I know that we are all grown ups here who realise that “guilty pleasures” is an oxymoron. If it’s a pleasure, why be guilty? But what if this pleasure is actually, unapologetically shite?
I started wondering about this tonight whilst watching BBC 4’s psychedelic night. Which features rather a lot of Incredible String Band
I love The Incredible String Band. But they are AWFUL really. I know this because putting them on for a second sends my wife out of the room swearing. She’s a kind tolerant woman, but the Incredible String Band makes her want to kick puppies.
So I feel guilty. I play the Incredible String Band, puppies get actually kicked by my wife.
When she plays U2 though…
mikethep says
My actual guilty pleasure is playing Angry Birds 2 on my phone. A lot.
There, I’ve said it.
ISB are wonderful, though. No guilt involved there.
JustB says
I think if I have a guilty pleasure, it is my phone (at least, since I gave up porn 🙈). I know I’m on it way, way too much. I know it’s pathetic. I can’t help it. I LOVE MY PHONE.
Gatz says
I’m on level 904. My name is Gatz and I am an Angry Birds 2 addict.
mikethep says
A mere 252 here…I spend most of my time in the er, Forum, pulling in pearls, jewels and hats. My name is Buster Barrelroll and I am an Angry Birds 2 addict.
Arthur Cowslip says
I love the ISB. But I know how ridiculous they sound to non-believers, so I only play them in private. I would actually get embarrassed if someone caught me listening to, for example, the more histrionic sections of Job’s Tears.
Why is that?
Rob C says
I adore the ISB. Regularly blasted out in the yurt, and on the Ipod. Anyone who doesn’t like, tough. Never take off music that you like to please others, and to expect anyone else to do the same for you is the height of bad manners.
mikethep says
My sister played loads of ISB at her 50th birthday party, and to anybody who complained she said, “Well, you know where the door is.”
Rob C says
Good for her! My kind of lady. They’re a rarity to be sure.
Tahir W says
I’m with ganglesprocket’s wife on this one (not on the matter of U2 however).
JustB says
I think my only “art” guilty pleasures – about which I don’t feel in the least bit guilty or furtive by the way – are shit 90s action films. The Rock. Con Air. Yes, even Armageddon. If they’ve got a Bruckheimer ident, if they contain more lens flare than a Duran Duran video, if every frame of the hero is slo-mo and angled lower than a gnome’s arse, if there’s a distressing soft rock soundtrack ideally with a breakout chart love theme – I’m fucking IN.
davebigpicture says
Pirates of the Caribbean, all of them, even the latest one. I used to do some work for Disney and I saw some preview clips of the first one and I’ve been hooked ever since.
JustB says
I maintain the first PotC film is great. I expected nothing from it when I saw it and had a blast.
ruff-diamond says
Where do you stand on “walking away from mahoosive explosions without looking back”?
JustB says
I don’t stand, I swagger – slowly, with slo-mo helicopter blades spinning lazily in soft focus overhead, just prior to saying “Now that’s what *I’m* talkin’ bout” or “shit got real” to myself and lighting a cigar between clenched teeth.
(Real answer: yes please!)
Rob C says
Saw Con Air a few months ago. It’s got Nicholas Cage in it, and it’s a hoot. What’s not to love?
JustB says
My sentiments precisely. Plus it has THIS (for full hilarity, the casual viewer needs to know that Malkovich’s character is called Cyrus and at no point in the movie, before or after this one, is he referred to as Cy):
Rob C says
Preposterously cool.
I must dig out my Wicker Man dvd. The Cage Version. Bought it in a thrift shop for a quid. Result.
He frequents the Abbey Tea rooms in Glastonbury from time to time. He’s mad for all things Arthurian. Doesn’t do the ego thing and no one hassles him.
Carl says
Well there isn’t a problem with ISB in this house as neither my wife nor I can stand them (though I did think last night the clips played in the documentary were almost listenable).
However should I play Roy Harper or (the capital crime) Julian Cope in her presence, the room is evacuated.
Similarly if she plays any Van Morrison post Hymns To The Silence (his last listenable album as far as I’m concerned).
Rob C says
OK. Socks with sandals. I don’t care. Black ones. Very comfy too. Free yourself.
Vincent says
Is this the place where i can cough to liking to smoke spice, using sex workers, casual and vindictive racism and sexism, not giving a shit about the third world, or are some actual guilty pleasures less guilty than others? It’s a long way from cocking a snook at the music Police by, for example, liking “Topographic oceans” best of all the Yes albums, or 10cc’s “How Dare You”.
count jim moriarty says
Nothing guilty in taking pleasure from ‘How Dare You’, a great album. I worked my way through 2 vinyl copies and then 2 CD versions. Still love it.
Liking ANY Yes album, on the other hand…
Rob C says
I don’t get it. How can anyone like 10cc?! They’re like a castrated Steely Dan.
Uncle Wheaty says
Your loss.
A truly great band for the first albums up until 1978. After that forget it.
The Live and Let Live album from 1977 has a couple of fans on here as well.
Carl says
Alternatively Steely Dan were 10CC after steroid injections.
Uncle Wheaty says
I assume that would be Oestrogen?
count jim moriarty says
10cc had twice as many top quality songwriters.
