MUSIC IS JUST BACKFLIPS NOW: OLD BANDS FOR OLD HEADS.

By Grave Matthews. you goddam punk.

So we have a new barmaid down the local, lovely lass, but she keeps taking over the jukebox and putting on just the worst music, every single time a song comes on I cover my ears and screech like a frightened barn owl, then I ask “Who the fuck is this wanker?” And she tells me Fergus Dinklepiss or Pilchered Churchyard or whichever spoiled Victorian child is flavour of the month.

Now I noticed something interesting about these people, do you want to know the running string between all of these people she tells me about? They’re all PEOPLE.

AH-HA! I have uncovered a fuckin’ mystery right here ain’t I, and not like my friend Davey Bones with the whole “Me nans a lizard. She blinks sideways I fookin swear it.” Thing, but an ACTUAL mystery.

Now at this point you’re probably sitting there wondering, well what’s the mystery? Why is this worth talking about? People are making music, big whoop, make some bunting why don’t ya, but all these people making music, well they’re people, but in my day they used to be BANDS.

So what happened to bands?

Back in my day all music was bands, as far as the eye could see bands of 4-7 dudes, with their bell bottomed trousers held together with vomit and cum, they weren’t good looking, they didn’t wear shoes or groom themselves in any way possible, no, they were real men who looked like every step was fucking agony.

They looked like they could fight an entire bar full of mostly dead people and then fuck for 30 seconds before they got winded, they looked like they could fill a joint with the resin in their fucking massive sideburns, it didn’t matter that they were ungroomed and shirtless cause in every group there was at least one member who looked like Gollum mixed with a cartoon snowman, so as long as you weren’t that guy it was all good and if you were that guy it didn’t even matter because you were so permanently fucked up that you had god on one shoulder telling you it was all good and to go kick the fuck out of a postbox.

And they were everywhere, you couldn’t fucking move without accidentally kicking a member of Little Feat to death, fucking everywhere they was, you’d go for a piss and half of The Allman Brothers band’d be in there just standing around, unblinking, talking about bathrooms is where they go to hide from god.

And they’d all huddle together on street corners and they’d wander off and the Music Management people would have to try and round them up with their sheepdogs, sure sometimes you’d get them mixed up a bit, get a bit of Peter Frampton in your Rolling Stones but who cared, the point was they existed together.

NOW, it’s just singular people, and all they do is wander around ON THEIR OWN and just do backflips every now and again and look really good, and that frankly ain’t shit.

But the thing is, the gall is, is that they WANT US TO BE IMPRESSED WHEN THEY DO THEIR LIL BACKFLIPS.

Now hear me out.

I went to go see KISS in 1982, tiny venue Bucket O’Piss in Hudley Upon-Thames, real shit venue, constantly on fire a bit, two old men were considered corner stones of the building, one time one of them got up to take a piss and I swear the whole building shuddered a bit, the coat check was actually the backroom of a Debenhams and they’d sell your coat for £2 while you were in there. You’d complain and they’d get your nan to come out and beat the shit out of you, cause what the fuck are you going to do, fight your nan? She’d fucking have you in a second.

But they took the stage that night, these four or five fuckers, I don’t know how many there are in KISS, can’t count, but they took the stage that night and they fucking killed it, and the topper? The fucking topper?

During one of the songs these four/five men, these four/five men who look like they’ve never showered and think numbers only go up to a hundred and anything after that is fake news, these fuckers who look like they think Noels House Party is “Alright, but a bit too on the intellectual side.”

These four men stomped their feet………….. in fucking unison, all four/five of them.

They each raised one of their little feet and they brought it down three times, sure the Cat Man was a bit off, but the fact remains, they all almost stomped in perfect unison, now think about that right.

The amount of fucking time it must have taken for those fellas to learn how to do that, god I don’t even like to think about it, probably fucking months if not years. For that group of fuckers who look like they live off of pies, fries and hate it’s the equivalent of learning rocket science in a day, you know those Apes that learn sign language? Like that but more impressive. It was amazing to witness, like seeing the face of god, I’m not ashamed to say I cried that night, the only .

But now you want me to be impressed that a dude with a moustache, a dude who looks like he works out a few times a week, is on top of his mental health and has showered and known love and care can do a fucking backflip? Fuck off.

At the very least if you want me to be impressed get every person on your crew to do a backflip, all of them, at the same time, then we can fucking talk Bedward Boonie or whatever the fuck your name is, let me know when you have a fucking out of shape dude called “Grim Gary.” who looks like he gets out of breath getting a handjob is up there doing fucking flips in the background, maybe then you’ll get my respect.

But these backflipping fuckers have killed it, they killed the band, bands were on the ground and these “Pfizer Fruitjuuls” or whatever the fuck their names are had a gun to their head and they pulled the trigger and backflipped off into the distance, and we shouldn’t fucking let them get away with it.

So next time you see someone backflipping do what I do, stand there with crossed arms and just silently shake your head at them, let them know you aren’t impressed or, you know actually I really lost where I was going with this honestly, this was meant to be about what happened to bands right? Sorry, I’ll get to that, actually wait a second, did I ever tell you lot about the time I saw Peter Green back in 1984?

That motherfucker did a backflip, but not like one of your modern day backflips, his was cool.