I’m sitting here listening to This Is What She’s Like by Dexys, air-drumming like a motherfucker, seconds away from falling right off my stool and smashing my butt, when my inbox lights up and it’s WayNorth J. asking if I, Phineas The Star, would like to contribute to a music site.

Obviously I have better things to do.

But it occurs to me that those ranting, high-pitched voices that wake me up every morning at 6am, the screeds as to why Arcade Fire bloke is just a crappy Axl Rose, the sucker punching that is happening behind the sticky walls about whether or not there is any statistical way to prove that the hashtag BNM accolade at Pitchfork is generated by an algorithm with using keywords like Rich Parents, Likes Smashing Pumpkins, and Cocaine Gums; that this might be a way to channel some of those groggy but penetrating insights.

So I pinky finger the reply button and tell Jim, I’m in lad! Please send money and Nessy rolling papers to my footman’s Paypal account, and we’ll get this beast dusted off A-sap.

A week passed, and UpNorth had not replied. It was obvious; things had gone north, even for North. Too north. We were going to have to take matters into our own hands. It was time for Phineas the Star to be born.

Really though, let’s consider a few facts as to what qualifies Phineas The Star to write about music when he’s a) never heard a song by DIIV b) never written for a blog apart from his brief tenure at MySkippingSpinArtCD.com and c) has been overheard saying to Acid Becs that the only reason LCD Sound System is getting back together is dude needs cash to pay for the wine-penis surgery.

Well, let’s look at the facts. Last week Phineas The Star tossed his new Florist LP* across the room, shouting at no one in particular, In my day we used our dorm rooms exclusively to smoke dirt weed out of ivory pipes and play Lode Runner on our Macintoshes. No one wrote dirty sock pop music and if we did it was with lots of Galaxie 500 reverb in mind.

The week before that Phineas The Star was holding the DJ Sotofett LP in his hands like it was a precious child. He was emailing his local record shop at 4AM demanding they get the new SUEDE LP by sunrise that same day. Phineas The Star opened a new Instagram account late in 2015 just to take photos of a child Annikin Skywalker Lego figure standing atop his stack of Arab Strap LPs and EPs in hopes that Aidan would re-Gram him. He didn’t, of course, but his drunken pop music Youtube rave-ups are a lifetime pass for any misstep he may have inadvertently made by not followbacking Phineas.

Let’s pivot and consider this: once I was jogging along the River Ness when I tripped while crossing a small bridge. I found myself amongst the rocks and smashed buckfast bottles. A troll named Kanye crept out from under the bridge and offered me a stolen towel. I said to him, why is it that you’re so shit but if you drop the N-Y-E from your name you get the greatest rapper alive? He said, Ka writes music from the future, but I get the editor’s of Vice and Medium to waste valuable brain spunk on trying to be clever about my ineptitude. All the while I live under this bridge and look up the shorts of the people running over the bridge. So you tell me Mr. The Star, who’s the winner of this game?

That’s just it, I shouted at Troll Kanye, it’s not a game. David Bowie is dead and you’re shouting to millions about how you want to name your new album: Cosby Beats. All the fuck-offs in the world just bounce of your force field of rot. But the truth is, I’ve never met ANYONE who can name a single song of yours, who claims to like your music, or can quote a line from one of your verses. All the love, all the praise, all the fans are blips, zeros and ones, not real people like you Kanye Troll!

Kanye Troll smiled at me, then he punched me in the junk and said, you’ll be back Phineas The Star. If you’re going to talk music, you’ll find that my ubiquity is essential, that no one will want to read your column if you don’t regurgitate what the echo chamber is saying about me in real time.

I walked along the River Ness and wondered if Kanye The Troll was right. I mean, certainly I wasn’t going to go rush out and buy any of his shitty albums, but was I, a newly christened music blogger, going to be able to be taken serious if I let it be known that I actually reject Kayne simply because the cokeheads at Pitchfork champion him? Am I just that thing your knee does when the man in the white coats hits you with a wee hammer?

I said I was going to wrap it up, and I am–I promise–but there’s one final act that needs to be shared. I got home from my walk and put on that Dolly Mixture CD that Saint Etienne dude released but seems to have totally forgotten otherwise. Please explain why every Spring Record Store Day shits out a bunch of duff but no Dolly Mixture Demonstration Tapes LP**? I’m stretching my leg muscles listening to this brilliant collection of low-fi bangers and a warm light sparks someplace deep inside me. It grows up out of my mouth and splashes up on the ceiling. I grab a note card and write down: Is it enough to simply say, hey it’s 2016 and I know you all are feeling obliged to write about the Porches/Savages album because that’s what the echo chamber demands this week, but instead, let’s just lay here and vomit happiness at the ceiling that’s brought on by having put on How Come You’re Such A Hit With the Boys Jane, by Dolly Mixture, a song I’ve heard 100 times before and insist I hear 100 times more before I die.

Peace losers,

P the S

*For the record, the Florist album is dope as fuck

**Okay so Discogs tells me someone did make an LP version of this in 2010, but that it didn’t make it to our tiny island, and it’s going for a buck fifty in the second hand market so like, demand is still high AF.