Chinese Democracy
Track-By-Track Review
Wild Billy Childish & the MBEs
Thatcher's ChildrenIan Gittins, August 7th, 2008 14:36
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Integrity in music is a strange and fluid notion. For some artists – and Björk and Damon Albarn come to mind – it entails being nobly allergic to commercial success; moving into ever more marginal and avant-garde areas to maintain their mojo. For Radiohead, it is – or was – all about saving their non-bourgeois souls by giving their music away for nothing. And for Kent’s own Billy Childish, it means never selling out to diversity, or change, or imagination, and instead making the identical record again and again and again.
With a productivity rate that leaves Mark E Smith resembling Kraftwerk, Childish has made more than 100 albums of ragged garage rock over the last thirty years. Indeed, the dogged, dogmatic Fall are a good attitudinal reference point, except that Childish lacks Smith’s sly wit, his edgy euphoria, his gnomic contrariness. When his former lover Tracey Emin condemned Childish’s determinedly static aesthetic vision as “stuck, stuck, stuck”, he took it as a compliment: he does not progress but then nor, by the same token, does he regress.
Instead, he just does this: this is what he does. Thatcher’s Children is a marvellously apposite album title for a man who remains consumed by adolescent grudges; who, entering his 50th year, appears still to be seeing the world through the eyes of Jilted John. The indignant punk-blues throb of the uptight title track sounds like a lesser Jam b-side, while elsewhere the carefully amateurish musical ethos recalls the long-forgotten punk journeymen who made up 1977’s numbers: Eater, Sham 69, UK Subs, Angelic Upstarts. Particularly Angelic Upstarts.
Childish grunts and thrashes away, the great British eccentric who never sold out partly as an act of grim willpower and partly because nobody ever wanted to buy him, but the Buzzcockian ‘Coffee Date’ and ‘He’s Making A Tape’, for all of their lyrical detail, betray a creativity that has atrophied through repetition. Ultimately, the irony is that his truculent passivity represents a timid refusal to quit his musical comfort zone, rather than any spectacular, chance-taking integrity. The album closes with a bleary roustabout called ‘Back Among The Medway Losers’, and you can almost feel Billy Childish nod with satisfaction: for the 107th time, he’s kept it as pretend-real as ever.
birt umber
Aug 8, 2008 10:23pm
Aug 8, 2008 10:23pm
Spot on Journalism.
Wow! Someone who finally sees Childish for the monosyllabalic idiot/ phony he truly is.
One chord, one sound, one brain cell! And who’s Jack Green? - (see previous response) - a po-faced Childish apologist can’t even post his comment without ballsing it up.
Good for Gittns for putting childish in his place.
Joss Milan
Aug 8, 2008 11:06pm
Aug 8, 2008 11:06pm
When I heard that Kurt Cobain was a fan of Childish I thought ‘thank god you shot yourself you sad man’. And then those idiot’s from Mud Honey called Childish a Genius –Dorks! Are these pop stars stupid or being paid? Kylie Minogue (a cute Aussie chick who can’t sing) was con'd into using one of Childish’s illiterate poems as a title for her LP –Impossible princess. Beck started singing Childish’s praises and then fat boy, Jack white was taken in by the Childish mafia, but Jack came to his sences when he realised that Childish was in fact rat litter. Eddy Vedder is one who still needs to wake up to Childish’s uselessness. And that Brit twit, Graham Coxen - who played for looser group, Blur.
Well done Gittns, you d**k wad!
Red Black
Aug 8, 2008 11:35pm
Aug 8, 2008 11:35pm
This album happens to be one of the finest in Mister Childish's long and illustrious carrier. The reviewer would seam to have a personal problem with Childish, and no nonsense Rock ‘n’ Roll. Maybe Childish dicked his wife! Whatever, Gittins should stick to AOR.
