BREAKFAST OF BANALITY 5: ORANGE JUICE
Orange juice, the sunshine drink! Now, Vitamin C – present in concentrated and tasty form in orange juice – is vital for preventing scurvy and anemia. These are diseases characterized by muscle wasting, easy bruising, fatigue, listlessness and jaundice. So is it not perhaps a little bit ironic that Orange Juice (the band) put out the most simpering, weedy, knock-kneed, pallid and gauche music ever made?
Now I?m reliably informed that the four spotty, spindly streaks of piss who first formed Orange Juice were among the toughest punkers in Glasgow. That may be so ? however I point the reader to photographs of the band (jumper catalogue showcases which make the cast of Gregory?s Girl look like a World?s Strongest Man contest), or to the cover of their first album (awww ? dolphin-wolphins!), or to the hamfisted jangling noise they made, or to their aw-shucks girls-don?t-like-me lyrics ? and I ask said reader this: if it wears clothes like a duck, and packages records like a duck, and plays guitar like a duck and writes words like a duck, might it not be a bastard duck?
The shocking and awful truth about Orange Juice is this: they invented indie music, not by conceiving and perfecting the form with a string of unsullied pop gems but by being so shoddy that limp-necked loons like Roddy Frame, Nick Heyward, Morrissey and David Gedge thought ?Bloody hell, even I could do that??. Rip it up and start again? Too late for that, I?m afraid. But I?ll settle for Edwyn Collins? neck ? freshly squeezed.