Home
sign up| features / music feature |
 content by: editor |
 clown music
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Clowning around with Har Mar Superstar. Music lovers in search of something profound or sublime view the perceived “clown music” of today’s pop jesters as a major irritation. Tongue-in-cheek troubadours like Har Mar Superstar, The Streets, Goldie Lookin’ Chain and The Darkness prompt many to ask, how real are they actually keeping it? Some people crave deep melancholy crafted by emotional cripples for Chrissakes. Better The Streets, Har Mar and Welsh goons Goldie Lookin’ Chain surely, though, than the over-earnest mewling of much white-boy indie music, all maudlin mumblings by jumper chewers touting tedious sixth-form poetry. At least the former three sound like they make the effort to get out of the house.  Goldie Lookin' Chain & The Darkness “I was in a bunch of indie bands,” confesses a pre-Reading Festival Har Mar Superstar. “I knew I could sing like Stevie Wonder or Prince and use my voice in a lot better ways than whining about shit.” Being a fun guy has done him no harm. HMS has made more friends – mostly ladies – in the last two years than many of you have had hot dinners. He says his sex appeal came when he “decided to have confidence. By the end of my awkward teenage stage I was mastering the art of being awesome.” Har Mar and Mike Skinner, for two, remain a quandary, loved by people who dig their savvy delivery and despised by musical purists. The first - a diminutive, chubby, mulleted Ron Jeremy lookalike - inspires ridicule with his “My Name’s Har Mar And I’m The F**king Best” shirts, et al, while the latter, a motormouth scallywag who’d look at home raiding phone boxes while sucking Special Brew through a straw, has been dubbed equally “a people’s poet, the modern Shakespeare” and “a chattering pain in the ass”. Goldie Lookin’ Chain, meanwhile, are tearing things up by pissing all over hip-hop’s self-importance. Ask Har Mar about his success and he replies: “The fact that I can do what I do, and look how I do, and get as far as I have – that’s hilarious. But at the same time, since I have the ball rolling I’m going to take it to a place that’s not so drenched in funny.” Putting the brakes on “funny” is important, because too many gags spoil the broth, right? Har Mar’s new LP, The Handler, like Mike Skinner’s latest, reveals more heartfelt moments than his cabaret-heavy debut. He describes the last two years as a period devoted to “being out and about in everyone’s face. But with that comes a whole underside of weird isolation.” The Handler chronicles these highs and lows. “As much as there are party good-time lyrics on there I definitely made more of an effort to write down what I was feeling,” explains Har Mar. “Because I think that’s what makes good art.”  The Streets & Har Mar Superstar It’s culture’s jokers who always get the last laugh - by presenting wisdom as humour they have garnered legions of believers. Their music, far from being shallow irony, is, in fact, pure pathos. Pop drama written with the shitty end of the stick. In the end it’s not even about getting the joke because there often isn’t one. The face of Vladivar vodka, Har Mar acknowledges his accidental agent provocateur status with a grin. “My personality is definitely more known than my music, which is a bit weird,” he concludes. “But I think this album will knock all that back into place.”
Stuart Turnbull
Goldie Lookin Chain - Greatest Hits, released 06 September 04 on Atlantic.  conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 the darkness permission to land the streetsa grand don't...
related member reviews
by lovefist-fury
also on bbc.co.uk
on bbc.co.uk/music on bbc.co.uk/music music  music archive Watch music sessions and interviews from 2002 to 2008. books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles