Charlie Parker help me I got embroiled in the Grammys and worse, started actually listening to music by everyone involved in the Kanye West/Beck/Beyoncé saga - what's wrong with me? I haven't felt right since the New Year started and here's the proof. I even played some (award-winner) Sam Smith. Please, someone put me out of my misery. Ever felt like an alien? That's not only their world but presumably the same planet millions of others live on when it comes to music. Realising this I feel like a dead tiger being consumed by killer ants, every tiny part of my body (and soul) being carried back to their nest...which is lined with posters of Beyoncé and Kanye...in fact, the queen ant has the face and legs of Beyoncé...which it flaunts by gyrating suggestively at every opportunity, especially when the worker (twerker?) ants return with bounty such as mouthfuls of me...welcome to my nightmare...
Ant-idote - Wu-Tang Clan - "mad fucking dangerous"...
I thought to meself: 'What's the opposite of all this bland superstar celebrity back-slapping R&B pained-white-boy-warbling shit?' Wu-Tang - those nasty fuckers - why they sprang to mind, I don't know, they just did, so I've spent the last couple of days listening to Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which I haven't done in years. 'Yeah,' I thought. 'Imagine them interrupting the Grammys by appearing in masks and decapitating as many people as they can with samurai swords!'. I told you I wasn't well. I don't even like Wu-Tang Clan, much. Well I do, but in the way you like something that's bad for you....like smoking three fags in a row or indulging in a reality TV show just to be anti-intellectual...or obese people, the way you like them for not being skinny, perfect role models...or Big Macs, for that matter, though I haven't had one of them for decades...yes, that kind of 'like'. The way you like Satan and wish he'd appear and destroy all those Darwin-denying air-headed Holy Rollers at congregations who have fits as if they've been possessed by the spirit of the Lord...fossils are fiction and we can't be related to monkeys! Wu-Tang...they way they represent some evil street slaying foul-mouthed macho reality, the kind middle-class white boys like because it's the opposite of their clean career-paved route towards mortgaged mediocrity called 'success'...
Music is my sanctuary, as Gary Bartz said - of course, to fight their music you fire back with your own; unable to actually play everyone at the Grammy awards my kind of music, I content myself with carrying it around on the MP3 player, at Work, on the way to get a coffee from the Benugo concession, where the girl behind the counter said (this morning) "What are you always listening to?" "Music," I reply, not meaning to be sarcastic but unable to help myself. I qualify it by saying "Jazz", because it's a lot easier than saying "A mixture of old and new electronic music, library music, obscure German avant-Pop industrial-beat music, rare Indian soundtracks...and Jazz". Well, at the time, I was listening to this...
...which I proved by showing her the tiny screen because it was easier than saying "Bobby Hutcherson", which I did anyway, just to try and plant the name more firmly in her head. She adjusted her hat, tightened the string on her apron, smiled and said "I'll check him out". OK. Perhaps I've done something good so far this week. Perhaps she will check him out and be amazed. That or she'll think "What's this shit?" before returning to Beyoncé...
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