Who the F*ck is Pete Doherty?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Is that true? HMHB are certainly afforded more respect on VWs than Peter Doherty.

Yeah, because they're better/more talented generally. So while it's a surprisingly good line for Doherty, it would be deemed a bit average coming from HMHB.

There's a thread in this, maybe. 'Apparently naff lyrics that would be seen as profound if Lou Reed or Bob Dylan had sung them'. And vice versa.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Honestly? Some people love to be irritated. Pick up a local paper. Preferably in Tunbridge Wells. Heck, I used to read the letters pages on Teletext, purely to wind myself up. Why dyou think I click on these sorts of threads? It's good to get the blood up now and again, even if it's just by reading ill-informed twaddle.

Is that the same reason why (some) thirtysomething Beatles fans were dismayed by The Sex Pistols in 1977? Was it a myth that they were 'disgusted' and 'didn't understand' the music? Did they actually just enjoy the masochism?

[LadyDay]

Is that true? HMHB are certainly afforded more respect on VWs than Peter Doherty.

Yeah, because they're better/more talented generally. So while it's a surprisingly good line for Doherty, it would be deemed a bit average coming from HMHB.

There's a thread in this, maybe. 'Apparently naff lyrics that would be seen as profound if Lou Reed or Bob Dylan had sung them'. And vice versa.

They're not more talented at all. More humourous maybe. I've seen them a dozen times and I loved them, but they are not "better" than the Libertines.

P.S. Leave off Johnny Borrell, he's a very nice boy..........crap band though.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

they are not "better" than the Libertines.

They're better at writing funny lyrics, though. And that 'Englishman in a baseball cap' line is sometimes quoted with the same reverence as the juiciest HMHB moments.

[LadyDay]

they are not "better" than the Libertines.

They're better at writing funny lyrics, though. And that 'Englishman in a baseball cap' line is sometimes quoted with the same reverence as the juiciest HMHB moments.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here, being as that ISN'T supposed to be a funny line.

[mayer]

Lalla, my dad knows who the Sex Pistols are, he doesn't have a clue who The Libertines are. If someone's annoyed by Doherty they're clearly letting themselves be. It's not like the War in Iraq or Income Tax, it's like Jerry Springer The Opera in that you have to put the effort in to get pissed off by something like that, so I have fuck-all sympathy for anyone in that frame of mind.


Meh, this isn't here to convince anyone of anything (though of course feel free to donwload and insult away), it's just to have something worthwhile and interesting for anyone that ever liked The Libertines in an otherwise dull retread of another old debate that this board has had about five times already, with all the same players assuming the same roles which I have to admit annoys me as much as crackhead popstars throwing away their talent and voice on crack cocaine and really tacky tabloid fame and adoration from slavish hangers-on and groupies.


Not a best of, not anything in particular, just ten tracks grabbed off the top of my head which aren't the most obvious tunes/versions in the world to choose I hope.


The Libertines etc. - Junkie Skiffle - (Odds and Sods 2002-2004)

01. Music When The Lights Go Out (Legs 11 Version)

02. Breck Road Lover (Unreleased Demo)

03. What A Waster (Sweary Non-Album Debut Single)

04. Mayday (B-Side to What A Waster)

05. Up The Bracket (XFM Session)

06. Don't Look Back Into The Sun (Non-Album Single)

07. The Ha Ha Wall (Lost "French Sessions" Version)

08. At The Flophouse (Dot Allison Vocals)

09. Can't Stand Me Now (Branding Sessions Solo Doherty Version)

10. The Saga (From The Libertines)

[mayer]

they are not "better" than the Libertines.

They're better at writing funny lyrics, though. And that 'Englishman in a baseball cap' line is sometimes quoted with the same reverence as the juiciest HMHB moments.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here, being as that ISN'T supposed to be a funny line.

Quite. Bernard Matthews is much better and more talented than Stanley Matthews, as he makes much better Turkey Drumsticks.

[Ciarán2]

Potty Pete Doherty.... That's what The Sun called him the other day. I liked that. I can see him in a pop star context now.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I'm not quite sure what your point is here, being as that ISN'T supposed to be a funny line.

Oh, I assumed it was.

[mayer]

I'm not quite sure what your point is here, being as that ISN'T supposed to be a funny line.

Oh, I assumed it was.

Er?

Go on. I'll bite.

Why?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Also, that line's in the middle of a song about being young and being yourself and rioting on May Day, which is the sort of thing the kids like. it's not in the middle of a  self concsiously "funny" song, which always gets some peoples backs up (not me, I quite like HMHB and the Presidents Of The United States, in a way).

I've never understood why people make the distinction between 'serious' and 'funny' songs, to be honest - blur the boundaries, I say. My friend finds U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday hilarious because he thinks Bono sounds really happy throughout.

Here's my favourite HMHB line, from 'Eno Collaboration':

'I know Bono and he knows Ono/And she knows Eno's phone goes thus'

It doesn't matter whether it's a comedy line - it's just brilliant writing full-stop.

[mayer]

Nah, that's a shit line, sorry.

