"... nothing is more entertaining than fucking with words and their arrangement" – Scroobius Pip.
If there is a golden zig-zagging line of art, entertainment, music, writing, comedy and philosophy that the psych-preaching, slang-slinging, dicky punsters, tragi-jesting, shabby electro-tweethearts, post-Zappa rappers, post-Aphex clowns, post Prodigy Gilbert and Sullivans, post-Boosh pop critics, post-Conchords Bernard Levins, post-Union Jackasses, post-Lily Chas and Daves, post-Streets Max Bygraves Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip are at the end of, considering that they are the post-modern post-Warp version of Cyril Fletcher on a version of That's Life presented by the love child of Philip K Dick and Victoria Wood, hip hop as a roasting high-spirited outdated but always lively combination of news, nonsense, satire, silliness, nicked beats, novelty noises, semi-fictional documentary, charming/nefarious/daft rhymes, nerdcore obssessiveness, whose final album will be called The Novelty's Worn Off, then you can imagine where they are and what this line might mean by thinking of the following in, in the immortal words of Philip Schofield, no particular order:
Sir John Betjeman/especially his albums on Charisma with Jim Parker
Squarepusher
Jilted John
Joe Orton
Anthony Moore
Mike and Bernie Winters
Iain Sinclair
Charlie Drake
Ivor Biggun
Luke Haines
Richard Stilgoe
The Fall
John Dowie
Mos Def
Johnny Morris
Roy Harper
Bernard Bresslaw
Arthur Conan Doyle/Askey/"The Bee Song"
Chris Morris
Cliff Michelmore
Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs
Patrik Fitzgerald
Screaming Lord Sutch
Terry Scott
Noel Coward
Hale and Pace
Jack Rosenthal
Seymour (to be Blur)
Ivor Cutler
Ray Gosling
Max Wall
Spike Jones
Vivian Stanshall
Frank Muir
Small Faces
Jimmy Cricket
Alexei Sayle
Eric Idle
XTC
Galton and Simpson
Russ Abbott
Pete Doherty
Dame Edith Sitwell
Ian Carmichael/Dury
Tommy Trinder
Scaffold
Frank Randle
Sir Isaiah Berlin
Jake Thackray
Art of Noise
Neil Innes
Auberon Waugh
Rolf Harris
Chicory Tip
Martin Amis
E.P Thompson
Flanders and Swann
Ray Alan and Lord Charles
Faust
Dick Hebridge
Benny Hill
The Barron Knights/the Grumbleweeds
Mike Harding
Benjamin Zephaniah
The Kinks
Spike Milligan/"The Ying Tong Song" (a birth of hip hop)
George Melly
Stanley Unwin
The Good the Bad and the Queen
The Goodies
Edward Lear
Vic and Bob
Danny Baker
John Cooper Clarke
Adrian Mitchell
Paul Kaye
Terry Gilliam
Lance Percival
Peter Kay
Stanley Holloway
Alex Harvey
Willie Rushton
Eric Sykes/Hattie Jacques
Bill Tidy
Tommy Steele
Singing Postman
Deryck Guyler
Slits
Slade
Joan Sims
Hinge and Brackett
Max Miller
PG Wodehouse
Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias
John Otway and Wild Willie Barratt
Billy Bragg
Michael Crawford
John Hegley
Herman's Hermits
Lemn Sissay
Harry Hill
KLF
Roy Hudd
Philip Larkin
Lonnie Donegan
Charles Bukowski
Kenny Everett
Bernard Cribbins
Napoleon XIV
Joyce Grenfell
etc etc etcetera.
