Gordon in the morning: Kasabian have some thinkings about 9/11

I suppose a band who cheerily use a killer's name as their brand will always have a different approach to death than other people, but Kasabian's use of September 11th as a promotional tool is a bit sickening, even by their standards. To be fair, the link is as much down to Gordon Smart as the band, as their Sun interview hammers home some sort of link to explain why the band might be playing a rooftop gig in New York on September 11th this year:

KASABIAN will play a poignant gig in New York — on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. And the timing of the show has made the Leicester lads think about how their lives have changed since that horrendous day in 2001.

Yes, Gordon and the boys are really just using the murder of 3,000 people as a staging post on their journey from unknown plod-rockers to fairly well known plod-rockers:

At the time the Twin Towers came down Tom and chief songwriter Serge Pizzorno were "grafting" for a living in Leicester. Serge helped out in his dad's garage and Tom drilled holes at a metalwork factory. Guitarist Serge says: "I was just helping out my old man, collecting parts and doing MOTs. Tom was working in fabrications, drilling. He used to come home black, man. He was so dirty. It used to take him 20 minutes to have a wash. blahblahblah hard work blahblahblah sweat of honest toil blahblah

Ah, yes. Tom was doing manual labour at the time. That kind of puts the collapse of the Twin Towers into some sort of perspective, right. But what about the attacks themselves? Surely the band must have something to say about those? If only to justify Gordon using them as background colour for yet another Kasabian interview?

Tom Meighan says: "It will be strange for us playing in the city on such a big weekend for New York people. It will be emotional. "I was at work and remember hearing 9/11 unfold on the radio. I remember going home and being in absolute shock. My mum had it on the news. It was f***ing awful."

"My mum had it on the news" doesn't really suggest much of an interest from Tom, does it? Still, "fucking awful" at least comes closer to capturing the horror than his colleague's reaction:

Serge adds: "Looking back to 9/11, I was at work. I went round Tom's on my way home. I'd always go in for a tea and I was sat watching it with his mum when Tom came home from work. "We were watching it in his front room. We were like everyone, thinking it was just mental."

"It was just mental". Why isn't this man regularly invited onto Newsnight to share his insights? "We watched it on the news. I remember, because the news was on and we looked at the pictures and listened to the words and that was what was happening", the pair continued. "Ten years on, it certainly remains something we saw happen on the news.