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Seven bands who needed to dial down the Northernness a bit

THERE’S celebrating your regional identity and there’s boring people shitless with it. These Northern bands veered well into the latter:

The Fall

An ever-rotating cast around moaning Salford git caricature Mark E Smith, a tiny fraction of whose random hates included: Joe Strummer, TV box sets, Blade Runner, Lloyd Grossman and scruffy dressing (‘There’s no need. Primark sells some alright stuff at a fair price.’) A legend, but not one you’d like to go on a long car journey with.

The Housemartins

Their 1986 debut album was London 0 Hull 4, referring to the number of good bands in the respective cities at the time, which must have come as a shock to Eurythmics, Madness, Bronski Beat and countless other shit bands no one liked.

Northside

From the north side of Manchester. Proved how Madchester they were with their single Shall We Take A Trip, containing the least subtle drug references in musical history: ‘Shall we take a trip down memory lane’, ‘head into the clouds in the acid rain’, and the unambiguous ‘Sing LSD, sing LSD’. They may as well have called it Please Ban This Druggie Song. And the BBC did.

Happy Mondays

Youth doesn’t get much more scally than Shaun Ryder’s in Greater Manchester: ‘robbing’, not learning the alphabet until he was 28, drugs, shagging housewives, working on a building site at 13. The very definition of rough-as-f**k Manchester, tales of him are still used to frighten Southern students to this day.

The Farm

From Liverpool, in case you hadn’t noticed. Peter Hooton was well into socialism, and their plodding hit All Together Now was about working class solidarity. However Groovy Train is just about a train where everyone is off their heads on drugs. Which might explain the service on TransPennine Express and Avanti.

Joy Division

Manchester is not the loveliest city compared to, say, Vienna, but it seems Joy Division lived in a part that was an ultra-bleak, dehumanising, existential future dystopia. With songs are as upbeat and chirpy as She’s Lost Control and New Dawn Fades, you wonder where that Northern sense of humour’s gone. Unless Ian Curtis was joking?

The Smiths

Morrissey turned Northern gloom into an art form. How Soon Is Now? is about going clubbing being suicidally depressing, Rusholme Ruffians reminds us that going to a funfair is grim and fatal, and Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now describes an average day north of Crewe. Still, it’s good-time party music compared to what he’s become.

Ghosting, breadcrumbing, gaslighting: millennial mating behaviours observed by Sir David Attenborough

DESPITE decades of study of the animal kingdom, I remain surprised by the lurid and depraved mating habits of humans. Let us examine the younger generation: 

Dick pics

The male peacock boasts its rich tail plumage; the lion, its proud mane. The millennial male is no different. Keen to impress upon an unsuspecting female his suitability as a mate, he will take a dimly lit photo of his phallus and scrotum and send it to her, typically coinciding with when she’s in an important meeting.

Breadcrumbing

To reproduce successfully, it is key to choose a mate carefully. So in order to entertain a variety of suitors, the female will keep them all in play by laying a trail of semi-flirtatious messages using her dating apps or messaging. The persistent may well be rewarded or used in a support role, for lifts.

Ghosting

Human mating has historically been monogamous and lifelong, to raise children. However the millennial male is presented with choice as never before and has become tremendously fickle. Rather than explain their waning sexual interest these young bucks will deliberately disregard messages, leaving them ‘blue-ticked’ and obviously ignored.

Orbiting

Females of this generation, having rejected a mate, still harbour curiosity about his future prospects. Hence they orbit, cutting off direct contact but continuing to observe his habits through social media and occasionally contributing an emoji. Men see this as an invitation to further sex which it emphatically is not.

Gaslighting

Monogamous human pairs inevitably reach a point of deep loathing. Instead of simply parting one of them, usually the male, will embark on a campaign of psychological terrorism against their partner, to control their perceptions and ultimately their reality. He will largely be ignored.

Dogging

The natural world has evolved a rich panoply of methods of copulation. The spectacle of a group of adult males in a Forestry England car park peering into a Toyota Yaris to watch a couple vigorously hump is no stranger than any of them. Indeed, it is likely the healthiest behaviour here.

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