Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » A Bunch Of Fuckwits

A Bunch Of Fuckwits

I’m of course talking about Kenickie. And everyone who loved Kenickie. And everyone, really.

(”We were Kenickie - a Bunch of Fuckwits” was Lauren’s final words at their final Astoria gig. Which I was at and talked nonsense to TV people outside before and cried afterwards. I recall in some pub, the Kenickie internet mob gathered around, with tears creeping into most people’s eyes. And then - I believe - Rob said “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m really rather sad”. Which made everyone mock Rob, because he was - indeed - sad. And lamentation was averted. Oh, those the-nineties.)

They’re 10 years dead today. I’m ashamed I didn’t realise before proxymoron on twitter mentioned it. Minutes later, KenickieUberFan RobRizzo sends a facebook message out asking how people are celebrating it. Hepton wimped out of laying a wreath outside the Astoria. LAZY! LAZY!

Me, I just put on Kenickie’s At The Club and lsten to it while cooking some chili for the lady who’s out at poetry stuff, finish the final Crown of Destruction script and then write this.

Kenickie were the last one of those bands for me.

I was, as Tim from Ash (is Foxy! - Kenickie Ed) noted on the radio after reading Phonogram recently, one of those scary fans. But I was aware of it - and, frankly, awareness that liking a band this much was really fucki’ scary was one of the things that was common in Kenickie fandom. Hell, I ran a Kenickie fansite for those few short years and I actively avoided as much contact with them as possible for that reason. I was scary! Stay out the way as much as possible!

(I mostly succeeded, bar an interview and a few hellos. Though was in some fanzine convention quiz team thing on Lauren and Pete’s team once. Or at least, I think so. This was when Mira Manga slapped me, so much of that day is in a bit of a fuzz.)

So Kenickie then. They were the last one of those sorts of bands. Those sorts. It’s not about intensity of emotional response to music. Every couple of months I’ll get a song which suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world (and I wouldn’t be writing Phonogram if that wasn’t true. I suspect the second that stops becoming true is the second I stop writing the bloody thing). What I’m talking about is a larger intensity - as in everything connected to the band burns with a bright light. Liking the band means everything. It’s about being a fan, in that “atic” sense. It’s been a while, but it’s like a religion. Except the hymns are better.

I believed in Kenkie. They spoke to the small decent things in humans and pop-music. They were, as I believe Simon Price noted, indie-kids who realised that being indie-kids was a pretty shit thing to be. And it is, and we knew it, and they reached and failed and loved and got whatever love leads to.

Heh. It’s at times like this I wish I had the pages of my Great Lost Fanzine, Darcy’s On The Pull Issue “U”. That had about fourteen pages on Kenickie, including at least one large essay about why they were so important. By which I mean, important to me. Christ - I was reading the Gamer forum today, and the thread about the problems with the Top 100, around them changing it from “Best games ever” to “our favourite games ever”. And I had to resist just noting that the second someone tried to sell you a best list where best doesn’t equal favourite, they’re trying to bullshit you. And, for me, Kenickie were both about Subjective Love of Life, and - so - justified my wholly subjective love of them.

I’m not even going to try to listen to my copy of Get In! - all my Kenickie singles are scratched to fuck, but it’s especially - but returning to At The Club after so many years pulls me in half a dozen ways. Bits remain - I was always the sort who thought Kenickie as a singles band who were never really served by their singles. Nightlife, In Your Car and - that big old albatross - Punka were brash and fun, but were never really showed why they were special. It was all in the album tracks, the B-sides and… well, the exception was always Millionaire Sweeper’s be-my-baby-driven downbeat Lauren lyric of teenage pregnancy, which remains atmospheric and painfully sad (All those kisses that “ache like blisters waiting to get burst”. Didn’t Get It when it came out, admitedly, but that’s fine too - I like that I can grow into stuff. Even the GO OUT! RIGHT NO! PARTY! singles were kind of outstripped by Classy driving that into psychopathy with its making things out of sin/blood and human skin-isms.

