Embraces with Greatness

The trouble with the term ‘greatness’ is that it is, at best, fully subjective. Greatness depends on context and it depends on you. I have plenty of favourites that strike me as sublime but send others running for the hills. Kate Bush, Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Wanda Jackson, The Mars Volta… This is why we will never run reviews. How do we know what you like? We don’t even know what we like most of the time.

This section is about those times when music is all and everything you have. It describes the song that takes you back to that shitty break-up, the album that defines that amazing night out, and that road-trip you took with only Pavement for company. For some reason, holidays always generate the most embarrassing and inappropriate memories of greatness and here is a perfect example. Like some kind of musical straw-camel syndrome, the change of environment goes to your head and affects whatever taste you have.

In my case, it was 1999 and I was languishing in South-East Asia on one of those ill-judged gap-year excursions; leading the Hokey-Cokey in school assembly, having strangers finger my peroxide blonde hair and trying and failing to get it on with my gorgeous housemate from Devon. The mood was not enhanced by the only listening material I brought with me; P J Harvey, Suede, The Smiths and The Velvet Underground. These four were, in fact, pretty much the only listening material of my country adolescence. Given that I had failed to meet any of the older cosmopolitan world travellers I hoped would be littering the streets of Goa, and also failed to find the good drugs, I spent all my time with my trusty cassette player. But they didn’t work quite so well here, I’d think, as the fiftieth play of ‘Stay Together’, the extended version, kicked in. Then, on a day trip, I found what I was looking for. In a dusty mini-cab of a record shop, amidst the bhangra and Ricky Martin I found the Smashing Pumpkin’s Adore. They were a band I had previously dismissed as whiny, American and pretentious but the sepia cover won me over and I bought it.

On my shonky tape player it sounded unbeatable. The lyrics and photographs were moody black-and-white depictions of Victorian circus melodrama and unlovable and doomed sad-eyed girls. I would listen to it endlessly on long journeys cross-country. Quiet piano introductions segued into epic songs as the humid forests gave way to snowy mountains. It sounded like rain and Chicago. Above all, it sounded urban. In Darjeeling, a place people dream of visiting, I stayed in my hostel bed and fantasised about urbanity. Growing up in Cheltenham, I had no knowledge of big cities but it would be, I thought, just like Adore. For the duration of my travels, I recommended it to everyone I met.

When I came home, unable to stuff down the two Boost bars my Dad brought to Heathrow and with a tan that washed off in the bath, I lay on my bed and listened to Adore to try and recapture the glory of travelling. Typically, the minute I was home, I wanted to be somewhere else. But as soon as the twee tinkles of the first track started, I realised something had changed. On my big stereo, as oppose to the tight and claustrophobic world of the tape player, Adore sounded like gothic piano-prog horror. The lyrics were awful (clearly the industrial noise of India’s train systems had prevented me hearing them properly) and even the photos seemed overblown and ridicilous. I threw it in the bin and pretended never to have liked it.

But the thing I couldn’t throw away was the feeling, the feeling of freedom realised and the possibility that maybe, one day if I was lucky, I’d get to a place where there were dark corners, and dirty bars, and twenty four hour convenience stores, and I didn’t have to teach the Hokey-Cokey every day.


SDW

We Are:

No-one can dispute that we live in an age of shallow opinions and affections, insincerity and cultural bankruptcy. Magazines are run by advertising companies and music only gets released if the band's faces are pretty. Fair enough. But we want something more. Something meaty that rejects the twin cults of newness and youth. The Good Fight is about literature, music, photography and everything else that doesn't matter.

So who are we?

We are the precocious adolescent at boarding school rebelling against authority and hanging out with the hypochondriacs. We are the girls with glasses that Dorothy Parker wrote of and Enid in Ghost World rejected. We are Robert Smith's haircut in the wrong part of town, in the wrong decade. We are not tall nor tan, and we are neither young or lovely. Sorry is our most used word and "I'll meet you by the toilets in 5 minutes" is the phrase you'd most likely hear us say at a club.

We are hookers with hearts of gold. We are Woody Allen trapped inside the body of Candy Darling. We will stay up with you and sleep in with you. We won't tell you what to think, but we'll be more than happy to talk shit about people with you.

Take us with you to the mountains. Take us with you on your commute. Take us to the park, bring a bottle of white, something fried and something sweet. We will compliment the taste and share a cigarette with you afterwards.

We will buy you a pint after a hard day's work. We believe in the underdog, the dandy, the loose cannon, and the butch lady who will defend your honour. We love the notorious and it is always the wallflowers who are the best company when prompted.

We are The Good Fight and we are happy to make your acquaintance.

Join Now: Treeclimbers Against Matrimony