Jarvis

I bought a copy of NME today. I'm not as faithful as I was as a student in buying and keeping up to date with the music scene. I do however buy it every now or then. I decided to judge a book by its cover this week because Jarvis Cocker was on the front. In his really interesting view he shares his views on everything from not mixing cider and red wine (sound advice I think) to condemning career rock stars. I do love Jarvis as he is a bit of a mad genius and as someone who grew up through Pulp's glory days of brit pop it was nice to hear from him after a number of years out of the public eye. I guess that most of us will remember Jarvis for his impromptu and very camp stage invasion/walk around during Michael Jackson's Brit Awards performance of Earth Song.

Relive that moment here.

Anyway during the interview he says this about musicians:

"There is a personality type to pop stars - a defective personality, I think. You have the desire to receive adulation from people to make you feel alright about yourself. That's why often the best pop stars screw themselves up because the reality doesn't provide the thing they were looking for."

also this rings true in many ways of my recollection of the mid 90's:

"In my day, Topshop was just a place for townies to go - nobody else would be seen dead in there. You'd get your white shirt and your pleat top trousers, but now it's all things with bits of zips and chains hanging off - it's quite extreme. The obscure trendy things are now the mainsteam townie things."

on careerist musicians:

"I've always liked people who mess up. I don't like career people - it doesn't seem very appropriate when it comes to music which is about something emotional. Reading an interview with Razorlight is just like reading the Economist, saying, Yeah, well we're going to be really big in America and we think this albums going to follow up the next one."