A 16-year old South African girl at Luton Sixth Form lent me “Let It Be” by Laibach. I returned it saying “it’s good!” (it sucked) but that was more out of politeness than fancying her (she was shagging a 30-something geography teacher anyway). Lying to women about being vegan (while scarfing down cheeseburgers on the sly) was more my style than faking interest in NIN.
A couple of ‘no audience underground’ artists sent me tape and CD-R releases that I lied about liking, just to ‘support the scene’. Sorry. Also tried to ‘will’ myself to like post ’94-Coil, as well as ‘Soldier Talk’ by Red Krayola (because I’ve always liked the bleak cover art – and I had it anyway, so why not), but neither happened.
Sometimes you’re better off pretending. I used to know this couple in Finchley, Nick and Kate, and one night I was at a party around theirs and it got to 3am, and I said to someone in the kitchen “I hate acoustic guitars, they only sound good if you run electricity through them”, and Kate (who was trolleyed) said “Listen to this,” and put on a recording of some drippy guitar music with nasally vocals. I said “See what I mean? What a load of shit,” and she said “That’s a song Nick wrote for me.” I actually think that’s out of order, how was I supposed to know it was him? He was a drum n bass freak. I wouldn’t have played her a tape of 14-year old me bashing a three-string Zenta and caterwauling about nuking Luton, and then got moody if they said “This sucks”. Anyway, I didn’t get invited around again (they split up anyway).