Culture Vulture Schmulture – N
In a feature shamelessly “inspired” by The Times‘s Culture Vulture, British Expat brings you the above titled (subtitled “Things you should own, if they’re the sort of thing you might like…”)
This “week”, “N”. But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Atoz (or should that be Atom?), I am lazy. (Cue AA-type clapping, “Very true…”) Amazingly, I don’t own a single video beginning with “N” (I have 50 videos. No food, but 50 videos) or any books for that matter. That leaves records, of which I have a plethora (Anybody remember “The Three Amigos”?). Recently, if you have the power of hearing, you will have been unable to escape the strains of Dido’s No Angel – the BBC being prime culprits. Eminem sampled her song “Thankyou” on his single “Stan”, TV’s Roswell High uses “Here With Me” as its theme. This is a very good album, that will soon p*** everybody off. Classic overkill. Now That’s What I Call Quite Good by The Housemartins, back when Fatboy Slim was more Slim than Fatboy, is also worth a look. Lo-fi (couple of a cappella tracks) and just sweet all round. My collection also includes a little-known album called Now That’s What I Call Music. With such classics as Men At Work and Cyndi Lauper, this is the only one of the series worth its weight in salt. Novelty value also abounds, as this was before they started numbering them (I believe they’re now onto about 4,000,000).
But there was always one horse with its neck a fair way ahead. This horse is offensive, and not a little bit punky! Never Mind The Bollocks… Here’s The Sex Pistols (let’s see if the Ed censors and censures me for that!) was released in 1977. I can’t tell you anything interesting about 1977. I wasn’t born. All I do know is that it was the summer after the long hot one, and a year after the mighty Crystal Palace were beaten in the FA Cup Semi-Final by my adopted hometown team. Scum. With such family classics as “Pretty Vacant”, “God Save the Queen” (a nice patriotic number) and “Anarchy in the UK” (New Labour??), this LP will get you out of many a dinner party scrape – well, the last guest won’t hang around too late anyway. The group’s underlying (underlying? They were pretty flippin’ obvious) problems were hinted at by “Problems”, “Bodies” and “Liar”. High praise indeed comes from Liam Gallagher, who on the renegade 7″ “Wibbling Rivalry” (The Gallagher Bros. fighting for 15 minutes – worth buying if you see it, it’ll be worth a mint eventually) claims that The Sex Pistols were the best band ever. Cue Noel Gallagher sensible moment – “Mate, they made one album.” Damn good one though.
Do we have any lawyers visiting this site? Just wondering, I’m thinking of filing a suit against the Ed. I’m fed up of waiting for that first pay cheque. What’s a bloke supposed to do for money round here? Don’t answer that.
If you’re all very, very good then “O” may follow before the year’s out.
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