Disclaimer: To the more literalist readers out there, please note that the slavishly overwritten outrage expressed in the following post shouldn't be taken entirely seriously. While it's true that I believe that the Black Eyed Peas do indeed make the worst music in the world, that is only my opinion. You, of course, may beg to differ. I've upset some readers, friends and casual acquaintances in the past with my rather pointedly expressed views on the subject of music. It's not my intention to ruin your day. By the same token, if your day can be so easily ruined by something you read about music or band t-shirts on a silly weblog, perhaps it's you that needs to relax a little.
Thanks, keep reading and enjoy...
- The Management
Back in the balmy, carefree days of 2008 (yeah, right), I typed up an angry little screed about the fact that Fergie -- she of the irrefutably vile Black Eye Peas -- was depicted sporting a vintage Sisters of Mercy t-shirt in an ad for iTunes. Being that she was and remains partly responsible for inarguably some of the WORST MUSIC HUMAN EARS HAVE EVER BEEN SUBJECTED TO, I felt that she was doing a woeful disservice to the incalculably superior Sisters by wearing a garment emblazoned with their signature iconography. More to the point, I rather aggressively doubted --- and remain entirely skeptical -- that Fergie could hum a `choon by the Sisters if her very life depended on it (and wouldn't it be splendid if it did?) I found it unfathomable that someone who'd versed themselves in the icy majesty and black-hearted sturm und drang of the Sisters could go on to make music..... like this.
In the ensuing years, Fergie's only become more of an inescapable figure of pop culture. It'd be charitable of me to suggest that the music of the Black Eyed Peas has improved in the interim, although that's very clearly not the case. Evidently not satisfied with blighting the world with her shrill sonic pestilence, Fergie (or, perhaps, her stylist) has seen fit once again to rile those easily-riled among us by wearing a Black Flag t-shirt. I mean, .... seriously?
Now, it's been long-documented that I have a feverish disdain for folks who wear band t-shirts while not actually being fans -- let alone passingly familiar -- with the bands in question. Apart from maybe people leaning their seat backs into my lap during flights, it's quite possibly my biggest, planet-engulfing pet peeve (and I'm not the only one bothered by it). It seems to have died down more recently (the last egregious example I can think of was in 2009 when "Hills" dingbat Audrina Partridge was photographed wearing an Exploited t-shirt ... that just about made me want to gargle with sulfuric acid), but it does still happen. And when it does, I am more than prepared to get all bent out of shape about it. Obviously, to anyone even remotely familiar with Black Flag, theirs was a music that served as the very antidote to the slickly vacuous pop of their day. I cannot possibly imagine a band with less in common with the Black Eyed Peas than Black Flag. It's almost hard to believe they come from the same planet as each other.
Now, by my count, Fergie must be somewhere in her mid-thirties. While I'd stake my life on the notion that Audrina Partridge hasn't the foggiest fuckin' clue about who the Exploited are or what they actually sound like, I must begrudgingly admit that maybe -- just maybe -- Fergie does know and care about bands like Black Flag and the Sisters of Mercy. I honestly doubt it, but it'd be presumptuous, elitist and probably even a little misogynist of me to assert that it was an impossibility.
That said, I still think she should KNOCK IT THE HELL OFF!
Entirely trivial side note: Prior to joining the insipid ranks of the B.E.P., Fergie warbled melismatically for a breathily overwrought trio named Wild Orchid in the 1990s. While theirs was precisely the type of syrupy slop that would send me scrambling to change the station, I couldn't help noticing that their video for "At Night I Pray" was shot in Central Park. Watch it with the sound off and you might enjoy it.
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