Cool As

Cool Bands

The TV is on, and MTV2 is on the TV. On MTV2 is the Top 50 Cool Bands. I am suspicious of anything touted as cool, as it will invariably be deemed uncool within about twenty minutes - I remember the NME doing an 8-page feature about The Darkness last year, and now it seems they are having to ring publicists themselves to go to events. Also, little metal scooters, Prague and branches of Yo! Sushi.

So anyway, I turn to channel 445 to see... Babyshambles. Now, I don't want to sound like some guy who's always moaning and saying "What's that racket, you could hear the words in my day" etc, but I am absolved on this particular occasion as I was born in the same year as Pete Doherty. 1979 is the shit-hot year this year. So. Babyshambles. Never was a band more aptly named. Apart from purely musical issues (inability to tune a guitar, no songs, tin ear etc) I still have a major problem with them. They just aren't very good. But even that I could handle in isolation.

It's the cult of Pete that I can't stand. It's the idea that he's being hassled by the police deliberately, is some Byronic anti-establishment hero, the people's poet, a beautiful fucked-up genius the same as the Romantic poets, Kurt Cobain and Jagger and Richards in 1968 after they were busted for marijuana. Who would break a butterfly on the wheel, to quote the Times editorial that eventually got them off?

Well, if you are a high-profile drug addict who flaunts his habits as part of his image whilst still being constantly arrested for possession, I'd think that the police would find you interesting. If you have form like him (drugs, assault, drugs, breaking and entering and then drugs again), they'd find you interesting no matter who you are. The idea that Pete Is Innocent is frankly offensive. He flails about in eyeliner with a lighter in his mouth, mumbling incoherently and showing off his trackmarks just so, to catch the light and underline his delicacy under the crushing weight of a philistine world that cares not for truth, beauty and the bohemian way. Well, bollocks. If he was such an opressed flower they wouldn't let him off bail to play gigs. You did it so off you go to prison. Again. And it doesn't matter how many records you sell (although he really isn't as known for that as he once was and the interested should look at just how much Babyshambles sell compared to the Libertines), you were caught with a load of Class A drugs in your car, you did it, it's a fair cop, now fuck off and don't come back. If he really were on the same career trajectory as his peers he should be dead within about 18 months.

But that's nothing as compared to my opinions of the NME, who voted him the coolest person of 2005 last year. It's bad enough that his own publicity machine is selling his addictions and atrocious self-pitying behaviour as laudable, but that a national magazine with a high circulation amongst impressionable 15 year olds does is unforgivable. Slavishly uncritical editorialising (including the idea that the Met are harrassing him) and big pictures of him looking glamorously ripped to the tits are standard fare. He is an exciting, unique voice, Our Pete, our hero, one of us. Rubbish. And selling that image as attractive is tantamount to selling the drugs yourself. Calling Craig Nicholls of The Vines a genius on the basis of ripping off Nirvana and only ever eating Big Macs was another, and isn't it amazing how fast they dropped him when it turned out he wasn't a rebellious artist after all, it was just Asperger's Syndrome. That's not something we can sell. How last year is that?

In reality, he'll be fine. He'll do his time, clean up and then vanish without trace before 2007 is over. Because he's rich. Look at Kate Moss, it's the same thing there. Drugs plus money equal publicity. Get caught, cry, go into rehab in Arizona, make a load of new money advertising a perfume called Opium (Christ, it'd be funny if it wasn't true) and finally resolve to be more careful in future, checking for cameras before chopping one out, no matter how itchy you are. But the kids who fall into crack because they are suffering like their hero will not be fine. No multi-million pound ad campaign selling their images and lifestyle. No help, no chance and more than likely, no Pete.

You might say I'm just being middle aged. And I admit, I am no longer cool. I am 26, and so far too old to be of interest to advertisers. But I say no. I am not yet stood in the aisle at HMV looking at the Supertramp section and thinking "Ooh, Breakfast In America!", and by the time I am I will have no idea who the contemporary Pete Doherty might be and so no longer care. In fact, I was never cool, even when I was 17 in 1996. But I know crap when I hear it, and I definately know a twat when I see one.

Mr D had another day in court today, charged with posessing crack and heroin again, and the fact that he was nicked for it a week after his last sentencing for drugs is frankly astonishing. Kicking a Radio 1 reporter for having the nerve to do her job is one thing, but to do it on the steps of a magistrates court is quite another. He's a dick, plain and simple.

So I'm off to seethe some more and await a libel action.
Good night, and good luck
Dougal