Artist News

Primal Scream so “disgusted” by Tories they mistake themselves for Dandy Warhols

By | Published on Thursday 6 October 2011

Primal Scream

Primal Scream have issued a statement saying that they are “disgusted” that Theresa May closed her speech at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday with their 1994 song, ‘Rocks’. Which is interesting for several reasons, though mainly because Theresa May didn’t close her speech at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday with their 1994 song, ‘Rocks’. She closed it with ‘Bohemian Like You’ by The Dandy Warhols.

In a statement slating the coalition government, and in particular the Conservative Party, Primal Scream said: “We would like to distance ourselves from this sick association. The Tories are waging a war on the disenfranchised. They are the enemy”.

But then the Conservatives responded by insisting that May had in fact used ‘Bohemian Like You’ by The Dandy Warhols. And unlike much of May’s speech, that was actually true. She’d not chosen a song containing the line “Cops keep bustin, hustlers keep hustling, death keeps knockin, souls are up for auction”, instead she’d gone with what is surely a much less appropriate song for a gathering of Tories, an ode to friendship and being helpful.

Of course The Dandy Warhols are Americans, so what do they care if some political party on a tiny island uses one of their songs? Surely they couldn’t be as angry about it as Primal Scream were when they thought it was their song. Well, er, upon hearing the news Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor wrote a blog post which started: “I’ll tear their fuggin heads off. Well maybe not, but this happened to us in an Arkansas gubernatorial race and it makes me super angry. And then I wanna puke”.

He continued: “Why don’t these assholes have right-wing bands make them some right-wing music for their right-wing jerkoff politics? Oh, because right wing people aren’t creative, visionary or any fun to be around. Nor are they productive or even introspective about it. I tend to really dislike ANY people who take sides in politics. It is the single greatest contributor to getting nothing done. Fuck ‘politics’. What a joke. I give my charitable donations to people who get on a plane themselves and go to Haiti or Africa and help other people. Do you? NEVER to a political machine. I like to get shit done”.

Of course, the biggest tragedy in all of this is the fact that a joke posted to Twitter by former Labour minister John Prescott was rendered redundant. “Surprised Cameron and Osborne used ‘Rocks’ from Primal Scream at conference. I’d have thought they’d prefer ‘Loaded'”, he tweeted, which goes to show that anyone can craft a half decent gag with just a little time spent on Wikipedia.



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