we're The Mercenaries yeah isn't me yeah
I'm the drummer a sensible one resource
go John Jones
Street Perry from campus yeah
we're still rows bass master
Bradley guitar I'm Clive Martin your
guide to the dark heart of the UK club
scene for the last episode we went to
hang out in Beelzebub spaceman for a
metal night but for this episode we were
off to investigate the more sensitive
side of guitar music indie when I was a
teenager it was all the rage I remember
hanging out in Camden asking my mum to
make my jean skinnier and thinking that
no fielding was cool but with the holy
arms fire and the advent of South London
based the UK based music Camden became a
cultural wasteland a downmarket tourist
trap for European exchange students to
buy grinders and try to live out the
Winehouse dream but is the scene I knew
and loved dead or are there signs of
life underneath it's battered trilby it
was time to leave Camden's decaying
corpse ditched the zulu jacket and head
to shortage the halfway house of the
indie dream walking in it was clear that
this wasn't the glamorous world of indie
rock and roll the Brandon Flowers
eulogized in song the smell of
second-hand leather and third hand pipe
belches vested in the air whilst the
sound of badly mixed 60s classics and
people calling each other fella provided
the original soundtrack for the evening
primarily the night was populated by
your Burton's menswear lads horizontally
stripe Young Turks from midsize towns
who wear smart shoes and big disclosure
is trendy bollocks
then you have their dabs and the
occasional indie Cindy to keep the male
to female ratio just below that of
another Melvin's reunion ATP the indie
cliches were still to be found but in a
diluted Student Union kind of way the
dancefloor seizures the bradley wiggins
haircuts and the worst array of hats
outside of ladies day at Aintree
even Richey Edwards decided to come out
of hiding for the night
yet the most unfortunate reality of
India nights came crashing with a flurry
of feedback and bad onstage banter live
music to be honest I'd be quite happy
guzzling watered-down lager and head
nodding to Kilimanjaro
but indie nights just won't let you do
that instead they forced you to endure
the rock style delusions of local
government employees who won't ever
admit that they aren't johnny marr and
cool science teachers who slipped
Kassabian lyrics into their homework
assignments call me a club fascist but
there's something horribly incongruous
about live music in clubs they should
really be about seamless dance for
ecstasy the people picking the tunes
capturing the moment with their
selections not front then
shouting out their girlfriends and
telling you where the merch table is
birthday perfect you Bat Mitzvah
I'm not saying there's no place for live
music but come on guys it's a club think
studio 54 think the Hacienda you aren't
about to break in to live forever at
Knebworth and you never will be
but maybe I'm in the minority here maybe
this is just the talk of another jaded
Shoreditch wanker what do you think so I
tell you what a shortage went in there
is somebody that's very dressed in the
canvas corner of a wanker I bought this
hat from a small guy called hock in the
Spitalfields market well the majority of
the guys it looks like a convention
winning them I'm a die-hard Laura
Marling family I'm not they would have
handed on the same even we're stronger
than him hi this is just my dorky
there's no fashion subsidies just let me
get my doll you talk about why the music
is flourishing here in shortage why the
courage successful opera claim it's
because they can find up with music the
thing is I don't remember India nights
being like this and I don't know whether
it's because I'm seeing it through John
Lennon rose-tinted glasses but this was
more like paralytic PE teachers trying
to dance to The Fratellis nothing about
it was alternative anymore it was like
being in the soccer am studio rather
than Warhol's Factory it just seems to
me that somewhere along the line the
scene dropped its standards and instead
settle for the lowest common denominator
I'm not saying Indies dead but my god
it's looking rough
the dubstep is like a here chair let me
try to contract this the years yeah what
we do is you down okay yeah and we like
dancer really come on