There's not much worse than a bad joke, unless it's a bad joke that just won't go away. Let's face it, there are only so many times you can hear that joke about Michael Jackson and the Pope in a plane and with the punch line being about fucking kids, before you want to pull someone's eyelids out and pour sand into their optic nerve. In fact, just about the only thing worse than a bad joke that won't go away is the bad joke that won't go away, but with people saying, "Oh, you only don't like it because you don't get the joke." I fucking get it; I just thought that Spinal Tap was funnier, okay?
And this is about the point that someone pops a head up and says something stupid like, "But The Darkness isn't a joke." Frankly, if they aren't, then it makes it all the worse.
First time around, fair enough. Anyone can make a mistake. Even I laughed the first time I ever saw an episode of Little Britain. The jokes were funny. Just that once, when they were fresh. The fact that each joke was replayed in each of the six subsequent episodes, added to the desperation and reliance on the plain ludicrous for a cheap laugh, meant that it grew stale. Real fast. Real fucking fast, in fact.
There's only so long a stupid falsetto can be funny for. There's only so long the same good ole' rock 'n' roll chord progressions can be funny for. There's only so far you can go when you've just lost your bass player with a look straight out of the Sidney Cooke handbook. Hell, even the leotard gimmick is getting kind of old now. Hades, why not just throw in some bagpipes, just for good measure? Fuck, I'm a whole step behind now.
One Way Ticket to Hell and Back is Permission to Land. Same mixture of "rockers" and a few ballads that Crème Brulee may have been proud of. Same bad riffs and the occasional use of some faux strings, just to prove how far everything has come since way back in the day. Same bad solos that could have come straight from the heart of Slade and an occasional vocal melody that Meat Loaf will be wanting back the next time the big guy stops pumping out greatest hits.
Oh fudge, now there's a guitar that's trying to sound like a saxophone. Or maybe it is a sax? I just don't give any number of shits anymore. Suffice to say, One Way Ticket to Hell and Back is the physical embodiment of everything that's ever been wrong with rock music.
But wait, that's the joke, right? Or isn't there a joke? Does it actually fucking matter anymore? Who the fuck still cares? Can't we all just go back to concentrating on whether or not Jack and Meg white are brother and sister or ex-husband and ex-wife? Or whether that Cobain thing really was suicide, or if that guy that got run down by a train was telling the truth?
The Darkness is to both music and comedy what Tracy Emin is to art. I just hope Justin Hawkins realizes that, in just enough time to etch his "Justin" tattoo out of his arm with a razorblade and post it to himself. Everything has a limit, unless your name is Jocelyn Wildenstein. And no matter how hard I try, I can't find a way to type "The Darkness" that looks anything like "Jocelyn Wildenstein."
