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Why English music is the best: pretentious teenagers

lloydshep's picture

Big up and big thanks to Speechification for the archiving of Pete Paphides' glorious programme on the "lost" Duran Duran album Dark Circles. Bullet point reasons:

  • Stephen Duffy is a candidate for anyone's list of Greatest Living Englishmen
  • Nick Rhodes is not, as it turns out, a brain-dead dandy, but a witty bloke with a very Brummie line in self-deprecation
  • The stuff from Dave Unsworth of a rival Brummie band, who says Duran Duran had money thrown at them, were offered the world and a career being worshipped by legions of young women, but "you can't blame them, they were only 18." Ah, the vigorous self-righteousness of the failed pop musician
  • A reminder to me that the best English music comes from insufferably pretentious teenagers whose ambitions are completely out of whack with their musical ability. If you get a sufficient number of these insufferably pretentious teenagers and stir them up, you end up with Joy Division. This is important to remember when you're a father whose son is organising a gig for his band despite the fact that they can only play half of Teenage Kicks.

Thanks, Speechification lads. 0A77F160-50B8-4610-BFD6-ACE4164FAFDD.jpg

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I worry about multi channel TV and global warming...

...because I always thought the driver of creativity of British pop music was:
1. Boredom.
2. The weather.

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David Hepworth | 17 June 2008 - 4:35pm

True

...but boredom and the weather just send pretentious teenagers indoors, where their pretension feeds back and amplifies itself over pretentious drinks (absinthe!) and old black and white films. Only pretentious teenagers could turn boredom and the weather into an art form....

Thing is, even with multichannel television, mobile phones, social networking and xbox, my son still finds time to dream about being a rock star. All those other things serve to feed the dream rather than replace it. They used to plan world domination in department store cafes; now they do it on web message boards.

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lloydshep | 17 June 2008 - 4:48pm

As long as there are jug-eared, pasty-faced lads out there...

whose only chance of getting girls to like them is to strap on an electric guitar, bands will form. Let the sun shine brighter and the TV channels grow in number, for it is so.

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Patrick Crowther | 17 June 2008 - 5:13pm

Global warming will be the killer

If it gets warm we will turn into spain, ace country rubbish pop music;). I do worry that interweb have an additonal effect with all the miriad ways of entertaining yourself may well reduce the need to make stuff yourself?

also the retouching on that photo is weird!

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Chris G | 17 June 2008 - 5:26pm

Newsflash

Planet in mourning as 'lost' Duran Duran album turns up.

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Philip Bryer | 18 June 2008 - 5:57am

Not THE Dave Unsworth

I'm asuming it's not the one who signed for Villa and then moved because his wife told him to.He was in Birmingham less than a month. Not He Surely?

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Sour Crout | 17 June 2008 - 8:28pm
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