I'm sat in my flat with not much else to do, but slightly antagonised by something i won't go into.
When suddenly appeared a taste in my mouth, a smell in my nostrils and a feeling in my lungs. I felt like i wanted a cigarette.
I've been smoke-free, for the second time, for 8 weeks to the day. I think. Something like that anyway. The first time i quit, in 2006, it lasted over 18 months. Then the occasional social ciggy kept appearing, then the odd one ponced from a work colleague, and then i bought 10 Marlboro Lights and it started all over again. I didn't smoke as much as before, and that's not me in denial, i really didn't. I used to smoke at home, and more when i was out, but what stopped that, more than anything, was the smoking ban. Legal and imposed by my girlfriend.
When i gave up the first time, i felt like i wanted to, when my friends and family were telling me to, round about New Years. But i don't do things when people tell me to, only when i want to. I only went to the gym and went on a diet and lost nearly 5 stone, when i wanted to, so i wasn't going to be bullied into quitting smoking. I waited 5 days, then gave up. Not cold-turkey though. I had nicorette gum. Tasted disgusting, but worked. This time I've used nothing. Just plain old regular Wriggleys Extra and will power.
To my surprised, it wasn't that hard. I did stop at the beginning of a week off work, which helped, but i expected to start craving when i went back to work. Nothing. What also helped was that no-one else smoked at work anymore. A fellow colleague had quit before me, and two regular inhabitants of the pub garden, had left for a different branch. They both still smoke.
The only thing that made me think about smoking, was people on TV. I have always dismissed the influence of TV on peoples behaviour and habits, but there is a certain mesmerizing element to watching your heroes in bands or what have you, lighting up, looking indescribably cool.
That's not to say, i instantly legged it to the garage and bought some, but it did make me think.
Of course it isn't cool. It's stupid. Its expensive. It's killing you. I don't care that i sound like your typical, hypocritical ex-smoker. Good. I am a hypocrite. Cos yeah it did feel good. That first cigarette after work (not so much in the morning, always made me a little light headed), or at lunchtime after a particularly trying morning. Or with the first pint on a Friday night.
Right now, i feel much better for not smoking. I'm glad i quit. I don't really miss it. I think its for the last time. I don't want to be smoking in my thirties, and they are approaching. I'm getting married next year, and hopefully starting a family soon after, so i don't want to be smoking, outside, on my own, when its pissing it down with rain, whilst my wife and kid(s) are inside. More importantly, i don't wanna die before my kids grow up. Those adverts are annoying to smokers, the ones with the parents all saying what they want to do with or for their children, but smoke, so may never do it. They are a little patronising, but the message is right. It really isn't worth it.
I used to think "Am i not cool if i don't smoke?". Then i would think "I'm not cool anyway". There is definitely a self satisfied, smug look on people faces when they are smoking, in a group, all the men trying to hold their cigarettes in a way that doesn't look gay, and the women, gesturing with the hand its held in, posing as if it is a fashion accessory.
On the other hand, there is the only one that does, stood slightly away from their friends, looking sheepish, almost embarrassed.
I'm pretty sure i don't want to be one of them anymore.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
Do you remember the first time?
"Do you remember the first time" sang Jarvis (Cocker, singer from Pulp).
I saw Terrorvision from Bradford last night. It wasn't the first time. The first time i had seen them was 11 years virtually to the day. May Bank Holiday Weekend 1997. Brighton Essential Festival. Indie Day.
We had to wait outside the tent as Bodycount had overrun. Too busy shouting obscenities about the police. I was 15. 16 in 7 days. Last night i was 26. 27 in 6 days. I felt 15 again. It was almost as if 11 years hadn't gone by.
Now i know I'm not OLD. Not technically. And every person over the age of 30 who i say i feel old to (and my girlfriend; same age) respond by telling me to shut up, or to wait till I'm 30 (i very nearly am) or even 40. But that is what the point is not. I'm not old, i know that. I'm OLDER. Which is still scary. Whilst i was being crushed and pushed around last night screaming every word of every song, i had regressed. I was a teenager. And so was everyone else around me. No-one (and by that i mean probably 90% of the crowd) WAS a teenager.
They were my age, or slightly younger, or slightly older, or a lot older.
I talked to a couple of them, who laughed when i said i felt old and they said they WERE old and i should wait till i was nearly 40.
Typical.
This was before Terrorvision came on. I saw one or two of them mid-set. They were teenagers again, you could see it in their face. Maybe, unlike me, they wouldn't admit it, or even acknowledge it to themselves, but they were. They had regressed too.
