Out of context introductions (pt1)

I used to write a singles column for The 405 and after a while it began to amuse me to see how egregious I could be leading into saying “here are your singles of the week”. So, out of context, here are your singles of the week.
It’s hard being out here on the farm, honestly, we hardly sleep at all. It’s force of habit from the old routine. In the years before the big telescope we’d have to get up in the middle of the night, pull on our boots and trudge in the dark for miles over to the neighbouring farm, all so we could see what content they were farming for clicks. Way back further before when, we used to have to wait and see what they had at the market, then just stare in awe as they took more and more of our share. We needed to do something drastic to stay afloat.
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For us the point is to keep up, so that when we get to market we look roughly the same, then we can rely on our charm and good looks to sell what we have. Although mostly it gets sold because we know folks there, we’ve made a point of knowing folks there, we went out of our way to know folks there. Thinking about it, I couldn’t even imagine having to rely on my charm and good looks, we wouldn’t make enough money to eat. Anyway, here are your singles of the week:
I haven’t been able to muster a single word about music since the EU referendum, I couldn’t see the point. I watched rolling news as the start of my dystopian short story became real life. Instead of the wagons circling back on us they turned and made for the horizon as we stared after them in horror. That type of thing.
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Much like a death, at some point you stop staring straight at the abyss and start looking for life around the edges, even if you don’t intend to. Even if you want nothing but the comfort of the deep. I found myself once again finding solace within sound, searching out records to play, nodding my head again. I realised that when I’m writing about importance, it’s not on a societal level, it’s for the individual.
Every song is an opportunity for a moment of freedom inside a world which grants us none. Every song is a fresh chance to break away from the endless same. Every song has the potential to be important to somebody, in some way, for reasons you may never know. The power, the importance, the necessity of music is driven by its ability to change your state of mind. It’s that simple. Music is a beautiful, overwhelming, bucket of sand to bury your head in. A comfortable pillow to rest your tired head, and sometimes that is the most important thing of all. Here are your singles of the week:
I’ve been sporadically writing about music in a public forum for eight years and I have run out of excuses. Yoni Wolf once sang that you swallow the cold and follow your breath until death, and there is a lot to be said for just swallowing it down and keeping it in your lungs. As my dear old Dad used to say, “content won’t keep you warm at night”. Here are your singles of the week:
I am contractually obliged to provide you with a few well thought out views on the latest Radiohead single because people won’t stop clicking on baited Radiohead links. Don’t blame me it’s not my fault, I can’t say it’s your fault either, that’s really bad for business and I’m not stupid. I just wish I hadn’t put in my cover letter that I could spot trends. I have to sneak through a quota of keywords and trending topics each week. I’m so fed up. Show them you really care they said, justify the gifs they said, here are your Singles of the Week:
I’ve not heard anything this week that I would want you to listen to, and I’m not prepared to lie about that. It’d be too easy to fill this space with music that doesn’t have any spark of life to it and call it life changing, but who knows where that path would end. Maybe one day I’d find myself nodding along to the latest Richard Ashcroft single and thinking, “that guy right there is a rock and roll legend, he appeals to a demographic that still pays for physical media. We should probably save the critical appraisal for someone millennials love because they don’t pay for anything and they express outrage by generating ad revenue”.
The horrible unrelenting truth of the matter is that people who were of music buying age in the 1990’s were the last generation to come through with the impulse to purchase and own music written into their DNA. Which is awful for everybody else, because it means pricks like Richard fucking Ashcroft are going to be wheeled out again and again until we’re all dead. Although perhaps the sweet release of death would be preferable when compared to a lifetime of major labels wringing cash out of nostalgic wanks.
Anyway here’s a song, because you clicked here expecting some music didn’t you? Try to forget I said anything. It should be easy. Here is your single of the week:
They said collaborate or die and it sounded like a threat, but they were firm in the assertion, it was an opportunity. One that I couldn’t refuse. Well, not if I wanted to remain out here on the farm. I guess the main problem is that I like it down here. Or that money is hard to come by if you’re content farming, even harder if you want to sell your content at market, because you have to follow the rules. Which is where they come in.
