Jump to content

Liam Fray slams classist snobs who criticise northern fans


Alan_C
 Share

Recommended Posts

28 minutes ago, Mardy said:

What a load of self justifying, mythologising old cobblers.

'we're different. Freer, more honest, know how to have a good time. Not like those c**ts 20 miles away'.

Divide and rule. Exactly what the political classes want.

We are divided politically and that has nothing to do with music. Just look at the Brexit result in relation to rich and poor. There is not one Tory councilor in Manchester or Liverpool. There are differences in wealth and political views between the north and south. 

To suggest we are all the same is well wide of the mark. Now I do not think it is anywhere bear as bad as it used to be music wise. It no longer matters if the man in the media is prejudiced as you can get your music out there without the middle man telling everyone who and what to like.

But to suggest there are not huge differences between the mindset alof southerners and northerners is wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 431
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Parts of London are the most deprived areas in the country. Fuck, parts of Kent also are. Generalisations about north and south are counterproductive. If you're skint and fucked, you're skint and fucked wherever you live. Chester, Cheshire, all round there, that bit of the northwest, man I'd never seen so many big houses and so much money and conspicuous consumption, and Tories, as when I worked up there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, bamber said:

 

Here's the thing,

Given the choice between being ruled by a metropolitan, intellectual elite of experts from London or a bunch of Northern Kippers, I choose the intellectual elite every time. That said, London does indeed seriously fail sometimes in the crowd department, but only if you are going to the wrong gigs :)

 

Yep. Whenever I go to a gig in London that costs a tenner to get in the atmosphere is brilliant. Yet when I see someone where the ticket has cost £50+ the crowd tends to be dead.

I wonder why....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But no matter. I guess we're never going to agree on this. I've spent 20 years living in different countries and seen the down side of generalisation and the dangers of believing in innate differences between regions. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mardy said:

Parts of London are the most deprived areas in the country. Fuck, parts of Kent also are. Generalisations about north and south are counterproductive. If you're skint and fucked, you're skint and fucked wherever you live. Chester, Cheshire, all round there, that bit of the northwest, man I'd never seen so many big houses and so much money and conspicuous consumption, and Tories, as when I worked up there.

You are entirely correct but you are talking about the minority rather than the majority. 

Now I have lost track about what this topic is actually about. I thought it was about a bloke in the Courteeners saying the southerners sneer at northern fans having a good time at a gig. If thats the case then the generalisations do matter. Generally people up north have less money and generally try to make the most of it when they go out. Because of that gigs generally have a better atmosphere up north than down south. Now you can go into the political ramifications of why that should be and point out there is a small enclave of multi millionaires in Cheshire. But this is about music and what is, not why.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Mardy said:

But no matter. I guess we're never going to agree on this. I've spent 20 years living in different countries and seen the down side of generalisation and the dangers of believing in innate differences between regions. 

But if you ignore the differences and pretend there are none. Nothing will ever be done to bring people closer together.

There are differences, the only danger is ignoring them as we have just found out with Brexit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, shoptildrop said:

He obviously gets upset by a few things, he was near us watching a band at Sound control before his set later in the day at Neighbourhood Festival and you should have seen the look of disgust he was giving these girls in front of him doing duck selfies  :D tbf it was before the banded started but he wasn't impressed LOL 

Neither would I, when did women think that was a better look than smiling 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

re. the cheaper gigs have a better crowd thing.

I don't think that that's got much to do with either class or geography and is more a factor of young bands having less cachet, and generally younger fans, so tickets tend to be cheap and they play smaller venues as they're less well known.

Once a band has a bit of a career behind them their reputation has grown so the venues scale up and they can charge more - but they're also a bit older and so are their fans who've  grown up with them - or, at least, the people with jobs who can afford the tickets are.  Hence it's a more sedate crowd as folk have work in the morning or other responsibilities to deal with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

re. the cheaper gigs have a better crowd thing.

I don't think that that's got much to do with either class or geography and is more a factor of young bands having less cachet, and generally younger fans, so tickets tend to be cheap and they play smaller venues as they're less well known.

