lemon revolution

 1995 - the year Oasis released Morning Glory, and the year before the band really started losing it musically and characteristically: 96 was the Union Jack guitars, and Liam's voice beginning to sound weary and cabbaged at Knebworth, and endless infighting as a product of endless touring and musical friction within the group. At this point, in these interviews, Gallagher appears bewildered by the sheer absurdity of the position he finds himself in - the voice of a working-class band quickly gaining international fame, and simultaneously a convenient hero of elites in the media, entertainment industry and even in government (Gallagher famously visited Downing Street to meet Tony Blair in 97). Some of the questions fired at him surrounding other bands (namely Blur) and the state of British music are so obviously picked from a media agenda he hadn't signed up for, and his black-faced responses point to a man who is trying to work out just what the hell is happening around him....

look back to the clock. 5 to 5. okay. just 5 more minutes. that’s it, one more, one more. okay. well done. keep going. not long now. not long now. 3 minutes. going great. keep peddling. almost there. next please! next please! next please! how are you. would you like a bag. sorry did you want a bag. cash or card. please insert your card. please enter your pin. please remove your card. thanks bye. do you mind just hanging on till this queue dies down a bit? just get the queue down and then you can head off okay? is that alright? you sure? thanks a lot cheers next please! next please! next please! next please! hi. bag? next. hi. bag? did you want a bag. sorry DID YOU WANT A BAG. next. how’s your day been mate? not bad thanks did you want a bag can you put your card in. enter your pin pleaseENTER YOUR FUCKING PIN FOR FUCK’S SAKE YOU’RE WASTING MY TIME YOU PIECE OF SHIT look back to the clock. 5.28pm. nice tap tap tap tap k...

A really good film that I, rather criminally, only saw through a couple of evenings ago. Still need to read the book which Messr Carney assures me is much better. The interview scene was truly golden. The pre-game discussion of the job-jiro is the 21 st century at its finest, a 30-second sketch of the same sentiment echoed by Noel Gallagher in Cigarettes and Alcohol, followed by a quick rush of class A drugs to help prepare for an important meeting – an image as honest to working-class Scotland as it is to the City of London. Spud’s manic gesturing and his brain-spark admission that he only has one fault: perfectionism. Anyone who has ever sat in an interview will no doubt have faced this absurd question (what is your biggest fault) and may well, like Spud and myself, have thrown together a trashcan of platitudes about “trying too hard for the best” and “being a bit tunnel-vision”. The film’s central idea is to explore the character of modern, Weste...

this face big adult shouting at me maybe shocked at me angry black pits are most of this it’s all empty space has he just punched me in the face like a clown with those big plastic ears shooting me down rough scruffy spikes of hair packs of needles out of his skin with the smoke, he like a bear thrashing around in the forest fire his pupils sprung as if hooked to live wire, will this be me one day errupting at a kid fat in my neck grease on my skin steel world cage traps my heart in

screens pictures of footballers and women, images of friday evenings at the bar, drinks clubs beaches dresses and suits, slogans and tags brands logos and tatts, plastered on the subway halls, on the city gates and village walls: a glass curtain warping time and memory and touch to its molten white rage, like bacteria crawling through your flesh and blood in the lonely, dreaming hour, swarming on the precious stones and towers wild wolves through a lost city. your mind is no more. your body is no more. your words are no more and your touch is no more. welcome to the digital age scratching burning and turning with boredom, the newsman is screaming loud and clear to the pipe in your ear which echoes with the drop drop drop of water, slow and not so steady as the basilisk fang hangs but never yet bites, the tigers claw paused yet never strikes, lying there flicking through the endless pages of a book you’ll only start but never finish, page after page after page ...

sitting by the tent as the sun spun wild and great i found the claw of envy be resting on the muddy floor i found the mad knife, blade wedged into a spirit bottle anger rose like a great bonfire, spiralling smoke into the night footstepts drawn in circles and eyes burned by sorrow the barrel had been emptied, the dream stamped dead all that remained was the shell the bleak icy shell frozen, all life stolen from it in its shining hour broken bits of old money sent from one end to the other flung round the fading tube maybe the time was coming to an end and the sun sunk down neath the towers and trees and darkness etched over our time of glee maybe it would never return and maybe we’d never be so free

 Is this film not a brilliant analogy of class-consciousness in the Western world since the 1980s: the individual awakes after a traumatic incident, unable to recall anything but watery memories of the distant past, unable to stitch its steps through the modern world into any coherent narrative or sense? How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time? The film undoubtedly develops the post-modern questioning of truth – we can’t even trust our own memories, so how can we claim anything at all to be true? But the plot, which hinges around some untold, practically forgotten accident, something you know is there in touching distance but you just can’t quite grasp, presents to us a pertinent truth of modern society. We do feel as though something is missing. Despite our materials, comfort and money, we have felt as though things don’t quite add up to make us whole. We feel empty, we feel battered, we feel cogs in some grand, faceless machine, but we d...