Freeloading shower of bastards: LV15 Interview Pt 2
The one in which we discuss the origins of the LV15 name (I’d forgotten), Prince Charles and A+B bootlegs.
4. Where did the name LV15 come from? Is it a Star Wars reference (would seem bit of a geeky thing for you to do) or a Liverpool reference?
You did a google search, noticed that one of the top results was from wookiepedia and somehow assumed that might be where i got the name from? Even though from what I can see the name LV15 was used in a dungeons and dragons type. star wars role playing game. If I had gotten my name from that, you would absolutely have my permission to punch me in the face.
People also guess the Liverpool thing too. In fact, over the 20+ years I used the name (it’s retired now) there are only two people out of the at least thousands that were presented with it, who got it straight away. You’d think that considering all the other fucking useless information I have in my head, that I would at least remember who those two people were. If I had to guess I’d probably say that one of them was someone who I disliked so much that the only way for me to continue existing knowing they were one of the people who cracked the code was to erase the memory of them and anyone else who got it from my mind.
The actual answer is so fucking banal that it makes my skin crawl. In the late 80′s, karaoke hit this country as a thing that would now be taking place in pubs and such. Back in those early days before people had heard ‘i will survive’ being murdered by every possible combination of hen party imaginable, karaoke was quite a new and novel thing. Through always being in the pub, knowing something about music and being able to push a button I fell into a job working with the karaoke people as there were more pubs who wanted karaoke than they could currently supply.
At my local pub, some joker had hilarious referred to me as elvis on account of my in no way similarity in any respect to the long dead king of rock n roll other than the fact that I had sang a song. As is the norm with such things, before long I couldn’t walk down the street without random people shouting out ‘alright elvis’. This annoyed me somewhat, due to my almost fanatical hatred of elvis and his entire body of work. Still, even back then I was clued in to the concepts of brand recognition and when it became time for me to move from karaoke into djing, i needed a dj name, I was already known locally as ‘elvis’ so I just called myself ‘LV15′ which I would have explained to people as ‘I used to be elvis but then I dropped an E’, if anyone had ever asked.
The arrival of the internet more than a decade later heaped even more shame on an already shitty name as even when people realised the whole elvis thing, they then assumed that you were just using l33t sp34k like what the kids do. To make matters worse, any hope I had of at least my shitty name being useful for search engine queries totally evaporated with the slew of people who wanted to discuss their LV15 (level 15) pokemon.
5. You said that you were ” lifelong king of GYBO and the guy who had by far and away the most karma points before some Scottish bastard spoiled everything by taking them away again and I take it as no coincidence that my life has spiralled downwards ever since.” Is this really true?
I realise that some of my answers have been a touch on the long side so far and so I will try to be more brief from now on.
I took a break after answering the last question, smoked a spliff and sat down to watch the ‘Ultimate’ cut of Watchmen, all three and a half fucking hours of it. Obviously that bored the shit out of me for a large portion of it and so my mind wandered off into other avenues, including what my answers may be to the rest of the questions. To be honest, the first four answers just came spilling out of my head and the first thing I really knew about them was akin to me holding my hair out of my face and blinking myself into focus to witness the true horror of the mess I had only just finished projectile vomiting onto the floor of a pristine, white tiled bathroom in an establishment far too classy to be having this kind of desecration carried out within it’s confines.
The resulting shame as my words and actions came flooding back to me, fixed me with a steely resolve. I would make every effort to be as succinct and precise as I could manage with the questions still left to answer. I knew I would probably be making a point about something being pathetic at some point in the future and so set my mind to the task of thinking of a suitable allegory for such a thing.
No sooner had I set my brain to this assignment than an image popped into my head. Prince Charles attempting to breakdance while visiting a youth centre or some such nonsense in an effort to try and ‘connect’ with the ‘youth’. I had no knowledge if such a thing had ever taken place but my brain assured me that would be entirely the kind of thing he has done on at least one occasion.
It’s ridiculous really. This man is next in line to the throne, for all I know the queen might have died while I am typing this and he is already the King. The head of the United Kingdom. The top dog, numero uno, the big i am, the motherfucking ruler. Is it not pathetic that such a man would attempt breakdancing to curry favour with his subjects? Wouldn’t he have just said ‘no, I’m not doing that’. Would Henry VIII have done that? Would Victoria? Would his mum?
Yet even before you’ve finished asking yourself the question, you already know the answer. Of fucking course he would, they all fucking would, the freeloading shower of bastards. They would do practically anything to carry on with their fucking cushy existence. Living in castles, having teams of people dedicated to their every fucking whim and all they have to do is turn up at different places every so often, patronise the locals and try to assuage the gradual decline from the rulers they once where to the burden that they currently are but oh well it’s tradition, they’re harmless enough, they bring the tourists in, leave them be.
It can’t have been that great a span of time that this change has occurred in. If the events of the film ‘The Kings Speech’ happened today, we wouldn’t all be stood around waiting for him to sort his fucking words out, we’d just demand someone else reads the fucking speech, it’s not like it fucking matters. Just bung it up on twitter or something mate, nobody really gives a fuck. Gareth Gates tried it with the whole speech impediment thing and of course it was adorable but ultimately, Will Young won because we’d rather have a bloke who we reckon probably shags blokes when we’re not watching but at least he’s not rubbing our fucking faces in it every week when we’re trying to watch some fucking telly. The stammer cleared up quickly enough when you had a fucking album to promote didn’t it Gareth?
So yeah, if the kings speech happened today, we’d just go ‘get fucking edward to read it instead, it’s not like that cunt ever does anything, didn’t he go to drama school or something? I’m sure he’ll be all over this shit.’ That’s why it’s always in community centres, church halls or outreach projects that these people go out of their way to ingratiate themselves to us, or at least to the poor because they are going to be the fucking front line if the revolution ever comes, the longer you can keep them on side, the longer you can keep bumbling along in the lap of fucking luxury. Minor royals will be sucking people off on babestation within the next 25 years. I guarantee it.
I had to know and so I started typing into google. Not only was prince charles breakdancing there, it was an auto complete suggestion. Of course it was, google knows the fucking score. One quick trip to youtube later and I can never unsee what I have now born witness to. Mind you, with something like that, I have to had seen it at some point previously in my life so ultimately my brain has done little more than recall something I once saw when I specifically asked it to imagine something. That’s the trouble with brains, they are cunts.
So to answer your question, yes.
6. Are there any bootlegs that you think have withstood the test of time (don’t say, no)?
Yes. I’d imagine you’d want me to name some. I’m not going to. I will however say that nearly all of them will amount to little more than a simple A vs B bootleg. That’s when the fun in them is distilled to its purest form. Hey I know this song, hey wait I also know this song, wow they are playing at the same time, that’s both comforting that I know both of the songs but also disconcerting because i am hearing them both at the same time in a way I never expected. It’s like a little warp in reality that could only be spoiled by timing issues or key clashes which could rip you back out of this new reality into the flaming shithole you had previously been occupying.
In which case I’ll pick one. How about this one:
LV15 – Languid Marmalade (A Different Kind Of Slow Jam) via (http://www.bmbx.org/category/lv15/)
http://media.blubrry.com/bmbx/p/mixes.b00mb0x.org/lv15mix6.mp3
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