I still can't believe it myself. That something this vicious, cold-hearted, and blackly emotional would spawn singalongs, mass media attention and triumphant touring. For one brief moment in time, a large chunk of my world view at its most dour aligned with the universe at large, and nobody could deny it. I may never see its like again.
King Jarvis, perhaps. I'd be happy with that, because then he could immediately abdicate and destroy the monarchy while he's at it. You just get this feeling that if he could doing something about the world's stupidities, he would do it with a sense of Realpolitik that would make Bismarck look like Woodrow Wilson. So why the hyperbole? Because that's what Different Class provided -- not merely a chance for every last disaffected type whose ear it caught to dream of an alternate place, and to do so beyond the bounds of simply being a pallid version of the Smiths (have I mentioned how little I care for Belle and Sebastian?), but a sense of saying, "Oh, you around us, this isn't alienation. This is pure, unalloyed feeling for the human condition, not a removal from it, and if you only knew what it could mean…"
And of course, great music. Chris Thomas doing the production, only the guy who produced Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols, and knew how to make things momentous from the simplest of touches. Thus El Jarv's gasps in stereo on "Pencil Skirt," post r'n'b expressions of emotion turned into aural parlor tricks as opposed to now typical signifiers. But if "Pencil Skirt" didn't have that great sense of unexpected trickery to its seemingly gentle flow as a song straight up, the sudden shifts and shades, then there'd be no point to begin with. Or there's the way "Live Bed Show" somehow lands squarely between boulevardier swing and raked-over-the-coals postpunk angst, and I'm still not sure exactly which way it wants to slide more.
The singles? Yes, the singles. Of course "Common People" was unavoidable. I was there for one of the first times they played it, opening for Blur in LA in 1994, simply introduced as a new song, had all of us begging for more after it was over. Then it got released and holy jesus -- keyboards like air-raid sirens, violins shooting like lasers, snarling guitars filling it all out. Nothing else mattered. "Mis-Shapes" was odd and fun, unexpected even, a lovely follow-up, "Disco 2000" cloned Laura Branigan and was brilliant about it, not to mention providing the only logical followup to hearing Prince all this year.
And I could continue on several levels and for several days. But that would ignore Jarvis. The acid throughout is a wonder to behold even as he turns into the best, most distinct popular vocalist in many a moon, flat tones turned epochal, and I still can't believe he did it. "Common People" alone should have won all the literary prizes that year, because it beats out all the suburban angst tales by being shorter, more to the point and, of course, singable. But to create twelve possible candidates? Revenge, why the drugs don't work, what to do today, every last little step coldly analyzed in the warmest, most alive way possible.
And every last yupscum fucker died bloodily without regret, and every smug bastard finally got it in the head without a shot being fired, every last romantic motive was turned into something which even at its calmest would have been vetoed by the Gang of Four for being 'too depressing.'
"My favorite parks are car parks
Grass is something you smoke
Birds are something you shag.
Take your "Year in Provence"
And shove it -- up - your - asssssssssssssssss."
It's a cruel world out there. Ain't it great?