Facing the NME
By Rebecca Quin
Monday 28th September 2009
21st century lacklustre musical output reaches new heights of tedium
‘Ultimately, I want to make everybody horny’
Well, Patti, I’m afraid to say your rock and roll dreams are dead, or at least shamefacedly flaccid. Its nigh on impossible to get even the slightest bit hot and bothered by say, the new James Blunt release; in fact, this has the opposite effect and is most likely the cause of erectile dysfunction in over 100 million men. That’s right James and evil cohorts, your relentless use of the perfect 5th under the same lyric, flinging tambourines and lumbering over a melody starved piano like a blind cow attempting to cross a row of tyres, nailing the listener to a crucifix of mediocrity...you know what you did. Continuing the analogy with sex (it is the best kind of analogy after all), contemporary rock and roll output compares to that of the previous generation like a bit of slap and tickle aside the pulsating passion Antony had for his Cleopatra. Listening to the radio today, I think they both had the right idea in the end. It’s a terrible thing to watch my intoxicated, smoky and pretentious youth unravel against a soundtrack of silence and strangely (no doubt resulting in irrevocable psychological damage) I envy my parents and their Zeppelinised, Peter Gabrieled, Hall and Oatsed, Earth, Wind and Fired adolescence. Growing up when music meant rebellion, secularism and really tight trousers. Simply when music meant something, anything at all. I fail to see the force of a song like She’s so lovely; for all I know, lead singer Roy Stride could be eulogising HMS Victory, but that would be too clever and interesting. This year’s Glastonbury line up saw timeless rock and roll greats Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen and even The Specials putting our young insipid mimics to shame. But why? Is retrospect varnishing over music of the past so that it glitters with gold, and so, in forty years time muzak will be the new, or old, prog rock? Or is rock and roll really dead?Watching Iggy Pop excitedly gyrating over his Swiftcover insurance (which incidentally does not provide for musicians) a terrible sinking thing comes over me, the answer. Rock and roll is suffering from a kind of fundamentalist capitalism where music is categorised, manufactured and made into a scene: musicians are embracing the man, man. Of course, as a student I see every virtue in squeezing money out of any tangible object but seems that musical consumerism fangs bared has sucked the last drop of creative enthusiasm from young musicians. And so it is, accidentally leaning my elbow against the remote control results in MTV promoting the newest, music-hall clankety-clank I got sumfink on my trainers record as ‘groundbreakingly (not actually a word) original’, hastily followed by John Lydon trying to sell me butter. You know he or she wrote that song pissed in a park somewhere, with a comatose imagination repeating over and over a sentence that will come to form both the chorus and bridge of their song, not in a minimalist sense, just a lazy one. To look to the past, then, seems the only solution. Music from a different generation is enchanting, unfamiliar and, for me, groundbreaking(ly). To watch The Last Waltz, attempt to learn Wild Horses on guitar and jump around to Just Like Heaven is the kind of meaningful if affected soundtrack I’m playing. I just wish my dad, Uncle Ted and the gang from Marbella 77’ would dance with their shirts on.
Monday 28th September 2009
21st century lacklustre musical output reaches new heights of tedium
‘Ultimately, I want to make everybody horny’
Well, Patti, I’m afraid to say your rock and roll dreams are dead, or at least shamefacedly flaccid. Its nigh on impossible to get even the slightest bit hot and bothered by say, the new James Blunt release; in fact, this has the opposite effect and is most likely the cause of erectile dysfunction in over 100 million men. That’s right James and evil cohorts, your relentless use of the perfect 5th under the same lyric, flinging tambourines and lumbering over a melody starved piano like a blind cow attempting to cross a row of tyres, nailing the listener to a crucifix of mediocrity...you know what you did. Continuing the analogy with sex (it is the best kind of analogy after all), contemporary rock and roll output compares to that of the previous generation like a bit of slap and tickle aside the pulsating passion Antony had for his Cleopatra. Listening to the radio today, I think they both had the right idea in the end. It’s a terrible thing to watch my intoxicated, smoky and pretentious youth unravel against a soundtrack of silence and strangely (no doubt resulting in irrevocable psychological damage) I envy my parents and their Zeppelinised, Peter Gabrieled, Hall and Oatsed, Earth, Wind and Fired adolescence. Growing up when music meant rebellion, secularism and really tight trousers. Simply when music meant something, anything at all. I fail to see the force of a song like She’s so lovely; for all I know, lead singer Roy Stride could be eulogising HMS Victory, but that would be too clever and interesting. This year’s Glastonbury line up saw timeless rock and roll greats Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen and even The Specials putting our young insipid mimics to shame. But why? Is retrospect varnishing over music of the past so that it glitters with gold, and so, in forty years time muzak will be the new, or old, prog rock? Or is rock and roll really dead?Watching Iggy Pop excitedly gyrating over his Swiftcover insurance (which incidentally does not provide for musicians) a terrible sinking thing comes over me, the answer. Rock and roll is suffering from a kind of fundamentalist capitalism where music is categorised, manufactured and made into a scene: musicians are embracing the man, man. Of course, as a student I see every virtue in squeezing money out of any tangible object but seems that musical consumerism fangs bared has sucked the last drop of creative enthusiasm from young musicians. And so it is, accidentally leaning my elbow against the remote control results in MTV promoting the newest, music-hall clankety-clank I got sumfink on my trainers record as ‘groundbreakingly (not actually a word) original’, hastily followed by John Lydon trying to sell me butter. You know he or she wrote that song pissed in a park somewhere, with a comatose imagination repeating over and over a sentence that will come to form both the chorus and bridge of their song, not in a minimalist sense, just a lazy one. To look to the past, then, seems the only solution. Music from a different generation is enchanting, unfamiliar and, for me, groundbreaking(ly). To watch The Last Waltz, attempt to learn Wild Horses on guitar and jump around to Just Like Heaven is the kind of meaningful if affected soundtrack I’m playing. I just wish my dad, Uncle Ted and the gang from Marbella 77’ would dance with their shirts on.