I left Twitter last week. This isn't news in itself and barely warrants comment at all, but I did have some followers (somewhere in the region of 120), several of whom I corresponded with on a regular basis. So, if you'll indulge me, I'd quite like to state my reasons for leaving.
Firstly, I was just spending too much time on there. Last week I had some free time in which I hoped to get lots of writing and subbing done. As it goes, I managed a fair bit, but not as much as I could have done, and Twitter was the main cause of that. Although it only takes a couple of minutes to check your feed and compose a couple of replies, that all adds up over the course of a day. Hopefully, no Twitter means more time to write, and perhaps more time to write self-serving blog entries like this.
Secondly, the News of the World hacking story broke last week. It probably appears horribly solipsistic and crass to draw any link at all between private investigators deleting the voicemails of missing children and me leaving a social networking site. However, when the story really went stratospheric, my news feed was full of bile, condemnation and links to further information. It's important to state that I wholeheartedly agree that these were terrible acts but, at the risk of sounding immature, I like to go on Twitter for a bit of knockabout fun and to talk rubbish about pop music. While the Twitter campaigns are admirable and, in the case of last week certainly, appear to work in some cases, that's not what I want of Twitter. Does this make me a bad person? Maybe, but it's the truth.
Finally, something that will mean absolutely nothing to an awful lot of people. Recently, a thread was started on The Word Magazine website about a perceived "clique," with their own brand of in-jokes and sycophancy. I don't believe a clique in such a form exists, but if there were one, I'm self-aware enough to know that, as a long-time and frequent poster, I'm more than likely part of it. When you can be deemed part of an online clique, I think it's time to take a look at the world you inhabit and take a step back.
Of course, the natural response to this would be to leave The Word Magazine website instead of/as well as Twitter, but The Word blog doesn't sap my time like Twitter does. Plus, I've made a good few friends via The Word (not just online, I mean real people that I've actually met in real life and everything), and I didn't want to completely restrict contact with them. So, sure, maybe not the ideal way to do things, but it's a compromise that works for me.
So, it's not necessarily forever and it wasn't me flouncing off in a huff with anyone. No-one's upset me, no-one's said anything that offended me, in fact, it's all pretty uninteresting. I just stepped back a bit and realised it wasn't what I wanted any more. I joined Twitter two years ago to promote my writing and, ironically, it was stopping me doing the writing in the first place.
I'm still on Facebook though. Don't know why - it's rubbish.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Monday, 4 July 2011
Wireless Festival 2011
The Wireless Festival isn’t really a festival at all. Festivals bring to mind tents, roll-mats, queues to get off the motorway and a part of the world you’d never normally visit. Wireless Festival takes place in the middle of Hyde Park in London – you’ve probably heard of it. It’s ludicrously easy to get to (there’s a tube station about a minute from the entrance) and there’s no camping allowed. As a result, Wireless cleverly puts on three completely different days of music. Friday was pop day, Saturday was dance day and Sunday was alternative day.
I gain entrance to the park and found the Janelle Monáe set already in full swing on the main stage. She may not have been around for too long, but she knows how to play a crowd like an industry veteran. There was dancing, crowd-surfing, call and response, and a bizarre moment where the band descended to a hush while Janelle encouraged the whole audience to sit on the floor. She was backed by a frighteningly competent band who seemed to be having just as much fun as the audience and whose dance moves were expertly choreographed. Reportedly, after her performance at the Glastonbury Festival was televised, sales of Janelle Monáe’s album, The ArchAndroid, rose 5,000%. Having seen her at Wireless, it’s not the least bit surprising.
Such a great opening meant next act, Katy B, had a lot to live up to. Eyebrows were raised earlier this year when I awarded her debut album, On A Mission, 9/10 on No Ripcord, but it’s a rating I still stand by months later. However, Katy B’s live performance came across slightly flat. Jumping up and down a bit and employing the tired trope of having some guy shout, “make some NOISE!” over half the lyrics isn’t the most engaging thing in the world. When you’ve just seen Janelle Monáe cover The Jackson Five with dancers dressed as Everton mints, you’re on a hiding to nothing really. Katy B’s idea of getting the crowd hyped may work in a dark club at 2am, but on a balmy June afternoon, it sadly doesn’t hit the spot.
