I was now heading north on my comfy, soundproofed train, and increasingly getting worried about my route. The blissful silence and sound free rocking movement (now that’s what I call rocking) had lulled me to sleep, and when I woke up I realised my initial plan to do like Fogg and hit the Suez canal was scuppered. I was way to north, in country in northern India to cut time by water travel. And ahead of me lay Pakistan, Afghanistan and lots of opportunities to play Rock The Kasbah and Killing An Arab.
THE VERY REASON I HAD HOPED NOT TO TRAVEL THAT WAY.
It finally hit me that traveling without a manservant was going to lead me to more mistakes like this. I endeavoured to try and contact Crispian at the next available opportunity. I needed someone to be awake, to book tickets and to get me into mystery scrapes on the moon and the like.
Which just left me a choice to bed down for my last night. The disputed territory of Kashmir (lousy Led Zep song keeping me awake all night), or the relatively safer Sikh territory of the Punjab. And since I have already taken the piss out of the Zep on this trip, the Punjab it was.
PUNJABI MC
David Bowie recorded Ziggy Stardust in German as well as English. It is rubbish, like the original, but rubbish and German. This is the analogy I would make with Punjabi MC. Yes, he is singing in Punjabi over more traditional Western hip-hop style backings, but that just makes it rubbish AND Punjabi.
Perhaps the addition of a language barrier means that at least I cannot be assaulted by the relentless inanity of his hip-hop lyrics. But luckily he has made up for that by making the tunes especially bad in some stab at over-compensation. Don’t over-compensate, just compensate ME. Financially and sign a contract saying you will never do it again.
What is it? Well, despite toytown techno being dead for over ten years, it seems Punjabi MC’s musical schtick is to rip-off long forgotten rubbish TV theme tunes and turn them into loops. Notwithstanding the Knight Rider riff being used to equally poor purposed by Nas two years before him, he has also cobbled together a tune using the Magnum theme. Now if you remember it, the Magnum theme tune was about a generic as they come, and is not improved by beats and a faux profound Punjabi squeal. Indeed the only thing it has to recommend it is that it reminds me of Magnum, which then reminds me of Dirty Harry, and I would like to ask Punjabi MC if he feels lucky? I would assume with his lack of talent that the answer would have to be yes.