• About

ActionTimeVision

~ Broke the yolk, no joke

ActionTimeVision

Category Archives: An open letter to …

An open letter to fans of The Libertines

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Kemper Boyd in An open letter to ...

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#carlbarat, #libertines, #petedoherty, Albion, Anthems for Doomed Youth, Arcadia, Carl Barat, Gigslutz, Pete Doherty, The Libertines

titantic-sinking

The HMS Albion in 2004. The iceberg was awarded the freedom of the British Isles

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/an-open-letter-to/

Dear acolytes of The Libs © The ‘Tines, the Four Mush-kateers,

As folklore has it … back in 2002 your heroes crash, bang walloped a moribund and decrepit culture-scene and now in 2015 they’re back, making threats about how the future’s about to be claimed by the past. Or some suchlike soliloquy-sonnet.

With yarns from arcane wastelands and urbane rallying cries for the troops, the gang’s newie (and first since 2004) Anthems for Doomed Youth reminds of what has been lacking in the hearts and minds of the faithful and deranged.

Lumme, your bedraggled intoxicunts are back with a whiz-bang, the faux-hemian Arcadian dreamers of Albion markets and cor blimey stone the crows Dickensian etiquette and downright roguery and rapscallionism. The artful disciples of Fagin, forever on the make with a cheeky nod and wink, a crafty fag and a drink. Ramshackle, rambunctious and Rimbaud, they remain the cocktail of the dreamer, the hell-redeemer, the devil-may-carers, the gonophs and the canard-creators. But, just who lurks behind the visage of anarch-aic- aristos?

Abuzz the Doc, (Peter) the turveydrop scion of Major Upright and the most overweight junkie this side of Rik Waller (albeit with predilections for different types of brown), with notebooks full of scrawled blood, the (track)marks of the ‘true’ artisan. He’s Voltaire, he’s Betjeman, he’s the Doc, the first man to make drugs uncool, espousing the belief that not bathing makes him a poet, or summat. His peripatetic spirit blessing his essence with the outsider’s prism of perception, his wry vignettes the equivalent of just the right dose of vinaigrette in the salad of romantique greens and reds.

rik_waller_2002_07_04

Pete regales his fans with a rendition of ‘Blow me daaaahn, ‘sparrer, ‘ere’s me muvva’

Immortalised on the info-supra-highway as a pup queueing to buy the third instalment of antecedent-rock Brit-beat bores Oasis, your idol was a fresh-faced whippersnapper unaware of the travails and capers to come, the horrors of listening to the end of that album soon to push his weak-will to self-destruction. Smack, crack and a regular snack was his staple diet for far too long, but, he’s banished the demons and kicked the sugar, it’s all about the honey nowadays (as reflected in new song ‘Belly of the Beast’).

Deputy Barat, (Carlito/Carlos) the yin to the Doc’s yang, the Mindy to his Mork, the Nancy to Sid with the emotional bruises to prove it. Sometime actor and long-time debonair, he’s the hardy boundary-tester on the waiting list for the Garrick (still), the calmer of the storms, the sun to the crops, the rain that nourishes the eco-system, his ‘libertine’ ink-job indelible evidence that not ‘living it’ is worse than death. Sinceritus in maxmimus.

Sticksman G-Pow, the backbeat, the rock, possessor of the ‘just signed-off’ at the DHSS facade, his grin the look of a man who knows he can walk down the street and look the human race in the eye again. Life is about being acknowledged after all. Who’s the other one? Jimmy? Dave? Oh, him, he lives in Denmark with 9 cats.

According to the Britannia Encyclopaedia 2.0 (Wikipedia) a libertine is ‘a person, especially a man, who freely indulges in sensual pleasures without regard to moral principles’. Thankfully, Pete’s now free from the moral maze, the sensory heights done with, he’s purely about the art now, with renewed vim and vigour inspired by Geoff’s graffiti in The Hawley Arms’ log-boxes and boy, are we the lucky ones.

As Chuck Dickens would have it ‘What a Uriah Heep a-shit’

Advertisements

An open letter to the NME

09 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Kemper Boyd in An open letter to ...

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Liam Gallagher, Morrissey, New Musical Express, NME

New NME

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/open-letter-new-nme/

Dear NME,

There isn’t an easy way to do this, but, here goes …

We went through so much together, shared so many special moments and cherished memories, through the good and the bad times you stood by me thick and thin, and then you went away with someone else, talking about other things that marginalised me, deliberately shunning me and forcing me to seek comfort in the arms of others. But, like the hussy you are, you came back. Saying you’d changed and that you’d learned from past misdemeanours. Well …

After a major group-think, corporate rethink and another revamp you’ve returned to an overcrowded free-blurb marketplace in a reduced, abridged and ever-atrocious format. Like an unlamented soap character who returns in a different guise you have already blended seamlessly into the crapsosphere, primed to join the mountain of discarded and ‘flicked-through’ ‘zines littered across the land.