You see older people at gigs starring the latest NME band (because you don't stop liking good music) but they look like they know they shouldn't be there. Some thrive on that, but all around them young, good looking teenagers and early twenties nubiles are strutting like peacocks as if they are the newest cast member of the TV show Skins. All impossibly skinny and svelte with hipster jeans, converse and a tight t-shirt with no hint of fat underneath.
They even looked old. The band. Its hard to describe watching people that you used to associate with your youth looking every bit their age. Time should have stood still in the intervening years whilst you got older and got a job, and put on weight and lost hair. But Tony, Mark, Leigh and Shutty should have stayed the same age, forever young. Forever the Terrovision i saw in a tent, in Brighton. 11 years ago.
Last night wasn't any ones first time. It wasn't supposed to be, and it never was going to be. It was a celebration of being young, when your not anymore.
I saw Terrorvision from Bradford last night. It wasn't the first time. The first time i had seen them was 11 years virtually to the day. May Bank Holiday Weekend 1997. Brighton Essential Festival. Indie Day.
We had to wait outside the tent as Bodycount had overrun. Too busy shouting obscenities about the police. I was 15. 16 in 7 days. Last night i was 26. 27 in 6 days. I felt 15 again. It was almost as if 11 years hadn't gone by.
Now i know I'm not OLD. Not technically. And every person over the age of 30 who i say i feel old to (and my girlfriend; same age) respond by telling me to shut up, or to wait till I'm 30 (i very nearly am) or even 40. But that is what the point is not. I'm not old, i know that. I'm OLDER. Which is still scary. Whilst i was being crushed and pushed around last night screaming every word of every song, i had regressed. I was a teenager. And so was everyone else around me. No-one (and by that i mean probably 90% of the crowd) WAS a teenager.
They were my age, or slightly younger, or slightly older, or a lot older.
I talked to a couple of them, who laughed when i said i felt old and they said they WERE old and i should wait till i was nearly 40.
Typical.
This was before Terrorvision came on. I saw one or two of them mid-set. They were teenagers again, you could see it in their face. Maybe, unlike me, they wouldn't admit it, or even acknowledge it to themselves, but they were. They had regressed too.
You see older people at gigs starring the latest NME band (because you don't stop liking good music) but they look like they know they shouldn't be there. Some thrive on that, but all around them young, good looking teenagers and early twenties nubiles are strutting like peacocks as if they are the newest cast member of the TV show Skins. All impossibly skinny and svelte with hipster jeans, converse and a tight t-shirt with no hint of fat underneath.
They even looked old. The band. Its hard to describe watching people that you used to associate with your youth looking every bit their age. Time should have stood still in the intervening years whilst you got older and got a job, and put on weight and lost hair. But Tony, Mark, Leigh and Shutty should have stayed the same age, forever young. Forever the Terrovision i saw in a tent, in Brighton. 11 years ago.
Last night wasn't any ones first time. It wasn't supposed to be, and it never was going to be. It was a celebration of being young, when your not anymore.
How can one person split society so?
Whatever your thoughts and feelings about reality tv, you can't deny its impact on society today.
Some magazines would barely exist if it wasn't for Big Brother, X Factor et al, and some people would have nothing to watch or talk about.
It seems to be re-cycling itself to an extent now too. Last night some bloke who was a runner up in one of the singing contests, finally won one of these things. The fact that finishing second a few years ago made him a "celebrity", allowed him the indignity of being a "household name" before the country discovered he could dance and skate a bit.
If there was anyone that embodied the name "Reality tv celebrity" it was Jade Goody. And if anyone pretends they don't know who this person is they are lying. Or live in a cave in the Hebrides's.
She sat naked on a couch, drunk, screaming about everyone at home seeing her "kebab". She called a Bollywood actress a "poppadom" and nearly started a diplomatic incident. She was then on the Indian Big Brother and given the devastating news she had cervical cancer. Finally she lived out her days on tv. Where else?
Whatever you think of her, and for the record, when she was originally on BB, i thought she was a loud mouthed idiot. When she was on Celebrity BB, i thought she was an arrogant, egotistical, loud mouthed idiot. When she was diagnosed, i thought she displayed it in a crass and garish manner, using it as a cash cow for her sons, however well intended.
I think you can tell by now, i wasn't her biggest fan. I will admit i laughed at some jokes that were in very poor taste, and felt a little moral outrage when i discovered she had ignored two abnormal smear tests.
In the end though, you wouldn't wish a death as painful on your worst enemy. Whatever they had done.
