A Brief Guide to New Music Superstar Jeremy Coburn
You’ve probably heard about the music world’s latest superstar, Jeremy Coburn, who wowed Glastonbury over the weekend. If you’re anything like me, you were previously unfamiliar with his back catalogue. And, if you’re anything like me, you’re a handsome thirty-something who found Coburn’s performance curiously flat, lacking anything which resembled a traditional song.
Nevertheless, he seemed to be a big hit with the youths and hippies at Glastonbury, so it’s presumably a sign that I’ve finally “Lost Touch”. It’s a bit disconcerting to be less trendy than a bearded man who apparently can’t even be bothered to wear a tie, but such are the ways of the world.
So, to help you other handsome thirty-somethings trick your younger crushes and colleagues into thinking that you’re still groovy, I’ve done some research into this Coburn chap, which I’ve shared below. I say ‘research’; I mostly talked to the closest thing I could find to Coburn’s Glastonbury audience—the youths who hang around the local basketball pitch whilst cycling BMX mountain bikes—but they certainly seemed to know their stuff.
He’s a Baller
I have no idea what this means, but a dictionary I consulted suggests that he is ‘a person or device that makes or forms something into balls’, or else ‘a player of a ball game, especially a talented basketball player’. Given that the youths with whom I was conversing frequent basketball pitches, the latter definition may well be what they meant. So, not just a(n allegedly) talented musician!
He’s a Quim Hound
This is not the exact phrase used to describe him, but in the interests of taste and decency I’ve quaint-ified it. When I made a joke which involved the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’, the youths informed me that the word they’d used didn’t refer to cats; I nodded along, pretending I’d known that all along, and I think they bought it (you’d probably need to know what the original phrase was to understand that previous sentence, so just ignore it).
I was then shown a shocking video of Coburn unashamedly grabbing a lady’s breast in public. He seems to be taking behavioural—if not musical!—pointers from the Mick Jaggers and Jimmy Pages of this world. The lady in question was considerably older than the groupies of the past, possibly reflecting the paedophobic climate in which we live, but evinced a similarly laissez-faire attitude towards the sexual assault.
He Has Gang Associations
If I had to put Coburn’s ‘music’ in a generic box, it’d be the box with ‘rap’ written on the outside of it, due to his refusal to sing and seeming total disregard for music tunes. (I’d then throw that box in the skip and wait for it to be removed to the dump!) We all know that gangster rappers like their gang-related activity—the clue’s in the name—and apparently this gangster rapper’s no different. The problem here is that he’s apparently a big fan of the IRA, who are among my least favourite gangs. In some ways this is apt, though, as Coburn’s certainly no Flava Flav (my favourite gangster rapper) himself.
He’s Moody
I sure didn’t need the youths to tell me this one! (And, to be fair, they didn’t mention it.) Most bands who play festivals perform for a minimum of half an hour; Coburn’s set may have felt like half an hour but my wristwatch told me he was, in fact, only on stage for about thirteen minutes. To clarify, I don’t have a talking wristwatch; I merely interpreted the movement of the minute hand and performed some elemental mental (elememental? Maybe I should write raps!) arithmetic. Presumably he’d had some sort of set-to with the organisers before taking to the stage, possibly due to a lack of middle-aged floozies being laid on in his dressing room, or a refusal to provide IRA guns for his entourage.
He’s (Allegedly) a Politician in His Spare Time
This seemed an outlandish suggestion on the part of the youths, given that Coburn’s status as a basketball-loving, gangster rapper. Then again, look at that lad who was president of America a few years ago!
Maybe if I’d been able to decipher some of Coburn’s lyrics I’d have been able to get a handle on his political allegiances, but singers these days tend to mumble incoherently, and it’s rare that I can actually understand a lyric. While watching his performance on my television set I tried turning on the closed captions, but either the man typing them was somewhat remedial, or Coburn’s lyrics were pure nonsense.
He’s Adickheadsayswhat (possible sic)
Again, I wasn’t sure that the youths meant by this, and my attempts to enquire as to what they actually meant were met with raucous laughter. I guess that’s further evidence of my losing touch!
The time had clearly come to take leave of the company of my young senseis. Those BMX mountain bikes weren’t going to cycle themselves around that basketball pitch! Also, it was getting dark, and I was somewhat fearful of being robbed by the youths.
One of them asked if I wanted to see his spidget finger, but, mindful of a particularly moist Wet Willy I’d received as a child, and not fully sure what a ‘spidget’ was, I thought it prudent to decline. As I made my way back to the Beamer, ears largely unmoist (beyond the usual amount of wax), the youth contented himself with spinning a cheap piece of plastic between the fingers of his right hand.
Then the thought struck me that the quim-hounding gangster-rapping Jeremy Coburn would probably have been well up for whatever spidget fingering is. I made a neat three-point turn and drove back to the basketball pitch, intending to cut loose and live a little.
I got that familiar, paralysing sense of fear and self-loathing, though, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to take that first step and get out of the car. Maybe Jeremy Coburn wouldn’t be hanging around spidget fingering kids; maybe he’d be out shooting hoops with Gerry Adams, or examining the breasts of a divorcée. Maybe the youths would steal my blazer if I went back. Maybe I’m just not meant to be young and hip.
After an hour, a man knocked on my window and said he was calling the police unless I left his kid alone, so I drove off home.
It was a mixed day, but at least I learned a lot about Jeremy Coburn.
The end.
Main image via Independent.co.uk
