Music Banter

This is just a repost of something found on Pitchfork, but it’s a reason to be cheerful, anyway. Stereolab were one of the most unusual and often impenetrable bands of the mid-nineties- if you put some of their music on for a friend, you’d either get a reaction of total bafflement or utter love. motoric Krautrock beats, weird analogue keyboards making the kind of thing robots would do if you told them to make lounge music (as opposed to Daft Punk, which is what robots would do if you told them to make disco music), and serene gallic-toned harmonies with lyrics which contained such gems as ‘originally the institutions were set up to serve society, now society serves the institutions.’ On the quiet, they were like the Manics, chucking provocative Marxist rhetoric into (sort of) pop music, and rendering it indecipherable as they did so. They were awesome.

They’ve been ploughing their own particular furrow for what seems like forever now, and announced recently that enough was enough, at least for the time being (although frontwoman Letitia Sadler will be putting out more solo stuff soon).

Luckily, however, there is still some new music to look forward to. with a new album called ‘Not Music’ coming out on Drag City records on the 16th of November.

Fantastic. I’m imagining it’ll be as charming, quirky and impenetrable as the band I’ve come to know and love over the years. I also hope it’s not the end for them- it’s harder and harder for bands to sustain themselves, and some bands really shouldn’t. Stereolab have managed to settle into that comfortable territory between ‘groundbreaking/unique’ and ‘instantly themselves no matter what record of theirs you put on’ that, say, Sonic Youth have also managed. It’s hard to know when diminishing returns set in, and I’m hoping that maybe this will just be a fallow period which allows them to return refreshed and invigorated.

In the mean time, here’s a reminder of exactly what got us interested in them in the first place:

How I loathe the Kings of Leon. Apparently, they’re good, because they sing in their own accents and they’re the sons of preacher men. Yeah, they’s good ole’ Southern Boys Who done gone and made them some purdy rock music. Whatever.

Even if this irritating, clichéd schtick isn’t put on, the resultant sound made by lead singer Old Pappy Wilkinson Haystacks the Third and his merry band of Uncle-brothers is one of the most irritating and pointless excuses for music to achieve success in recent years. His voice. My god, his awful, awful voice. You know how people listen to, I don’t know, Xiu Xiu, or Bjork or something and just say it’s weird noises with no musicality? That’s exactly how I react to this man’s voice. It’s almost indescribably terrible and I just cannot understand how otherwise intelligent people who can do things like remember to get dressed in the morning would like this band’s music.

I have traced the original inspiration for it, however. Just look at this Jack Dee video from the mid-nineties, and listen from about 3.26:

He’s talking about an old teacher of his, but I think you’ll agree that the sounds he’s making are scarily close.

Anyway, I hate them. They’re shit and if you like them you simply don’t understand and there is something wrong with your ears.

The world, however, seems to have a LOT wrong collectively with their ears, and the Kings of Leon are bafflingly successful.

Luckily, it seems the pigeons of the world have seen fit to redress the balance, subjecting them to the physical equivalent of what they’ve been shovelling our way, musically, for ages, by crapping on them from a great height until they stopped playing.

Brilliant, just brilliant. Of course, I’m not saying that rock and roll venues should be full of pigeons crapping on bands, but this petulant behaviour from a bunch of supposedly rough tough country boys just makes me laugh. Let’s not forget, too, that not one but TWO support bands had already made it through their sets. Kings of Leon- bunch of wusses.

Still, it could have been worse. Kings of Leon could have actually played a full set.

This has understandably garnered rather a lot of coverage, but my particular favourite is The Guardian’s Mark Beaumont turning over their Singles review page to the pigeons in question.

