Seriously though, F@€K Busted

I was gonna work on an "End of Year" type post with lists of stuff but I decided not to (Local Resident Failure - best album, PMX & Twin Dracula joint top EP). Instead I'm going to write about something mildly topical in the world of punk rock. The "highly anticipated" Busted reunion.

In 2002 something amazing was happening in the UK charts. For the first time in a long while alternative music that wasn't brit pop was flooding the top 40. I remember this year as a year I think I saw more bands than I ever did before. Bands like Less Than Jake, MXPX, Jimmy Eat World, Sum 41, New Found Glory, Fenix TX, The Offspring and god knows how many others. The punk/alternative world was blowing right the hell up and the charts reflected this. People like Avril Lavigne were in the top ten along with P!nk now singing songs off albums she was writing with Tim Armstrong. Bands  like Puddle Of Mudd and alternative sensations like Eminem could be found rubbing shoulders with the usual pop shit. All in all this was a huge time for rock music and punk was at the forefront of the charge, maybe not the stuff those guys in the 70s were listening to but us 90s teenagers had sudden easy access to all our favourite bands.
Kerrang TV had become a thing and by late 2002 they were playing more than just smells like teen spirit and enter sandman on 24 hour repeat and the bands we love were getting a hell of a lot of spotlight. Blink 182 in particular had been an overwhelming powerhouse when it came to breaking punk rock and alternative music into everyday households with cheeky but inoffensive videos and tunes that didn't freak your parents out.
Island Records obviously took notice of this and decided they wanted some of that sweet sweet punk rock pound. Island being a branch of the Universal Music Group, the company that also own EMI (you might recognise EMI as the record label the sex pistols fucking hated). In late 2002 'Busted', the debut album of brand new band Busted was released.

Main thing about Busted is that they were absolutely a pop band with guitars that they didn't actually play doing synchronised jumps and looking like total chumps. For someone who was genuinely in the scene back then Busted were an affront to everything that I loved. All those bands that were awesome and were pioneering alternative music from artist owned labels like Nitro and Kung Fu and Fat Wreck and Hell Cat were being shat on by this band.

I can't stress this enough, Busted were One Direction, only someone had gelled their hair up and given them guitars to hold onto.
It wasn't just that they were shit, and entirely manufactured, and catered to pre teen girls. It was that they did all this while pretending that they were in the Kerrang crowd. It was just deeply offensive for this band of public school assholes to label themselves in the same category as No Use For A Name or a pre American Idiot Green Day.
It's important to remember Charlie Simpson in all of this too. Charlie was a real rock music fan and HATED being in busted. Like really hated it. In an interview he gave with the guardian when Fightstar formed he has this to say about Busted:

"I was in a fucked-up situation. I was in a music career, which was amazing, and I hated it because it wasn't fulfilling me in any sense of the word. I kept thinking, imagine if this was a band I really liked, I'd be loving it. It was like torture."

Those are not the words of someone who thought they were in a good band, or an even remotely alternative band. Busted was his prison, which makes it all the more sad to see that he's back. I guess they must have offered him one hell of a lot of money.

So Why are we looking back on Busted now with a hint of nostalgia? Well my guess is that the mists of time have helped us forget who Busted really were. We look at them now like pop punk bands such as Fallout Boy, who are over-produced pop crap now but came from great beginnings. Or because they appeared in the charts at the same time that Blink-182 were in the charts we mis-remember them as part of that peer group instead of the major label cash in on the scene we were a part of. Today we have 5 Seconds Of Summer. A band that I care so little about I can't even be bothered to research them (I've already had to listen to Busted, don't make me do more!!). They are the modern Busted, probably even better if I cared to check out a song (I don't) yet we don't love them for the same reasons no one loved Busted back in the day.

We also have McFly, who, in the wake of the backlash against Busted being so blatantly fake made a point of playing everything entirely live and putting together a live show that showcased each of the members as great musicians. Their reputation eventually ended up tinting Busteds as being from the same crowd rather than that of the band that pretty much destroyed the genre before it had taken off.

I guess this all comes down to grumpiness and age in the end. I was eighteen and fully immersed in the punk scene at the time. Corporate entertainment always ends up ruining the things kids love and Busted was that corporate entertainment effort to cash in on what I thought was cool. If you got into alternative music five years later maybe Busted seemed like the pop punk band that the cool dude from Fightstar used to be in, or maybe everyone is being super ironic. I don't really know, all I know is I'm an older gen punk now telling the punk kids of this generation that Falling In Reverse and Yellawolf are shit, and it'll never be better than when I was 18.

So after reading this are you still excited for Busted coming back in a non ironic way? If you are then we probably can't be friends anymore.

p.s. even if you allowed for a 35 year gap between generations you're looking at roughly 30 in a 1000 year period. Your great great great granddaughter is more likely to occur in a 100 year window. Idiots.