You know, it’s the news reporters I feel sorry for. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Huw Edwards hides a massive bottle of whiskey behind that big red BBC desk, promising himself he’ll only go near it on special occasions but ending up finding it needs replacing it twice a week.
Politicians say and do some mad shit, don’t they? Whether it’s Trump and Kim having a dick measuring contest (using nuclear warheads as the unit of measurement, of course) or Cameron calling the bluff of the great unwashed and hurling the continent a pipe bomb the size of Gibraltar, you have to wonder – does literally nobody have a fucking clue?
Closer to home, I’ve seen similarly aged friends starting to settle down with children. Actually, that could be worded better. I’ve seen similarly aged friends starting to settle down with similarly aged friends, going on to procreate and have to provide love, care and attention to children. I often wonder how they do it. Do they suddenly become blessed with the knowledge of how to raise one? Do they learn it from a book? Are they able to know when it’s going well and when it’s not? And it occurs to me that, other than picking it up as they go along, they’re probably just as clueless as I am when it comes to raising a child. That makes it all the more scarier for them because (unlike me) they actually have to deal with it on a daily basis.
As horrible as that sounds towards any new parent, the sentiment stands: as we grow up and venture further into adulthood, it’s quite clear that a lot of us feel extremely lost and uncertain a lot of the time. I think the idea of children just brings that thought to light because, as children, we once looked up to grown-ups as if they were all-knowing divine beings. And yet, thanks to the passage of time, we’ve come to realise that all those adults are just as dumb and clueless as we are, only now we have a new generation of kids looking at us for answers and getting the prospect of societal division, economic collapse and perhaps a little dash of nuclear apocalypse thrown in for good measure.
After Mr Cameron lobbed the hot potato (made in Belgium) in the air, the rest of his cohorts ducked for cover one by one, leaving Mrs May clutching onto it, adamant to make a success of it while surrounded by the intoxicating scent of singed flesh coming from her own hands. Now that many of her political peers and rivals have begged her to put the hot potato down, she’s clamped her own hands shut around it and challenged everyone else to come get it from her vice-like grip.
What follows now is an excruciating seven weeks of news coverage on the next big uncertain that nobody (not even the politician parents we look up to the know all the things for us) really wants to deal with, but we have to because that’s just the way this shit’s been going for the last few years now. Or maybe it’s always been like this, only we haven’t realised it until now because we’re only just at that stage where we’re starting to understand that nobody has a clue.
Shame about the potato though. That could’ve easily been used to distill a fresh bottle of vodka that Huw could’ve stuck under the desk. God knows he’d need it over the next few weeks.
If someone said to you (like I’m about to do right now), “imagine a band whose musical style is to layer a few instruments over archive clips of old radio transmissions,” you’d think they were fucking mad, right? Well for some reason, these guys do it anyway, because why the fuck not, I guess.
Unlike last year’s funky jazz band accompaniment to Russian spacemen circa the 1960s (seriously, search for Gagarin and you’ll see what I mean), this track dials it down a bit on the archive footage and brings in some serene, modern vocals to create something that easily passes for a bit of ambient background music to while away these lengthening Spring days. Every cloud, right?
Public Service Broadcasting feat. Tracyanne Campbell – Progress
Jamie Walsh 
Leave a comment