The last two years have seen me rediscover my love of pop, but I still hadn’t actually seen an out and out chart pop act in a live setting. That’s why I was really quite looking forward to seeing Ke$ha. I wasn’t particularly familiar with her oeuvre but the subject matter of her songs soon became clear: drinking, partying and sex. Subtlety is clearly not in the Ke$ha dictionary – any time there was a line that may or may not have been a sexual advance, she’d point to her crotch, just to make sure there wasn’t any doubt. We were invited to go in her “glovebox” and told there was “a slumber party in my basement” while all around me, the crowd seemed to know every single word. Overcoming my initial bafflement, I got completely swept up in the euphoria and, despite it being the trashiest experience of my life so far, had an absolute riot. Say what you like about Ke$ha but she knows how to put on a show. It’s not often you see someone pretend to tear the limbs off their dancers and proceed to drink the blood from their heart. Towards the end, she shouted, “London! There’s one problem! There’s not enough glitter ON MY TITS!” The crowd roared and dancers in hot pants were deployed to add sparkle to her décolletage. You don’t get this sort of thing at your average Fleet Foxes gig.
Like Janelle Monáe before her, the sheer showmanship of Ke$ha meant that the next act were almost inevitably going to be a disappointment. The unlucky people this time round were Canadian electrofunk duoChromeo. Their keyboard stands looked like ladies’ legs in high heels, they had a talkbox and… that was about it in terms of interesting aspects of Chromeo’s set. After twenty minutes of music that had my attention wandering, it was decided that a pint of overpriced lager in a paper cup and a kangaroo burger were a more enticing prospect.
It’s often the case that you can feel completely outside of a movement. The popularity of an artist confuses you, not just because you don’t connect with their music, but because you’ve barely heard of them and it’s a shock to find out just how popular they are. This is what happened to me when I stumbled into Devlin’s set. The crowd were going crazy for Devlin’s freestyle MCing, but to me it just recalled the dark days of UK hip-hop before Dizzee Rascal and Roots Manuva broke through. I was half expecting him to bring out Mark B and Blade for a guest spot, but instead he brought out Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran is a ruddy-faced urchin who’s recently had a big hit in the UK with The A Team. However, I’ve no idea why, as he displayed all the talent and originality of a busker on the London Underground.
So, as has probably been covered in enough detail, I was left cold by Devlin and when he departed, my friends and I (including top NR scribe Craig Stevens) went to the front of the stage anticipating Battles. Poor, poor Battles. After setting up all their equipment, they launched into their opening number, only to immediately blow the speakers. An apology followed, as did twenty minutes or so of panicked roadies frantically turning things off and on again. It became clear we weren’t going to get a song any time soon, so props to drummer John Stanier who did his utmost to keep the crowd entertained with a marathon drum solo. Clearly no-one goes to a show to see a drum solo, but the audience were patient and we received more apologies from the group. Eventually, the band started playing, but only had time for two songs and it was clear something still wasn’t quite right. They were granted an extension and soldiered on for one more track, which still didn’t quite hit the spot. Battles left the stage to sympathetic applause, telling us, “we owe you a proper show next time,” but it was hard not to feel disappointed. Poor Battles.
After Battles’ departure, it wasn’t long before the stage was lit an eerie shade of red and full of space-age mixing desks. A giant net loomed in front of the crowd, on to which numbers were being projected. It all appeared to make no sense, which was completely to be expected as I was awaiting the arrival of Aphex Twin. A ripple of applause broke out, a silhouette made its way behind the mixing desk, and a bass note was played at the kind of volume and frequency which made my internal organs scream. A bit more ear-bleed tomfoolery occurred and then he broke out into Windowlicker, and the party really started. Unfortunately, the problem with Aphex Twin is that he makes dance music that’s impossible to dance to. This is fine at home, but in a big, sweaty tent, you’re in the mood for some communal swaying. Quarter of an hour in, I had an epiphany. He won’t even show his face, he’s being wilfully difficult and the potential fight next to me featuring a shove-happy stoner and the world’s most Cockney man is more interesting to me than the music, therefore I’m off. And leave the tent I did, not that the silly, beardy fool would have cared one jot.
