Moranthology Read Free Page A

entitled 522.
    In the hipster pecking order of the time, Ned’s—as their fans called them—were pretty much the lowest of the low: a group of lads from Stourbridge—the Midlands! My patch!—barely in their twenties, who made amiable, slightly slack-jawed, very white rackets for amiable, slightly slack-jawed, very white youths to leap around to. In terms of funk, or glamor, they rated level with Bovril, or the clog. Additionally, their career was past its best. They were on the wane.
    Nonetheless, a lack of funk, hotness or success is not, and never has been, a crime. It’s not even against park by-laws. Therefore, the thermonuclear savaging I proceeded to give that album, over 480 words, was as unnecessary and unprovoked as Chewbacca strafing the local duck pond with the Millennium Falcon .
    Actually, I wasn’t using weaponry a quarter as sophisticated as the Millennium Falcon . It was more like Chewbacca falling out of the Millennium Falcon , then wading into the duck pond and kicking the ducks, then stamping on the ducks, then punching the ducks—alarmed, innocent ducks, now all quacking as the Wookiee flailed at them, wholly unprovoked, and who didn’t leave the pond until the water was covered in tail-feathers.
    â€œHello, boys,” I opened—addressing the band directly. “Funerals are a bummer, aren’t they? Career in a coffin, all we have to do is chuck a bit of earth around, and troop through a thick grey gauze of rain to the wake, and get pissed. I have been chosen to stand, blearily, at the wake, and say a few words at the passing of your ability to ever sell records again. What can I say? The words of one of the great poets—Liam from Flowered Up—seem appropriate: “FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF AND DIE!”
    Eighteen years later, and I am still so mortified by what I wrote, I can only look at the middle section through my fingers: “Putrid . . . anthems to nothing . . . stink . . . dirges . . . nasty scribbles . . . no-one gives a flying fuck . . .”
    I accused them of being sexless, tuneless, fuckless, revolting: responsible for a musical climate where bands crawled on their bellies with three chords, rather than flying with the aspirations of gods. I was a total wanker.
    I ended with: “1994 was the year we waved goodbye to Kurt Cobain and That Bloke Out of Doctor Feelgood. Feel like making it a hat-trick, Jonn(nnnnnnnnn)?”
    Yes, that’s right—I ended an album review by wishing death on the lead singer, either by the methodology of Kurt Cobain, who’d shot himself in April, or the lead singer of Doctor Feelgood, who’d died of cancer in August. And spelt his name “sarcastically,” to boot.
    The review itself was sub-headlined, “Jesus, Caitlin—there are gonna be repercussions about this one.” As if the magazine itself was alarmed by what I’d written.
    Looking back now, I can see what I was doing. I was a seventeen-year-old, working in an office otherwise full of adults. I was a cub, savaging some prey, and bringing back the carcass to the pack elders, to impress them. I wanted to make my mark.
    However, even the most cursory examination of the situation shows us that I was not bringing back a mighty Arctic fox. I had just come back with a couple of sad, surprised ducks instead.
    And of course, we can also see that I was not a white-toothed wolf-cub, either—but a puffin, or a penguin, or a giant hen: some perambulatory creature not built for pugilism. I would never go up to someone at a party and be horrible to their face—so why was I doing it in a magazine? I was just thinking of what I wrote as “some copy”—some space filled on a page, with whatever came into my head at the time.
    But of course, it’s not just “copy.” There’s no such thing as “copy.” Putting things on paper doesn’t make it matter less.