telly following a less-than stellar stint in the US. Sadly, a prime TV slot means that D-listers with a book to flog will swallow any remaining pride and self-respect to allow the Teflon-coated former tabloid hack to probe them in front of an audience of millions.
One man whose reputation has walked a thin line for many years is former Sex Pistol John Lydon. Ok, signing with the major labels they purported to despise could be seen as sticking it to The Man, while everyone knew that the Nazi imagery punks used was just for shock value, right? The cash-ins – ‘The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle’ album and film, the ‘Flogging a Dead Horse’ compilation, the ‘Filthy Lucre’ reformation tour – could hardly give cause for complaint under the Trade Descriptions Act. And Lydon’s refusal to head to Rio to work with celebrity criminal Ronnie Biggs does him some credit, and surely the Pistols credit card was ironic, a bit like Lydon selling butter to fund his next PiL album?
Piers Morgan, though?
The littlest things can upset hardcore fans. Nowadays more important than record sales, TV advert soundtracking was once akin to supping with the devil (or EMI to use his formal name). And Morrissey fans must be long fed up with defending their hero, who, to be fair, is never one for backing down from his principles. Gary Numan was a letdown, having endorsed the Tories in the 80s, admittedly very honestly – stating that tax breaks for rich pop stars was his kind of politics. Though given that lefty Paul Weller and his chums in The Jam did the same a few years before, and looking at how New Labour turned out, the moral high ground can be hard to see for the piles of crushed reputations and shattered dreams. (On that note, fans of both Lou Reed and John Lennon had better get their Xmas lists in early this year as they’re not going to like the latest tomes about their heroes).
Still, could be worse – we’ll draw a veil over another ‘Gary’ and the Xmas ‘Gang Show’ I took my mother to in the early 1990s. That is most certainly not a story for another day.
The Spook School
Try To Be Hopeful
(Fortuna Pop)
Having recently aligned themselves to the ‘Queer-trans-pop-punk’ scene (see penultimate track ‘Binary’) this Edinburgh four-piece’s second long player hasn’t seen their music change all that much since debut ‘Dress Up’. Which is no bad thing – 11 fuzzy pop tunes big on choruses and short on duration… what’s not to like? If anything the songs are catchier than ever, and occasionally delving into meatier production, for a woozy wall of sound on ‘August 17th’. That aside, while sounding pretty current, the overall feel harks back to times before the band were even born – nods of the new wave of Buzzcocks, and the ragged jangle of The Wedding Present, Shop Assistants et al. And let’s face it, ‘indie pop’ isn’t a bad label to hang on a band. HHHH
