Midweek Music Memories: Smells Like Teen Spirit

So the inevitable murmurs of a Nineties revival have been in motion for a while. How far this will go (EMF box-set anyone?) we will have to see but for me, if you’re going to revisit the 90s, you start with this video. I was living in tiny village at the time in Italy, a land inhabited by horrific musical monstrosities such as man that stayed at number 1 for months with a song called ‘Lambrusco & Popcorn’, I was musically starved with the exception of occasional access to MTV Europe which salvaged me from the likes of Eros Ramazotti and my mother’s Simply Red cd and introduced me to Nirvana. It was never the same again…

 

Soopsworld’s Week In Links: The Vaccines/Maximum Balloon/Dave Grohl is AWESOME/Belle & Sebastian’s new album/Gorillaz new track’s ACE

Hype can be a strange, unpredictable beast at the best of times and last night myself and my dear friends Lotts & Jess found ourselves witnessing an extraordinary example of it at The Vaccines debut gig at The Flowerpot. After … Continue reading →

No More Heroes

A bizarre thing occured to me the other night at White Rabbits (mindblowingly awesome btw), I didn't have a clue what any of them looked like, let alone what any of their names were. I'd been so engrossed in their album in recent months that it literally had been all about their music, not the various personalities sold to me as now so often the case with bands – they're sold as a package. My brother turned to me and asked if a bloke on stage was one of them and was highly amused when I couldn't tell him (it was, I soon discovered,really quite obvious who White Rabbits were, they were the best looking blokes in the venue – duh).

 

In the words of that 80s gravelly voiced, big haired songstress, Bonnie Tyler I'm holding out for a hero. Not in the same sense that she was – as in someone of note to look up to. To the fill that section on Facebook and MySpace and have people look at it and think "Ah yes, she is an intelligent, cultured young woman of morals and sophistication if she has that person as a hero". That's what people do don't they?

 

There are the usual suspects: Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, John Peel, Audrey Hepburn, Maya Angelou, Ozzy Osbourne… I ain't feeling it.  Don't get me wrong, I look up to many of the aforementioned (John Peel, along with Michael Palin until I was informed by someone who'd worked with him that he REALLY wasn't suitable, was my fantasy dad for MANY years) but I don't hero worship them. Historical figures don't really cut it for me either – ultimately there is respect but I don't WORSHIP them… Eventually after having giving the matter some considerable thought I came up with one…

 

Dave Grohl.

 

If you're gonna have someone as a hero, they might as well be the Biggest Dude In The History Of Ever. The man can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, especially when he declared in a recent interview that the number one pre-requisite to joining Foo Fighters wasn't musical talent of any sort, it was the ability to drink. It brings into ridicule about worshipping anyone in the first place – if you're going to admire someone, it might as well be someone that is having the time of their lives and unashamedly so. That LOVES what they do for a living and, also, just happens to be hilarious. That's my kind of hero, Audrey Hepburn = zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.