The current BBC4 indie-rock-doc ‘Misfits’ highlights once more the terrain you used to occupy, manage and at one point dominate. A land of plenty, fertility and prosperity, a culture forever challenging and driven by a future to be imagined and attained, now amid a barren, arid and a culturally bereft desert you prop up the present with infantile dross and error-strewn PR drivel.
Your much vaunted return has underwhelmed yet again, have you learned nothing from the past 15 years? (Rhetoric alert) Oh, of course you haven’t, why even attempt to educate, inform and elucidate when you can parrot, rephrase, rehash, contributing to the industry of inanity, the perpetual past-present stasis that signposts all things CONSUMPTION.

Fashioning yourself as yet another ‘style bible’ another free rag-mag designed to coerce and seduce, aspirational claptrap disguised as accoutrements of avarice. Every page geared towards the oniomaniac impulse: accept and expend and don’t think. EVER.

they-live-buy-do-not-question

By plastering infant horrible and ex-member of ‘The Roly Polys’ Chris Moyles and deep-dish-actor Crem-Patz all over your front pages you have thrown in the towel once and for all, mooning over the lowest common denominator and whispering sweet nothings and empty promises. Who next, Grimmy? Shoot me now.

Like MTV your relationship with ‘music’ ended way back, pre-millennium, before music became aural wallpaper to be plastered willy-nilly and the backdrop to mundanity. Awash with advertorials and ill-thought think-pieces, synergy and platforms are your raison d’etre now, a sad reminder of a once luminous past, even the ghosts of yore don’t knock at your door anymore. Well, quasi-breathing anachronism (and ambassador for ‘Catch that Thatch’ hair extensions) Liam Gallagher might, he’s permanently on the look-out for some kind of cathartic-comeback. Here he comes now singing ‘Alimony-money …’

MIck MIller and fan

Ex-Oasis-man Liam and uber-fan outside Pretty Green’s flagship retro-repository, Carnaby Street, London, UK

Editor Mike Williams opined earlier this year ‘the evolution of 2015 is our boldest ever move’. Really, Mick? Cash your cheque and carry on bellowing smoke up and down the corporate shit-chute of conformity. The Star’s sleb-pages beckon for you.

In the words of former hero turned litigant, Morrissey ‘I could say more, but you get the general idea’

Yours no more,

Kemper Boyd

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014

Album reviews An open letter to ... Book reviews Doppelgangers EP reviews Famous Last Words Features Film reviews Have we met before? Interviews Krankie Watch LIve reviews Monster Mash-up Other Protocols of the Scions of Elders Protocols of the Scions of Elders #1 Separated at birth Should've been a Bond theme Sigue Sigue Sputnik Singles of the week Songs Morrissey should cover Songs where the cover's superior Theatre The Gestation Files: Disc-ovary of the week Uncategorized Video reviews welcome

Recent Posts

  • Songs Morrissey should cover#14
  • “I’m on my own now, you’ve gone and left me …
  • Have we met before? #161
  • Have we met before? #160
  • INTERVIEW: Bis

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blogs I Follow

  • The Post-Punk Professor
  • BRITISH YOUTH CULTURE
  • FRANK OWEN
  • TOFFEE FOR TEA
  • Pandaemonium
  • Peak Music Experiences
  • Stevie Chick
  • The Women's Liberation Music Archive
  • IMNN
  • The Academic Antidote
  • GODS & RADICALS
  • My Things - Music history for those who are able to read.
  • Crimes of Britain
  • Daddy Dewdrop Says
  • Infinite Coincidence
  • Jamie Stern-Weiner
  • britishideascorporation.co.uk/
  • statiknoizeblog.wordpress.com/
  • Songography for The Wedding Present and Cinerama
  • Bigmouth.
Advertisements

Blog at WordPress.com.

The Post-Punk Professor

Reading my way through pop culture one book at a time

BRITISH YOUTH CULTURE

A journey through the history of British Subculture Fashion

FRANK OWEN

Author and Investigative Reporter

TOFFEE FOR TEA

Everything With a Blue Toffee fFavour

Pandaemonium

Peak Music Experiences

Research and reflections by Ben Green

Stevie Chick

Author, Freelance Journalist, Sub-Editor and Lecturer

The Women's Liberation Music Archive

Feminist music-making in the UK and Ireland in the 1970s and 80s

IMNN

international media and nostalgia network

The Academic Antidote

Independent research and academic analysis into migration, media and international politics

GODS & RADICALS

A Site of Beautiful Resistance

My Things - Music history for those who are able to read.

On this site I share articles from my vast collection of music magazines. You can even buy them! Follow me on Facebook or Twitter to ensure you never miss an update!

Crimes of Britain

Revisiting and monitoring the crimes of Britain

Daddy Dewdrop Says

There is no antidote for arrogance with ignorance

Infinite Coincidence

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.

Jamie Stern-Weiner

Israel. Palestine. Israel-Palestine.

britishideascorporation.co.uk/

Stick your bugle into cool British culture

statiknoizeblog.wordpress.com/

Genres Don't Matter, Good Musik is Good Musik. Find Something New and Try It.

Songography for The Wedding Present and Cinerama

"I haven't heard this song in years, it never fails to start the tears"

Bigmouth.

Clever talk about music and pop culture

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy