On this week in 2000, Yusuf Islam (previously known as Cat Stevens) joined the campaign to fight the government’s repeal of Section 28. Section 28 was the ban on homosexuality being ‘promoted’ in schools. By ‘promoted’, what it really meant was ‘being told that it existed’.
Those that sought to keep Section 28 thought that it was an essential piece of legislation that was all that stood between the bottoms of our innocent schoolchildren and a queue of 2000 predatory gays with unquenchable erections, such is the uniquely paranoid perspective of the bigoted mind.
Luckily the Section 28 thing has been forgotten and despite his high-profile religious conversion he is still mainly famous for writing some pretty ditties. Other tunesmiths have not been so lucky though and have become better known for other, similarly embarrassing behaviour.*
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Musicians think about sex a lot. They must do, it’s almost the only thing they write about. Popstars live to defile their young screaming fans. Rockers know they’ve made it when there are aspiring muses knocking on the dressing room door.
Hip-hop has a frankly terrifying capacity for the horn.
Frankly it’s a miracle they get any work done at all with heads overflowing with images of baps, flaps and todgers. In fact such is the unstoppable high-pressure filth fawcet in their addled brains that doing it with others doesn’t fill their schedules and sometimes they combine their libidinous obsessions with their other favourite pastime- loving themselves.
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On Monday, in an interview with Guardian Music, The Shamen’s Mr C revealed that their 1992 hit single Ebeneezer Goode was about ecstasy. Who would have thought it?
To celebrate this revelation, we were going to have a list of our favourite songs that seem to be about one thing, but are actually about another. We soon realised that almost all pop music is actually about sex whilst pretending to be about ding-a-lings, lollipops, divine hammers, relaxing, and the banging of gongs.
So we thought it would be easier to list our favourite songs about drugs.
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Making a good first impression is important. In books it sets the tone, in social surroundings it allows busy idiots the chance to judge us, and in job interviews it provides a useful opportunity to explain that whilst, yes, you are technically on the sex offenders’ register it was all a terrible mix-up and could have happened to anyone.
In music, the first line is underrated. We barely even notice them unless they’re clunky or funny.
The best first lines can, like the opening of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, throw you right into the action or they can, like A Tale of Two Cities, set a vivid scene. They can provide an aggressive statement of intent or they can be just plain funny.
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In the late eighties, the UK was home to the most exciting music culture movement since punk as a mutation of house music, born in Chicago but exported to the warehouses and fields of Britain, re-wrote the relationship between artist and audience.
With Acid House, the crowd and the DJs were a partnership, both there to make equal contribution to the euphoria of the rave. As BPMs got faster in the nineties acid house begat rave which in turn begat jungle.
With the help of pirate radio, jungle (which was starting to be known by the less exciting but seemingly more popular name of ‘drum and bass’) became a dominant underground force. The importance of the crowd wasn’t the only way in which dance music challenged a comfortable and complacent music industry. The music may have been disparagingly called ‘faceless’ but rock’s cult of personality was a tired hangover from its heyday and certainly nothing to aspire to for a generation who had found a genuine alternative.
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The big Christmas celeb-story was the Katy Perry/Russell Brand divorce announcement. For tabloids it had everything- she’s a lipstick lesbian and his addictive personality means that there has to be something either up his nose or on his dick at all times.
It’s been the latter for years now which has made him the thinking woman’s sexual predator of choice and a tabloid favourite.
What the tabloids don’t like is not having the sleazy details.
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Matthew Broderick is a man with a surprisingly unremarkable film career.
We don’t mean he doesn’t make money- we’re sure he’s super-successful if judged by wealth. However, before you continue reading, grab a pad of paper and a pen. If, like us, you get hand-cramp from even writing your own name, then just open up a word document instead.
Now make a list of all the Matthew Broderick films of which you can remember. Done that? Now cross out all the ones that weren’t artistic travesties. Come on, be honest with yourselves. By the way if you didn’t cross out Godzilla it’s probably best if you cease this exercie immediately.
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Effortlessness is of course the cornerstone of cool.
That’s why the Chesterfield hanging out of the corner of James Dean’s mouth is better than the Benson being desperately tugged on by the 14 yr old on the corner of your street. It’s why more guitarists want to be Hendrix than Angus Young. It’s why every indie rocker in the late 80s wanted to be J Mascis.
And with that Dinosaur Jr reference we’ll move clumsily and rather obviously onto Yuck, a band who seemingly can’t be described by writers outside of the context of their apparent influences. Which is a pity since Yuck’s crime isn’t sounding derivative, it ‘s sounding authentic.
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