Once a band has a bit of a career behind them their reputation has grown so the venues scale up and they can charge more - but they're also a bit older and so are their fans who've  grown up with them - or, at least, the people with jobs who can afford the tickets are.  Hence it's a more sedate crowd as folk have work in the morning or other responsibilities to deal with.

I can only go off my own experiences here but I have found that not to be the case. Using New Order as an example, I seen them 6 times on their most recent tour. Twice in Manchester, Twice in Berlin, once in London and once at Glastonbury. The atmospheres at Glastonbury and Royal Albert Hall being the worse, with the RAH one being bewildering. There were people sat down eating popcorn while occasionaly offering some polite applause. The times times in Manchester were off the hook even though the WHP one was the poorest performance by the bamd and the shittest venue. 

I will be interested to experience the atmosphere with the Roses at Wembley in comparison to their gigs up here.

I take your point in regards to youngsters. I went to watch The DMA'S last week. It was full of youngsters and absolutely wild. I would expect that to be the same down south.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

The RAH vibe will have been dictated a bit by the venue, whilst the Glasto one by the alternatives on offer - all the cool kids being at Adele and Hooky and the lads attracting a crowd of balding, red-eyed, toothless old geezers.

Gillian says Hi :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, eastynh said:

You are entirely correct but you are talking about the minority rather than the majority. 

Now I have lost track about what this topic is actually about. I thought it was about a bloke in the Courteeners saying the southerners sneer at northern fans having a good time at a gig. If thats the case then the generalisations do matter.[/b] Generally people up north have less money and generally try to make the most of it when they go out. [/b]Because of that gigs generally have a better atmosphere up north than down south. Now you can go into the political ramifications of why that should be and point out there is a small enclave of multi millionaires in Cheshire. But this is about music and what is, not why.

 

Have you only ever been to touristy areas of London? 

I grew up in a former mining town in Yorkshire and having lived in south London for a long time i find there is just as much if not more poverty in London and excessive property prices make exasperates this far more. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, addicted2noise said:

I guess his comments are a response to articles like this

https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/i-tried-to-understand-why-people-like-the-courteeners

Also I'm quite liking the new Courteeners album, there's not really a bad song on there. 

I like the Courteeners more than most on here but even I'm not into the new album at all. I think The 17th is great and there's a couple of other songs that are decent enough but the rest is just so poor. Comfortably their worst album for me. My favourite bit is the spoken word bit in Modern Love which I think is meant to come across as a kind of Jarvis Cocker style moment but just comes across horribly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Classist, maybe, geographical? I doubt it.  

My son's a big Courteeners fan, I don't get it myself, he also likes Catnip and the Bottletops, Kasabian and a number of other "lad rock" bands.  I don't see the attraction myself (apart from the early Kasabian stuff) but if you think music snobbishness doesn't exist I have only one thing to say.

9. Pablo Honey.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

The RAH vibe will have been dictated a bit by the venue, whilst the Glasto one by the alternatives on offer - all the cool kids being at Adele and Hooky and the lads attracting a crowd of balding, red-eyed, toothless old geezers.

Hey! I am not toothless. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Going back and re reading the original post I also feel it's worth pointing out that the concept that there is some vast cabal of Londoners sneering at the working class people of this north is entirely manufactured, I won't deny that a few people might engage in this but actually I've experienced almost no negativity or hostility towards the north/northern people from Londoners whereas I do feel a lot of hostility in the north towards London. As somone else pointed out up thread I think much of this boils down to dive and rule tactics for political ends. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 28/10/2016 at 10:55 PM, Untz said:

It's very wrong to classify people on class. Better to go on what they call a barm cake. 

You mean a bun - you freak.

9 hours ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

Hooky and the lads

Hooky? Really?

18 minutes ago, fur_q said:

 I won't deny that a few people might engage in this but actually I've experienced almost no negativity or hostility towards the north/northern people from Londoners whereas I do feel a lot of hostility in the north towards London. 