This is the bit where I tell you all about the headliners, The Chemical Brothers. However, a combination of beer, bad timing and my kidneys (personally, I blame Aphex Twin) meant I found myself stranded from my friends on the edge of a heaving mass of people, with no way of getting back in. Twenty minutes into the Chemical Brothers set, they’d played one hit, I was too far away to get the real atmosphere, and I was frazzled from a whole day of music.
Remember I mentioned just how easy it is to get to Wireless Festival? It also means it’s incredibly easy to leave. So, call me a slacker, call me a quitter, call me a lightweight if you like, but I’ve never been a massive Chemical Brothers fan so I was happy to slink off into the evening unchallenged. I’d had a great day, but from my point of view, the best acts were all done and dusted by 5pm. I’d certainly go again next year though – when summer comes, that combination of good music, the open air and being with your friends is hard to beat.
Back to the Future
The 70s were great, weren’t they? Playing out in the street until sunset, summers that lasted forever and top quality pop. We had proper music back then, remember?
Actually, I don’t. Without wishing to sound too smug, I’m probably a fair bit younger than the average Rocking Vicar parishioner, which means I didn’t experience even a minute of the 70s. I grew up in the 90s as a music fan but not one in thrall to the NME, therefore my knowledge came second-hand: a cavalcade of “classic” tracks on the radio, retrospectives in magazines and stories from my elders about how much better things used to be in the 1970s. Of course, there were some phenomenal songs and albums from the decade and I’ve come to love Nick Drake, The Faces and Stevie Wonder. But there’s also been plenty of good music in every era since the birth of pop, so I figured people were just being nostalgic.
The trouble with so much music broadcasting and publishing is that it aims either for the ‘up-to-the- minute’ brigade or the heritage market, and they both get romanticised in the process. Which is why I was looking forward to the BBC4 “real-time” re-runs of Top Of The Pops so much; I’d get an objective view of what was really going on in the past, warts and all. In times of infinite choice, it’s actually something of a novelty to listen to music from a precise moment in time.
Of course, anyone who was there at the time was also looking forward to these re-runs but for different reasons. I was swept along in their enthusiasm, imagining the fusion of disco, glam, soul and pop I would be feasting on week after week. I was also prepared to see punk gradually creep into the nation’s consciousness over the months. Punk barely existed in mid-1976, but soon became the most important musical revolution since Elvis or The Beatles. I was breathless with anticipation.
So, what did I find? The mighty Led Zeppelin succumbing to an onslaught from the brutality of The Clash? Not quite.
Brotherhood of Man, ABBA, terrible knitwear, acres of AOR, bands whose mothers had probably forgotten they existed, and vocoders. Lots of vocoders. My initial reaction was one of shock and denial. The notion this was just a bad week and soon the real quality would emerge. But next week, Brotherhood of Man were still number one … and the week after.
I loved it. I was hooked.
This isn’t some kind of ‘guilty pleasure’ admission; it’s a genuine feeling of warmth towards old episodes of a much-loved show. Pop music has been a huge part of my life since I could talk, so I’m interested in every aspect of it. That’s why I find these broadcasts endlessly fascinating - taking the rough with the smooth, the good with the bad - and forming my own opinions. It’s a rare opportunity to observe cultural history without editing, cherry-picking or prejudice.
Of course, some of the music is terrible, and I sit through the offending acts impatiently waiting. However, I’ve made several discoveries. The height of sophisticated pop it is not, but S-S-Single Bed by Fox is a marvellous record. I never knew Isaac Hayes took a funk monster like Disco Connection into the Top 10. I’d never heard the Sensational Alex Harvey Band or Sailor before. Nor did I have any idea The Wurzels had had a chart topping record and it was news to me that reissues of Beatles singles were high in the charts in 1976.
