Dry Your Fears M8 (sadsack UKpop of the 2000s)

An interesting piece on The Streets's A Grand Don't Come For Free by Fergal Kinney at The Quietus... 

.... it got me thinking about "Dry Your Eyes" and a certain strain of emotionally-frayed post-Britpop... loosely-speaking in the New Wave tradition: observational realism... ordinary blokes and blokettes singing about workaday worries and mundane luvlife miseries...  one of those phases when the weak become heroes, or at least the protagonists, in pop. 

Despite the blokey-ness, or geezer-ness, of The Streets, the bulk of  Mike Skinner's progeny, or fellow-travelers, are women. 

The very first time I heard this it struck me as a post-"Dry Your Eyes" move, and a calculated one most likely (if not by the artist, then the record company). 

 But in the Wiki entry, Mike Skinner doesn't appear in the long, large list of Kate Nash's avowed influences.  

One of those avowed influences is John Cooper Clarke - which I can't quite see but it would bolster this notion of the 2000s wave as New Wave flashback, the reactivation of a tradition of tragicomic verse and grubby realism. 

I can't think of another vocal delivery that is so glottal-stoppy.

Mind you, rather than a female Mike Skinner, Kate Nash could be seen as a post-Lily Allen artist.

In recovery from an amorous setback: 

"See, you messed up my mental health

I was quite unwell

I was so lost back then

But with a little help from my friends

I found the light in the tunnel at the end"

Now right as rain but revenge-minded

"You left me in such a state"  - the emotional bruises still yet to fully fade.

My favorite on the album, "Everything's Just Wonderful" - the title is ironic. 

Distraught and insomniac from the pressures on the modern metropolitan girl - fashion-implanted weight-worries, mortgage-impossibilities

"Do you think, think

Everything, everyone is going mental?

It seems to me we're spiraling

Out of control and it's inevitable

"...It seems to me, we're on all fours

Crawling on our knees, someone help us please

Oh, Jesus Christ, Almighty

Do I feel alright? No, not slightly

Lyrics shift from the personal (worrying about that spag bol for "days and days and days" after eating it) to an existential-political register: 

"Don't you want something else

Something new, than what we got here?

And don't you feel it's all the same

Some sick game, and it's so insincere?

I wish I could change the ways of the world

Make it a nice place

Until that day, I guess we stay

Doing what we do, screwing who we screw

By "The Fear", even Mark Fisher noticed and approved.  

"I don't know what's right and what's real anymore

And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore

And when do you think it will all become clear?

'Cause I'm being taken over by the fear

Life's about film stars and less about mothers...

But it doesn't matter 'cause I'm packing plastic

And that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic

And I am a weapon of massive consumption

And it's not my fault, it's how I'm programmed to function"

Lily Allen is addressing the same kind of malaises (personal-amorous and small "p" political) as Florence Shaw,  but in a more pop-forward and lyrically more direct, less artfully fractured, way. (It's one reason - along with his Sleaford Mods admiration - that I have argued that almost alone of contemporary groups, K-punk might have rated Dry Cleaning).

While he had his canon, Mark could always surprise us with a taste swerve - e,g, his fondness for Dido (for similar reasons). Who belongs in this company, I think. 

'White Flag' was one of my favourite pop singles of last year.... Belying her reputation for AOR confectionery, 'White Flag' is a song of desperate love, coming from the thin line between loving dedication and stalker-obsession..... Dido's delivery - almost stilted, lacking in the throaty passion de rigeur in these r and b dominated -times - is refreshingly cool. 'White Flag' forms a neat contrast with 'Life for Rent', the title track of the LP, which sings of the opposite condition: a dissolute inability to commit. It's like Jean Paul Sartre meets Sex and the City. Wandering aimlessly through the hypermarket of the postmodern, fingering all the options but never settling on any one of them, Dido castigates herself for her failure to really engage, to stick at or believe in anything for very long, to make meaningful choices. She concludes that, if this is the case, she 'deserves' nothing, because nothing is really hers"

Probably my favorite bit in the Kinney piece on A Grand Don't Come For Free is when he quotes Skinner discussing "Dry Your Eyes" with his record company and telling them "this is the song that's going to put me on regional radio" 

I actually heard this next song on a regional radio station - indeed, not living in the UK I might never have heard it otherwise. We were driving to Dorset after my brother's funeral, to visit one of his favorite places on Earth, Swanage, scene of our boyhood holidays. Perhaps my state of mind  made me vulnerable to its AOR charms? But no - t's a gorgeous song - I love the curling melody of the chorus, the way KT Tunstall's voice seems to shift and catch the light.