I for one really fucking hate London. I am not exactly sure why that is. Most Londoners that I have met have been sound.

 

Re Fray and his band - I don't like their stuff, lets get that out of the way. In general I think they get a bit of stick based on their songs (or lack of), their fan-base and Fray's often large gob (which is probably what gets most people's goat). 

There does seem to me a number of bands that suffer from a similar vitriol towards their fan-base as previously mentioned. Mondays, Roses, Oasis, The Verve etc. I'm not sure that all of them are exclusively Northern though. Madness probably fall into a similar pot - although maybe their lovable cock-er-ney shenanigans buys them a bit of slack from the media intelligentsia.

Interesting that the Charlatans seem to escape this a bit. Associated with the Manchester scene (but originating mainly elsewhere) have Tim's eccentricities and Warholian hair allowed them to slip under the radar? Or are they just nice? No attitude.

Maybe that is the key to it? A Northern Attitude. Liam Fray, Liam Gallagher, Richard Ashcroft, Ian Brown. All have a mouth on them. 'Know thy place Northern boy'.

Edited by pehaw
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, pehaw said:

You mean a bun - you freak.

Hooky? Really?

I for one really fucking hate London. I am not exactly sure why that is. Most Londoners that I have met have been sound.

 

Re Fray and his band - I don't like their stuff, lets get that out of the way. In general I think they get a bit of stick based on their songs (or lack of), their fan-base and Fray's often large gob (which is probably what gets most people's goat). 

There does seem to me a number of bands that suffer from a similar vitriol towards their fan-base as previously mentioned. Mondays, Roses, Oasis, The Verve etc. I'm not sure that all of them are exclusively Northern though. Madness probably fall into a similar pot - although maybe their lovable cock-er-ney shenanigans buys them a bit of slack from the media intelligentsia.

Interesting that the Charlatans seem to escape this a bit. Associated with the Manchester scene (but originating mainly elsewhere) have Tim's eccentricities and Warholian hair allowed them to slip under the radar? Or are they just nice? No attitude.

Maybe that is the key to it? A Northern Attitude. Liam Fray, Liam Gallagher, Richard Ashcroft, Ian Brown. All have a mouth on them. 'Know thy place Northern boy'.

That's the first time it's ever occurred to me that there's such a thing as a "Madness Fan". Aren't they just that cheerful singles band from the 80's everyone quite likes that aren't as cool as The Specials? I've certainly never thought of "Madness fans" as being an identifiable group. I suppose there must be die hard fans of them, but I'm more aware of Bay City Rollers fans or   Dan Brown fans than Madness fans.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

That's the first time it's ever occurred to me that there's such a thing as a "Madness Fan". Aren't they just that cheerful singles band from the 80's everyone quite likes that aren't as cool as The Specials? I've certainly never thought of "Madness fans" as being an identifiable group. I suppose there must be die hard fans of them, but I'm more aware of Bay City Rollers fans or   Dan Brown fans than Madness fans.

There are Bay City Roller fans?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, pehaw said:

Maybe that is the key to it? A Northern Attitude. Liam Fray, Liam Gallagher, Richard Ashcroft, Ian Brown. All have mouth on them. 

Perhaps, or it's a stereotype that's carved out by the media. I mean, I'm sure there are a load of southern people in music that are matter of fact but "northern* attitude" is something you could probably understand without prior knowledge and "southern attitude" isn't. The guys from Blur have historically come across like tossers but - and I wasn't around for the entire 90's so I might be wrong on this one - weren't they sort of the 'cheeky chappies' whereas Oasis were the louts with all the negative press? Additionally their worst period of music sort of gets a pass nowadays whereas people lament Oasis' tunes of the same timeframe. :lol:

*northern as in Manchester, always and only that one northern city.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, dentalplan said:

*northern as in Manchester, always and only that one northern city.

Not only but also.... Salford (Sumner and Hook - more mouths!), Wigan (Ashcroft), even Liverpool (Lennon - maybe the start of it all)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...