HE’S NOT JUST DRAWN BADLY
As loathe as I am to rise to the bait of something as half arsed and uninformed as the Technics Mercury Music Prize (I mean, the prize is named after a company that no longer exists) I cannot let this Badly Drawn Boy nonsense persist. There are two things you need to know about the boy drawn bad.
a) He is the British Beck.
b) He wears a bobble hat.
Let us examine these two stabs at greatness. How much of a compliment is it to be compaired to some Yank with rubbish hair who is quite obviously a loon and only knows one word in the dictionary – which is of course eclectic. In an attempt to be like the hip-hopping, folk rocking, funk maulingly rubbish Beckster – Mr Gough has treated a few knocked out guitar tunes with a flanger. Badly Drawn Boy is also quite badly reading boy and appeard to have mistaken the eclectic for epiletic – which might explain his occasion fits of tunefulness. The rest of his songs sound like The Proclaimers.
But I know I am missing the big picture here. He wears a bobble hat, that most maligned of rock acoutrements. No rock star has ever worn a bobble hat. It is not sexy, it is not clever. The only vaguely famous people to ever wear bobble hats were The Flumps. And here is where the story leads us too. Badly Drawn Boy is merely Grandpa Flump on his Flumpsichord. Well worth an award named after a defunct telecom firm. The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast? Night of the serious muso critic trying to champion a talent so mediorce that even when he rocks out he just sounds like a soft rock version of Chicago? ie Boston.
(Dear reader, I am merely annoyed because my money was on Helicopter Girl. When a poster campaign can win someone an award I will finally be happy and convinced of the death of all music. Music awards should be won on the strength of blitz postering of Camden and a girl sticking her arse in the air.)