 

It's not actually as melancholic as other songs in this selection - the stance is resilience...  battered a bit by life, getting older but with nothing figured out as yet. 

It's that wistful whistle that places it in this company! 

(Somehow I have never got it together to listen to anything else by KT). 

I suppose we ought to have some Skinner... 

This, and "Blinded By the Lights", were my favorites on A Grand

But overall, I wasn't taken with the concept / narrative. And the sound seemed Happy Shopper cheapo  - shabby and spindly - compared to Original Pirate Material. 

Probably that very flimsiness is what enabled "Dry Your Eyes" to cross over so massively: its Jona Lewie-ness  put it across on Chiltern Radio and the like. Radio 2-ready from the off.  

As opposed to the first album which rhythmically and sonically was closer to the sound of the, well, streets, rather than the sound of the suburbs. 

This is probably the bleakest song on Original Pirate Material, because it has a memory of better days, a higher way of life, taunting at it.

The prototype for "Dry Your Eyes" in some ways, much better though

Winding up my selection  -  mostly stuff I like or love -  here is my favorite album of whatever year it was: the s/t debut of The Good, the Bad and The Queen. 

I described all this stuff as post-Britpop... and Lily Allen and Damon Albarn's supergroop fit that in two senses:

1. It's Britpop corrected - multi-racialised in sound, with Jamaica at its core (lover's rock in Allen's case, dub and roots with TGTBaTQ) and Africa too through Tony Allen's contributions to the latter.

2. I always like to contrast Damon's affect in TGTBaTQ with Blur - how he carried himself.  The perky,  perpendicular cheeky-chap persona of "Parklife" is replaced by a slumped bleariness. There's a documentary from around this time in which Damon appears - he's unshaven, he mumbles, seems vaguely downcast,  and is clad in a drab-colored hoodie. You can practically smell the stale weedsmoke.  This album likewise captures a man sagging into middle age, looking out at a crumbling and stagnant society, an England that's no longer Swinging Again... where the NuLab initial excitement has long since soured... 

"A stroppy little island of mixed-up people" 

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Bearing in mind that I didn't live in not-so-Great Britain for the entirety of the 2000s (well, except for the summer of 2002, when I came over to do Rip It Up research), I must have missed a LOT of Sadsack UKpop of that era.,,, 

Nominations please!

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Ed suggests Adele's "Chasing Pavements", pointing to the Anglicism of the title. 

Can't really hear it as being part of this company  - the song seems too dramatic, retro-soul, pop-classicist. Sonically there's not that sense of exact-same-size-as-life.  But I remember my mum really liked Adele at this point, i.e. before she lost all the weight, partly because she seemed like an ordinary person plopped in the middle of pop. 

Anonymous suggests this by Jamie T, an artist I have never heard (not living in the UK) and only very faintly heard of

The frail vocal tones reminded me of Calvin Harris's "I'm Not Alone" which feels like it kinda belongs in this zone while not having the mundane mise en scene particularly 

It also has the glottal-stop chorus, which creates a sort of just chatting not singing feeling, and a gulped emotionality. 

Studentphobia

 

You're working at your leisure to learn the things you'll need

The promises you make tomorrow will carry no guarantee

I've seen your qualifications, you've got a Ph.D.

I've got one art O level, it did nothing for me

You plan your conversation to impress the college bar

Just talking about your Mother and Daddy's Jaguar

Wear your political T-shirt and sacred college scarf

Discussing the worlds situation but just for a laugh

Working for the rat race

You know you're wasting your time

You're working for the rat race

You're no friend of mine

Inter-band class friction? Given that a third of The Specials, including its leader-founder Dammers, were art school products. Whereas the writer of "Rat Race", Roddy Radiation, had worked as a painter and decorator for Coventry council... 

The Fall tirade started out back in the band's earliest days as "Hey! Student" - W/C autodidact scorn for higher-education sheep, inspired by the sheer density of colleges in Manchester - but then Mark E. Smith changed it to "Hey! Fascist" (perhaps aware that an increasing proportion of the Fall following were university-educated? That seems a little politic and polittesse-y for one as bloody-minded as M.E.S. Probably it was to do the urgencies of that Rock Against Racism and Anti-Nazi League moment). 

 I don't think "Hey! Fascist" was ever recorded. But then in the early '90s, it became "Hey! Student" again and was finally recorded for the appropriately titled Middle Class Revolt. 

Ah-well I'm walking down the street,

It's always students that I meet,

Long hair down and sneakers on your feet.

