Bad Vibrations

Daytime TV has long been the scourge of the daylight hours. The teenage pregnancies and wife-beatings of Jeremy Kyle, the re-runs of Going For Gold or the chance to buy 2 shopping basket trolley bags for under 10 quid if you call me in the next 7 minutes. It's enough to drive anyone into employment. Well, almost anyone.

There has been a recent shining star on the horizon of late, however, in the form of the excellent Seven Ages of Rock documentary series. And having just caught the episode on 90s Indie/Brit Pop, a thought occurred to me: where have all the inter-band battles gone?

Back in my formative years, there was only one important question - whether you liked Blur or Oasis (personally I preferred Supergrass to either, but that's just the way I am). Your social standing lived or died depending on your answer, and many a fight could start from a throwaway comment about Damon Albarn being a pansy.

A generation earlier the Rolling Stones and the Beatles tussled for superiority of Britain, embarking on artistic one-upmanship and subtle parody in an attempt to be declared The Greatest. The Stones even temporarily abandoned their blues-rock blueprint in exchange for a crack at psychedelia, 1967's Their Satanic Majesties Request, lest they allow the Fab Four to claim the market unchallenged.

What stands out from these examples is that artists previously used their craft as the expression of their talent - they let the music do the talking. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys drove himself into a nervous breakdown, so determined was he to create something that would surpass the Beatles (admittedly 'Good Vibrations' is arguably the greatest single ever recorded, even if it did take a year to make and cost him his sanity). But in a world of MySpace and OK magazine, it's all too easy now for 15-Minute Popstars to sit on their pedestal of hubris and hurl out insults at their chart rivals. Now, I'm happy to slang abuse in the direction of Eoghan Quigg or Peaches Geldoff as much as the next guy, but if I had genuine talent, a studio and a record company at my disposal, I'd emote my ideas through music. After all, isn't that what real artists do?

And if all that failed, I'd start shooting a la Biggie and 2Pac - at least that had some violent poeticism about it.