Of course, the whole debacle could have been avoided if they had simply worn this hat:

I’ve just got done listening to Tom Ravenscroft’s Six Music show, which is a breath of fresh air, musically speaking. It’s a little bit of everything, from strange shouty punk to interesting techno, to mad women singing god knows what in a foreign language. there’s also lots of really strange band names- Gay Against You, The Babies, and a song called ‘Curious Oven’ are particular notables. There seems to be no agenda, no theme or plan apart from finding things the DJ finds interesting and wants to share with the world. Ravenscroft himself is a pleasant, articulate speaker, albeit one with a slightly flat voice. He also sounds just a little bit nervous sometimes, but it’s endearing rather than annoying. It’s refreshing, unpretentious. We’ve all heard slick DJs a million times before, and it’s nice to hear someone who isn’t that- he’s just someone who likes music, and that’s something we’ve not heard since….

since….

Oh, it’s an unfair comparison, isn’t it? Still, in some ways it’s a valid one. More so, since he read out an email from someone and misread it as ‘dear John’ before correcting himself. Bet that mortified the poor guy, but then again, I bet every email he got mentioned his dad in some way or other.

Just in case you’re one of the few people in the universe who might not know what I’m hinting at, I’ll show you a picture of his dad.

in fact, have two:

Yes that’s right he’s JOHN PEEL’S SON. JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL’S SON DID YOU KNOW TOM RAVENSCROFT IS JOHN PEEL’S SON HE’S A DJ AND SO WAS HIS DAD DID YOU KNOW JOHN PEEL TOM RAVENSCROFT JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN TOM PEEL RAVENSCROFT JOHN PEEL’S SON JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL. JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN. PEEL. JOHN PEEL’S SON HAS A RADIO SHOW, JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL. JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL TOM RAVENSCROFT IS JOHN PEEL’S SON OMG WTF JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN PEEL JOHN. PEELJOHNPEELJOHNPEELRAVENSCROFTWASHISREALNAMEYOUKNOW.

It’s an inevitable comparison, really, and to be honest it’s initially a little bit spooky, listening to Ravenscroft’s show. You hear that voice, that musical grandfather’s voice, speaking through him, in the same way it spoke through a lot of other people. It’s creepy. I’m reminded of the way that at my gran’s funeral, I was told by some people I’d never met that I really reminded them of her. Good for a man in his mid-twenties to be told he looks like a septuagenarian scots lady, but heritage is heritage I guess. You have to accept it with a smile and try to be yourself, whilst allowing that these people live on in you.

Plus, anyway, it’s not just Ravenscroft who carries this legacy. All of british music does. Six Music has, let’s be fair, been made in his image, and he’s in every real fan of music. I remember countless times I met some indie fan or other, and you could hear Peel-isms in the way they talked about music. I heard it in Mark Radcliffe, in people who ran second hand music-shops, and in the way I talk when I’m trying to sound knowledgeable. It’s in all of us. Peel re-wrote the rule book on how to be a music DJ, and made it ok to sound like a human being rather than a polished automaton. Every good DJ in the world is in his debt.

So anyway, is Ravenscroft’s show actually any good? Yes, it’s really good. It’s good because of the music, and because of the lack of ego displayed by Ravenscroft himself. You should listen to it. You’ll hear something that you’ve never heard before.

So, ageing president-botherer and shades-wearer Bono has gone and hurt his back, forcing the rescheduling of a huge swathe of U2 tour dates whilst he undergoes rehabilitation. It sounds like it was a pretty harrowing injury, from all accounts: the doctor who treated him is quoted as saying that the injury was a herniated disc, which caused a partial paralysis of the lower leg. Other details which came out suggest that there was some kind of fall during rehearsal, and that he was immediately rushed to hospital.

Now, you might be expecting a bit of a dig at wrinkled rock stars and bad backs, but as it happens I’m in slightly charitable mood. I’m also recovering from a very minor back injury myself (an unfortunate accident involving my fiance and a trampoline, which sounds fantastically salacious when I type it down, so it’s staying unexplained!) so I can quite imagine the pain poor old Bono’s in.

Still, it does serve as one of those strange reminders of mortality, and the passing of time. When someone you remember as the rock and roll firebrands of your youth is sidelined with an injury like this, it does make you think about how time claims us all.

