Eddy Says

Eddy Says: Top ten things I hate, as of summer 2010

By | Published on Saturday 21 August 2010

Eddy Temple Morris

We hate the fact that while the rest of the world chills out in August, we here at CMU HQ are in our busiest period of the year because our sister media – ThreeWeeks – is the biggest reviewer at the Edinburgh Festival, which is on right now. That’s a round about way of explaining why this and the last edition of Eddy Says have arrived a bit later than normal. And also a clever introduction to this week’s Eddy Says, another list of the things that get even the most easy going man in music all riled up.

Many moons ago in Eddy Says, I put together a list of the top 20 things I hate. I remember people reacting with great joy that someone normally so positive could be so easily wound up. So I thought it’s time I updated that list, with ten fresh bees in my bonnet. A new deuce of goat-getters.

1. Poorly labelled MP3s. I’m often put in the position of having to download multiple tunes, to spend an hour or two with ten simultaneous downloads chugging away on my laptop. The MP3s then land randomly on my desktop and if they just have the track name, I have to trawl through hundreds of emails trying to find one that tells me who the fuck made it. Even better, the MP3 will be labelled something like ‘version 2′ or ’01 TTFK’ or, in the case of the daftest MP3 ever (took me about six months to trace it back to my gorgeous pals, The Midimidis) ’02 XXFGGDDGF0FDDRE3548555 V2 less comp.than V1 but more than V3′. It does happen to the best of us. When Pendulum sent me ‘Immunize’ it was simply called ‘track01’. Please boys and girls, it’s not brain surgery, you wouldn’t send me a blank CD would you? Actually, thinking about it, I have had a quite a few of those!

2. Fishes on the backs of vehicles. It’s not the passive aggressive evangelism I hate, as much as the downright arrogance. “I’ve put this fish on the back of my car to show I’m better than you… after all, I’m going to heaven, while you are going to hell”. No I’m not, Christian, and neither are you, because the FACT is we’ll BOTH end up as worm-shit. There is no God, no heaven and no hell, only the hell you create on Earth before you die, forever, with only your children giving your genes any form of afterlife. Adam and Eve were not the first people on Earth and the Bible – as you know it – was written nearly 350 plus years after an alleged event, that makes it a novel, you fuckwit.

3. Pointy shoes. Extending the size of your feet only makes them less attractive. Clowns have long feet for a reason; it’s funny. Those noughties witch-toed boots, ugh. Those men’s shoes that make you look like you have a pair of canoes attached to your feet. If I was king, I’d have a special contraption made, like a cross between stocks and a guillotine, just to slice them cleanly off at the ankle. Interestingly though, in my opinion, there is a point beyond which the pointyness becomes so ridiculous that it’s kind of cool, funny-cool, like those Turkish slippers, or Tom Losers gothy winkle-pickers, which rock on him, but anything else is just plain wrong.

4. Flip flops in the city. David Human, the wonderful wordsmith and front man of A Human has been ranting about this on Twitter and I’m 100% with him. Girls, flip flops are for beaches, not polluted cities… get your filthy, horrid, putrefying black feet away from me. Don’t you put them on that chair, and don’t even think about putting them on my lap, you beast!

5. Slagging your ex on Twitter. God knows (except there is no God – I refer you to point two) most of us have a psychotic ex, but slagging them off on Twitter is like shooting puppies in a shoebox. OK the puppies may lie, the puppies may be petty, evil little shits, but executing puppies in public, in broad daylight, is not a good look.

6. Promo companies that refuse to provide listen links. The other week I got another download link from a large, reputable company that plugs a lot of records to a lot of DJs. I politely asked if the plugger in question could send me listen links, as I was wasting so much time downloading stuff I didn’t like, or that was more appropriate for Ras Kwame or Pete Tong. His reply was incredible. He refused. He said: “I only send exclusive shizzle, if you don’t download it, that’s your loss”. I was incredulous. With the exception of a few records that have more than one plugger sending them out, ALL tunes are ‘exclusive’. An ‘exclusive’ turd is still a fucking turd. Amazingly he could not seem to grasp that by using SoundCloud or Fatdrop he’d get instant feedback and I’d download only what I needed, making everybody a winner. I wrote this down a while back and I’m glad to report his company has now entered the 21st Century before losing all their business.

7. Not giving credit where credit is due. From Coco Sumner (that evil little spawn of Sting and Trudi Styler, who stole a track from Dead Kids, passed it off as her own, got busted, had to relinquish a portion of the song back to Dead Kids, and STILL doesn’t credit them on her record) right through to MIA, who talked over a Suicide tune and left every teenager in the western hemisphere thinking it was hers: Politeness costs nothing.

8. TCP. God, I fucking hate that stuff. Savlon, yummy. Dettol, OK, a bit hospitally but acceptable. TCP smells like pure death. I’d put it on a par with a week old dead horse in the desert, or a tramp’s arse.

9. White curtains. I really hate things that FAIL in their primary function. Belts that don’t have enough holes, umbrellas that turn inside out when somebody nearby coughs hard, hand driers that blow like a vole with emphysema, and curtains in bedrooms that let ALL THE FUCKING LIGHT THROUGH. Yes, they might look nice in the daytime but the whole point of curtains is to KEEP. LIGHT. OUT. In-laws’ houses tend to be where you find these pointless, sleep-depriving, life-ruining, design-flawed, nonsensical pieces of ill-conceived bedroom furniture. If I had my way, I’d use World War Two black out curtains and gaffa tape the edges down, like a vampire in hiding, not one crack of light gets through on my watch. Not one shaft. Sensory deprivation. That’s how I roll.

10. Deck shoes. I’ve just noticed that three out of ten of these are footwear related. I don’t think it’s anything more than coincidence, and I should point out that I have no footwear fetish that I’m aware of. But I digress, my focus on this tenth little rant are those white soled, preppy look, often tasselled, brown (or worryingly other colours now, as I saw in Shortlist Magazine the other week) ‘yacht loafers’. I’ve always hated that US prep school look. I remember American mates and family extolling the virtues of a shop called LL Bean, which pretty much invented this barfworthy appearance, and it’s unfortunately all the rage now. I can’t move on Clapham Common without my gag reflex going like a cat with a hairball. When combined with rolled up chinos, or a jumper tied around the neck, they only serve to make the wearer appear like nauseating Ivy League graduate with pretentions of poshness. Look: there is only ONE scenario in which ‘yacht footwear’ is acceptable, and that is if you are, at the time of wearing said shoes, on board a yacht that is registered in your name. And even then, as someone posted on my Facebook wall, they are “still a bit iffy”.

Rant over. Normal service will be resumed next week.

Eddy xx

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