July 26, 2004

A SPECTRAL FREQUENCY

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.....)

Posted by mark at July 26, 2004 06:53 AM | TrackBack
Comments

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.

Posted by: Tom at July 26, 2004 09:02 AM

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.

Posted by: paul "Relentlessly Middlebrow" meme at July 26, 2004 11:13 AM

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.

Posted by: Henry Miller at July 26, 2004 12:50 PM

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...

Posted by: mark at July 26, 2004 02:32 PM

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.

Posted by: Derek Walmsley at July 26, 2004 03:17 PM

Are you calling Mike Skinner some kind of blogger, Derek?

Posted by: Tom at July 26, 2004 03:22 PM

Well, as we all know, there's many similarities between "busting rhymes" and "busting blogs".

Posted by: Derek Walmsley at July 26, 2004 08:06 PM

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.

Posted by: luke.. at July 27, 2004 01:23 PM

they play it on Radio 2 now. Crossover, or what?

Posted by: undercurrent at July 29, 2004 09:27 PM