Top Band: Dan le sac VS Scroobius pip

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

I always come late to the party as far as cool new bands go.  So, per­haps inev­it­ably, I am telling you all things you already know, but these guys are bril­liant.  There is a real move­ment abroad in the semi-spoken music genre.  Its not really rap; its cer­tainly not on the major theme or rap, which is primar­ily con­cerned with sex, power and wealth.  Or as rap puts it: Bitches, Guns and Bling Bling, Barrp!  No, this music comes from poetry.  There are numer­ous spoken artists out there I really like.  For example Ernie Cline is a bril­liant, eru­dite and very funny artist of the spoken word, and some artists have gone in this dir­ec­tion; for­sak­ing any music.  Their words become like a tirade against whatever it is they do not like.  Another example is Denis Leary who steals the jokes/wisdom of the great Bill Hicks and speeds them up, speak­ing very fast into the mike so that we the listen­ers are sat­ur­ated in words we can in one sense tell are import­ant, but we can­not focus on before being splashed by the next sen­tence.  The move­ment has also split and gone another way.  It star­ted with musical artists in the UK tak­ing US rap­ping and fla­vour­ing it for Eng­land.  Per­haps the inspir­a­tion was the mighty Eminem, per­haps not.  Nev­er­the­less, Eng­lish bands star­ted with lyr­ics about life in the UK, which was spoken over music and beats.  The early suc­cesses I listened to were The Streets (Dry Your Eyes being one of the most mov­ing songs I ever heard), but of course this great band have been all but eclipsed by the amaz­ing and tal­en­ted Arc­tic Mon­keys, who com­bined the words with much more than just beats, effect­ively (to my ears) being a mod­ern inter­pret­a­tion of Mad­ness (who I saw live two weeks ago and still rock hard).

Any­way, like I said, I am hardly an expert on music.  As oth­ers might say of art, “I don’t know music, but I know what I like!”.

I like Scroobius a lot.

I came across this song on You Tube and it imme­di­ately grabbed me.  I post the lyr­ics here, which are very good and I have bought all the avail­able tracks from iTunes.  I will buy more when they make it onto there.  They are much more irrev­er­ent than The Streets and not as main­stream as The Arc­tic Mon­keys (although AM’s second album was a ter­rific and wel­come sur­prise), the words are clearly spoken and offered with no philo­soph­ical explan­a­tion as to what they mean.  That is for you to work out.  The truth of the words is in the end not in what they are say­ing, but rather in how they are say­ing it.  The truths you tell your­self to keep liv­ing a sane and happy life.

The video:

The CD cover:

The lyr­ics:

Lyr­ics for “Thou Shalt Always Kill“
————————————-

Thou shalt not steal if there is a dir­ect victim;

Thou shalt not wor­ship pop idols or fol­low lost prophets;

Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strum­mer, Johnny Hart­man, Des­mond Dek­ker, Jim Mor­rison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Bar­rat in vein;

Thou shalt not think that any male over 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a pae­do­phile, some people are just nice;

Thou shalt not read NME;

Thou shalt not stop lik­ing a band just because they have become popular;

Thou shalt not ques­tion Stephen Fry;

Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover;

Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover;

Thou shalt not buy Coca Cola products;

Thou shalt not buy nestle products;

Thou shalt not go into the woods with your boy­friend best­friend, take drugs and cheat on him;

Thou shalt not fall in love so easily;

Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls pants……use it to get into their heads;

Thou shalt not watch Hollyoaks;

Thou shalt not attend an open mic and then leave as soon as you have done your shitty little poem or song you self right­eous prick;

Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in & week out just because you once saw a girl there that you fan­cied that your never going to talk to anyway;

Thou shalt not put musi­cians and record­ing artists on ridicu­lous ped­es­tals no mat­ter how great they are or were;

The Beatles.
Were just a band.
Led Zep­pelin
Just a band.
The Beach Boys.
Just a band
Sex Pis­tols.
Just a band.
The Clash.
Just a band.
Crass.
Just a band
Minor Threat.
Just a band.
The Cure
Just a band.
The Smiths
Just a band.
Nir­vana.
Just a band.
The Pix­ies
Just a band
Oasis.
Just a band
Radi­o­head.
Just a band.
Bloc Party.
Just a band.
Arc­tic Mon­keys.
Just a band.
The next big thing
Just a band.

Thou shalt give equal worth to tra­gedies that occur in non-english speak­ing coun­tries as to those that occur in eng­lish speak­ing countries;

Thou shalt remem­ber that guns, bitches and bling where never part of the four ele­ments and never will be;

Thou shalt not make repet­it­ive gen­eric music;
Thou shalt not make repet­it­ive gen­eric music;
Thou shalt not make repet­it­ive gen­eric music;
Thou shalt not make repet­it­ive gen­eric music;

Thou shalt not pimp my ride;

Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster;

Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness;

Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit;
When I say “hey” thou shalt not say “ho”;

When I say “hip” thou shalt not say “hop”;

When I say, he say, she say, we say “make some noise”…..kill me;

Thou shalt not quote me happy;

Thou shalt not shake it like a Polar­oid picture;

Thou shalt not wish your girl­friend was a freak like me;

Thou shalt spell the word phoenix : P-H-E-O-N-I-X not P-H-O-E-N-I-X regard­less of what the oxford Eng­lish dic­tion­ary tells you;

Thou shalt not express your shock at the fact that Sharon got off with Brad at the club last night by say­ing “is it?”;

Thou shalt think for yourselves;

And thou shalt ALWAYS kill.

Images:

The Web­site:

http://www.overviewland.co.uk/scroobiuspip/index.html

Con­clu­sion:

I can’t wait for more!

Basho

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