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The money used to be generated from your Mother’s purse, it would go to the big guys who would help finance our farming operation by paying for billboards to go on the farm boundary, where the road traffic could see it. Now mother’s purse funds the means to a click, not the click itself, so the rules have changed. The money is now generated by the content, so the system has skewed, they need us to farm them just to be seen at the market. It’s getting crazy out here, folks are always trying to get in, to switch the content we farm so gracefully with their own. We put up a big barbed wire fence to keep them out, Dad said it looked a prison yard, but it still didn’t stop them. They met us on the way to market, told us we had to take the content they had grown with us, as folks would click with us because they trusted us. By any means necessary they said, collaborate or die, it sounded like a threat but apparently it was an opportunity. Here are your singles of the week:
“One cannot survive on content alone” my dear old Dad used to say, and he was right, life can get pretty tough on the farm. There are times when you have to leave the tweets and press releases behind, head into the big city, and stock up on IRL interaction. We don’t like it, neither do the people we meet, but sometimes it has to be done. Here are your Singles of the Week:
I regularly get told that I’m angry, like I don’t get to decide, by people who don’t know me. Now, it is true that I used to care a great deal about things. It is also true that life has mellowed me since I moved out here to live on the old content farm. I don’t seem to care about anything like I used to. I have a basic grasp of human psychology and a keen eye for detail when it comes to data analysis, what have I got to be angry about? I mean I’m slightly irked that people think a hashtag on social media can and should have rules, but that’s as tough as it gets for me, I can sit back and watch people literally generate content for me. I can harvest all the clicks I need to make rent without ever having to think about it. Here are your singles of the week:
You leave the house, two children escalate insults as they walk past, it barely registers. In the car on the way into work, another driver pulls alongside you, all red faced gesticulations, you look straight ahead and drive on. At lunch, an elderly couple at an adjacent table argue about what it means to be vegan, you chew your flesh and stare out of the window. As you try to work, the banter of two lads goes awry outside the office, you hear them yell abuse at each other until you turn up the stereo and drown them out. Looking into your screen, two people you’ve never met briefly mock each other and you’ll never guess what happened next. It’s hilarious, it’s so weird, honestly you don’t want to be the only one not to know about this; hurriedly pasted URL’s are generating minuscule amounts of revenue for content farmers. Adverts are accidentally clicked on mobiles, whole page pop ups hide their little crosses, video clips burst out between paragraphs of hyperbole. Wheat, oilseed rape, barley, we leave the field over the back for hay because the soil won’t let anything else grow. We do what we can with what we have, here are your Singles of the week:
All of the summer tours have been announced, the festival dates are booked, the brands have been tied in. The admin staff are very much on board. The cycle has been agreed upon and smoothed out to fit perfectly. The narrative is written and we are just waiting for it to be broadcast.
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These are trying times down on the content farm. We’ve been kicking the dust all week wondering what to cmd+V, but I’ll let you into a little secret, at the bottom of the news fields we have a lovely little river that is just exquisite at this time of year. In the afternoons we sit in the ebb of the shallows and watch the vast current of nothing flow, hoping for a juicy tweet to drift past. Sometimes we sit on the shore, dipping our toes into the cold water, watching the indulged monetise each tributary in turn as our friends drown downstream in the lake. Drape whisky, K**** sneakers, PJ Harvey’s late night chat show, the Jack Garratt gag reflex diet. Whatever you need, it’s all for sale in the great dull lull between awards and festivals. Luckily, for you, here are your Singles of the Week:
Crocodile Dundee’s Barry Hogan, esteemed leader of the Association of Tennis Professionals, has finally admitted this week that he didn’t actually give his Alligator teeth to Wimbledon Tennis Club. In fact, we saw on Bebo that the tennis will be cancelled until “if and when” it actually takes place, and then it only won’t be cancelled because it’ll be happening. Although technically it could still be postponed. Big Baz Dundee says there is only one thing that you really need to do, you must give all of your spare gator teeth to him, so that he can make many more necklaces to hang around his neck. Don’t ask any questions, and don’t for god sake ask if he will give the tennis players any necklaces. The Association of Tennis Professionals is made up of tennis players with integrity, who play for the love of the game, they are not motivated by fancy gator teeth necklaces. Everybody knows that.
The real problem here, and I think deep down we all know this, is the unbelievable speed that people can pass words amongst themselves nowadays, with new fangled technology and whatnot. You speak to me, I instantly understand the words, it’s like we talking in the same language. With those words, the ones you speak and I understand, you ask for an explanation. You want to know what happened to all your gator teeth. The man with all the necklaces looks at you angrily, shrugs his shoulders, then walks away. My top friend on myspace said that as he went he overheard him say “I guess it’s time to get a real job, but that’s ok, I was getting tired of killing crocodiles.”
