From the second issue of Margin, published spring 1982
the first publically printed thing by me that is not a total embarrassment - indeed it's not bad at all for a 19-year-old, to come up quite independently with an Eno-style transvaluation of the term "pretentious"
3 comments:
A return of the word prat! Ever since coarser epithets supplanted it in sitcoms, I've rather missed prat, not least because of how usefully it serves to describe the 80s male rock star.
Quick, think of an eighties male rock star. The odds are overwhelmingly in favour of that rock star you named being palpably a prat. Some aspect of the musician, be it dress sense, self-righteousness, ill-conceived opinion or just sheer uncoolness, damned almost every 80s male rock star as a total and utter prat. To get a few obvious examples out the way: Bono, Sting, Phil Collins, Simon Le Bon, Morrissey, Phil Oakey, Axl Rose, Adam Ant, Huey Lewis, Kevin Rowland, Michael Hutchence, all of Motlëy Crüe, Shaun Ryder, Robert Smith, Boy George, George Michael (and Andrew Ridgeley), Michael Stipe, Kenny Loggins, Mick Hucknall, Nik Kershaw, Dave Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Somerville, Bob Geldof, Mark E. Smith, Ian Astbury, Tony Hadley, Dave Gahan, Ali Campbell, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Paul Young, Paul Weller, both Hall and Oates, David Byrne, Mark Knopfler, Holly Johnson and, of course, Jon Bon Jovi were all rightfully considered prats at their peak. The 80s saw the start of what we would now recognise as heritage rock, and with that came established rock stars moving into the category of prat, or the prategory as cool people never called it: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Roger Waters, Tom Petty, Paul Simon and the late-70s upstarts John Lydon, Joe Strummer, Captain Sensible and Jimmy Pursey spent the 80s as prats (would John Lennon have been an eighties prat? He’d already spent the entire 70s as a trailblazer of the prattist cause, so he’d’ve definitely spent the 80s taking pratness to unimagined vistas). Some musicians flirted with pratness: David Bowie’s need to reinvent himself saw him dabble with pratness, Freddie Mercury clearly loved being a prat, and one can observe Bruce Springsteen’s pratness in the sartorial choices of the Born in the USA ripped-off sleeves and Tunnel of Love’s bolo. I have only mentioned white musicians so far, but plenty of non-white rock stars were pioneering prats: Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder (he somehow went from Superstition to I Just Called to Say I Love You), Michael Jackson (only a prat would make Man in the Mirror), LL Cool J, Lenny Kravitz and Public Enemy (especially when they went all anti-Semitic), with Terence Trent-D’arby demonstrating his Ph. D. in pratness. This is not to call all these men bad musicians; plenty of them are among my absolute favourite musicians. What I am calling them are prats. But the king of them all, the quintessential prat of 80s music is perhaps the quintessential 80s musician, and the one whose relevance ended completely and precisely as the clockhands passed over the twelve to mark the start of January 1st, 1990, leaving him with only his pratness as sustenance: Prince.
It's just a great word innit, "prat" - a useful word.
What is the difference between prat and twat, or are they just interchangeable? I feel like there is a difference but I'd be hard pressed to pinpoint it.
Well, there is the fact that twat refers to the female pudenda. I've never heard prat used in that sense.
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