Blog: Fun With Anti-Popular Culture

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On Sunday I strode over to Islington, to the Buffalo Bar, for the Anti-Folk All Dayer. I keep hearing about anti-folk ALL the time, but I've never actually heard any, so was EAGER to learn more, if not a bit TREPIDATIOUS. Would it be, actually, just like FOLK? Or would it be dreary slightly bearded sods poring over laptops, whilst other similar sods sat around pretending to be interested? Or would it be something UNKNOWABLY WORSE?

No! It wasn't! In fact, it was GRATE! I was there for two and a half hours, and I sat through an ACE procession of people getting on stage and singing things about REAL stuff, in a HAPPY way full of INTEREST and JOY in LIFE! It was utterly GRATE! A lovely atmosphere, interesting songs, no ATTITUDE about it being IMPORTANT or anything, and a Television Personalities cover version! FANTASTIC!

In a moment of RUM induced madness (I'm not drinking BEER this month, so am searching around for replacements) I thought "At last! I have found MY PEOPLE!" and while that's probably not true, it did feel like I'd, AT LAST, found the sort of Musical TYPES i have been searching for for YEARS. It was like when Dr Brown and I finally discovered The Pub That Women Go To - this was many many years ago, when there weren't the All Bar Ones and Nice Pubs we have today, that people of all genders can enjoy, and before even THEME PUBS and It's A Screams and so forth existed. Everywhere was an Old Man's Pub, and it seemed to us that it was JUST us and the old men who drank anywhere in Leicester. However, we KNEW that, surely, women must go somewhere for beer? But where?

One evening we went to meet a PAL in a New Pub he'd started drinking in, and as soon as we entered we discovered why - there were GURLS there! Hundreds of them! For the next couple of weeks we went there EVERY CHANCE WE GOT - finally we had discovered our promised land, our holy grail, our Elephant's Graveyard, our Pub Full Of Women! - until eventually we realised that they were very YOUNG women, and were accompanied by the lads they were at sixth form with, and were NEVER going to be impressed by two drunk men in their early twenties wearing old suede jackets that smelt faintly of chips. So, we returned to our usual haunts, our quest re-started. As the years passed we came to see that, actually, there WERE pubs out there not full of Old Men, and that our BLIND DEVOTION to Real Ale meant that we were drinking in the MOST Old Manly Pubs in creation. Also Britpop and All That happened and so Grim Indie Discoes TRANSMOGRIFIED into Slightly Less Grim Indie Discoes where people OTHER than po-faced Indie Snobs and The Man Who Looks Like Robert Smith would occasionally go, and our search was forgotten.

Er... anyway, yes, but that sudden SHOCK of DISCOVERY we felt that night was echoed LAST night, and so i FORCED a CD into the hands of the organiser, foolishly said "This is GRATE - LET! ME! IN!" and fled into the twilight. Go ME!

posted 2/8/2004 by MJ Hibbett

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