I like The Police.
I don't much like Sting's solo stuff.
I did quite like Fields of Gold mind. And the one about the nuclear bomb.
His rain-forest posturing and general liberal wet arty farty ways are a bit annoying as well.
But he's absolutely dead right in his criticism of The X-Factor.
It is a Karaoke competition and nothing else. It is about generating cash for Cowell Corporation. It is factory pop of the worst kind since....oh.....a few years back when Stock, Aitken and Waterman ruled the airwaves. It has fuck all to do with proper real music. I don't deny that Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, JLS et al.... have technically near perfect voices. That's all they do have though. Music and song is much much more than just showing off your vocal power and range everytime a microphone is shoved in your face. It's more than dance routines and sparkly outfits. It's more than being a performing seal.
It's about soul, passion, spirit, individuality and creativity and that little something that sets you aside. Good music and good 'pop' music have something intangible that works. Talented artists really do have an X factor. That special ingredient that emanates from them and what they perform that gets into the soul of the those , like me, who love music. It's the same for painters, sculptors and writers.
Look carefully at the X Factor and ask yourself how many of the following artists would have survived to win the alleged competition. Rod Stewart? Sinead O' Connor? Randy Crawford? Kate Bush? Would the current George Michael or Elton John versions get past Cowells critical eye? What about Engelbert Humperdinck with his crooning ballads? If Sting turned up with his guitar, would he make it? Come to think of it would Michael Jackson have got very far? Kirsty Maccoll perhaps? Nah, not pretty enough. John Lennon.....Freddie Mercury......John Lydon........the list goes on. None of them would meet the pre-packed, pre-moulded, sanitized production line pop criteria needed to be a 'star' through the X Factor route.
If it's all the same to you, I'll stick to Jools Holland's Later and the Beeb's Glasto coverage for my TV music.
A plague on the X-Factor house and all it's occupants!
Later, GJ
Friday, November 13, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Why I love the 80's.........and the 60's and 70's...and bits of the 90's
This is weird. What started off as a retrospective 'weren't the 80's actually rather good' spiel turns into 'aren't I lucky to have lived through music's most golden ages' piece.
It started a few weeks back during the enforced absence when I was wading through weeks of recorded programmes catching up on all the 'must see' stuff I'd recorded in a delusionally desperate attempt to prove the value of the new TV . The truth is most of this 'must see' stuff ends up being deleted through boredom/lack of time/better things to do. But when you're immobile there is very little that's better than lying flat, propped into a comfy position with fluffy pillows, surrounded by remote controls, medicines, an iPod, mobile phones and bags of Minstrels and Midget Gems. Not the most active or healthy of lifestyles I grant that, but something everyone should do occasionally just for the good of the soul. A break from the strife of normality one might say.
One of the recorded programmes was called Synth Britannia, yet another excellent piece of contemporary cultural history from the rather good BBC4 stable. I started to watch this thinking it might be worthy but dull, but instead revelled in a nostalgia-fest of the birth, flourishing, maturation and eventual record industry homogenisation of electronic music.
Setting aside that bands like Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream etc had dallied with electronic sounds for some years, the programme gave a wonderful overview of the emergence into the charts from the late 70's in the shape of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), through the fringe elements of bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and the transition of The Human League from failing electronic/synth geeks into pop-tastic leaders of synth dance music so synonymous with the 80's. Of course the nostalgia was where it worked the most, and it set me reflecting on my own almost covert love of this stuff, the fashions and the post punk evolution of music through arguably its last truly avant-garde era of mixing the independent with mainstream appeal. Until Stock, Aitken and Waterman came along and strangled it with their ruthlessly efficent factory model producing electro-pap instead of electro-pop.
For 2 glorious hours I lay on the sofa revelling in clips from Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Pet shop Boys, Human League, Heaven 17, OMD and even some Kraftwerk lobbed in for good measure. From some BBC treasure vault they included video clips from clubs and concerts showing the transition from punk fashions including the goth eye make-up and quasi-bondage outfits into the refined versions so prevalent at the time and which in turn heavily influenced the whole New Romantic fashions seen at the time. Men wearing make-up then was outrageous, but who really bats an eyelid these days? For me it was covert because of the image I'd woven for myself at the time, the jean-jacketed long haired pseudo Motorhead look was my way. But although a dyed in the wool rocker, underneath it all beat the heart of a wedge haircut, make-up wearing, be-suited Spandau Ballet fan. I envied the guys in my local pub off to the clubs wearing this immaculate outrageous gear, spangly, sparkling women adorning their arms. It was circa 1983 when the hair finally got cut and the wedge appeared. I had two ear piercings but was never brave enough to don the make-up despite being just about the only one in that group. We all fancied the Human league girls, and some even fancied Alison Moyet (I've never been a weight fascist). Watching the programme reminded me of the prime of youth I guess, those years between about 17 and 25, prior to any really serious relationships or marriages, when a fuck or a fight at the end of an evening was a result (the fight obviously being the lesser prize), an age when school was done and you had very little in the way of responsibility. And as usual a time of our lives that we were too young to appreciate fully.
As I sat down to write this I realised that being born in 1961 has meant that I am so fortunate because I have lived through the best decades humanity has known. I got a taste of the 60's, like a young boy's first taste of Dad's beer. You pretend to like it but can't be sure because you're too young. But you know you'll love it when you grow up. The 1970's, a much maligned decade politically, culturally, artistically and musically, were in retrospect like the first few seconds of the Big Bang, where the Big Bang was the 60's (the decade that spat on post-war austerity, where the teenager was finally acknowledged by society). The 1970's gave us colour TV, FM radio, vcr's, glam rock, Queen, disco, new wave, punk, David Bowie, Dame Elton John. Rod Stewart, The Clash, T Rex, Sweet, Slade....the list is just too big, but suffice to say the 80's needed the 70's fashions and influence and they succeeded just as spectacularly. As the 90's came along the inevitable ageing process removes you from the cult of youth and you lose that touch with what's 'in' and what's relevant to the incoming generations.
