This is a rant. If you don’t like it get a new one.

He’s resting his elbows on the bar, leaning back far enough to reach his glass of water. He slips his hand into his vintage black leather jacket’s pocket and pulls out a joint he rolled – shifts his cap with a badge which reads “fuck da police” and focuses his attention on not enjoying the band playing in front of him. My blood fucking boils, when I hear him say “ah they’re shit, not like [insert obscure band reference and obligatory name drop] they’re still underground they haven’t sold out”. Jog on twat.

Now that the Parlotones have attained commercial success it is the scenester subculture, which catalysed the bands success, which now disregards their stardom as merely a commercial endeavour. Apparently when the Parlotones were gutter trash their shit music made more sense than it does now? I don’t fucking think so.

Our local scenesters write for One Small Seed, Mahala and SL Magazine. Whilst penning their informed pieces they’ll use a lexicon which flatters the author about as well as a pair of skinny jeans. Oh these writers – who represent the consciously disaffected pseudo intellectual class – will attend your event but they’ll pooh pooh the shoddy performances of the commercial acts with polished tracks and supporting fans. Instead their focus is on the alt-grunge-avant-garde-post-rock-emo-electronica band playing discordant folksy numbers to an audience of, but one, a fan called “mom”. Don’t bother asking this lot which artists they do enjoy because odds are good you’ve never heard of them, and if you have and you share their positive sentiment well they’ll either burst into flame or toss the band aside as shameful and something they enjoyed when they were much younger.

Don’t even get me started on South Africa’s art and photographic media coverage. Let alone the manner in which writers for SA’s youth-culture literary anachronisms carry themselves at gigs. The sheer arrogance from these half-witted hacks is mind blowing. Get over yourselves, when Monocle Magazine or the New York Times begs for your copy then I’ll accept your complaints about having to pay for your own drinks, the music at a media launch, getting to events on your own steam and oh-dear-fuck paying for your own tickets you lousy cretinous shits.

Scenesters visit parks in shabby cars and whip out the latest Nikon to snap artsy pictures of friends in affected poses whilst laying on blankets drinking red wine. Later, in their chic little bachelor pad in Killarney, they’ll ensure poses are plastic photoshop renditions of a real life or at least a post-produced version of it. Huxley in his works on the futility of the intellectual class would bitch slap this banal little lot into a land fit only for religious zealots, people who drive BMW’s and Vuyo Mbuli.

These tepid, vacuous little bottom feeders will insist they are sophisticated whilst using the word “zef”, they’ll subscribe to material wants and buy macs to tap away their diatribes and when asked how they feel about commercial brands they’ll raise a fist and say “down with the man” and then pause and sip on their double machiato from Vida e Caffe.

It feels good to get this off my chest because I fear one day they’ll absorb me into their cultural-borg, and I’ll be a teetotaller, a vegan, a country-music listener, a red-checkered-cardigan wearer, a dirty little tramp with too much free time, way too much disposable income and a desire to paint the world in sepia using my iPhones Sepia app.

Until then. I leave you with the words from a far wiser man than I, Eric Cartman.

I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about “protectin’ the earth” and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets – I hate ‘em! I wanna kick ‘em in the nuts!

Tags: hippies, Music, one small seed, ranting, scenesters, SL magazine, south african media, south african music

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.