What I'm Watching: The Great (Scottish) Hip-Hop Hoax

Making it as a musician is a pipe dream for many a young small-town kid. This documentary takes that well-worn story and pushes it up to a whole new level of baroque deceit and intrigue.

It starts out with an audition in London and a new hip-hop duo from a tiny town in Scotland, Arbroath, trying to get noticed as 'the next Eminem'. Instead of success, however, they meet with derision and are laughed out of the studio with the phrase 'the rapping Proclaimers' ringing in their ears. 

Determined to try again and make the music industry executives sit up and listen, they call around venues in London and put on fake American accents, pretending to be a hip-hop duo from California, 'Silibil 'n' Brains', looking to build up a presence in London. They were booked on the spot and signed to a record label within days of their first gig.

What I love about this story is the surreal hilarity of two young guys from a town that is know for not much more than a variety of smoked fish, taking on the music industry and duping seasoned A&R executives into thinking they were 'street' and 'real'. 

Listening to these guys, I'm amazed they ever took anyone in as their American accents are not that convincing and not very Californian either. At best, they sound Canadian. If they had ever encountered even one real American in their escapades, especially a Californian, I imagine their cover would have been blown very quickly.

They kept up the pretense for a matter of years, however, and were set to release an album and single until the pressure of the lie got to them and they broke up. 'Silibil' aka Billy Boyd went back to Arbroath to get married, have children and work on a oil rig. 'Brains McLoud' aka Gavin Bain, stayed in London and continued to try and make it big as a musician but went through many dark nights of the soul along the way.

The documentary itself isn't that great. It is a po-faced and deeply sincere about the entire saga, painting it as a tragic story of big ambitions gone awry. To me the real value of this story is the humor in it. It's absolutely hilarious that two kids from the middle of nowhere conned senior music industry types into thinking they were actual real live Americans from the 'hood. It is a classic American fable of self-made dreamers who turn fantasy into reality through nothing more than chutzpah and initiative. Their story is more American than Silibil 'n' Brains ever were. 

I'm not sure why the documentary-maker took such a serious angle on the story. Possibly it may be down to the suicide attempt of one of the duo, Gavin McBain, who struggled to adapt back to reality once the Silibil 'n' Brains fantasy was exposed. Perhaps she felt a duty to keep a serious tone to the story to recognize the hardships faced by Gavin. 

The music industry is built on fakery. Lady Gaga, Lana del Ray, Rihanna, even the Great White Rappers, Eminem and the Beastie Boys, have built their careers on fake personas. I had mistakenly always thought that The Beastie Boys were from some urban ghetto in Pittsburgh or somewhere  so I was very surprised to read this article in the NY Times and discover that the members were in fact nice middle-class Jewish boys from nice New York suburbs.

Nothing about the industry is authentic. There are musicians who have achieved mainstream success who live true to their values like Björk and Arcade Fire but the mainstream pop artists are just playing a role. Who really knows the truth about who they are and where they're from? At least these two guys managed to turn that superficiality of the industry to work in their favor. Good luck to them for that.

Peace Walls and Government Shutdowns

This documentary about the peace walls in Northern Ireland made me think of Ted Cruz and his banana republicans. It shows the lives of ordinary Belfast people living cheek-by-jowl with one another but divided by a high wall, the so-called 'peace walls' that were erected during the Troubles to limit sectarian violence. I had thought most of these walls had come down after the peace process but it seems many still stand to preserve an unsteady peace between divided communities.

It was sad to see people who should have common cultural and economic interests still divided by out-of-date sectarian ideas that have no place in a modern society, imagined political loyalties and old slights that should be long forgotten.

Whenever I see Tea Party Republicans arguing their case in the media, they always remind me of the hardened hatred I grew up seeing from sectarian people. There is something about the dead-eyed stare of intransigence and the malicious grins of these hardliners that are reminiscent of some of Northern Ireland's most objectionable politicians. 

This article in the NY Times notes that many moderate Republicans are getting frustrated with the hardliners and putting them under pressure to clarify their strategy in shutting down government. Understandably, they want to move the debate on from pure intransigence and obstructionism and start focusing on how to win elections.

To quote Jeb Bush (a sentence I never thought I'd write...):

“The fight here is important to have — this is an important part of political life,” said former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida at a recent news conference in the capital. “But I do think the emphasis of being against the president’s policies, no matter how principled they are, needs to be only half the story, if not less."

This is all recognizable territory to me. Intransigence for the sake of it and obstructionism against all compromise in order not to lose face has been the bedrock of Northern Irish politics for decades. That old Ian Paisley slogan of 'Ulster Says No!' always comes to mind when I see hardline Republicans. The answer is always 'No', regardless of what the question was.

One familiar thing I didn't expect to see in the Republican/Democrat fight, however, is gerrymandering. This manipulation of voting districts has a long history in the US but it was also used by the Unionist faction in Northern Ireland to maintain a majority in NI, ensuring that an intransigent group of Unionists always had a voice in Westminster.

On the other side, Sinn Fein represented polarized Nationalist districts by not attending Westminster at all - which didn't really help matters as it left their constituents unrepresented and therefore unprotected from sectarian prejudice. The result of this gerrymandering was polarization of both parties, entrenching hardliners and alienating moderates.

A similar result of gerrymandering seems to be happening in the Republican party today. While the party may have thought it was being clever to gerrymander districts and thus win the House, in fact all they have done is create entrenched extremists who have been voted into safe districts where the Republican majority will never be threatened. This gives these politicians no incentive to negotiate.

It is this rump of 'safe-seat' House Republicans who are now providing the main resistance to the compromise that is necessary to get the government out of shutdown. They oppose Obama for the sake of it: 'Republicans Say No!' regardless of what the question was.

As it happens, many prominent US politicians from the red states have Scots-Irish ancestry. Both Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson had Scots-Irish ancestry. Ted Cruz's mother is Irish, along with his remaining Cuban-Canadian mix. Mitch McConnell looks like he could be a cousin of Ian Paisley. straight out of an Orange Order march in Belfast. John Boehner actually is orange but I'm not sure what that says about his ethnic origins.

Maybe Northern Ireland needs to take responsibility for having injected this intransigent DNA into the US political system. Here's a suggestion: Ulster can send over its own George Mitchell figure to heal the Republican-Democrat divide and get the government open and working again. It would probably be easier than letting the US descend into intra-necine violence and learning the hard way that mindless intransigence only leads to more suffering in the long run.