Write your letters to the Evening News

I clench my fist and sing this tune:

I said Hey student, hey student, hey student,

You're gonna get it through the head,

Henna in your hair,

As you

I clench my hand before I flip my lid.

Long hair down and sneakers on your feet.

As you listen to Pearl Jam in your room.

I'm thinking like that when I sing this song:

I said I walk some more, walk some more,

As you stare in your room at Shaun Ryder's face

Down long long long long days

The dead brains of class A-B

Twin swastikas

Reflective of Lady Sovereign's love of her parents' 2-Tone and New Wave records, perhaps. 

Sipping snake bite and black kick

Didn't taste nice, in fact it was flat

Sitting at this halfback harly rat student union bash

You asked me to dance, I said no so I sat on my arse,

Watching all these arty farty hooligans charge at the bar

How bizarre?

Went to the courtyard for tobacco and tar

Saw these chicks doing this flex, wearing tee's but not wearing bras

La la la la

It was all la la la la la,

At the student union bar,

I was dragged to the student union bar,

It was crap at the student union bar,

I was at the student union bar,

What a headache?

Yeah, sipping on cheap drinks and geeks galore,

Somewhere I ain't been before

I never went to uni and I never was a student

I'm a high school drop out, a popular loner,

Making papers not exams,

Yeah, I brush my shoulders man

Roll up smoking get up joker, flagging down the enemies,

Sipping on your vodka

Oh my gosh I think I might have clocked ya,

If that's how ya go about becoming a doctor

Oh my god,

They're looking at me,

Shit, no, I don't go to uni, na,

I'm just here, my friend brought me here

Yeah,

Shouldn't you lot be like studying or something?

Like, I don't know about uni or things like that but,

Yeah, alright, I'm going

What other examples are there of liminal class disdain for uni-challenged tosspots? Must be some Oi! rants on this subject, surely. 

This song by The Streets is typical-liminal in its twin contempt for both the student stoner Tim and the lumpen beer monster Terry. A tour de force of observational comedy / character sketch stereotypy / method acting by Mike Skinner playing both roles.

Hey! I never knew there was a video for it, with proper acting.

Hello, Hello. My names Terry and I'm a law abider

There's nothing I like more than getting fired up on beer

And when the weekends here I to exercise my right to get paralytic and fight

Good bloke fairly

But I get well leery when geezers look at me funny

Bounce 'em round like bunnies

I'm likely to cause mischief

Good clean grief you must believe and I ain't no thief.

Law abiding and all, all legal.

And who cares about my liver when it feels good

What you need is some real manhood.

Rasher Rasher Barney and Kasha putting peoples backs up.

Public disorder, I'll give you public disorder.

I down eight pints and run all over the place

Spit in the face of an officer

See if that bothers you cause I never broke a law in my life

Someday I'm gonna settle down with a wife

Come on lads lets have another fight

Eh hello. My names Tim and I'm a criminal,

In the eyes of society I need to be in jail

For the choice of herbs I inhale.

This ain't no wholesale operation

Just a few eighths and some Playstations my's vocation

I pose a threat to the nation

And down the station the police hold no patients

Let's talk space and time

I like to get deep sometimes and think about Einstein

And Carl Young And old Kung Fu movies I like to see

Pass the hydrator please

Yeah I'm floating on thin air.

Going to Amsterdam in the New Year - top gear there

'Cause I taker pride in my hobby

Home made bongs using my engineering degree

Dear Leaders, please legalize weed for these reasons.

(Terry)

Like I was saying to him.

I told him: "Top with me and you won't leave."

So I smacked him in the head and downed another Carling

Bada Bada Bing for the lad's night.

Mad fight, his face's a sad sight.

Vodka and Snake Bite.

Going on like a right geez, he's a twat,

Shouldn't have looked at me like that.

Anyway I'm an upstanding citizen

If a war came along I'd be on the front line with em.

Can't stand crime either them hooligans on heroin.

Drugs and criminals those thugs on the penny colored will be the downfall of society

I've got all the anger pent up inside of me.

(Tim)

You know I don't see why I should be the criminal

How can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal

And how many deaths are there per year from alcohol

I just completed Gran Tourismo on the hardest setting

We pose no threat on my settee

Ooh the pizza's here will someone let him in please

"We didn't order chicken, Not a problem we'll pick it out

I doubt they meant to mess us about

After all we're all adults not louts."

As I was saying, we're friendly peaceful people

We're not the ones out there causing trouble.

We just sit in this hazy bubble with our quarters

Discussing how beautiful Gail Porter is.