Bono, in his younger days, was a classic rock and roll show-off, running about the place, diving into the audience and generally doing whatever he could to grab everyone’s attention.

Here’s U2 live in 1983: check how Bono climbs up onto the camera boom. Whether or not you like U2 or see them as blustering rock dinosaurs, you have to admit that seeing someone do something like this would be a pretty cool thing to see a singer do at a gig:

You see, live music’s about seeing something unusual, some crazy unexpected event that isn’t in the script. The best frontmen are always doing things that mean you can’t tear your eyes away. Maybe in future, this might just mean that Bono won’t be quite so keen to do something like that. That’d be perhaps the moment in a rock star’s life where they maybe accept that they’re growing old.

In some ways, I’d like to see that- ‘Get On Your Boots’ was just embarrassing, like seeing your dad dance at a wedding. Whilst I do think rock stars have the right to grow old disgracefully, there is something to be said for self-knowledge. If this marked the moment that Bono stopped trying to be a rock and roll wild child and matured into something different, well, that might be very interesting.

Get well soon, Bono. And don’t be afraid to act your age.

Remember those moments in the school playground where word got round that there was going to be a fight, and everyone would gather at some illicit location to watch two people who didn’t like each other got at it for a little while, whilst the rest of you stood around in a circle watching, feeling oh so rebellious and wondering how long it would be before the teachers came to break things up?

Ah, happy days. I remember my own big moment in the world of FIGHT! when I decided that Jamie Hughes from my class had made one kilt joke too many (Scottish boy in an English school, toughens you up a bit) and that I needed to show people I wasn’t there to be picked on. Oh, the glory, oh the attention. Oh, the week-long detention afterwards.

Of course, these days we do things differently. We have the internet. We have Twitter, Facebook, blogs, text alerts and a thousand ways to communicate.

But some things are still the same. The recent Hole Album, which I liked seems to have stirred up some rage in erstwhile Smashing Pumpkins frontman and professional asshole Billy Corgan, who has launched an astonishing rant on Twitter about Courtney Love.

Here’s a highlight:

Thought number three’s a bit harsh, I have to say.

Love’s fired back, of course, accusing him of paedophilia, then going on a talk show and claiming to be a changed woman, who’s above all that immature bitching, and anyway, he started it.

It’s a shame, really. They’ve both made some amazing music at various times, and now they’re sniping at each other for all the world to see. It’s not very dignified, but it is very them.

If I can offer a solution, then here it is; LET’S TAKE THIS TO THE RING!

After the recent string of deaths, retirements and general looking back, here’s something to look forward to: Next saturday, April the 17th is National Record Store day, which as I’m sure you know is a wonderful and noble idea.

I spent a lot of time in record shops as a teenager, leafing through seemingly endless stacks of music, searching out new sounds, bands I’d heard of, songs that friends of mine had mentioned to me at school, or that I’d read about. I had a favourite ship, Avid Records in Oxford, which I spent god knows how long looking through stacks and stacks of music. In researching this, I’ve just heard a rumour that it’s been closed down, and that makes me feel old and sad.

Going into that shop was a personal delight, the first steps in a journey into music that I’ve been taking ever since. It’s where I found music by long-gone bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine, The Chameleons, Whipping Boy, and too many more to mention. Every now and then I’d see something that I’d never even heard of before, and buy something just to see what it was. Sometimes it’d be great, sometimes awful, but that was part of the fun.

This is what it looked like, when I wandered in through that door:

Of course, nowadays we have this thing called the internet. You don’t have to do leave your bed to find new music, not if you’ve got Wi-Fi and a laptop. It’s there for you in a thousand guises, all you’ve got to do is look.

In some ways that’s superior- there’s something wonderful about Last.fm and playlists and Spotify and all of that. But still, there’s something irreplacable about the act of going into a record shop. It’s the difference between Amazon and your public Library. They’re nice places to go into, and something about the atmosphere of being in a shop serves to connect you to people in ways that just reading about stuff online doesn’t. I might just be old-fashioned about this, but I think there’s still space for small stores in today’s music world. A good one creates a sort of musical landscape all of its own.