What I’ve come to realise is that this show is part of our national heritage. It is tremendous these shows were broadcast in the first place, but the realisation that so many are still available in the BBC archive really is marvellous.
In 2011, we’re all equal. It doesn’t matter if you were there or not, every Thursday, we all get to revisit 1976 in all its synthetic, tacky, glittering, snarling, bombastic and melodramatic glory. And that’s more than enough for me.
Actually, I don’t. Without wishing to sound too smug, I’m probably a fair bit younger than the average Rocking Vicar parishioner, which means I didn’t experience even a minute of the 70s. I grew up in the 90s as a music fan but not one in thrall to the NME, therefore my knowledge came second-hand: a cavalcade of “classic” tracks on the radio, retrospectives in magazines and stories from my elders about how much better things used to be in the 1970s. Of course, there were some phenomenal songs and albums from the decade and I’ve come to love Nick Drake, The Faces and Stevie Wonder. But there’s also been plenty of good music in every era since the birth of pop, so I figured people were just being nostalgic.
The trouble with so much music broadcasting and publishing is that it aims either for the ‘up-to-the- minute’ brigade or the heritage market, and they both get romanticised in the process. Which is why I was looking forward to the BBC4 “real-time” re-runs of Top Of The Pops so much; I’d get an objective view of what was really going on in the past, warts and all. In times of infinite choice, it’s actually something of a novelty to listen to music from a precise moment in time.
Of course, anyone who was there at the time was also looking forward to these re-runs but for different reasons. I was swept along in their enthusiasm, imagining the fusion of disco, glam, soul and pop I would be feasting on week after week. I was also prepared to see punk gradually creep into the nation’s consciousness over the months. Punk barely existed in mid-1976, but soon became the most important musical revolution since Elvis or The Beatles. I was breathless with anticipation.
So, what did I find? The mighty Led Zeppelin succumbing to an onslaught from the brutality of The Clash? Not quite.
Brotherhood of Man, ABBA, terrible knitwear, acres of AOR, bands whose mothers had probably forgotten they existed, and vocoders. Lots of vocoders. My initial reaction was one of shock and denial. The notion this was just a bad week and soon the real quality would emerge. But next week, Brotherhood of Man were still number one … and the week after.
I loved it. I was hooked.
This isn’t some kind of ‘guilty pleasure’ admission; it’s a genuine feeling of warmth towards old episodes of a much-loved show. Pop music has been a huge part of my life since I could talk, so I’m interested in every aspect of it. That’s why I find these broadcasts endlessly fascinating - taking the rough with the smooth, the good with the bad - and forming my own opinions. It’s a rare opportunity to observe cultural history without editing, cherry-picking or prejudice.
Of course, some of the music is terrible, and I sit through the offending acts impatiently waiting. However, I’ve made several discoveries. The height of sophisticated pop it is not, but S-S-Single Bed by Fox is a marvellous record. I never knew Isaac Hayes took a funk monster like Disco Connection into the Top 10. I’d never heard the Sensational Alex Harvey Band or Sailor before. Nor did I have any idea The Wurzels had had a chart topping record and it was news to me that reissues of Beatles singles were high in the charts in 1976.
What I’ve come to realise is that this show is part of our national heritage. It is tremendous these shows were broadcast in the first place, but the realisation that so many are still available in the BBC archive really is marvellous.
In 2011, we’re all equal. It doesn’t matter if you were there or not, every Thursday, we all get to revisit 1976 in all its synthetic, tacky, glittering, snarling, bombastic and melodramatic glory. And that’s more than enough for me.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Born This Way
released 23 May 2011 on Polydor
You’ve no idea how much I wanted this album to be great. Really, really great. So great that all the naysayers, the people who dismiss pop and those who think “proper” music is made with “proper” instruments would sit up, take notice and say, “Wow! You know what? I was wrong.” An album that, just for once, matched the enormous hype and celebrity that went with it. Born This Way is, sadly, not that album.
