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by daniel robert chapman_Archive
The "music scene" in Leeds has received something of a "lift" with the recent success of the Kaiser Chiefs.
Where do I start?
Okay, I start with their previous band, the garage band when garage was fashionable, who released a single about 'Living On The Hessles', which the press release described as a song about growing up in a tough area of Leeds prone to crime, and which had a sleeve depicting a burnt out New York police car.
I can see 'The Hessles' from my flat and they didn't grow up there, they moved there when they were students and it's the nice part of the student area. No burnt out NYPD cars tonight.
Then Franz Ferdinand happened and these cunts came to the fore in golf gear with a new name, The Kaiser Chiefs. The Franz-Kaiser link is obvious, but these clowns claimed it was related to Leeds United FC's captain, a South African named Lucas Radebe, and his former club. Except that club was the Kaizer Chiefs. Either these twats are dumb, or lying.
My earliest memory is a personal encounter with the keyboard player, the self-named 'Peanut', who is noted for wearing "a hat". I was DJing in the pub where he used to work, and the equipment was fucked. Everytime I switched from one deck to the other, there would be an unpredicatable jump in volume. Each time I would correct it, each time he would come over and tell me it had been too loud.
"Yeah, I know," says I. "The equipment's fucked. I turned it down."
"But man, like, that was too loud, man," he says. "We couldn't hear customers at the bar."
"Sure," I says. "So I turned it down. Is it too loud now? No? So, I'm on top, okay?"
...and this would happen every time I changed record.
And now they're wacky funsters rehashing Blur records and supporting U2. And I hoped with the first terrible single from their terrible second album that would be it, they would disappear, but the public have clutched them even closer to their collective busom and now there's no hope.
This weekend, Kaiser Chiefs are playing an outdoor gig in the grounds of a stately home near Leeds. The whole city is abuzz, even though the rain is a-pouring and the mud must surely by a-thickening. Sadly, I don't think any mud is thick or wet enough to save me from these bastards any time soon.
Still, at least their success has given a 'shot in the arm' to all the local Kaiser Chiefs-copy bands, and filled the city up with moist-mouthed A&R men. That's got to be a good thing right? Yeah. Too fucking right.
Twenty-four hours a week, seven days a month