Vincent says
The first 4 albums are excellent. The rest – not so much. Once they lost Manchester’s answer to Becker and Fagen they were left with the not inconsiderable Rusholme Denny Dias and Ancoats Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, but more than a little patchy. But Becker and fagen were right to fall out big time regarding “The Things We Do For Love”. Jeff should’ve kept it for his solo album and had his own hit out of it, so the ‘C were not sullied by it’s trite crapness. I want smart-arse one liners in tricky pop rock, and I want it NOW. OOAA.
count jim moriarty says
Although both halves produced some top quality music, the post-How Dare You material what a fine balance the original band was. Without each other, Stewart/Gouldman tended towards blandness, whereas Godley/Creme were at times tiresomely smartarse.
GCU Grey Area says
A Gregg’s dummy (aka one of their sausage rolls) must be one of life’s guilty pleasures. Yummy when just cool enough to eat, despite no doubt being made from earholes, eyeholes and arseholes and other ‘meat’ mechanically recovered from the carcass ect, ect, with a week’s salt, fat and E-numbers in every bite.
fishface says
spot on…best if washed down with a can of Fosters….at a bus stop.
also Steak n’ Cheese…..may contain cheese….and steak.
JustB says
Microwaving a cheese sarnie. That’s a bit of a guilty pleasure. Crap cheese, average white Hovis, a minute on full power. Like the tastiest industrial sealant ever.
Mike_H says
Better to toast the bread first, use a nice tangy mature cheddar and keep an eye on it as it microwaves.
The very moment the cheese begins bubbling out of the sides of the sarnie, hit the door open button because it’s done. That way the cheese retains good flavour.
My food guilty pleasure is Sainsbury’s cook-in-the-bag kippers, microwaved and wrapped in a slice of my favourite bread. No spread necessary. With Heinz tomato ketchup and perhaps some black pepper. You get five half-fillets from a packet but I usually only have 4 of them in slices of bread and eat the last piece of kipper with a fork.
JustB says
Defeats the object. I don’t want something with flavour. I want something reprehensible. 😉
Mike_H says
Don’t see any point in eating things without flavour.
We have tastebuds, so we should use them.
Tahir W says
Like wearing a leather jacket for example?
Milkybarnick says
Also nice done with cream crackers – they go a bit soft, but not soggy. For extra taste a bit of brown sauce or mustard helps. Great washed down with a bottle of cheap ale.
minibreakfast says
They shouldn’t go soggy. I microwave four or five crackers with a thin layer of cheese until it bubbles slightly, adding a teaspoon of baked beans to each on high days and holidays.
Bliss.
Black Celebration says
If you are watching football on the couch on your own on a Sunday afternoon TUC cheese sandwich crackers washed down with dandelion and burdock is pretty hard to beat.
It’s a guilty pleasure because all of it is wrong – especially if it’s a Chelsea game.
Uncle Wheaty says
I bloody love TUC cheese sandwich crackers.
A proper guilty pleasure that has to be hidden from the kids because “Daddy cooks nice food”!
minibreakfast says
I’m eating one now.
MmmfmmphwooarOHMYGODnmnmnmmmm.
fentonsteve says
The ISB at the Bloomsbury theatre was the only gig both Mrs F. and I agreed to leave during the half-time interval. We’d gone because an older friend was very excited and we’d never heard of them. It turned out to be a total arse-ache as we got back to the station car park to find the car had been broken into, and it then had a tyre puncture during the short drive home.
Stereolab at the Astoria was a gig I loved and she hated, I stayed in the moshpit all night with my pal and she waited at the bar with fingers in ears. I can no longer play anything with a motorik beat and Moog solo within earshot of her.
Rob C says
Last night I had a very guilty pleasure. A fuck off bacon sarnie with lashings of HP.
I’m generally veggie, but the opportunity presented itself and it was ethical bacon, so not too high a score on the Karma calories to burn.
pencilsqueezer says
Ethical bacon doesn’t sound entirely kosher.
Rob C says
I had the munchies. Happy outdoor reared pigs, so….yeah, more ethical than not.
Rob C says
I’ll do a few extra malas, and besides, got some good quality stuff to donate to the animal charity shop.
pencilsqueezer says
An old much loved pair of pigskin mittens?
Rob C says
A bunch of pristine cds that I have updated versions of and a few I’m not that into, plus some excellent quality books/pre-recorded VHS tapes and a game of Karma Sutra Twister. That should square the karma.
Rob C says
PDSA got my entire Beatles/Yes/ and some Van andISB when I bought the remasters.
Rob C says
I hawk my occult stuff in Glastonbury.
pencilsqueezer says
So mote it be.
Rob C says
Gotta recycle and spread The Knowledge, Pencilbrodude x
( I had that Israel Regardie in the back of my cab once)….
Lando Cakes says
Coincidentally, I was at an Incredible String Band tribute on Thursday. It was (almost) entirely marvellous. The only ISB-er performing was Mike Heron, with a cameo appearance by Rose Simpson. A veritable galaxy of stars helping out though – Robyn Hitchcock, Green Gartside, Alasdair Roberts, Barbara Dickson, Withered Hand, to name but a few – and compered/produced by Joe Boyd. Yes, the lyrics are batty at times and some of the guests looked like they couldn’t quite believe what they were singing. But it can be sublime too. A Very Cellular Song is just aces.
And I didn’t feel even a tiny bit guilty.
Rob C says
I heard about this on FB/TW in advance. Absolutely wonderful Landodude. Didn’t know of Rose’s cameo. Lucky you.
Om Shanti
Lando Cakes says
I recalled on FB thinking that Rose becoming Lady Mayor of Aberystwyth would be the most unlikely political event of my lifetime. What innocent times the 1990s were…
Arthur Cowslip says
This thread has made me want to listen to the old Stringies again. Haven’t listened to them in ages. Must give The Minotaur Song a real blast when I’m next in the house alone.
bricameron says
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.