Since it's New Years Eve, what are your plans?

Tonight we were tempted with going out, but the fact that it is New Years Eve has actually Detempted us. The streets will be full of enforced jollyness, people drinking to try to get laid, or to try and forget they're not getting laid, the streets full of men & women that I don't really like, after all, since when has intoxication been any good : the world is full of people who are on a mission to have a good time, and where that happens they'll inevitably be fights, puking, and hopefully a bit of romance. But since we are six months pregnant (cripes! six months!), and wallking ten minutes is difficult, we won't be going out. What's the point? Something that is hard enough in the first place (that is, going out), being compounded by the sheer number of people, multiplied by the likelihood of drunks./vomiting/fights means that we are staying in. Great shame, as Ellen's favourite band, The Concretes, are supporting Saint Etienne, who she also loves, eight miles away.

So 2004, in retrospective? It's just another year, really. A year ago I lived somewhere else, with someone else, and this year, I'm living with Ellen, in another place, with our baby on the way, and I've actually, never been happier. New Year Eve : I remember what I was doing for each of them, and whilst most of them I used to go out and get horrendously drunk to tolerate the company - (bad bands, wankers I thought were friends, priest, vicars, and so on and so forth) - now I'm goingt o stay in. Which is going to be brilliant.

Besides which, New Year's is like Christmas, the more you have the less bothered you are about them.

Cunt Of The Year? Pete Doherty of The Libertines. (Here's a discussion about him...). Now, I don't know him, I haven't met him, I haven't heard much of his music, though I did see The Libertines after he was thrown out - and they were pisspoor and woefully average in every respect. What do I know about him? He's been thrown out of one band for consistently being a smacked-out non-shower, and his other band, the aptly titled Babyshambles, have only played one show out of their last four. Of those three no-shows, he failed to arrive at the venue for two of them - including a 1,700 capacity headline show at the London Astoria, the type of venue most people would give their eyeteeth to play. (In fact, Matt Terry, singer of Dharma Drive, told me taht supporting a band at a venue that size was the best night of his life, whilst Pete Doherty can't be bothered to leave his smackedup stupor to even do the gig. That shows you which one of those two has more talent..)

Imagine you've got two huge-selling albums, your band are consistently on the covers of the weekly inkies that are devoured across the world as the arbiters of cool (even if the NME doesn't know it's arse from it's elbow there), your touted as an genius by thousands, - what do you do? DO you realise your ambition, make great records, and live the dream? Or do you sit in a squat, break into people's flats to get crack money, and sit in a drugged out junkie stupor trying to crowbar your constipated genius out of your useless brain like a fucked-up-hooker? What reason has Pete Doherty got to take drugs? Supressed child memories? That he's a rent boy? or is it that he's a stupid junkie loser who can't seperate myth from reality?

Myth = Drugs make you cool and creative
Reality = Drugs are for dickheads

Yep, Six months in prison for breaking into your lead-guitarists flat is so glamourous. Dickhead. I'm currently watching his Newsnight interview, where he tries to work out where his creativity comes from. Bollocks. Creativity comes from nowhere. It's either in you or it isn't. You can't force it. It's like taking drugs to unleash your inner footballer. (Though, to unleash your inner sportsman you probably have to sleep with hookers and crash cars).

It's bullshit. Seeing him I just get the feeling of a bewildered, fucked up useless idiot whose merely a shadow of what he used to be, and is too stupid/self-absorbed/selfish to try and save his thin slice of talent in favour of chasing some romantic notion of the fucked up junkie. There are millions of people who would give all they had to be in his position, being in a successful band with massive sales, a healthy live following... but anyone can be a junkie.

"Just another junkie loser" as the song goes.

Anyone who doesn't turn up to play in front of thousands of people, and consistently amkes a habit of it, is a fucking dickhead who deserves to go back to the day job. Watch the interview, and he comes across as a naive middle-class wanker whose completely up his own arse, self-absorbed in a world where he is a genius, believing the hype, and calling his former bandmate "His Highness" (or some other phrase). Let's play Fantasy Funerals 2005. Whose going to miss another talentless junkie?

(At least Kurt Cobain could write decent songs, fact fans).


- posted by Mark @ 9:36 am