Cool Britannia
Welcome To Croydon - Home Of Nestlé
Being British is a delightful, yet menial task. Whilst you can revel in those
beautiful traditions of the stiff upper-lip, honour and "For Queen and
country!" you can also indulge yourself, quite magnificently, in the flipside
of the epitome of Britishness: whinging about the weather, whinging about the
state of the nation, whinging about Americans, whinging about music, whinging
in general. I am a humble British soul and a proud resident of London 's dirty
streets. Ah. South London , to be precise. The nice part of London, i.e. the part where you're as distant from the reek of the Thames and the pollution of the streets as you would want to be, and near enough to the fashion and the glamour and bright lights as you would want to be. My hometown, Croydon, just south of central London , is somewhat infamous among urban knowledge for being, what is commonly termed, a shit hole. At the train station, there is a rusting, elderly sign that reads: "Welcome To Croydon, Home Of Nestlé." Such an achievement, worthy of a sign an' all! The meek, embarrassing humour is not lost on the people who visit.
Living in London is certainly an interesting experience. It's all I've ever done, all my life. Sure, I've traveled the world a little bit -- I even stopped off at a Washington airport for about 3 hours, and left with the, probably incorrect, opinion that all of your walls are whitewashed and that all of your residents are crew-cutted monstrosities of vertical posture and "have-a-nice-day-Sir." However, BigYawn has shown me the brighter side of Washington and, in particular, its music scene, so it's only right that I return the favour. Over the coming months (unless I die or get told to go away) I shall tell you of the delights of what's going down this side of the big pond, from the perspective of a wee whippersnapper like myself. Who knows, we might even have some mp3 capers along the way as well. And that's as much as a formal introduction as you're going to get.
Oh, Croydon! I could write books on Croydon, I could write books on how it affects myself and others around me. I could write books on the people that inhabit it. I could also write column after column whinging about the relatively decrepit state of the local music scene here but I'll resist the urge to, after this short but important diversion. You see, it's just a huge gap; a big, floating, non-entity. Besides the rare occasions when one or two extremely adventurous (some would say foolish) bands wander into town, it's a black hole. Then again, many would disagree. There's pubs and possibly two clubs, where black-haired, black-fingernailed, black-everything kinds of people can go, where the whole place smells of BO and the sound systems are not only a threat to your physical health but your mental health to boot. I presume that's because the volume hides how bad the music is. Various socialite gits have tried to drag me along, but I'm simply not having it. The bands are crap and I'd have a better time hurting myself in all manner of highly inventive ways. Not that I do that. I leave that to the sad little people that frequent such pubs and clubs of the Croydon nightlife.
Then again, why should I complain? I am but a boy, and I don't want to dance to idiots screeching down a microphone about made up tales of teen anguish? Good God, what insanity! Croydon is a delightfully boisterous and fittingly tacky abode, but when you're looking for good live music (beyond what any mildly educated mind could only consider shite) you have to make that short wander to The Big Smoke.
At the moment, British music is supposed to be having a renaissance. Personally, I don't subscribe to the NME's banter about a "new musical era" (nor the NME at all) and I don't think what's happening in my neck of the woods is deserving of such lavish praise as being called a renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci was part of a renaissance way-back-when; Pete Doherty is not part of one nowadays. However, having long tentacles of cultural knowledge, I am fully aware that something is happening. As of yet, I can't distinguish whether we're about to strike musical gold or whether the wheels of the bandwagon are going to buckle and collapse within months, defeated by the weight of a million and one indie "haven't-I-heard-this-before?" bands. When you take a look at the whole picture, bad habits of romanticism and enthusiasm, put down to youth or not, tell me that things are on the up. I don't remember things being this good, this lively, this much fun in a very long time. In fact, I don't remember anything being this socially active, musically, since the Britpop battles between Oasis and Blur , and even then a huge amount of shit stirring came from a very bored media.