Rijk Nordson
Aug 9, 2008 12:03am
Aug 9, 2008 12:03am
I’m not much bothered either way - if Billy Childish is a genius or dullard - but this article has been written by a pompous ass.
stitch morrison
Aug 9, 2008 2:50pm
Aug 9, 2008 2:50pm
Mark E. Smith a wit? He sounds more like the local nutter directing traffic in Sainsbury car park with a plastic bag on his head! Billy Childish is a poet.
john john hardin
Aug 9, 2008 3:00pm
Aug 9, 2008 3:00pm
We’er talking about music, not poety. Numb nuts!
dan theman
Aug 9, 2008 3:18pm
Aug 9, 2008 3:18pm
If you want to here some truly great Childish music listen to the 1986 Childish LP Jack Ketch and the Crowmen. It’s like the Fall but good. So to Thee Hedacoats LP The Messerschmitt pilots severed hand. Obviously this reviewer thinks all Childish LP’s are the same; he’d probably say all black people look alike too.
Check out Childish’s poetry
http://www.theaquariumonline.co.uk/acatalog/Books.html
Kieths mum Mumstheword
Aug 9, 2008 3:27pm
Aug 9, 2008 3:27pm
Who’s writing all this shit? These names are just too suspicious. Billy Childish and his two mates?
Smart Guy Journyman
Aug 9, 2008 3:32pm
Aug 9, 2008 3:32pm
If we were ment to read boring old poertry why did god invented cds?
Morten Wasinski
Aug 22, 2008 7:38pm
Aug 22, 2008 7:38pm
Ian Gittins: what a clever review! I'll bet you read Greil Marcus books, and enjoy them too!
And using Angelic Upstarts as a swear word... Classy!
By the way, an excellent lp by mr Childish.
Cat Power
Britney Spears
Coldplay
The Killers
The Bronx 
Skeletons
News Headlines
Aug 8, 2008 9:53pm
Very jaundiced journalism.
There are just too many holes in this review. Firstly, to say that Björk and Damon Albarn are "nobly allergic to commercial success" is so obviously off target. Both Björk and Damon Albarn are multi millionaires who possess a very keen sense of commercial value, even if that sometimes necessitates appearing a bit weird.
The next big dud is to accuse Billy Childish of “never selling out to diversity, or change, or imagination”. Childish is recognized for recording solo blues, spoken voice, nursery rhymes, 77 punk rock, and even experimental classical music. Of course Childish is also a published novelist, poet, painter, super 8-film maker, photographer, etc. etc…
The next whopping clangor is to suggest that Mister Childish “lacks the sly wit . . . edgy euphoria [and] gnomic contrariness of Mark E. Smith.” I think the reviewer shows a distinct propensity towards contrariness, but if you have ever read an interview with Childish, or come across his response to Jack Whites slur, you will know that there are few musicians, or artists, who can match Childish for ‘sly wit’, and love of contradiction.
The next obvious mistake must be the reviewers ‘observation’ that [Childish] “never sold out…because nobody ever wanted to buy him” it was widely reported when Childish turned down the offer of appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and it is also well known that Childish refuses to Very jaundiced journalism.
There are just too many holes in this review. Firstly, to say that Björk and Damon Albarn are "nobly allergic to commercial success" is so obviously off target. Both Björk and Damon Albarn are multi millionaires who possess a very keen sense of commercial value, even if that sometimes necessitates appearing a bit weird.
The next big dud is to accuse Billy Childish of “never selling out to diversity, or change, or imagination”. Childish is recognized for recording solo blues, spoken voice, nursery rhymes, 77 punk rock, and even experimental classical music. Of course Childish is also a published novelist, poet, painter, super 8-film maker, photographer, etc. etc…
The next whopping clangor is to suggest that Mister Childish “lacks the sly wit . . . edgy euphoria [and] gnomic contrariness of Mark E. Smith.” I think the reviewer shows a distinct propensity towards contrariness, but if you have ever read an interview with Childish, or come across his response to Jack Whites slur, you will know that there are few musicians, or artists, who can match Childish for ‘sly wit’, and love of contradiction.
The next obvious mistake must be the reviewers ‘observation’ that [Childish] “never sold out…because nobody ever wanted to buy him” it was widely reported when Childish turned down the offer of appearing on Celebrity Big Brother and it is also well known that Childish refuses to become a professional musician. To conclude with accusing Childish of all people of being “pretend-real” revels an almost perverse need for this reviewer to invert the truth.
I think it would be a much simpler if Ian Gittns simply said, “I’m a big fan of Björk and Damon Albarn and people like Billy Childish bother me.”
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