EDIT: But a very valient attempt to cleverly sidestep the issues at hand anyway.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Er?

Go on. I'll bite.

Why?

I assumed it was him being a sort of grumpy old man figure. Or was attempting something like The Fall's 'British People in Hot Weather'.

The idea of an Englishman in a baseball cap being 'distressing' - how can that not be a comic line? I mean, it is a distressing sight, I agree, but it's still bathetic and thus comic.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Lalla, my dad knows who the Sex Pistols are, he doesn't have a clue who The Libertines are. If someone's annoyed by Doherty they're clearly letting themselves be. It's not like the War in Iraq or Income Tax, it's like Jerry Springer The Opera in that you have to put the effort in to get pissed off by something like that, so I have fuck-all sympathy for anyone in that frame of mind.

To be fair, you'd have to have made a point of hating The Sex Pistols in '77 too. Records hardly ever on the radio, Grundy i/v only went out in London, etc. I think Baccara were harder to avoid than Johnny and co.

[mayer]

It's neither a "serious" nor "funny" line, it's blurring the boundary. It's less funny than saying "you're going home in a crispy ambulance" but it's also more serious.

It's a trad-rad lyric.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Nah, that's a shit line, sorry.

Why's that? On assonance alone, it's great.

How about 'Quick, run, hide - here comes Dave Stewart!/With a look in his eye...'

[mayer]

To be fair, you'd have to have made a point of hating The Sex Pistols in '77 too.

"God Save The Queen" charted higher than any LIbertines single, but yeah, your point is entirely valid. All the twats outdoors protesting Pistols gigs were idiots who love to get themselves riled up over nothing too.

[mayer]

Why's that? On assonance alone, it's great.

"Assonance is just getting the rhyme wrong." Now that's an amusing line in literature. I think it's toss, sorry. Unamusing toss at that, and I like the bits of HMHB I've heard.


"Quick, run, hide - here comes Dave Stewart!/With a look in his eye..."

What does that even mean?

It's frustrating for you
Well, it's frustrating for me
You're lying there
And you're beautiful
You're beautiful
And of course I want to
Why wouldn't I

I doesn't mean I don't love you
One more try with me above you

Leave the lights on!
Leave the lights on!
Leave the lights on for me

It's got nothing to do with anything I've had to drink
It's something wrong with the way I think

I know I can, I know I can
I'm fine when I am with my own hands

Now, that's funny, and dripping with floppy pathos too.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

"you're going home in a crispy ambulance"

'You're going on after Crispy Ambulance...'

Anyway, yeah, fair enough, the baseball cap line blurs the boundaries. Wasn't that what I was saying earlier though? Which you said was 'sidestepping'.

[mayer]

Because that line being funny, or serious, or whatever, wasn't the issue.

Some 12 year olds on the television said Doherty was a "poet". I said he was a popstar and whittled off some of my favourite lyrics.

You got your usual "aahhhh... but if it was x saying y... what would we say!?!?" thing out. And I reminded you of your support for a brilliant Robbie Williams line in an awful song, with possibly the worst lyric in pop right after it, (which you've ignored twice now).

The issue wasn't the comedy or otherwise of the line. Was it? No. It wasn't. it was about Doherty's worth as a songwriter. And, for example, saying "Why Bother?" is funnier than Up The Bracket is a pointless, absurd thing to say. You can't dance to "Why Bother?".

[jimmy jazz]

I think it was the pure energy in Up The Bracket that got most people into the Libertines. You can't describe being 13 years old and hearing Horrorshow for the first time. It's something completely different to the nu-metal/ post-grunge pap I had had to endure for the majority of my life. I could've looked harder, but I didn't. Then Up The Bracket comes along, which is as close to God Save the Queen as I'm probably ever going to get. It's nowhere near as good, but I can't think of any other album I could've listened to at the time that would give me the same impression. It was raw, it was completely ramshackle yet had a certain charm and elegance to it that I'd never heard before. I followed Doherty and Barat religously after that, hanging on to their interviews and listening to all the B-sides and bootlegs I could find. Luckily, I wasn't stupid enough to know that the second album was bullshit, and by then I had found other bands that took the shine off it.

But Doherty is brilliant, he is declining into mediocrity but he's still great. I don't like Babyshambles and I haven't heard anytihng decent from him for a long time but there are little sparks of genius sometimes which aggravate me. If only The Libertines could get back together and recapture all that made Up The Bracket brilliant then it'd be alright.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

And I reminded you of your support for a brilliant Robbie Williams line in an awful song, with possibly the worst lyric in pop right after it, (which you've ignored twice now).

Why do I need to respond? Yes I said it, and yes I stand by it. And yes, the 'take it to the bridge' line is smug and shit.

I was talking about how a quoted lyric (divorced of its context) can sound either funny, profound, embarrassing, pompous, shallow, unfunny or whatever, depending on how you look at it.

Also, I disagree that the lyrics you quoted were especially great. Same as you did with my HMHB quotes.

I don't know what points you want me to respond to, or why you think I'm avoiding them.

[mayer]

I don't know what points you want me to respond to, or why you think I'm avoiding them.

