Sunday, October 5, 2008

No feelings (either way)?

Everyone's seen this now, haven't they?:




Apparently though it seems, Keith Allen (nowadays known professionally as 'Lilly Allen's Father') is so 'genuinely' gutted by John Lydon's 'betrayal' of his roots, that he felt he had to write a little response of his own.



Since, probably, the most subversive thing the average joe can do these days is to encourage other people not to buy something (and particularly since the Spill is most decidedly and delightfully not a CIF moanathon type blog - we can leave that stuff to them) I think the best contribution we RRers can make to this 'debate' is to do what we do best and decide which of the two turns (John's or Keith's) - to paraphrase Mick Jagger in "Performance" - really "makes it".

Are we amused? Vote here.

13 comments:

Blimpy said...

the butter ad was a bit half baked if you ask me. could have been a lot better.

allen's thing was really dull, and i could only watch a minute of it.

lydon wins.

Anonymous said...

Ditto that Blimpy. I hadn't seen the ad before, but nothing surprises me with celebrity commercials anymore. I'm still cringeing at the Alan Hansen Morrisons ones.

Anonymous said...

Lydon wins, he probably needs the money.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm butter versus cheese ... too close to call a winner out of that dondle in the dairy.

Is anyone else a fan of malt whisky as well as music; if so, try this site - Whiskyfun ...

and scroll down to 2nd October for a (belated) review of The Pistols at Hammersmith Apollo back in September.

http://www.whiskyfun.com/

sourpus said...

Cheers all.

I wasnt sure whether I was bothered or not by this debacle; maybe a vague sense that I should be, since the Pistols (at least in principle) do somehow still seem to represent some sort of watermark for counter-cultural values under attack.

My best attempt at fairness brings me though to the following assessment:

God save the Queen:

On the plus side, Lydon is reliably unhinged and makes a decent fist of the opening sortie and of the tagline at the end. Keith operates the same general principle (never leave em certain if you're just having a larf or not) more or less successfully. Clealy both know a thing or two about projection and playing to gallery.

No fun:

See Lydon in sporting tweeds and 'odd couple' pyjamas left me feeling ever-so-slightly billious and Keith Allen (notwithstanding that he gets the soup of his sound just about swampy enough to be believable) still comes across as someone who has made a career out of hanging around with (and in this case banging on about) other "celebrities" - he also seems to have another variety of the same everlasting BritPop hangover as Noel Gallagher, Brett Anderson, making him a ever-flowering potential Billy Sowhat.

Best to let it lie now though I think.

treefrogdemon said...

I already like Country Life butter and I prefer John to Keith any old day.

Anonymous said...

It's a shame it wasn't lurpak, they coulda made lydon into a wee morph type butter chappy playing a trombone.

glasshalfempty said...

I could've understood if Johnny's ad had been a remake of the bu**ery scene in Last Tango in Paris. But this? Puhleese...

Shoegazer said...

Could have been butter

sourpus said...

Actually, I will just add one more thing.

Maybe I did care about the whole issue more than I realised (I thought I had given up on the Mr Rotten ages ago, after he tried to sell the idea of a 'Filthy Lucre' tour to me in the 90's and in so doing, took painful liberties with one the last remaining almost unsullied legacies of popular culture) But after rewatching the ad for CL one final time (I wanted closure in the end, I found. Ha ha), I happened to notice a TV interview from PIL days on US television (also on YouTube) with Keith Levine as a partner in crime.

At first I was merely curious and a bit lost in the idea that Mr Levine was so similar to a mate of mine from the pub I usually frequent at home, but then I started to pay attention to the whole clip and its contents a bit more and it made me think.

Perhaps the real question which needed to be asked here was 'How far is the current incarnation of Mr L different from the person he always was?' Study the two films - the ad for butter and the interview - and make your own mind up. For my money, its the same man - for good or bad. The only thing is, should we be reassessing John Lydon in the light of the evidence, or should we in fact be reassessing PIL and Johnny Rotten?

Anonymous said...

my comment seems to have slipped into the ether but it wasn't very profound anyway - didn't Salman Rushdie write the Anchor butter jingle? ("We are happy cows, we chew the cud and browse ..." Now that was class.

Anonymous said...

Do you think they were trying to channel some English eccentricity from this guy to spread the word about the butter .... ?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3MpUGERFIeY

Shoegazer said...

Once PIL lost Wobble then Levine it was game over. Apart from a couple of tracks with Afrika Bambata & Leftfield, John Lyden has done nothing of note.