Tag Archive: heroine


PUNK POETRY’S NOT DEAD

Filed under: Humour, Music, Poetry, Television — Leave a comment
June 1, 2012

I was thoroughly entertained by the BBC 4 profile on John Cooper Clarke and it was a pleasure to see that he is miraculously still in the land of the living after kicking his longstanding heroine addiction.

It’s heartening too to see that he is winning a whole new audience, some of whom were alerted to his genius when a neutered version of Evidently Chicken Town featured on the closing credits of an episode of The Sopranos.

This is still one of his funniest and powerful poems even when the emphatic adjective has been altered from ‘fucking’ to the milder ‘bloody’. Film of his performance in the documentary shows that there’s nothing to beat the original when it comes to the venomous delivery of peerless lines like:

“a fucking bloke is fucking stabbed
waiting for the fucking cab
you fucking stay at fucking home
the fucking neighbours fucking moan
keep the fucking racket down
this is fucking chicken town”.

Poems like this and Beezley Street (which rhymes with uneasy cheesy greasy queasy and beastly) are Britain’s answer to Desolation Row although comparisons to Dylan are exaggerated for someone who has passed the best part of two decades without writing anything new.

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RANT AGAINST SMOKING

Filed under: Music — 3 Comments
October 12, 2008


I have never smoked and given that my Dad died aged 60 from cancer, I’m not particularly tolerant to arguments in favour of the habit.
Yesterday, while picking up my blood test results from the hospital I was struck by the disproportionate number of smokers entering and leaving. To my mind this communicates a collective ‘fuck you’ to the idea of preventive health care.
One cause of escalating medical costs and extended waiting lists for treatment is the high percentage of people who ignore common sense advice on ways of maintaining a healthier lifestyle.
Some say smoking is sexy, which is true if you’re turned on by stained teeth, yellow fingers and smelly clothes.
Others argue that it keeps you thin, which is definitely the case when combined with a vigorous programme of chemotherapy.
Some also argue that it fuels creativity.
In the movie The Future Is Unwritten, Joe Strummer is quoted as saying that non smokers should be denied access to books and music which nicotine has helped to create. It’s not clear whether he applied the same logic to harder drugs.
Heroine has probably inspired much of my favourite music but I don’t feel obliged to shoot up to enjoy it.
I know full well that the grim reaper will come a calling whatever, but personally I don’t see any advantage on bringing forward the appointment.

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