You probably already knew this album had been released seeing as Lady Gaga has undertaken one of the biggest promotional campaigns in recent history. Apparently putting her name to any booming brand she could, in the run up to the release, Lady Gaga aligned herself with Google Chrome, Starbucks and Farmville. That’s not to mention her prolific Twitter use for further marketing. Lady Gaga is about as 2011 as a pop star can get, but if you’re suspicious that all this external activity may impinge upon the quality of the songs, then your fears have been realised.
Born This Way isn’t a bad album by any means, it’s just that Gaga is so conscious of the image and message she projects that the music is no longer her top priority. You might think that someone with a persona such as hers has never been about the music, and that theory certainly carries some weight. However, it’s worth remembering that her debut, The Fame, and subsequent bolt-on EP, The Fame Monster, contained some genuinely fantastic songs. Pokerface, Telephone and Paparazzi are some of the best examples of pop music from the last decade, and Bad Romance may well be one of the greatest songs of all time, so it’s disheartening to see there’s nothing here that quite hits those heights.
The first thing that hits you about Born This Way is the over-zealous production. It’s as if Gaga is so mindful about being usurped from her position as Queen of Pop, that she turns everything up to 11 so she can’t be ignored. There’s a sledgehammer drum beat that seems to run through the entire record and some of the synths and effects are about as subtle as being punched in the face. Often, this style of production is there to mask a lack of tunes, but on Born This Way, the tunes are mostly there, and the “look-at-me” exuberance tends to get in the way.
What’s also disappointing to see, is how Gaga has descended into well-worn pop clichés of controversy. Whereas she was genuinely exciting a couple of years back, it now seems she’s been revising from the Madonna book of “How to Irritate the Christian Right.” She sings of being “a government hooker” and “still in love with Judas;” she has songs called Bloody Mary and Scheiβe – it’s like she’s doing nothing new and just trying to goad people into a reaction.
However, she didn’t get to the top of the pop tree without having a tune or two up her sleeve. Born This Way is an album of great moments rather than great songs, but what moments they are. The oscillating bassline of Judas is so huge it measures on the Richter scale while the post-chorus of finest track, Hair, is absolute throwaway bubblegum, and all the better for it.
Bizarrely for an album that’s so up-to-date, the style is fairly retro. Born This Way is a mixture of dance, hi-NRG club tracks and 80s power ballads. The worst offender here is Yoü and I, where even the presence of an umlaut can’t disguise the fact it’s an ugly, Queen-like track with a verse melody horribly reminiscent of Nickelback’s Rockstar.
So, is Born This Way sufficient for Gaga to retain her crown? Probably, but only just. It lacks the overall quality of Robyn’s Body Talk or the stand-out singles of Rihanna’s Loud, yet it’s still packed with hooks, killer choruses and unexpected twists. She’s taken her eye off the ball somewhat but is likely to get away with it; album #3 could be the one that truly tells us whether Gaga is here to stay.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Do the Continental
Year after year, the British public are fed the same tired, slightly xenophobic line about the Eurovision Song Contest: we’re far too sophisticated to treat something so ridiculous with any respect but Johnny Foreigner clearly laps this rubbish up. We’re the land of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, how could we possibly enjoy this carnival of the grotesque. It’s probably what daytime radio sounds like in Eastern Europe anyway!
If we do watch the show, it must be with a knowing, ironic detachment. We celebrate the kitsch aspect by hosting themed, fancy dress parties and the whole event is treated with as the most snobbish phrase in the English language: “a guilty pleasure.”
It’s baffling why we’re not allowed to enjoy Eurovision for the spectacle it is. After all, the UK has a rich tradition of talent shows and end-of-the-pier entertainment, and a population which laps up The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
That said, my sub-three hour stint in front of the finest music in Europe didn’t get off to a great start. The interaction between the hosts is never the high point and this year was no exception. It’s never easy to keep the funnies going in at least two languages, but some of the material was fist-bitingly bad. It was the same story when we were taken round the continent for the scores; forced bonhomie with each nation’s representative is very wearing, but forty-three countries later, my eyelids felt weighted down with bags of sugar.