Certainly, it's obvious that things are changing. There is a huge amount of buzz around a lot of guitar-based bands at the moment, mainly due to MySpace and us kids and our internetios. More of BigYawn's kinds of bands (indie, rock and roll, rock, punk, pop and so on forever) are charting every week, in both the album charts and the singles charts. Just a few weeks ago, the Arctic Monkeys managed to reach No.1 in the singles chart -- they're kids from up north, barely 20, playing classic, Libertines -veined rock and roll which the hipsters, scenesters and pretty much everybody loves . Even my darling Mother likes them, and she owns Rod Stewart CDs. The most amazing thing is that they're ours; they're born through my music scene and the internet and online streaming. They don't mime, they don't dance pretty dances, and they're not especially pretty themselves. If that is not an indication of a shift in modern themes, I don't know what is.
Pop bands, the kinds of pop bands ( Spice Girls being the glaring example of such success) that flooded all of your senses during the 90s and that are designed to attract kids to waste their pocket money on a new album which is neither written nor (probably...) sung by the actual artist, are struggling to find form on current single and album sales. The biggest stars now have to appeal to something representing diversity and a facade of something genre hopping and attractive to get success, rather than just relying on the formulaic 3-minute pop song about love. Take one of the biggest in Britain at the moment: Girls Aloud . They were created through a reality TV show; one would expect them to be completely ignorable on all levels because of that fact alone. But I actually like their new single - it's poppy and charming, as well as being intelligent on more levels than past bands. And other people like it, it's no major faux pas to sing along to it (in moderation, you must understand). It represents a reflection of the up-and-coming music that I, we, you, like. It reflects all of the new wave of music coming from the underground into the mainstream. They've actually had to put effort into this one, when they didn't have to in the past. In the past, they could do what they wanted and people would lap it up. But, no longer. And you know why? Because if they didn't put in the effort, they'd die on their arses.
Of course certain good things are happening in the British music scene. It would be snobbish and blindly cynical to deny it. Good things are happening in the London scene as well. More and more indie club nights are springing up across the capital, new clubs are being opened all the time. Just recently, the famous Camden Marquee was re-opened as KOKO, to huge success. They even held an intimate Madonna gig there -- yet another sign of this desperate merge between pop and rock. New bands are playing "the sound of the capital." Walk into pretty much any club along Oxford Street and talk to a random, shabby-looking bloke and he's probably in a band. I'm in a band. We're a free form jazz band. We're also made up, but I'm still in a band! The punk ethic is back, anyone can form a band if they want to. Anyone can pick up a guitar and string a few chords together; anyone can play the Ramones or Wire and go from there. On the one hand it's beautiful, but on the other it's ominous and looming that a certain saturation point must be reached, that at some point the minority opposed to this free-for-all will become the majority and things will be forced to change. But when has that ever stopped us?
Croydon is not any old subculture, it doesn't like change and it doesn't like fitting in. It's a mish-mash of God knows what. Walk down the high street and you'll see gangs of hooded, villainous-looking youths. A modern teenage stereotype, vaguely threatening and vaguely hilarious in their ill-fated attempts at looking cool. You'll hear heavy, drenching reggae beats hammering out of one shop and the latest NME plaything in another. Croydon is home. It might not have any signs of a scene I want to belong to, but I still love it.
At least there's London , the internet, and my youth to fall back on for a good night out. There's definitely something going on, round these parts.
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A footnote of sorts. Scotland's finest fickle pop veterans and one of my favourite bands in the history of forever, Belle and Sebastian , have announced a massive US tour alongside the release of their new album, The Life Pursuit . They're also playing a UK tour next month, I already have my ticket. I'm looking forward to being able to cross 'See Belle and Sebastian live' off my 'Do Before You Die Or You're A Failure, David' list.
Details can be found here . New Pornographers are supporting, you lucky buggers! Do get yourselves along, for a lovely night of singing and dancing.
David Segurola