So remember, on Saturday the 17th, go buy some music from your local record shop. Call it an investment in future nostalgia.

Well, the old days are certainly ending with a vengeance.

Supergrass, the crazy teenage wild things of that gorgeous Golden summer of Britpop, 15 years ago, have split up.

It’s fairly fresh news- so fresh that at the time I post this, the split isn’t even mentioned on their website, and, well, it’s not entirely expected. After all, eventually bands like them fade from sight, and you stop hearing about them. There’ll be a lot of people going ‘really? they were still going?’ at the news. That’s just the way of things- no band lasts forever. A slow slide into obscurity is pretty much inevitable, after the first flush of youth and success, unless you’re Aerosmith or U2 or someone.

So let’s remember Supergrass as they where when they began; a riot of energy, colour, noise, fury and excitement. I saw them in 1994 at the Apollo Theatre in Oxford, part of a dream line-up of Oxford bands including the Mystics (anyone? No? Ah, well), and a truly fantastic Radiohead, who were still only successful because of Creep, but had a whole bunch of amazing new songs that no-one had heard but were to make up The Bends. That in itself was the stuff of legends, let me tell you.

Back to Supergrass, though. The thing that struck you about them was that there was so much energy coming off that stage, and at the same time, a sort of sun-drenched tiredness that seemed really esoteric- it wasn’t aggressive, or confrontational, it was simply happy, joyous and full of life. They were a little subtler than your average thrashy punk band, too. Here’s an example, ‘She’s so Loose’ from Glastonbury Festival a year after that:

They were fantastic, and a lot better than that shit novelty hit ‘Alright’ which was a bit like ‘Country House’ for Blur, a caricature version of the band that someone could use to shove them into the public consciousness. Supergrass always rocked a bit harder than that.

As time went on, the inevitable happened- they mellowed, their songs got a bit looser, a little slower, and they carried on. People would go see them to feel like they were young again, to recapture the spirit of long ago.

And maybe that’s part of why I’m not surprised to see them split up. Eventually, things change, the old gang suddenly have mortgages and don’t live down the end of the road any more. Supergrass will always be there, back in 1994, jumping around that stage and rocking like only teenagers can.

And anyway, at least we’ve still got Ash.

Shit, did I just jinx them? Please God, don’t you DARE take Ash next…

Another week, another pop culture moment that makes you feel old. This week, it’s been the sad news that Malcolm Mclaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols, has lost his fight with cancer at the age of 64. My god, Malcolm Mclaren was 64? My first thought on reading that was surely that can’t be right?

But it was. The Silver Jubilee was a long, long time ago, kids. There’s teenagers alive to whom Punk Rock means Fall Out Boy, or the Offspring, or something. Strange indeed.

Let’s just take a moment, then, to remember that back in the seventies, Britain was screwed, both musically and culturally. Bin bags piled up in the streets, no-one had anything, rock music had disappeared up its own arse and was staring at the Dark Side of the Moon or Journeying to the Centre of the Earth. It was something done by rich people, or aliens. Society was stagnant and things were terrible.

And then came the Sex Pistols. A glorious, ranting, enraged mess of noise, filth, profanity and bodily fluids who hated everything around them, hated themselves, hated the establishment, hated their own audience. Where they went, anger, noise, barbarism, energy, change, anarchy, rebellion, shock and outrage followed in their wake.

They signed their record deal in front of Buckingham Palace and openly expressed their contempt for the monarch. And behind them (usually at a safe distance), Malcolm Mclaren stood smirking.

Just look at this picture of that signing:

Notice who’s standing there, staring at the camera like he knows this picture is going to be on the front of every paper in the country the next day? Yup. He knew what he was doing, did McLaren. He looks like one of the band in that picture, and it’s clear that they were, in a lot of ways, his carefully selected weapon of choice. I’m not wanting to take anything away from John Lydon and the rest (I suspect if I did, Lydon would find me as I slept, rip off my head and gob down my throat, kick my sorry corpse till it stopped twitching, using my head as a kind of twisted glove puppet to make me apologise for my disrespect), but I think that everyone knows that McLaren’s flair for publicity was a vital part of the Sex Pistol’s success.

