Tuesday 16 January 2018

Hello! Hooray!

My mum often asks me when I think I’ll be discovered. The thing is, I was discovered years ago.

10 years ago this very day, the internet was full of warmth, compliments and photographs of loved pets and unloved animals mocked up as happy dinners. Every time we looked on Facebook, we read our friends’ successes and I related to none of it. The internet just didn’t speak to me, so I decided to speak to it. In fact, I shouted at it. 10 years ago this very day, I invented online anger.

And now look at the state of the place.

Back then, no one had ever thought of calling a friend’s wedding cake a cunt but it’s all different now. Everyone is angry. Not just occasionally but all the time. Non-stop. I came up with the simple idea of not telling lies about how great my life and your life was and now everyone does it. But with none of the charm. I was the Pixies and then you lot became a huge, popular, white supremacist, women-hating, constantly threatening Nirvana who, if he were still alive, would probably coax the snowflake Kurt Cobain into killing himself live on Instagram or Snapchat or iPlayer. There are days when I almost regret calling David Walliams a corpse-fucker on Twitter. I was supposed to be the angry man on the Internet but who would even notice that now? I’ve become undiscovered.

I hide online now. Mainly on Twitter. Mainly on my @vitriolamusic Twitter account. It’s a place I share with Robin Ince (he hasn’t ever logged in once yet) and I go there to avoid the copycat angry people who took my beautiful idea too far. I talk to lots of people on there every day. While you are threatening to rape a slut or telling a woman who doesn’t like Black Mirror that they’re fat, I go on to my @vitriolamusic Twitter account and talk to kind, civil people about music.

For those who are unaware of music, it’s a popular art form based on sound and rhythm and without it our lives would be completely empty and without any meaning and it is very easy to steal. Some people actually pay for it but not many and the few that do are threatened with violence or called fat on the Internet. I much prefer risking the threats and paying for the music because I’ve loved it so much since I was a child and buying new music helps keep me almost up to date with whatever might be happening in the music (please forgive me for using this next word, I am very aware it’s awful) scene. And there lies the problem. The music scene has undiscovered me.

It happens every few years. The whole music scene changes and it becomes filled with bands that forget to sing about the things I like or play guitars the way I like them. Like the Internet, the scene isn’t for me just now but I’m in so deep with music that I can’t just turn my back on it. That’s why I buy the new one from the National or some other band that are clearly aimed at me and I get disappointed. It’s just not for me. The National are boring and their singer is a prick and the guitars are crap and they wear waistcoats like absolute cunts. And then, out of nowhere, my secret online friends and I will decide to pick an artist from the past and listen to their back catalogue and discuss it. That’s how, in 2018, I discovered the talents of Alice Cooper.

I am a fucking idiot. For years I bought Shed Seven albums and The Soft Parade singles and that fucking bullshit last album by Sleater-Kinney and all of The National’s fucking records and ALICE COOPER HAD BEEN THERE ALL ALONG. Every one of his albums (that I’ve heard so far) are incredible and  they have just been sitting there. For decades. Just sitting there statically and full of life. They have an actual heartbeat. Great tunes with fun in them. Pantomime, schlock-horror, loads of actual horns, drug-induced electro experimentations and rock that has decided that it has to live because YOU have to live. It is music that has invited you in and it only wants you to be happy. It’s music that actually cares about you.

Songs that are so good you won’t be able to stop whistling, humming and screaming them. Probably all at the same time. Alice Cooper has just sat there waiting and my reward for finding him is a new joyous belief in the power of music.

Think I’m going too far? Then please just listen to Elected, an uplifting Ringmaster of a song that revels in being the first thing to ever slag off Donald Trump, beating the Internet by over 40 years. After that, try a whole album in order. Some of you may never have done that before but, trust me, in this case it’s worth it. Try Billion Dollar Babies and Welcome To My Nightmare because those are albums that everyone (except me) knows and they are sunshine in a very dark, spooky and incredibly funny can. Then go to Flush The Fashion, very different to his classics and it’s my favourite Alice Cooper album. I always love the ones the artist can’t remember making.

I’m new to all this so I’m excited and want to share it with you like it’s a picture of my loved pet or my happy vegan dinner. If you’re not keen on Alice Cooper then all I can say is: you love him, you just don’t know it yet.


Alice Cooper’s incredible music and very witty lyrics (yep, he’s really funny) are pretty much the reasons why I love the Internet right now. Coming together and sharing that stuff hasn’t just made me happy, it’s given me a genuine thrill to find out everything I can about a new artist. Admittedly, one that’s been around since 1969. And huge thanks to Dan Mersh and EVERYONE who joins in with the listen-alongs at @vitriolamusic. You can go and find out about Alice Cooper’s stuff too because it’s just there. Gathering dust but waiting to be discovered. Just like all of us.




www.twitter.com/vitriolamusic
www.twitter.com/michaellegge 

1 comment:

Scientist Nazmul Huda said...

Mr. Antonio Guterres
Honorable Secretary General, UN

10 October 2018


UN should start working for its true spirit of World Peace and betterment of mankind : A window for UN and a humble suggestion to President Trump

Thank you for at least a reply, though through your Public Inquiries Team, for a Top High Level Scientific Affair.The present invention is a small endeavour in solving the current Energy Crisis of this planet which is becoming alarmingly acute every day. Included also are a few long-sought (even with head-cracking efforts of the scientists) solutions to some mysteries of very basic physics, needing a new policy decision of the UN which calls for personal attention and effort coupled with a strong desire on the part of the Secretary General.

The paper I had sent to you, although a very brief 2-page synopsis (against more than a 100-page patent paper) about the invention, included 13 very exceptional postulates besides the titled invention and formed an extra-ordinary prima facie scientific case for a primary evaluation right away. Had the invention been made by a western scientist, the Western Media would by this time have buzzed 24-hourly with each of these postulates and the inventor would have been awarded 14 Nobel prizes.But the racial portion of the Western World would rather try to conceal the success story of a developing country and even try to hijack the same through some Dr. Fox / Dr. Wolf, as they did in the past ( my world wide well circulated paper styled as “ 100-Dollar Laptop : UN Secretary General’s Office should not be used for exploiting the poor”, is referred to). As it is the Westen World is reluctant to give recognition unless the research is done under their supervision or at least they are associated with it, especially if it threatens their supremacy. Late Mr. Kofi Annan did not bother even to reply, while no action was seen from the next Secretary General Mr. Moon, and now it is your turn, to do justice to a long awaited well deserved matter..

Scientist Nazmul Huda nazinvbd@yahoo.com