Off Message

Watching Arctic Monkeys headline Glastonbury last night (and by ‘watching’ I mean ‘on telly’; you’re not getting me back to the actual festival anytime soon), it struck me that, quite apart from sounding newly immense, they must be the fastest band ever to have topped the bill. Most of the tracks on ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ are pretty fucking fast in the first place, but last night they played them like a bunch of speeding (in every sense) joyriders doing a ton through a Croydon council estate. In other words, a lot faster than on the record.

Of course, playing very fast indeed has always been the way in indie circles. But contrast that with your usual Glastonbury headliners: Coldplay, Oasis, Muse and the like; the epitome of plod-rock. So do Arctic Monkeys represent a real change, or are they just a blip on the radar? Future festivals will tell, I guess.

Another random comment I see (post below post below this one). Blogger Girl, if you’re real and you read this, I had a quick look at your blog, and my advice is to keep it up. Despite my previous post, at least blogging does get you writing, and if we’re all going to be spending the bulk of our lives twatting about online, which, judging by the majority of my friends, it seems we are, we might as well try and do something mildly creative at the same time. Oh, and stop looking at your boyfriend’s ass. You’re far too young for that sort of thing.

So, intriguingly, these days I seem to be getting a load of views of Off Message before I even log in. Which means someone’s either getting up bloody early to have a read, or we have some overseas viewers. Or it’s neither of those options, in which case I’ll shut the fuck up.

If one were to do a word-count on this blog, I wonder what the total would be? Obviously I’m not going to be doing that myself; I’ve got much more important things to do, like, er, well, washing up and reading comics if today is any indication. But if one did do a word-count, would there be enough for a novel, d’you think? Maybe. A short novel. A very short novel.

But a novel-length work, nonetheless. My point being, rather than throwing words at this blog in a haphazard and ill-considered fashion, like a child flicking bogies at the bathroom mirror, I could’ve been crafting them carefully into something more worthwhile, something with more weight and substance, something enduring. A novel, say.

Mind you, it’d probably be shit.