Therefore i cannot ignore the disgusting, foul-mouthed and gutter surfing comments, dripping with bile, that i have read. You don't have to like someone to not feel your heart strings tug, when you think of those two boys, getting up yesterday morning, to give their mum a mothers day card, to be taken aside and told she had died. I cannot imagine what they are going through.
The comments such as "i couldn't care less about those two brats" are beyond belief. Heart of stone. It genuinely scares me to think there are people out there that make those kind of comments and start discussing conspiracy theories. Pathetic.
On the flip side to this, the out-pouring of grief, akin to the aftermath of Princess Di's premature passing, is a little OTT! I may be making enemies here when i say that the publics perception that she consciously made these tv programmes to heighten awareness of the disease, is more than a little shortsighted. She admitted that it was to make as much money as possible for her boys. Not sure what she had done with the alleged million pounds she earned immediately after BB, or after the advances for her book, appearance fee for Celeb BB etc etc, but you can't argue about her motives.
I have friends who have lost their mothers, i can't begin to understand what that is like. So any help these two boys could get to succeed in life, i couldn't begrudge.
Jade Goody died to soon. Too soon for her family. I would never have wished her dead, however much i disliked her. She epitomised the Reality tv, disposable culture, nothing behind the facade. It won't change anything. There are those who feel she was the spokesman for the no-mark, no talent, big-mouthed, fame hungry morons who audition every year for these shows just to get there fizog on the goggle-box.
At the end of the day, she stole the limelight for too long, but shes gone. Those two boys have no mother. That's the reality.
Some magazines would barely exist if it wasn't for Big Brother, X Factor et al, and some people would have nothing to watch or talk about.
It seems to be re-cycling itself to an extent now too. Last night some bloke who was a runner up in one of the singing contests, finally won one of these things. The fact that finishing second a few years ago made him a "celebrity", allowed him the indignity of being a "household name" before the country discovered he could dance and skate a bit.
If there was anyone that embodied the name "Reality tv celebrity" it was Jade Goody. And if anyone pretends they don't know who this person is they are lying. Or live in a cave in the Hebrides's.
She sat naked on a couch, drunk, screaming about everyone at home seeing her "kebab". She called a Bollywood actress a "poppadom" and nearly started a diplomatic incident. She was then on the Indian Big Brother and given the devastating news she had cervical cancer. Finally she lived out her days on tv. Where else?
Whatever you think of her, and for the record, when she was originally on BB, i thought she was a loud mouthed idiot. When she was on Celebrity BB, i thought she was an arrogant, egotistical, loud mouthed idiot. When she was diagnosed, i thought she displayed it in a crass and garish manner, using it as a cash cow for her sons, however well intended.
I think you can tell by now, i wasn't her biggest fan. I will admit i laughed at some jokes that were in very poor taste, and felt a little moral outrage when i discovered she had ignored two abnormal smear tests.
In the end though, you wouldn't wish a death as painful on your worst enemy. Whatever they had done.
Therefore i cannot ignore the disgusting, foul-mouthed and gutter surfing comments, dripping with bile, that i have read. You don't have to like someone to not feel your heart strings tug, when you think of those two boys, getting up yesterday morning, to give their mum a mothers day card, to be taken aside and told she had died. I cannot imagine what they are going through.
The comments such as "i couldn't care less about those two brats" are beyond belief. Heart of stone. It genuinely scares me to think there are people out there that make those kind of comments and start discussing conspiracy theories. Pathetic.
On the flip side to this, the out-pouring of grief, akin to the aftermath of Princess Di's premature passing, is a little OTT! I may be making enemies here when i say that the publics perception that she consciously made these tv programmes to heighten awareness of the disease, is more than a little shortsighted. She admitted that it was to make as much money as possible for her boys. Not sure what she had done with the alleged million pounds she earned immediately after BB, or after the advances for her book, appearance fee for Celeb BB etc etc, but you can't argue about her motives.
I have friends who have lost their mothers, i can't begin to understand what that is like. So any help these two boys could get to succeed in life, i couldn't begrudge.
Jade Goody died to soon. Too soon for her family. I would never have wished her dead, however much i disliked her. She epitomised the Reality tv, disposable culture, nothing behind the facade. It won't change anything. There are those who feel she was the spokesman for the no-mark, no talent, big-mouthed, fame hungry morons who audition every year for these shows just to get there fizog on the goggle-box.
At the end of the day, she stole the limelight for too long, but shes gone. Those two boys have no mother. That's the reality.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Was music better before?