However, when it came to the music, it was fast-paced, slick, professional, and there really was something for everyone. You’d struggle to find a radio station producingso much variety across two hours. Sure, there was the rubbish your prejudices expected: the Italian entry was pitched at the terrifying point where Harry Connick Jr. and Jamie Cullum meet; Georgia appears to have fully embraced nu-metal a decade after the rest of the world and Azerbaijan’s song was so bland, I forgot how it went halfway through. It still emerged victorious at the night’s climax.
Yet amongst the chaff, we had Moldova’s wonderfully bizarre performance featuring musicians with giant conical hats and a unicyclist. There was a French tenor singing in Corsican. We watched a retro girl-group chic from Serbia and a Ukrainian vocalist accompanied by a live sand artist (though, as Caitlin Moran correctly pointed out on Twitter, she’d have been in trouble had she sneezed). We even saw, er… Jedward!
Jedward genuinely are a curio. While decades of research may suggest identical twins have an almost telepathic connection due to their genetic and environmental similarities, Jedward display all the coordination of two drunks who have never met. Nevertheless they turned in the most entertaining performance of the show, aided in no small part by an extremely strong song, ‘Lipstick’ - a cross between early Depeche Mode and latter-day Take That.
Possibly because of poor results in recent years, the UK selection committee decided to put a bit more thought into our own representatives. Blue may be more famous for displaying their staggering ignorance in interviews than their pop stylings, but they were extremely popular in their heyday and undertook an extensive promotional tour across Europe before the weekend’s festivities. Their song was one of the better efforts too; a sleek, toe-tapping slice of contemporary R&B. Treating Eurovision with a bit more respect paid some dividends – Blue finished eleventh with a century of points, a far cry from the measly dix points of last year.
Of course Eurovision has its faults. While trying so hard to appeal to the largest possible demographic, it can end up throwing its faux jollity in your face. However, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be seen in the UK as it is viewed by the rest of Europe: accomplished primetime entertainment. It might be counter-intuitive, but the more seriously you treat Eurovision, the more fun it becomes.
If we do watch the show, it must be with a knowing, ironic detachment. We celebrate the kitsch aspect by hosting themed, fancy dress parties and the whole event is treated with as the most snobbish phrase in the English language: “a guilty pleasure.”
It’s baffling why we’re not allowed to enjoy Eurovision for the spectacle it is. After all, the UK has a rich tradition of talent shows and end-of-the-pier entertainment, and a population which laps up The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
That said, my sub-three hour stint in front of the finest music in Europe didn’t get off to a great start. The interaction between the hosts is never the high point and this year was no exception. It’s never easy to keep the funnies going in at least two languages, but some of the material was fist-bitingly bad. It was the same story when we were taken round the continent for the scores; forced bonhomie with each nation’s representative is very wearing, but forty-three countries later, my eyelids felt weighted down with bags of sugar.
However, when it came to the music, it was fast-paced, slick, professional, and there really was something for everyone. You’d struggle to find a radio station producingso much variety across two hours. Sure, there was the rubbish your prejudices expected: the Italian entry was pitched at the terrifying point where Harry Connick Jr. and Jamie Cullum meet; Georgia appears to have fully embraced nu-metal a decade after the rest of the world and Azerbaijan’s song was so bland, I forgot how it went halfway through. It still emerged victorious at the night’s climax.
Yet amongst the chaff, we had Moldova’s wonderfully bizarre performance featuring musicians with giant conical hats and a unicyclist. There was a French tenor singing in Corsican. We watched a retro girl-group chic from Serbia and a Ukrainian vocalist accompanied by a live sand artist (though, as Caitlin Moran correctly pointed out on Twitter, she’d have been in trouble had she sneezed). We even saw, er… Jedward!
Jedward genuinely are a curio. While decades of research may suggest identical twins have an almost telepathic connection due to their genetic and environmental similarities, Jedward display all the coordination of two drunks who have never met. Nevertheless they turned in the most entertaining performance of the show, aided in no small part by an extremely strong song, ‘Lipstick’ - a cross between early Depeche Mode and latter-day Take That.