Here are your Singles of the Week:
I am a dull white man. Let me tell you why we should be friends, the music industry is run by dull old white men who think that fun is a place they visited whilst high on coke in the mid-nineties, and the music press is run by dull foetal white men who have an idea of what fun might be but have never dared leave their allowance behind to find it. Anyway, here are your Singles of the Week:
Everyone is rushing to have an opinion on K****, whilst knowing deep down that they’ll change it later to make sure they fall on the right side of history. It’s an interesting time, the press is no longer tomorrow’s fish wrappers, it’s digested and spat out quicker than you can shit. Anyway, I have nothing to say about K**** so here are your Singles of the Week:
The sheer number of bands that we’ve hyped over the years is pretty terrifying, the problem is they don’t go away. Once you’ve said they’re the best band to ever wear clogs they expect you to write about them again, and again, and again. It’s awful. Who knew that the last wave of bands to make any money from music would stick around? Who knew the first wave of bands to not make any money from music would stick around? (Delete as applicable) I guess some people are not motivated enough to get proper jobs, here are your singles of the week:
I love this time of year. All the bigger kids come back down to the content farm, pushing the smaller kids off the swings with their announcements, readying themselves for the release of their late Q1/early Q2 albums in time for the upcoming festival moneyball season. You can’t beat it, you should taste the steam that rises from the yellow snow in my inbox, it smells glorious. Here are your singles of the week:
I have a lot say about brotection in the music industry and the criminal behaviour of arseholes, but this goes beyond my narcissistic need to comment, now is the time to listen to what you are being told and support those voices in anyway you can. Read, listen, be the change. Here are your singles of the week:
I always feel like a jerk at this time of year. I think it’s because the adverts tell me to repent for the sins that took place in December. I try to remember the teachings of my hero, Ghandi, who once inspirationally said “Be the arsehole you want to see”. Anyway, I’m going to let the music handle the chat this week, it’s traumatic enough for me just pretending to care about anything other than myself. It’s a privilege I take very seriously. Here are your singles of the week:
I read recently that new year’s resolutions were a waste of time, or at least trying to start them on January first is a waste of time, that beginning anything whilst on a come down from the big emotionally draining holiday is just setting yourself up to own your failure. You should allow yourself a couple of weeks respite to evaluate where your life is at, and more importantly, where you’d like it to be. Get back into the grind, recognise what your “grind” is, and how you ended up where you are. Think it through before making positive changes, set achievable goals, remember that small steps climb big mountains and all that. Type it over a nice picture and put it on Instagram if you have to. Do whatever you need.
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You know that every single day lasts a lifetime. Or so it can feel. But trust me when I say,when you look back with the clarity of knowing you’re near the end, your life will feel like a single day. It’s easy to put things off, to say that you’ll do them tomorrow and slowly forget the promises you made yourself, but can you imagine how it feels to look back and wonder what you could have achieved if you had just given yourself a chance. I’d hate for that to happen to you. I’d hate for you to have had the chance to live free happily, and end up only with regret, I’d hate for that. Your life is a fragile animal, you should celebrate the ridiculous odds against you even existing at all, you should seek to add meaning to the wonderful accident that is you just being alive and aware of it. Every day is a new opportunity, you are free to wake up each morning and say “well yesterday is a day that I’ll never have to live again”. You can tick it off and file it among the many days of same, that is your right, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to be old and full of glassy-eyed memories. To know that you lived with the spirit of all you had. To be thankful for the chances you were given, the places you put yourself in, and to know that you made the best of them while you could. Here are your singles of the week:
Shout out to all you non-believers queuing up for Christmas presents. The process of making the stuff you resent having to buy is strangling the Earth and will be the death of your grandchildren. At least you’ll be able to say that you kept up with your peers — here are your singles of the week:
Honestly, I can’t sit here and write about music whilst my elected representative is voting to drop bombs on human beings, voting to rain fire upon actual living and breathing human beings, voting to return them to dust.
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We must cut, devalue, and close our public services, one by one we must run them into the ground. Our schools, hospitals, libraries, fire stations, police stations, our lifeboats. We must not protect ourselves, heal, educate, care, organise, have a choice, or try to change. We must just watch passively as they burn, we must let them get on with it, we must accept this as reality and go to work and buy christmas presents and complain about the weather. The goddamn awful weather. I had to carry an umbrella. The horror, the horror of it all.
We, the “all in this together unless you can afford to opt out and look on in mock terror” we, must destroy all the things that help the people that need our help the most, because the vulnerable don’t make donations to my elected representative, because the vulnerable won’t increase the stock value of my elected representative’s corporate interests, because we all have to make allowances when we are at war.
I can’t sit here and write about music resigned to the fact that my elected representative is hungry to kill real human beings, that it has been voted for and so it will be done, that they laughed. That they fucking laughed as they filed out of the room, delirious from the thrill of the kill.
Here is a song by Shearwater called ‘Castaways’. You might as well call it my single of the week.