And so it should be. What my generation, with all it's inherent grumpiness' has managed to do a million times better than our parents and grandparents generations is to accept what our kids like whilst reserving the right to dismissing it as rubbish either in jest or for real. We do not seem to embrace outrage or resistance to cultural change as they did in the 50's and 60's. And with any luck the next set of 40-something parents will be even better this, accepting the gap and encouraging the kids to do their own thing, to dress their own way, to listen to and like their own music. But I'll say this, boy have they got their work cut out in doing better than us. Something tells me that kids of today might not be looking back quite as nostalgically at Jedward, Rhydian, Mika, Acon and the stuff around today. Although Lady Gaga might make the cut!
Sound like a parent don't I?
Later, GJ
It started a few weeks back during the enforced absence when I was wading through weeks of recorded programmes catching up on all the 'must see' stuff I'd recorded in a delusionally desperate attempt to prove the value of the new TV . The truth is most of this 'must see' stuff ends up being deleted through boredom/lack of time/better things to do. But when you're immobile there is very little that's better than lying flat, propped into a comfy position with fluffy pillows, surrounded by remote controls, medicines, an iPod, mobile phones and bags of Minstrels and Midget Gems. Not the most active or healthy of lifestyles I grant that, but something everyone should do occasionally just for the good of the soul. A break from the strife of normality one might say.
One of the recorded programmes was called Synth Britannia, yet another excellent piece of contemporary cultural history from the rather good BBC4 stable. I started to watch this thinking it might be worthy but dull, but instead revelled in a nostalgia-fest of the birth, flourishing, maturation and eventual record industry homogenisation of electronic music.
Setting aside that bands like Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream etc had dallied with electronic sounds for some years, the programme gave a wonderful overview of the emergence into the charts from the late 70's in the shape of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), through the fringe elements of bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and the transition of The Human League from failing electronic/synth geeks into pop-tastic leaders of synth dance music so synonymous with the 80's. Of course the nostalgia was where it worked the most, and it set me reflecting on my own almost covert love of this stuff, the fashions and the post punk evolution of music through arguably its last truly avant-garde era of mixing the independent with mainstream appeal. Until Stock, Aitken and Waterman came along and strangled it with their ruthlessly efficent factory model producing electro-pap instead of electro-pop.
For 2 glorious hours I lay on the sofa revelling in clips from Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Pet shop Boys, Human League, Heaven 17, OMD and even some Kraftwerk lobbed in for good measure. From some BBC treasure vault they included video clips from clubs and concerts showing the transition from punk fashions including the goth eye make-up and quasi-bondage outfits into the refined versions so prevalent at the time and which in turn heavily influenced the whole New Romantic fashions seen at the time. Men wearing make-up then was outrageous, but who really bats an eyelid these days? For me it was covert because of the image I'd woven for myself at the time, the jean-jacketed long haired pseudo Motorhead look was my way. But although a dyed in the wool rocker, underneath it all beat the heart of a wedge haircut, make-up wearing, be-suited Spandau Ballet fan. I envied the guys in my local pub off to the clubs wearing this immaculate outrageous gear, spangly, sparkling women adorning their arms. It was circa 1983 when the hair finally got cut and the wedge appeared. I had two ear piercings but was never brave enough to don the make-up despite being just about the only one in that group. We all fancied the Human league girls, and some even fancied Alison Moyet (I've never been a weight fascist). Watching the programme reminded me of the prime of youth I guess, those years between about 17 and 25, prior to any really serious relationships or marriages, when a fuck or a fight at the end of an evening was a result (the fight obviously being the lesser prize), an age when school was done and you had very little in the way of responsibility. And as usual a time of our lives that we were too young to appreciate fully.
As I sat down to write this I realised that being born in 1961 has meant that I am so fortunate because I have lived through the best decades humanity has known. I got a taste of the 60's, like a young boy's first taste of Dad's beer. You pretend to like it but can't be sure because you're too young. But you know you'll love it when you grow up. The 1970's, a much maligned decade politically, culturally, artistically and musically, were in retrospect like the first few seconds of the Big Bang, where the Big Bang was the 60's (the decade that spat on post-war austerity, where the teenager was finally acknowledged by society). The 1970's gave us colour TV, FM radio, vcr's, glam rock, Queen, disco, new wave, punk, David Bowie, Dame Elton John. Rod Stewart, The Clash, T Rex, Sweet, Slade....the list is just too big, but suffice to say the 80's needed the 70's fashions and influence and they succeeded just as spectacularly. As the 90's came along the inevitable ageing process removes you from the cult of youth and you lose that touch with what's 'in' and what's relevant to the incoming generations.
And so it should be. What my generation, with all it's inherent grumpiness' has managed to do a million times better than our parents and grandparents generations is to accept what our kids like whilst reserving the right to dismissing it as rubbish either in jest or for real. We do not seem to embrace outrage or resistance to cultural change as they did in the 50's and 60's. And with any luck the next set of 40-something parents will be even better this, accepting the gap and encouraging the kids to do their own thing, to dress their own way, to listen to and like their own music. But I'll say this, boy have they got their work cut out in doing better than us. Something tells me that kids of today might not be looking back quite as nostalgically at Jedward, Rhydian, Mika, Acon and the stuff around today. Although Lady Gaga might make the cut!
Sound like a parent don't I?
Later, GJ
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