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| Young people, probably not so young any more. via dr.regor |
Robert Foster from Platform doesn't feel that young anymore. I'd like to say it gets better. I'm not going to say that, but I'd like to. Here he writes about trying to keep the dream alive.
FOREVER YOUNG
Hi! I’m 28 years old and I’ve got my shit together, more or less. I make money and I pay bills and I’ve got a decent future set up doing what I want to do, like everyone who’s even vaguely happy at 28.
It was touch and go for a while, sure, but I’m pleased all that shit’s underway now, I’m also really very pleased I’ve managed to eek out my adolescence for an extra eight years after it ended. I make jokes and show people cool stuff with my bezt budz for a living, I wear a different stoops punk t shirt every day, I buy sneakers like they’re going out of style (they never will) and I’m never bored. How have I done it? Well, the dole helped for a while, I met a lot of other feckless dreamers at art school, and getting sailor tattoos all over me has put paid to any chance of a career in accountancy, but it’s mainly because -like Newton and Oasis said- I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.
You see, there are trailblazers in the field of permanent adolescence that I’ve admired for years. Sure, there’s dropouts, deluded idiots and video shop employees in every suburban town, but I’m not interested in them (unless I need to buy weed when I’m at my parents’ house), I’m interested in the guys who’ve really made a success of themselves and left their mark without losing their sense of humour, their easy vybz or their imaginations.
At this point I was going to give you a listicle of my favourite successful perma-teens, but it started to cross over into a motivational speech to myself, sort of like Bruce Willis’s “you are a neat, neat guy” turn in Friends, and I also ended up writing about 1000 words about how great Fat Mike from NOFX is, which was unnecessary because all I really had to do was link you to his Cokie The Clown SXSW performance where he told sad stories and pissed in everyone’s drinks to prove he’s way more than just another dumb pop punk guy (I was also informed not everyone would feel the same about him as me…).
So, instead of a bunch of guys I have a heterocrush on, I’m going to tell you the records that keep me as unsophisticated and irresponsible as a hormonal monkey coming off Ritalin.
Smut Peddlers – Porn Again
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| In which a bunch of chubby white guys rapped about their sex and violence fantasies. |
Fantasy and masturbation is a big deal when you’re a teenager, it’s an incredible outlet, but it’s tainted by guilt and feelings of inadequacy. What Smut Peddlers went and did here is they embraced the inadequacy (“I’m not too bright, my brain’s made of oatmeal…”) and removed the guilt, creating an amoral place for all their stoopid childish nonsense while other men their age get jobs in finance. On this album it doesn’t feel like it’s a group or a crew, it’s feels like a co-dependant support group for Jewish wiggers well into their thirties who like video games. You can scoff at that, but I think it’s adorable. Cage (the guy in the harness at the beginning) has since lost a lot of weight and looks like he plays guitar in Death Cab For Cutie. He blew it.
(I’d give you a download link for this but it turns out Amazon , go get it, the cd inlay’s worth the asking price alone). This is an INCREDIBLE video:
Slayer – Undisputed Attitude
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| In which Slayer played punk and hardcore covers. |
This record is just simply the brute masculinity of Slayer mixed with the retardedness of early hardcore. What’s that you say? Retarded masculinity? Welcome to my underpants from 13-18. There’s an energy to this album that you can’t tap into unless your penis’s muscle memory can recall those precious adolescent years of raging hardons and raging anger. But if you can harness that energy by remaining young at heart and drinking coffee while listening to it, you’ll get everything done that you need to do today.
(This is the only Slayer album that has ever spent a lot of time in bargain bins, meaning lazy music fans are the main demographic who own this record.)
Gravediggaz – 6 Feet Deep
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| In which the guy who made the beats for 3 Is The Magic Number put everything in a minor key and someone gave them a cool looking knife for the album cover. |
You can’t see it unless you’ve got the inlay, but that knife is half knife, half knuckleduster. It’s the coolest! Teenagers love cool looking knifes. Remember those school trips to France and subsequent expulsions resulting from the illegal importation of cool knifes? Remember the rumour and intrigue surrounding the disappearance from lessons of a particularly spotty but muscular nerd? Thems were exciting times. Most times, it was a kid with an older brother who had a lot of anime and found a dead body, maybe. That atmosphere of ‘did he didn’t he?’/'what happens when cannibals eat your cock?’/'he’s got a video of a man being fucked by a horse’ urban myth type stuff is what this record’s all about. By that I mean, it’s a bunch of exaggerated stories told by guys who know the names of different gun brands. You’ll love it.
Smoking Popes- Destination Failure
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| In which the Smoking Popes are adorable. |
It’s a bunch of upbeat but kind of downbeat love songs that perfectly replicate the feeling you had when you got smoochy for the first time with a girl who you thought was cool, then you walk home feeling so crushed out your heart could explode. If it’s the first time (or maybe the first five times) you get with a girl, you still haven’t learned how horrific human relationships are, so you’re psyched on marrying her and you feel a warm feeling that you stop feeling by the time you’re 21 and your first thought after getting smoochy is “I wonder if she’s got an eating disorder and self esteem issues like the last one?”. If you can hold onto that warm feeling and channel it via Destination Failure, you’re set to not view every encounter and tryst through cold, dead adult eyes and reduce it to prospects, convenience and whether or not you’ve got the time for this sort of thing. That’s called enjoying things in the moment and not sweating the small stuff like a little bitch.
Beastie Boys – Aglio E Olio
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In which the Beastie Boys finished what they started 12 years before.
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This is the Beastie Boys playing hardcore like they did when they started out, there’s a million hardcore records that sound like a bratty kids having no strings fun, but this is coolest because by 1995 the Beastie Boys were famous millionaires and they still wanted to act like their 17 year old selfs and beat the shit out of some instruments and yell cocky things at a sweaty crowd of kids. If you can hold onto that urge to get loose like an idiot, congratulations, you’ve still got a sense of humour and you’re still young.
Look, I made a minimix for you! It’s got all these guys on!
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3 comments:
Good stuff here Bob. Suppose that's obvious since I posted it here, but you know, still.
Guy up top kind of looks like Bob anyway.
The Smut Peddlers? No thanks.
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