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i'll have to agree the year out backpacking in goa bit is the kicker.
Nobody spends a whole year in Goa, as any fule kno.
The party season runs from November to February, at which point the rainy season starts, so it's time to move North and carry on raving in Dharamasala, or McCloud Ganj. Where you can meet the Dalai Lama, if you like.
To clear up the situation with Kula Shaker, who I'd agree are unfairly lambasted, both in Phonogram and elsewhere;
In the contentious interview, what Crispian (OK, but nobody gets to name themselves until they join an internet message board, right?) said was that the Swastika was a Hindu symbol of peace, love, etc which had been reversed by Hitler's PR people (as far as I know, this is factually correct) and that consequently, Hitler 'knew what he was doing'. The book Crispian was referencing here is 'The Morning Of The Magicians' by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, which posited the notion that the high-ranking Nazis were into teh darque magicks. Whether or not that's actually the case I don't know, but all I can say is that I read that book during my year off in India, and that if you're on a steady diet of pot, opium and LSD, as all righteous people are by the time they've made it far enough North to even think about trying to arrange a meeting with the Dalai Lama, it makes a lot of sense.
Back in London it makes less so, but it's hard to blame Crispian for trying to keep the vibe going, I suppose. George Morrissey, after all, did exactly the same thing after his time away in India.
The trouble really started, with regard to Kula Shaker, when it emerged that his mother, Hayley of movie fame (for younger readers, older guys in your family will almost certainly have shared an intimate moment with Hayley and a box of tissues at some point in their sorry lives) had been going out with this or that character with connections to a Hard Right occult sect. The implication being, at the time, that Crispian had fallen under the guy's spell, and was using his band's sub-Happy Mondays, Psych-Mod influenced pop records as a means to further some sort of Neo-Nazi agenda.
And, fair enough, he did write;
'Hey Dude
Don't lean on me, man
You treat me like a woman
When I feel like a man!'
But perhaps he was on about his step-father when he said this? Who knows.
Anyway, Mills was really gone at, when all this stuff came out, by the kind of music journalist that seems fairly despicable, IMVHO, for a number of reasons.
A)'Tommy Udo' was the hack who, if memory serves, broke the original story with regard to the crypto-fascist occult connections, but what would have to have gone wrong with things generally if you purport to be the authentic voice of the shut-down steel mills etc, but nevertheless hide behind a fairly obvious B-movie pseudonym? I suppose his real name is Valentine.
B)I wonder about the kind of 'writer' (Simon Price is the masterclass in this) who goes on about The Posh People, while at the same time celebrating artistes who are quite clearly going to send their children to boarding school, should the record sales pan out. The offspring of the Manic Street Preachers, say, (Richey did the right thing)are about as likely to end up going to the local comp, at least for more than a month, than Wills or Harry. And that apart, shouldn't individuals who are that hung up about the cash they claim to despise just have got a job in the City? They're not that hard to get if you're clever, 'unprincipled' (and what a joke that is, these days ...) and can string a sentence together - is it so awful to expect 'writers' to stand by their choices?
C)Apparently so.
D)When these characters were gunnning for Kula Shaker, weren't they, in a sense, attacking their own reflections? Mills' most vocal critics (Udo, Stephen Wells) having been vaguely associated with Hard Right movements themselves, having been former skinheads?
Basically, I think the Bluetones were far worse.
And that Lauren Laverne isn't nearly as funny as she thinks she is, either. |
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