Still - the stuff I adored remains adorable. People We Want makes me think of whether we did actually become the People We Want. I dunno. The difference between first hearing it on the album in an American Bedsit and in a North London flat seems a world away - but I can see the route along, and the mix of lust and doom still means the world to me. How I Was Made was the point where Kenickie graduated from a pop-crush to proper devotion when I realised it was on the flipside to Come OUt 2nite. I hadn’t played it for a few months, assuming that the B-side couldn’t be any good. And when it hit me in a Stafford room, I played it dozens of times in a row, recognising the catholic self-loathing all too well.

(God: that Lauren and Marie were - in their differing ways - all-so-clearly Catholic was another reason I loved them, though I don’t think I ever admited it until now. Actually, was Marie? I forget. Marie should have been Norse.)

Oh - and Robot Song, which still punches aboves its weight in terms of construction and lyrical conceit: and the loneliness in invulnerability throughout is something that’s so rarely captured in a pop-record.

So, yeah. They changed my life, and only for the better. That’s all you can hope to recieve for a band. And I’m grateful, you know?

Anyway - Ben Hall has lobbed some Kenickie Live MP3s onto his own 10 year Kenickie post, and they’re entirely loveable. Especially worth listening to the version of I Would Fix You. I like the recorded version well enough, but there’s a fragility to those early live preformances of the song which I really miss from it.

14 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Sounds like something I’d say. Or would have said. I do remember punching Hepton in the stomach for being unkind, so I guess that makes sense.

I also remember it not hurting one bit, you big girl.

I listened to 122 Kenickie tracks today, which is the sum total of everything I’ve got - albums, singles, EPs, live tracks, radio appearances, the lot. I was left with a bewildering feeling which I can’t really articulate, and won’t try.

All I will say is this: the B-Sides from the At The Club singles? Man, they’re still white hot.

I also remember it not hurting one bit, you big girl.

I listened to 122 Kenickie tracks today, which is the sum total of everything I’ve got - albums, singles, EPs, live tracks, radio appearances, the lot. I was left with a bewildering feeling which I can’t really articulate, and won’t try.

All I will say is this: the B-Sides from the At The Club singles? Man, they’re still white hot.

Erm. Sorry about that. Cursed netbook and it’s child-sized keyboard.

I was talking about this - in person! Blew my mind, it did, especially as we were waiting to see Future Of The Left at the time - with Matt Sullivan the other week, and I put forward that there really hasn’t been a band anywhere near their special aura, all the contenders being too try-hard, not try-hard enough, too in thrall to Being Indie* or make the classic mistake of equating Kenickie with three chord shouting because working out all the other stuff might involve investing emotion. Kenickie knew you could pretend to be live-fast-split-young dayglo grrrls as long as you had emotional reinforcement if anyone dared to probe deeper.

Now Lauren’s openly not interested in making any more music and, it seems, is increasingly trying to make out that those were her young and foolish days. I hope she did look into that Phonogram thing further.

* Apparently Slampt have made a documentary for their whateverth anniversary which prominently features t’Nix. Ha!

Despite Simon mentioning it to me the other week, I entirely forgot about this. Although I did walk past both the Astoria and the pub the scary internet fans met up in before the gig this evening. Spook!

Erm, yeah, What everyone else said.

I was getting really into Kenickie just at the point they split up, and ended up stumbling deep into Manics fandom as a result of having a vacant spot for “one of those” bands that needed filling. Never got to see Kenickie live, but I did get to see Lauren do a set at Reading 2000 which was almost as good (to me, at least).

Literally a week ago today I was on the tube and realised, to my utter astonishment, that I could hear that the guy next to me was listening to Come out 2nite on his MP3 player. I was about to be impressed, but almost as soon as I realised, so did he, and he reached into his pocket, pulled out the MP3 player and skipped the track. I’ve seen some depressing things on the underground, but even as desensitised as I am, that’s the sort of thing that’ll ruin anyone’s day.

It’s true
To you
It must seem sad
I know
It all
But I’m not sad belive me
‘Cos I choose not to be

It still makes me smile and want to cry at the same time.

Kenickie fucking ruled. Yes it’s sad that they’re no longer with us, but take comfort in the fact that Come Out 2nite is at Number 1 in heaven, and it makes Elvis weep every time while Sid Vicious and Johnny Cash have a punch-up over who’s fitter, Lauren or Marie.

