A SPECTRAL FREQUENCY
Mon. July 26, 2004Categories: Abstract Dynamics
Really lovely piece by Kek-w @ Kid Shirt on The Streets’ garage-for-students. ‘… despite its apparent authenticity, its over-pushy, pumped-up realism, it still somehow fails to convince…it’s like there’s something essential missing from its centre; there’s a hole; a gap; a spectral frequency…a feeling that’s gone awol from its core, like an old LP digitally-remastered so that it now sounds wrong.’ YES! Wholeheartedly agree with all of kek-w’s piece, apart from his dissing of the Jam (one of the most unfairly maligned groups in blogdom IMHO) and his praise of Sham 69 obv (I admire Kek-w bucking the trend, but…..)
The working-class realism thing is SUCH a straw man I think (serves Skinner right for his choice of ‘band name’) – there’s very little that happens in A Grand Don’t Come For Free that wouldn’t happen to a student too. The Streets’ appeal is comedy-of-recognition, not cultural tourism.
I like the Streets (is there ANYTHING slagged off in K-Punk I don’t like?). Dry your eyes — TUUUUNE!
All this stuff about “authenticity” and “being for students” is just over-cerebral tosh. You don’t like the tunes? Fair enough. But stooping to criticise something on whether it’s culturally “realistic” or not is just naieve.
Not very many Streets-advocates say that Mike’s real or working-class — that’s just the assumption of the hataz. I’m not too keen on ‘Dry Your Eyes’, that said.
Well, everyone likes the Streets, apart from Kek-w and Luke (tho even he seems to be wavering). I took it that Kek’s point was more about emotional authenticity than class authenticitiy, really…
The fascinating thing about The Streets is not so much the fact that there’s a lack of presence, a lack of a real authentic narrator or whatever. It’s the fact that, at this particular time, British pop can accomodate and thrive on such a music. The Streets are passive reportage, absorbing and relating pointless minutae of tedious life; for several reasons (musical fragmentation, pomo irony, the desire for anti-iconography), this stream of consciousness fills a number of nihilistic needs.
I did quite like Fit But You Know It, though.
Are you calling Mike Skinner some kind of blogger, Derek?
Well, as we all know, there’s many similarities between “busting rhymes” and “busting blogs”.
don’t like the music or the voice. the lyrics i’ve heard off the neww album i really like. the lyrics on the first album were pretty cringey though.
they play it on Radio 2 now. Crossover, or what?