The point was me questioning why you, or anyone here, is constantly getting sand in their vagina about Doherty being on Newsnight or BBC3. A popstar with a #1 LP has sex with Britain's most famous supermodel. And he takes a lot of drugs. Of course he's going to be on the television for heaven's sake! Bitching about not liking his songs or his "punchable face" isn't really addressing your issues with his ubiquity, is it? Why not do what you do for comedy, and look at the atmosphere which has promoted his ubiquity? (Tabloid love of scandal, moral panic about drugs, everyone's love of Kate Moss's fanny, and Doherty and his hangers-on own pathetic desire to stay in the limelight).


Is disliking Peter Doherty really that important to all of you that it has to be mentioned again and again, maybe with a "I wish he was dead" or better still "I wish him and Tom Hanks died of cancer" added in for a larf? It's brilliant.


Anywayse, I agree with much of what jimmy  said up there, except I was 19-20 when I first heard Up The Bracket and had heard every Clash and Stooges and the first three Wire LPs by then, and it still blew me away.

I wouldn't agree that Doherty's still brilliant mind. I honestly can't see how it's possible that someone who wrote the words to "The Saga" can go out and do half the stuff he does now. It's tragic for him and sad for anyone that adored him as a songwriter and a popstar. If that band get back together I'd be as suspicious as I would be suprised. I can't see it happening for the right reasons if Doherty is still addicted to crack and hanger-on-love.

I'd say he's still capable of brilliance, if something drastic happens. I'm also teased by those flashes of genius he so rarely exhibits these days.

[Frinky]

And you're also incredibly gay for him.


Go on, admit it.

Y'are.

[The Mumbler]

Nothing to do with The Libertines, with or without Doherty, my favourite HMHB lyric at the moment is If I Had Possession Of A Pancake Day.  Which not only begins with:

"Outside Goldsmiths, coughing up blood
Turner Prize judge says, 'Christ that's good!'"

but ends with:

"Give a philosophy student a glass of limeade
And he will say, 'Is this a glass of limeade?'
And if so, 'Why is it a glass of limeade?' , and
After a while, he'll die of thirst".

[23 Daves]

"There are fewer more distressing sights than that
Of an Englishman in a baseball cap"

That sounds like a post that was nicked from this forum at some point in 2002.  Or at best, it could be a very throwaway line in Dickon Edwards' LiveJournal.  Come on, mayer, that really won't cut it.  

And The Libertines sound like some slightly-spruced up mediocre jangly eighties bullshit.  All those wannabe-Smiths bands who were around in 86/87 could have been The Libertines if they'd just had Mick Jones producing and a better recording budget.  In fact, they'd probably have been better.  "Can't Stand Me Now" is just the laziest piece of songwriting to be declared "genius" I've heard in years.  Lazy clodhopping rhythms, pedestrian, lolloping guitar lines, a melody line based on dull repetition with none of the rock n roll mantra energy or any kind of blissed out psychedelia... It just doesn't work to my ears, I'm afraid.

"Fuck Forever", on the other hand, actually almost works (and please note that I didn't say it was "brilliant", and haven't even illegally downloaded a copy much less purchased one) because it has a much more ramshackle feel, which gives it a tiny edge of unpredictability against the pedestrian songwriting structure he normally uses.  There are almost shades of Syd Barrett about it, and I do find myself listening because the whole thing hangs together by a slight thread, but works all the same.  It's not much of a compliment, but it's the most I'm prepared to give.

[mayer]

And you're also incredibly gay for him.

Go on, admit it.

Y'are.

Tsh

With these men currently working in rock and roll?!? That sixth form poet doesn't stand a chance!

[mayer]

That sounds like a post that was nicked from this forum at some point in 2002.

Well, timeline-wise that really isn't possible considering when the thing was written. Why is everyone jumping on that lyric anywayse? I had half a page of them up there.

There are almost shades of Syd Barrett about it

Nah, there are shades of an Oasis b-side about it. Just because he can't sing and the production is awful, it doesnt' make it any of those things.

If you want to hear less pedestrian Doherty songs, then I'd recommend Stix and Stones, Cyclops, Gang Of Gin, that sort of thing.

[LadyDay]

And you're also incredibly gay for him.

Go on, admit it.

Y'are.

Tsh

With these men currently working in rock and roll?!? That sixth form poet doesn't stand a chance!

Presumably Zac is about to bite Andrew's ear off there

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Mayer, I actually said I'd quite enjoyed Up the Bracket, back on page one. Yes, I said I found 'Doherty the Icon' irritating, but I actually asked you about your theories why this might be. The truth is, I'm not sure myself. Do I resent the fact that I never had an icon like that when I was growing up, or do I actually, genuienly, think he's over-rated?

But yes, you're right, he doesn't affect my life unless I masochistically choose to get annoyed by him. I suppose the wider thing of mediocre-and-derivative--stuff-talked-about-as-if-it's-brilliant will always wind me up, but there's no particular reason to single out The Libertines.

You can't dance to Why Bother? You can dance to HMHB though. Who combine really funny lyrics with excellent music. Why is it unfair to compare them with Doherty?