If the world of the Dudley Corporation is currently a lonely one then THEY SHOULD NOT YET DESPAIR! For the power of my subconcious has come to save them!!! The Corpo, you see, have saved my faith in rock music many a time! In a world where the rockists are allowed to churn out nonsense on Pitchfork all day long about cockfarming post rock (like postal chess but louder) and the two rock choices are between Endless Noise and US Punk Pop, the Corpo make a REFRESHING CHANGE. Like going into a beer garden instead of the back room. And ordering a GIN and FANTA LIMON with swizzle stick instead of a Pint of the The Usual. In a sticky glass. Urgh. But a bit less GURLY obv.
Ah yes but anyway where was I? Oh yes, they will not be lonely because WORD CAME TO ME IN A DREAM!!! In this dream, I passed through a wonderful vista of the streets of North London on a double decker red bus and my destination was to a Dudley Corporation musical gathering. There would be the squiggly guitars and the wickedfast basslines and the BEST DRUMMING EVAH, what more do you need for a rock experience? Venue? An indoor tennis court! I see bassist Pip doctoring his low frequencies on the sidelines. I wave, go over and LIKE A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PITCHER, he throws me a beer! Quality! I then rock over to see guitar hero Dudley and punk rock drummer Joss. Joss drums like a BANG CRASH MONKEY HERO! But in my dream he is a professional marathon runner and is wearing a SWEATBAND on his head!! Hee, he looked funny. We do a bit of idle chit chat and then the Arsemonkey tells me she is bored and wants to go home. So we rock back home and then switch the telly on and what do we see?? The Corpo! Playing the Royal Festival Hall! To A CAST OF THOUSANDS! All cheering like wot the great unwashed are liable to do. Hoorah!!! I put forward that this is not at all being lonely but instead it is being ROCKSTARS!!! Yay!
And then someone threw a cucumber on stage. It is obviously phallic.
I love the Dudleys. It’s rock but not rockist, it’s pop but they don’t wear spangly S Club FroXoR (although if they did they would be best band EVAH maybe even better than KATE BUSH). The noise from the GEETAR and the intricate COMPLEXITY makes everything they do a WINNAH – and even when they slow it down I have been known to break my ‘Oh No, Not The Ballad’ rule and let them rock the melancholy acoustical tree hugging HIPPY RUBBIDGE. Because they can actually do it quite well due to lashings of very dark humour which drop kick them out of the ditch of mediocrity like 3 meng on new fangled FLYING MACHINES.
(9/10, obv. Get Kate Bush on backing vocals, 10/10.)