CHAPTER 8

 

 

 

 

 

#93: MARK RONSON & THE BUSINESS INTL.

"Bang Bang Bang"

from the album Record Collection

Released: September 2010

 

One grey, overcast Wednesday afternoon in the very late summer of 2010, we made our way to Portobello Road, or at any rate just off it, because Mark Ronson was in attendance at Rough Trade West promoting his then-new album. I had the day off work and we were always keen to spend as much time away from our accommodation - as it then was - as possible. I can't remember whether we saw Kelly Hoppen directing the unloading of a van across the street from the bus stop - well, we did, but I cannot recall whether it was on that same afternoon or another time altogether.

 

 

 

In the shop, Ronson was seated, having dyed his hair silver, chatting enthusiastically to a couple of young ladies. He signed our copy of the CD without really looking at us. Others in attendance, namely Rose Elinor Dougall and I think Amanda Warner, a.k.a. MNDR, were more forthcoming and gave us nicer signatures. Other books are available.

 

 

 

"Bang Bang Bang" was the first single from an album intent on reconstituting the musical elements of its chief creator's childhood and rendering it meaningful in the 2010 present tense. In any setting it would be a daunting declaration of principles, even if, as guest rapper Q-Tip is at pains to point out, principles are everything a living society should fulminate and act against ("We're believin' in the proof, we're believin' in the truth/We're believin' in each other, not you, you, YOU!"). The music is Heaven 17/Leisure Process-level insistent (the harmonic fab four of F, C, G and B flat) with swirls of atonal improvisation darting around the verses' background and that key vibraphone button so central to pop qualitatives.

 

 

 

Warner's lead vocal, plucking heads in a cruel, CRUEL world, is remorsefully remorseless; she licks the ice of her assassing lips with valuable venom. She'll apologise for killing you as she does it. The song rotates in Clairol Travelcards of baffled blossom. The song quotes "Alouette," which in itself celebrates the lark, the first bird to sing of a morning, and also the worst gossip. Since that song was initially published in A Pocket Song Book for the Use of Students and Graduates of McGill College in 1879, i.e. in Montreal, it is technically French-Canadian. The staccato shoots and sudden ending of "Bang Bang Bang," if they are not to represent the end of the world, should indicate the building blocks for another, better one, and that's what the song would show anyone. I think we caught a 328 bus to go to West Hampstead, the penultimate time we've been there to date.

 

 

 

We've never had a record collection. Collections are dead things that you just sit and stare at and never actually like, let alone listen to. We have a record library. Everything gets used, listened to and loved and they're maybe not in mint condition but we don't run a museum or a mortuary. We're on the side of life, while that's still legal.