MTV, BBC Two, Channel Four is on until six in the morning.

Then at six in the morning the sun dawns and it's my bedtime.

(Terry)

Causing trouble, your stinking rabble

Boys saying I'm the lad who's spoiling it

You're on drugs it really bugs me when people try and tell me I'm a thug

Just for getting drunk

I like getting drunk

'Cause I'm an upstanding citizen

If a war came along I'd be on the front line with 'em.

(Tim)

Now Terry you're repeating yourself

But that's okay drunk people can't help that.

A chemical reaction inside your brain causes you to forget what you're saying.

(Terry)

What. I know exactly what I'm saying

I'm perfectly sane

You stinking student lameo

Go get a job and stop robbing us of our taxes.

(Tim)

Err, well actually according to research

Government funding for further education pales in insignificance

When compared to how much they spend on repairing

Leery drunk people at the weekend

In casualty wards all over the land.

(Terry)

Why you cheeky little swine come here

I'm gonna batter you. Come here.

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Apropos of not-quite-nothing, the word "uni" - yukk! Sets my teeth on edge, whenever I hear it.  Wasn't used in my day, of that I am sure. When did it take over? 

In America, people talk confusingly of school, when they mean college. University is not a word in common parlance. Let alone "uni"

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Late addition, suggested by Ed in comments - The Undertones's "My Perfect Cousin", which adds family romance to comprehensive versus grammar school intra-class tensions. 

I've got a cousin called Kevin

He's sure to go to heaven

Always spotless, clean and neat

As smooth as you'll get 'em

He's got a fur lined sheepskin jacket

My ma said they cost a packet

But she won't even let me explain

That me and Kevin we're just not the same

He's got a degree in economics

Maths, physics and bionics

He thinks that I'm a cabbage

'Cause I hate University Challenge

Even at the age of ten Smart boy

Kevin was a smart boy then

He always beat me at Subbuteo

'Cause he 'flicked to kick'

And I didn't know

His mother bought him a synthesiser

Got the Human League in to advise her

Now he's making lots of noise

Playing along with the art school boys

Girls try to attract his attention

But what a shame, it's in vain, total rejection

He will never be left on the shelf

'Cause Kevin, he's in love with himself

Oh, my perfect cousin

What I like to do he doesn't

He's his family's pride and joy

His mother's little golden boy

Ed further points out that college is celebrated far more in America pop culture - and that groups are unashamedly collegiate. Certainly Vampire Weekend's first album had some songs whose mise en scene was dorms and quadrangles and Ivy League type stuff. 

But then I thought of this - a song that is anti university (or at least ambivalent about it) by people who went to university. 

Ed also mentions college radio which was once a huge thing (members of Animal Collective were involved in it and schooled in weirdo music through doing it) but isn't anymore. I mean, it still exists, people do it - but I don't think anyone's listening. Whereas once upon a time, in some regions, stumbling on the signal of the nearest college radio station was revelatory, an induction point into an entire realm of alternative music. Before the internet it was one of the only ways you found about this stuff, accessed it. (The other being music magazines and fanzines). 

Indeed college radio / college rock was such a force there was a magazine in service to it: College Music Journal, or CMJ. It was industry-oriented, rather than critical: a indie-scene counterpart to Billboard. CMJ then became the name of an annual music festival, a showcase of new, rising, alt groups. I think it was called CMJ Seminar, in fact, because of the panel discussions and talks during the day (I was on a couple, over the years, back in the '90s). A sort of funkier, cooler version of the New Music Seminar, which was probably slanted to "modern rock" as opposed to indie-alt.  But in both cases, there was a hustle-bustle of networking and talent-spotting and deal-signing. 

But back to college radio - there wasn't an equivalent in the UK. My sense is that student operated radio was purely a training place for those who hoped for a career at the BBC or in commercial radio. No one would ever tune in as listener,  surely?  I mean, I never did, in part because I didn't know of any station's frequency or even of their existence. (Why would you bother when you had Peel and the early evening DJs on R1?). Someone playing records on a university radio station possibly reached fewer people than hospital radio. Maybe it's changed now that the university radio stations go out on the internet rather than through the air... I should imagine not, though.

What was enduringly important was the student union run college gig circuit. It was so vital to the Underground during the progressive rock heyday, that Melody Maker had a weekly column called Student Statement.  Being a student union entertainments officer was a position of real power. They had NUS funding to burn - some concert promoters complained bitterly that student largesse had ratcheted up the cost of hiring a band like Stackridge or Hatfield and the North.