Another Way To Breathe

Indie is four people getting together wanting to create something sublime and immortal having had their lives swallowed by pop and needing to do the same, surveying the infinite possibilities and deciding three guitars some drums and some good songs will just about do. Indie is the scornful look from people your brain could eclipse and burn a million times over. Indie is every single transcendent spirit of humanity withered and died to the desire to succeed.

Indie is musical bigotry, political apathy, casual racism. Indie is a popularity contest that hates shallowness. Indie is revenge. Indie is the class weirdo with their own thrown in the sixth form centre. Indie is the dual luxury of the glamour of alienation coupled with party invitations. Indie is sauce over sex, ignorance over intuition, Gene over Gravediggaz, Powder over Pram and if you think that’s petty you weren’t here tonight, this was petty-lite. Indie is utterly wonderful.

“Buzzcocks did it first. Or at least were the first band that really mattered to my generation who did the unthinkable: Reform. Man, you should’ve heard the Greek Chorus of post punk condemnation. (three more from them later as John Peel used to say). It was a dark day back in 1989 when the news broke as my two skinny basin headed knock kneed pals and I listened to a cassette of the Buzzers ‘Razor Cuts’ bootleg, whilst bemoaning the inevitable besmirching of the ‘Cocks perfectly imperfect legacy - three albums and that run of singles. Remember, by the mid eighties the defunct Buzzcocks (notice I correctly refrain from writing The Buzzcocks. Annoying huh?) were seen as a major influence on The Smiths, The Mary Chain, the burgeoning C86 mob and erm, The Soup Dragons. In short, Buzzcocks (arghh) were close to canonisation. Then they went and blew it by reforming. My we were cross. Buzzcocks have now been reformed for 21 years. Sixteen years longer than when they were originally together.

( … )

In case anyone is wondering (and they’re not) I don’t give a shit how many adverts for car insurance Iggy Pop does, actually I think he should do more. He should advertise more shit. Nestle baby milk, go on Iggy, sell, sell sell. No one can deny Iggy a decent retirement fund. I also don’t give a shit about The Stooges reforming to perform ‘Funhouse’. God knows if one musician deserved a bit of payola it was the late Ron Ashton. What I do give a shit about is Iggy And The Stooges performing ‘Raw Power’ and making out it’s some kind of unloved under-appreciated black sheep of an album whose time has finally come. Give me a break man. When I was a teenager growing up in Portsmouth, every one of the fourteen cool people in that provincial shithole (for those interested I was approximately the third coolest) had a copy of ‘Raw Power’. And this was fucking Portsmouth in 1982. The record was a frigging set text. British punk would not have happened without ‘Raw Power.’ Every cunt knows this, so can we quit making out that it’s a matter of unfinished business.”

The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: “Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?”

Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, “Nothing.” Then Katz asked the women, “What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:

“I don’t make eye contact with men when I walk down the street,” said one.
“I don’t put my drink down at parties,” said another.
“I use the buddy system when I go to parties.”
“I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction.”
“I use my keys as a potential weapon.”

The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men’s side of the blackboard was blank. I was stunned. I had never heard a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of the women in my life — including my mother, sister and girlfriend — and realized that I had a lot to learn about gender.