Possibly because of poor results in recent years, the UK selection committee decided to put a bit more thought into our own representatives. Blue may be more famous for displaying their staggering ignorance in interviews than their pop stylings, but they were extremely popular in their heyday and undertook an extensive promotional tour across Europe before the weekend’s festivities. Their song was one of the better efforts too; a sleek, toe-tapping slice of contemporary R&B. Treating Eurovision with a bit more respect paid some dividends – Blue finished eleventh with a century of points, a far cry from the measly dix points of last year.
Of course Eurovision has its faults. While trying so hard to appeal to the largest possible demographic, it can end up throwing its faux jollity in your face. However, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be seen in the UK as it is viewed by the rest of Europe: accomplished primetime entertainment. It might be counter-intuitive, but the more seriously you treat Eurovision, the more fun it becomes.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Overlooked Albums - Lewis II
It’s difficult to believe that someone could just sever all ties with music and leave the industry in such a fashion, but that’s exactly what Lewis Taylor did. No grand announcement or farewell tour, he simply slipped out the back door when no-one was looking. On the evidence of his body of work, second album Lewis II in particular, his departure is very much our loss.
Following a chequered decade or so on the periphery of the music industry, Lewis Taylor signed to Island in the mid-90s and was immediately heralded as the future of music. Tipped for the top by names as illustrious as David Bowie and Elton John, it seemed he couldn’t fail. Yet, fail he did - relatively speaking - as his first two albums didn’t sell as well as Island would’ve liked, who promptly dropped him. Taylor then self-released three more full-length records before his abrupt decampment.
Lewis Taylor’s work is impassioned, thrilling, heady and beautiful. It’s an admirably cohesive mix of rock, soul, pop and contemporary R&B which displays a seldom heard understanding of how music fits together and a keen eye for detail. If you had to compartmentalise it, you could probably describe it as neo-soul; in fact, Taylor’s music is not all that dissimilar to that of D’Angelo or Erykah Badu, but with a harder edge.
Lewis II is Lewis Taylor’s party record. It even opens with a track called Party, a six-minute slab of raw funk which slithers and slinks its way into your subconscious. Heavy, sporadic bass give the track an animal, sexual feel and although it’s ostensibly seduction music, it’s a million miles away from the unimaginative bedroom-eyed soul of R Kelly and his ilk.
Unappreciative ears could dismiss Lewis II as self-indulgent. Most of the tracks clock in at over five minutes, but that’s just testament to the sheer breadth of what’s going on: sultry vocals, squalling guitar solos, jazz piano and even the odd well-judged key change. It’s the kind of music that could easily descend into parody or schmaltz, but Lewis Taylor’s quality control ensures we’re always comfortably on the right side of the line.
Perhaps the most eye-catching of the eleven songs is Satisfied. Power ballads generally have a bad reputation (and, often, deservingly so), but this tears up the rule book. It’s a gorgeous, emotion-packed track that could easily be taken to the top of the charts by a Simon Cowell protégé. Note: this is very much a compliment.
Lewis Taylor could be called the soul Jeff Buckley (their vocal styles are somewhat similar) and Lewis II closes with a Buckley cover: Everybody Here Wants You from the unfinished Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk. It’s perhaps an obvious choice of Buckley song, a paean to his partner of the time, Joan Wasser (aka Joan As Police Woman), but it’s tackled masterfully by Taylor. The restraint, longing and feeling of respect are just as poignant as in the original, and it’s gratifying to see it as part of a fully-realised album.
Truth be told, any of Lewis Taylor’s studio LPs could be considered an overlooked album, in the same way that Lewis Taylor is an overlooked artist. Everybody has artists they love that they wish more people were aware of, and Lewis Taylor is mine. The story of Lewis Taylor is a cautionary tale on the destructive nature of the music business and although it left him unfulfilled, we’re lucky to have his back catalogue - especially Lewis II - available to us.
I’d be fascinated to know what Lewis Taylor is up to these days. Perhaps he’s working as a session musician, maybe he’s a plumber, or he could live in the Bermuda Triangle with Richey Edwards and Shergar. Whatever he’s doing, we can only hope his life now provides him with the stability and happiness he couldn’t find previously. We may never know, but Lewis II remains; 55 minutes that documents the astonishing abilities and wonderful mind of the man who used to be Lewis Taylor.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Do we need rock and roll?
