my life as a artist
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does ghetto blaster make glasto better?
Monday 5th May 2008 10:38 PM
On the announcement that Jay Z, the 'rags to bitches', hip-hop super-star, is going to headline the Glastonbury festival, Noel Gallagher says;
'I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong.'
Noel, who also 'slams City's sacking of Sven', goes on to say that the festival has a long history of miserable white blokes playing guitar-based songs with unfeasibly long anthemic choruses.
The last time I bothered making the trek to the pyramid stage was in 1961, to see Pearl and Teddy Carr, so it's unlikely that I'll get to see the Jay Z gig. Except for Iced Tea, 10 cent and Snoopy the Dog, my knowledge of the hip-hop scene is sketchy, so I thought I'd check out some of Jay Z's lyrics on the internet.
There could be layers of irony that I'm not getting here, but he mainly talks about what an all-round brilliant bloke he thinks he is. He tells us that he's the best rapper and really hard, and that he's immensely wealthy and gets plenty of sausage action. I suspect that this delusory self-celebration masks a chronic insecurity, and it wouldn't surprise me if he holds onto his willy when he sings.
A lot of Jay's pain comes from a difficult childhood spent on the mean streets of Brooklyn, where he was set apart from his peers by a state of extreme poverty. While the other kids were running around in the latest fashionable trainers, Mr and Mrs Z were so poor that the young Jay had to suffer the embarrassment of 'hangin in the hood' in a pair of Kermit the frog wellington boots. A muddy Glastonbury could offer Jay the chance of healing.
This time when he slips on a pair of wellies, it'll be an act of inclusivity, and maybe, for the first time in his life, he'll be able to experience the practicality and comfort, and that indefinable sense of impermeable nurture, that only rubberised footwear can bring. When I wear wellies, I feel held and protected, and it gives me an almost godlike inner strength, where I feel that I could heal the sick and walk through water.
if it's dry and not a drip-drop
you'll hear the sound of clip-clop
that's the slapping of my flip-flop
as I'm dancing to some hip-hop
by a bloke who thinks he's tip-top
but should be working in a chip-shop
Posted 10:38 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
looking for a sign
Tuesday 29th April 2008 11:03 PM
It's Monday evening, and I'm enjoying the trance-like after-effects that you get when you drink a particularly perky cup of orange pekoe, china rose petal tea, and listen to Money Box Live. Seeking something to write about, and aghast at the sheer multiplicity of things, I decide to consult radio 4 as a five second oracle. I briefly consider consulting radio 5 as a four second oracle, because it's a sort of joke, and then go back to the original plan. It's a woman's voice speaking calmly but firmly.
'You just have to tell them what happened. They're going to be a bit disorientated….'
So I'm telling you what happened, and if my divinatory powers of radiomancy are still functioning, then I imagine you must be feeling a bit vague and directionless. Don't worry, me too. I like to think of it as a place of all possibilities.
I decide to go to today's magic validation word for inspiration, so I click on home page, go to 'my life as a artist', scroll down, click on comments, eat six oatcakes, covered in tahini and honey, because it feels nice against my skin, scroll down, past the comments to the magic validation word… and…. the magic validation word is…. 'word'. When the world becomes tight-lipped and inscrutable like that, I often think it's best just to go to bed, so I did.
It's Tuesday evening, and I'm enjoying the after-effects of unused adrenalin, pumped and clotted during the heart-congealing hour and a half of the Man United versus Barcelona game. In the last ten minutes, I tried to medicate myself with one of the 'magi-cigs' that my mum bought me at the car-boot sale last week, and I must say, it tasted really spicy, and I could really feel it doing me good.
'The game was a living painting, and on the crowd-framed canvas of the pitch, artists of different schools splashed and crafted their myriad styles, passion and technique fused in a fabulous flurry of physical paint', Rio Ferdinand said afterwards. Ronaldo's rococo swirls, (possibly Lisbon's most popular breakfast cereal), were in impudent contrast to the elegant functionality of Art Deco. To be honest, during the last-ten-minutes, I lost my focus a bit, and it just ended up all Brown and Messi.
Posted 11:03 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