I've just finished watching an episode of "The Seven Ages of Rock" on UK History (its not "Yesterday", i refuse to call it that, its a HISTORY channel, not what was on the telly the day before) and I've posed the question, was music better 40, 30, 20 years ago, than it is now? It was the one about Stadium Rock. Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Police, Dire Straits and Bruce Springsteen. Just watching it gave me goosebumps. I've only had the pleasure of being at one stadium concert, that was Oasis saying cheerio to the old Wembley. They had had a terrible 12 months, lost two band members and released a less than fantastic follow up to the less than fantastic, Be Here Now. They could have been better would be the crux of it.
So who would be able to follow them up? Oasis i mean. Arctic Monkeys are the closest. They are the nearest thing we have to an Oasis. They are/were the nearest we had to The Stone Roses. And so on and so on.
Having the ability to be a stadium rock band is not the reason i started this post. Its whether there will ever be bands to compete with the greats? Although is it fair to compare?
The search for originality is the holy grail for all new bands. Its the impossible dream. Your never going to be totally new. There only so many chords and only so many ways they can go together, and therefore, only so many songs that don't sound the same. You try though, you strive for that freshness, that illusive new sound that will stand the test of time. The issue is though; your going to be influenced. The Beatles were influenced by their heroes, the Rolling Stones, The Who, i could go on. Oasis, we all know who they were influenced by. Not original but they took their influences, moulded the Oasis sound and ran with it.
That's the thing. The sound. Or making it your own.
You could say it was easier back in the 60's. The reaction to the Beatles and the Stones were unprecedented. The scenes of wild hysteria were shocking. Even today they seem un-real. Things hadn't been done before, it was easy to experiment, the influence of drugs, the "swinging sixties", it was a creative period. Maybe they over did it. Maybe they wrote the book, sold the t-shirt and cornered the greatest album of all time polls, forever, and nothing will ever live up to their billing.
Its hard not to feel like that when you watch the pioneers of rock BEGIN stadium rock. The Beatles at Shea Stadium, NYC. Then Led Zeppelin took the mantle and made it a regular occurrence.
Listening to Robert Plant belt out "Rock'n'Roll", it feels like that nothing else can touch it. "Stairway to Heaven" is as transcendent now as it was for those at Knebworth in 1979.
Can anyone live up to those moments? Those stadium gigs aren't the be all and end all of music, today or back then. Maybe its because its the nostalgic side of us see those times with rose tinted glasses, nothing could possibly top those, albums, gigs, those times, era defining music.
Will the Arctic Monkeys define the beginning of the millennium? Will this time stand out like those that have gone before? Time will tell!
So who would be able to follow them up? Oasis i mean. Arctic Monkeys are the closest. They are the nearest thing we have to an Oasis. They are/were the nearest we had to The Stone Roses. And so on and so on.
Having the ability to be a stadium rock band is not the reason i started this post. Its whether there will ever be bands to compete with the greats? Although is it fair to compare?
The search for originality is the holy grail for all new bands. Its the impossible dream. Your never going to be totally new. There only so many chords and only so many ways they can go together, and therefore, only so many songs that don't sound the same. You try though, you strive for that freshness, that illusive new sound that will stand the test of time. The issue is though; your going to be influenced. The Beatles were influenced by their heroes, the Rolling Stones, The Who, i could go on. Oasis, we all know who they were influenced by. Not original but they took their influences, moulded the Oasis sound and ran with it.
That's the thing. The sound. Or making it your own.
You could say it was easier back in the 60's. The reaction to the Beatles and the Stones were unprecedented. The scenes of wild hysteria were shocking. Even today they seem un-real. Things hadn't been done before, it was easy to experiment, the influence of drugs, the "swinging sixties", it was a creative period. Maybe they over did it. Maybe they wrote the book, sold the t-shirt and cornered the greatest album of all time polls, forever, and nothing will ever live up to their billing.
Its hard not to feel like that when you watch the pioneers of rock BEGIN stadium rock. The Beatles at Shea Stadium, NYC. Then Led Zeppelin took the mantle and made it a regular occurrence.
Listening to Robert Plant belt out "Rock'n'Roll", it feels like that nothing else can touch it. "Stairway to Heaven" is as transcendent now as it was for those at Knebworth in 1979.
Can anyone live up to those moments? Those stadium gigs aren't the be all and end all of music, today or back then. Maybe its because its the nostalgic side of us see those times with rose tinted glasses, nothing could possibly top those, albums, gigs, those times, era defining music.
Will the Arctic Monkeys define the beginning of the millennium? Will this time stand out like those that have gone before? Time will tell!
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