Recently, No Ripcord ran an article about whether there was a future for rock and roll, and asked whether it was even important. The full article can be found here, but below is my side of the argument.
Whether your definition of the birth of rock n’ roll has Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Lonnie Donegan or anyone else as the creator, the music itself was heavily steeped in the idea of rebellion. Post-World War II, teenagers were fed up and in need of something to distance themselves from their past. A shake of the hips, a curl of the lip and a chord ringing out on an electric guitar were their ticket out of the doldrums. Whereas their parents would listen to jazz, Rat Pack crooners or musical standards, these children of the revolution were getting their kicks elsewhere.
So far, nothing you didn’t already know, but in 2011 we’re still being fed the line that rock n’ roll is the anti-establishment music of the underground and it’s simply not true. If anything, rock n’ roll has become the establishment itself. That generation gap doesn’t exist and, when developing music tastes, a large part of becoming your own person is listening to precisely the kind of music your parents wouldn’t approve of. If a 15-year-old today attempted to rebel by listening to The Vaccines, their Dad would likely pop his head round the corner, ask who this band ripping off The Ramones were, and promptly lend their offspring a copy of End Of The Century.
Does this mean rock n’ roll can limp on when its raison d’être no longer exists? Well, for better or worse, we’re always going to have guitar/bass/drum/vocal combos banging out three-minute songs. You could argue it’s the true form of the latter day pop group, but the question isn’t will there be rock bands, it’s whether we should care.
Since The Beatles split, there have been few bands that have truly shaken up the rock n’ roll paradigm. You’ll probably have your own favourites that aren’t included here, but as a back-of-a-fag-packet-list, let’s say: Pink Floyd, The Ramones, The Clash, Black Sabbath, Joy Division, The Smiths, Nirvana, Radiohead and The Strokes. Sure, that list could be debated all day, and there are probably inclusions you strongly disagree with, but the main point is this: you’ll be hard pushed to find anyone in the last decade who’s pushed rock n’ roll forward.
Why is this? Well, as we’ve established, rock n’ roll is getting on a bit. Of course, not everything that can possibly be done has been done, but we’re starting to repeat ourselves more and more. Rock n’ roll leaves me jaded and I feel like there’s no originality out there. I’m not some seasoned hack; I’m 24 – I shouldn’t feel this way, at least, not yet. If we’re going to strip rock n’ roll back to its first principles and concentrate on it in its purest form, then we reached the zenith in the 1990s with Weezer’s first record and Lemonhead’s It’s A Shame About Ray; two records which can’t be improved upon. And what are the rock n’ rollers of today doing? It’s been ten years since Is This It and it would appear that it, in fact, was it. The Strokes are holding onto former glories and other guitar bands simply re-hash the music of their heroes or look farther afield for their influences.
Aha, farther afield. This is why we shouldn’t care about the future of rock n’ roll. Why get hung up about it when there are so many fresh sounds if you cast your net a little wider? Pop has embraced technology and is racing forward at an alarming speed, electronic music is more exciting than ever before and the relative youthfulness of hip-hop means there are still plenty of places to go. That’s before you’ve even thought about fusions of styles, bedroom experimentalists, dubstep, chillwave and any other new genre you care to mention.
On a personal note, my three favourite albums of the past twelve months are in no way in thrall to the traditions of rock n’ roll: Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid, Katy B’s On A Mission, and James Blake’s eponymous debut. While they might not be your idea of fun, you’ll struggle to find a guitar-based record that shows the level of invention and intrigue of any of those records. Who are the hot, young gunslingers supposed to lead the charge in this brave new world? Brother? Glasvegas? Noah and the Whale? Give me a break.
There have always been fallow periods in rock n’ roll and a ground-breaking artist could be just around the corner. But while there are ideas in abundance elsewhere, there’s no point in getting too hung up about it. Right now, I’d rather listen to Rihanna than the Foo Fighters, and that’s the truth.
Only time will tell, but maybe the sad reality is that rock n’ roll really is past its best.
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