It's hardly surprising that disenfranchised kids of all backgrounds, faced with a parade of prefabricated microcelebrities every bit as spontaneous and inspirational as any state-approved Maoist entertainment, should seek more accurate expression of their situation in the swearing, sexuality and criminal glamour of hip hop.Rap's ascendancy was assured the moment that Tipper Gore and her censorious PMRC accomplices forced the American music industry to plaster "Parental Advisory" stickers on any records that might be deemed obscene by people such as Tipper. Overnight, the sticker came to represent almost a government-approved guarantee of objectionability, a sort of kitemark of scatological quality.In Britain, we never really got with the PMRC project, though our gallant Obscene Publications Squad did make itself look more than usually ridiculous when it impounded a batch of Efil4zaggin, the second album by the gangsta rappers NWA. Geoffrey Robertson QC, famed for his defence in the Oz trial two decades earlier, successfully defended the album as "street journalism". "The stories are told in street language which is ironic, bitter, sarcastic, rude and crude, not in vacuous moon-and-June rhymes like Perry Como and Elvis Presley," he explained. "The album arouses fear and concern, distaste but not lust; no one in their right mind, or indeed in their wrong mind, could be sexually aroused by this record."Ice-T's rebellious brotherhood wasn't long in coming. In the late Nineties, hip hop's nihilistic horror show chimed perfectly with the nihilism of grunge, and a generation of white kids with an excess of self-pity and a conviction that someone else was to blame became eager prey to rap's outlaw lure - a confluence of attitudes that ultimately led to the noisome caterwauling of sportz-metal bands such as Limp Bizkit. But it's the unstoppable rise of Eminem, rap's Elvis, that has really set the seal on hip hop's takeover of rock'n'roll.
Like Presley, he represents a threat to established values: just as Elvis's pelvic gyrations couldn't be shown on network television, so "radio won't even play my jam", as Eminem notes in "The Way I Am". The ostensible threat is different in substance, but ultimately of little consequence; what both men really represent is the championing of a black art form over their "native" white European heritage, which is as shocking to the establishment today as it was when Picasso tried it nearly a century ago.Ultimately, the entire thorny issue of rap boils down to the perennial problem of youthful energy and renegade creativity. But what kind of Stepford parent would prefer to have their teenagers listen to Five or Westlife than Eminem? To have them mechanically primed to purchase, rather than challenged by the scabrous wit and rude charm of Eminem's cautionary cartoons? In the long run, it may be more than just rock'n'roll that is saved by hip hop.. "Anyone who came to see me at Glastonbury '95 -- I'm sorry I missed the gig." It's just a throwaway line, but we get Dando's message. In the mid-Nineties, when the former Lemonhead was everyone's drug buddy, he looked set to crash and burn.
"Anyone who came to see me at Glastonbury '95 -- I'm sorry I missed the gig." It's just a throwaway line, but we get Dando's message. In the mid-Nineties, when the former Lemonhead was everyone's drug buddy, he looked set to crash and burn. Now he's back, joking that he'd spent the interim "doing monitors for Enya", and telling us to check out David Beckham's autobiography.Like a prettier Neil Young, or a less vapid Leo DiCaprio, Dando is still a rare confluence of looks and talent. Once, he would sport a girlie dress and pigtails; tonight he's in a blue T-shirt bearing the legend "Del Bomber". His sticker-studded acoustic guitar is hooked up to a Marshall amplifier, and every now and then he kicks on a fuzz-pedal to take him from Jekyll to Hyde.
It's a little reminder that he first came to the fore at the height of grunge.The old tunes zip past, Dando scarcely stopping to draw breath in the first half-hour. We get "It's a Shame About Ray", "Into Your Arms" and "My Drug Buddy", each of them evincing a songwriting talent that easily outstrips that of your Toploaders and Lowgolds. Front of stage, there's a sea of doe-eyed girls who seem lost in private, Evan-related reveries. "Big Gay Heart", though - an accepting, conciliatory song about a homosexual-on-heterosexual crush - is a reminder that all are welcome at the church of Evan.The title of Dando's new album, Is the Grass All Wine Coloured?, suggests that pharmaceuticals may still be an indulgence. The three or four new songs he plays from it sound special,
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straight off the bat, and they're received with a mixture of excitement and reverence. "Hard-drive" is a simple list song, its title seemingly a metaphor for the human brain and what it chooses to retain, its sweet chorus a melody built around the phrase, "Have you ever felt yourself in motion?" Further in, "All My Life" is even better, Evan now joined for three-part vocal harmonies by his friends Ben Lee and Ben Kweller.The coup de grâce comes just before the encores. One of last year's oft-quoted lyrics was the "nicotine, Valium, marijuana..." shopping-list on Queens of the Stone Age's "Feel Good Hit of the Summer".Wise to that, and keen to align himself with rock's new aristocracy, Dando delivers a bowdlerised, 30-second version that begins: "Nicorettes, Listerine, Head & Shoulders". It's a great little skit, and proof, if it were needed, that Dando still has wit and invention to spare Welcome him back with open arms.. Few plunges from grace have been as sudden as the former Pixies front man Frank Black's. The Pixies split at the start of the Nineties, just as their disciple Kurt Cobain's band Nirvana put Black's sonic blueprint - quiet-loud dynamics, melodic noise, eccentric lyrics - into a shocked American mainstream. Few plunges from grace have been as sudden as the former Pixies front man Frank Black's.