I saw them without realising when they supported the Ramones, who I was really there to see. They were alright, I suppose.

I’m capturing this when I should be thinking of bed and sleep and dear Cthulhu the soon to happen weekend because I’m listening to The Sundays when I know I should be listening to The Flatmates or even better See See Rider, when while surfing I found [url=http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?p=1653]this meaningless but truthful rave[/url], I’d call it a rant but I guess Kieron might have had a few before posting, but yet it’s terribly important.

This isn’t exactly about Kenicke (however they were so painfully brilliantly beautiful and this uncaring world didn’t get it because everyone else is a moron), what Kieron touches on affects so many people’s reactions to so many bands. When Will Sin’s death broke, I cried not just for his passing, I cried because The Shamen would never be great again (sure they got into the charts, but they weren’t great), The Flatmates physically assaulted each other on stage and the peroxide blonde movement became The Primitives (yes their early work was painfully brilliantly beautiful but look what happen to the blonde movement after Crash… it crashed, so ending the rise of See See Rider who at this moment in time should be consuming your first born as tribute to their latest opus, damn you Tracy Tracy, we never even got a See See Rider album because of you).

And uncaring stupid people called Sarah Records ‘fey’ and ‘gentle’ when every release came with a nails to hammer into your head because they sounded so painfully brilliantly beautiful but even Morrissey was too scared to get that nasty and brittle about life.

But at least some bands are still worth championing for. Okkervil River for their de-construction of fame and personality. Rasputina for those who are still fucked up Goths at heart. PJ Harvey because the new album should never, [i]ever[/i] sound like the last album (a sin even as an ardent Nick Cave fan I can accuse him off, which BTW is why PJ pwns my soul rather than Nick).

Which is of course why I’m a Romantic, it should always be perfect. Yeah, it ends (mainly due to stupid moron people getting involved, but such is the nature of stupid moron people), at least we got a glimpse of the painfully brilliantly beautiful. We get to spend decades on the ‘but what if’, yet Kenicke, The Flatmates, See See Rider, Sarah Records and all the painfully brilliantly beautiful acts I could list here (like brave Birdland, Green On Red, Pizzacato 5 [don’t get me started on how the world was cruel to them] and others), however for those who were there, those who gave our very souls to them so they’d have the opportunity to steal more of our spirit … well… of course I regret their passing, I think the stupid moron people should be shot for ruining the art and finer world these bands would have given us. But I can’t be bitter because to this day, I experienced something painfully brilliantly beautiful and it still lingers on, not as a memory, but as part of me, a sum of my total.

So, they didn’t fail, we didn’t fail. They were and still are painfully brilliantly beautiful. Thank ‘em.

(taken from a post to some mates late at night so apologies if rambling)

I only ever saw them once, when me ‘n Jon DJ-ed the Melody Maker 80th birthday thingy at the Astoria, but I’ve yet to see a band with funnier between-song banter, even if I never loved the tunes quite as much as you do.
The world is a sadder place without them, certainly.
I wish Lauren was still singing, too. Whilst she’s a decent presenter, she’s never been as funny as she was with the rest of the band, and I get the feeling that the corporate world has dulled her slightly.

Damnit, i was 16 and never ever got to see them live, the news of their break up was pretty devastating, but in a sly way i hoped they’d then move back to sunderland and i’d get to see them at some point (never did, missed them by minutes on occasions according to friends)
very much one of those bands, i completely echo your sentiments, i dont think many (any) bands since have made me feel “ooh” and devoted to them as Kenickie did.

oh, i just remembered, i did see Johnny X once in Newcastle, coming out of a hairdressers, i was then 23 and realised i’d embarrass him and me if i even referred to him as the infamous Johnny X

sad world without Kenickie, now im going to spend a friday night drinking cider, wearing black cherry lipstick and listening to my also-scratched-to-hell At The Club

[…] (I’ll have a review of O’Neill’s Down and Out on Murder Mile — which is definitely worth your time — on Lit Mob fairly soon, for what it’s worth. Also worth a read: Phonogram’s Kieron Gillen on Kenickie.) […]

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>