Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Who The F**k Are Arctic Monkeys?


Who The F**k Are Arctic Monkeys?

The question asked in the title of the Arctic Monkey’s second EP was a typically bold move from the confident quartet… Alex Turner treating their lightspeed rise to biggest band in the country with cynicism. Just three months prior to its release, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ had become the UK’s fastest selling debut album- the 360,000 first week sales were enough to top the rest of the top 20 put together. In 2005/06 EVERYBODY knew who Arctic Monkeys were. It’s a story that’s been well-documented but its one that, for me, will always bear repeating.

As a keen music fan I’m used to discovering new bands and music through any means possible, a task that is infinitely easier now than it was even 5, 6, 7 years ago. Only last week Jack Penate released a new song to his fans via Twitter. Recorded in his front room, with just a video camera and a guitar, it was being heard on Radio One that same evening. And it was no gimmick, no-one batted an eye. But in 2004 Arctic Monkeys became the first to truly reap the rewards of the accessability and the means to distribute their material afforded to them by the internet. Believe it or not, I remember clearly hearing their music for the first time. The tribal drums of ‘A Certain Romance’, joined by the urgency of the guitar, made for a 30 second assault of an intro that gave way to a calmer melody that literally made me sit up and listen. The narrative ‘grim up north’ tale sung with affection held me rapt and I’m sure a grin found its way to my face. Having approached the tracks which make up what has come to be known as the ‘Beneath The Boardwalk EP’ (a collection of demos) with indifference, I was an instant convert to a band that had already created for itself a certain mythology. Listening to ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ I could scarcely believe that what I was hearing had been recorded by a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds who had only picked up instruments 2 years earlier. The way these songs were being spread and the interest generated is testament to the quality of the tracks- the band themselves have since admitted they were unaware the demos had even made it on to the internet, having been given away on cd at early gigs.

It’s difficult to adequately convey just what it meant to me as music lover to see the Arctic Monkeys breakthrough as they did. It was truly exciting. Before the release of their first single they sold out the London Astoria, a venue much more established bands had had to work up to. Tickets were bought for several times face value outside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJ2DJgLflQ

Listen to the cheer that greets the opening notes of ‘Mardy Bum’ and the crowd that sings along to every word…

 The musical landscape in the early 2000’s can fairly be described as ‘bland’. Of course there’s always quality if you look for it but at least in terms of mainstream successes, a list of the best selling artists of the early part of the decade tells its own story; James Blunt, Dido, Keane, Coldplay, Norah Jones, Snow Patrol, Katie Melua, Westlife, Will Young. As far as guitar-based music, indie, rock bands were concerned the charts had long been an irrelevence. But to send ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ to Number One in October 2005 felt like a victory. Oasis didn’t get in to the top ten until their third single. The Libertines, their fifth. Picking the case up from the rapidly depleting display I shared a knowing look with a guy who’d just done the same, and we turned to go to the checkout- the sole purpose of our visit to HMV Richmond being to buy the single. The release of the album was bought forward a week to January 23rd 2006 officially due to ‘high demand’ but likely to try and avoid the wide-spread sharing of the mastered album tracks for free (a move that failed, as I recall the entire finished album was doing the rounds, as the demos had before). Not that it appeared to matter in the slightest- to me, nor everybody else. There was never any question that we’d be buying the physical release. As mentioned above, the 360,000 first week sales (118,000 on the first day of release) sent Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not to Number One- it stayed there for a further three weeks. Just unheard of. This was a real band that to all appearances  had crashed the mainstream out of nowhere but to those ‘in the know’ it was the culmination of months and months of building antcipation and excitement.

Having waited what felt a long time from the initial distribution of the ‘…Boardwalk’ demo MP3’s to the album release, the announcement of an EP of new material to come in April was a welcome surprise. The first track ‘The View from the Afternoon’ was intended to be the third single but was instead backed by 4 new songs. The chart-ineligible EP confirmed beyond all doubt to me that Alex Turner was the Real Deal. ‘Despair In The Departure Lounge’ and ‘Who The F**k Are Arctic Monkeys’ particularly displayed a song-writing maturity, complexity and musical proficiency that left the band head and shoulders above anything else around. A born frontman, rather than bask in the adulation he’s earned he uses the EP’s title track to mock the band-wagon jumpers,

‘And there's a couple of hundred
Think they're Christopher Columbus
But the settlers had already settled
Yeah, long before ya’

Anticpate his own downfall,

Oh, in five years time, will it be
"Who the fuck's Arctic Monkeys?’

And go as far as to invite it

‘bring on the backlash!’

For every band I feel pleased to have discovered and raved about before they’ve made it big, none of them have done it on the scale seen by the Arctic Monkeys- a genuinely phenomenal sequence of events that will never be repeated. Seven years later the impact their debut made still resonates with me. Self-made superstars.

2 comments:

  1. Very good read. I look forward to your future posts

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  2. Really enjoyed this! I have to admit, I came to the Arctic Monkeys much, much later than you did, and I think so did most of the country. They were being talked about EVERYWHERE in the weeks up to their debut album release! I even remember their album being cover being advertised on the front page of the Metro! But honestly, before I heard their album, I had only heard I Bet You Look Good so I listened to the album, without much background knowledge of who they were and what they were about, but I was really very sceptical that they would be able to live up to, what was an hysterical amount of hype. I got it that first week, and pressed play, and with every track my smile just got wider and wider...i just couldn't believe how good it was! When it finished, I just sat there deliriously happy! For me, they achieved the almost impossible, and that was to be even better than their most ardent fans said they were.

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