Its a Friday night in the Nags Head, Shrewsbury. Theres peril and sadness amongst the old Guinness mirrors and soaked beer mats. Someone has put Madness on the jukebox, and the jollity of the song sounds hollow and almost insultingly inappropriate. Our friend has been laid off work, something that seems to happening with alarming regularity. He was a good worker, honest and enthusiastic. Its said that his gaffer had tears in his eyes when he told him the bad news, but he just couldn't afford to keep the business going any longer. We take turns buying him a pint. He feels bad, like hes sponging, but he would do the same thing for us and he knows it. A million times over. Inwardly, i breath a sigh of relief that its not me on the receiving end. And I bet im not the only one.
Im the queen of discount supermarkets/i own everything thats cheap/im a martyr for not having money/cant afford to do much else but sleep.
These lyrics are from a song called Cashflow Crisis by a band called The 10p Mixes. The clearest, most honest song written yet about being in a financial crisis and being in the shit . Its full of images of drinking water down the pub and waiting to hear about work from dodgy agencies. Its a brave move, it must be easier to write (and listen to) songs about falling in love in libraries and the like.
Its pretty sad that to task of writing about the current dole age has landed on such shy shoulders. The 10p Mixes download LP, Bedroom Sound, is a wonderfully whistful adventure into folky Indie. As well covering the worst money crisis since the 80's, they also write heartily about childrens confectionry (10p Mix),sex, romance and bitter regret(Always There), the romance of purple tights and a shitty indie disco(Sticky Disco) and being let down by Tommorows World (The Future).
It would appear you can have your cola-cube and eat it.
Its bedroom music in the best possible way, never better represented than in Nice Day for a Coat,a real stare-out-of-the-window song and Im Coming Home, a song that (if listened to on a walkmen on the train home) could have any Europhile blubbing for dear old Blighty.
The recesession in the 80's created some serious monstrosities-Holiday, Young Guns Go For It!, Live Aid, Stock Aitkin and Waterman and every pop 'hit' being about money.
Right now, with Simon Cowell, Scouting for Girls, V festival, Kate Nash, X factor and James fucking Corden poisoning our collective conscious, its really good to have The 10p Mixes on our side.
http://corporaterecords.co.uk/artists/The+10p+Mixes/Bedroomsound/
No comments:
Post a Comment