As England lay Dreaming, languished in the depths of suburban misery, McLaren gave the Sex Pistols a chance to wake it up, and reminded us that Rock and Roll could still be truly shocking. That means Punk Rock, if not his idea, is at least partly his fault.

For that, I for one salute the grumpy old cunt.

This isn’t strictly speaking a music post, but it’s close enough to be of relevance to this blog. Plus, you know, it’s my blog and I say it counts. Oh, the power.

So, anyway, Stonehenge.

I’m talking about the mystic home of the I’m talking about the mystic home of the druids, people. The giant bluestone temple on Salisbury Plain which has stood for thousands of years, and spawned vast acres of discussion, archeological investigation, scholarly speculation and new-age rambling about Crystals and mythological allignments. No-one really knew what it was. Was it a temple? a giant solar calendar? A well-ventilated yet badly-secured barn?

There have been all sorts of suggested uses for the place, too. Some say it was a focus point for sun worship. Others a meeting place for festivals, or perhaps a Lourdes-like destination for pilgrimage. More luridly, it has also been imagined that human sacrifice too place on that altar in the centre.

It’s recently been suggested that the central purpose of Stonehenge was… a music venue?

Apparently so. Rupert Till, an acoustics expert and part-time DJ from the University of Huddersfield, is convinced that the ancient site would have had the ideal acoustics to set up a ‘repetitive trance rhythm.’

Bangin’. Maybe it would have been a bit like this:

Of course, everyone who’s ever been to Glastonbury, Cropredy, or even a particularly rowdy village fete, knows that music is better in the open air. It’s also true that there are a few neo-pagan festivals kicking around the UK, for example Edinburgh’s Beltane Fire, which give a bit of a hint as to how something could have been done. It’s also silly to think that back in the days when people were scratching a living from these lands before the Romans came, people wouldn’t have put a premium on having a good time.

Music is an intrinsic part of our culture- that’s something which it can be all too easy to forget, especially when you hear the latest music industry spiel about how downloading is killing music and eventually, rock and roll will be a thing of the past. Something like this serves as a reminder that music was always with us, and probably always will be.

Still, it’s all speculation. No proof.

I do like to think Stonehenge was a music venue, however. The world seems simply better if that’s true. I also like to think that the music that was played there went a little something like this:

LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL!

Charity records are, by and large, arse. They’re written in a hurry, and are full of over-wrought musical clichés and tortuous, more-virtuous-than-though lyrics which are designed to try and wring out the maximum amount of cash for whatever worthy concern it is.

The other problem, of course, is the ridiculous circling of egos that you get on records like this, with each star performer trying to out-do the other. Witness this rather embarrassing argument between the Darkness and Bono on the re-recording of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ two years ago. I’m a big U2 fan, much to my own puzzlement sometimes, but that really leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

The music is often terrible, too; a blanded-out, hastily-produced piece of anonymous pop dreck is usually your lot when a charity single is crafted. Here’s a recent example; We Are the World, an already dull track, stripped of all soul and grace by the inevitable sickening celebrity-fest for Haiti.

Of course, I’m not suggesting for a second that the cause involved is anything other than wholly worthy. As if you didn’t need reminding of how terrible the whole situation is, here’s a very moving article from Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne, who has family connections to Haiti.

So we should all give money, and help out in any way we can.

That caveat aside, here’s that actual rarity- a charity record that manages to be fantastic! Shane Magowan, Nick Cave, Bobby Gillespie Chrissy Hynde and others do a storming version of ‘I put a Spell on You’ which is both visceral and moving. It’s great, really primal stuff. Oh, and that’s Jonny Depp playing guitar at the end. He’s pretty good.

The whole thing is in aid of Concern, a Charity who are currently active in Haiti. You should listen to this song. And then go give them some money.