Hello everyone both of you,
You may have read my rant recently where I got on one (as they say) with regard to spammers and bots misappropriating my magical words and thereby bringing a premature end to my blogging in the free world (which was almost a joke, for those who recall the song by Neil Young...)
Speaking of which, what happened to music ?
I mean - I'm old and out of the loop - at 50 something, I should perhaps be grateful for pastoral symphonies and suchlike, to ease the pain of life in a harsh, unforgiving world.
For those of you protesting that 50 - something is not old ; when I was eternally 21 , anything over thirty was old, so I am technically a listed building.
All the hoary cliches of my punky mis-spent youth are now true.
I am that old fart that I shouldn't trust.
Though I'm not a 'hippy'...
but Peace anyway.
I am only grateful that age is less of a cliché than it once was.
Besides, I was reared on the musical dabblings of John Peel, and he was timeless
But the music, man.
What happened ?
Since 'home taping is killing music', it's been going downhill
I've always been wary of the charts (payola man, breadheads and cocaine)
But the situation has spiralled downwards -
The birth of CDs, the death of tapes,
The advent of Mpegs , torrents and Spotify .
The death of vinyl - now making a comeback, hurrah - but boo as I will have to re-invest in turntables .
When I was younger, living through the shock of the new
and grooving to Punky - Reggie music
my mainstream was The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and The Jam.
With a side order of The Damned , Wire, The Gang Of Four, The Mekons , XTC , etcetera.
Later flavours included The Swell Maps, The Normal, Patrik Fitzgerald, early Ultravox.
Stateside we had Devo with their buttoned - up version of Satisfaction
Novelty nonsense The Dickies .
Guilty Pleasures were The Vibrators and The Tubes.
It's already getting messy, and I haven't mentioned so many ...
For melodic, old school moments, Mr David Bowie.
For more challenging old school, proto-punks The Velvet Underground.
Back in the U.K., The Soft Boys.
Oh, and Queen, now and again - though I never quite got their angle ...
As my personal musical tastes expanded, I discovered the joys of reggae, psychedelia, blues, mod and metal.
I had mind expanding moments with Captain Beefheart and Mr Barrett...and I was a sucker for coloured vinyl and gimmicks from John Cooper Clarke to Dr Feelgood.
It was an incredible world with a wealth of stuff.
I always assumed that as Imatured got older, I might gain a new found respect for 'Prog Rock' embodied by Yes, Hawkwind,' The Floyd ', and suchlike (in fairness I never warmed to Jon Andersons voice, or much of the endless self indulgent guitar- noodling of 'The Floyd ' and co, but c'est la vie...).
I also grooved on the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces, etc
These groups were endemic and are mostly timeless - but what happened to music ?
Punk became 'New Wave' with a slightly wider remit and real grassroots d.i.y and more influences - even the dressing- up box as Adam And The Ants morphed into pirates followed by the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and Visage leading to the New Romantics and the rise of Goth, which was led by The Mission, Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy, All About Eve , Bauhaus and The Cure.
As the Eighties became the Nineties, dance music mashed and mangled choice moments from years gone by - eventually creating loved up baggy - swagger.
I never quite got the angle of people like the Happy Mondays, who seemed more of a gang than a band. Plenty of fashion and attitude, but not so hot on the ditties, in my opinion- but they were part of the burgeoning u.k.dance 'scene' in the early Nineties, which felt like more of a protest, with endless illegal raves organised in secret, and 'cat and mouse' games with the authorities...one of the beauties of this rebellion was the sense of unity, and the fact that you could be happy drinking water all night long...
The 'House' scene diverged, with Euro-House, Acid-House, Hard-House and probably Wendy House.
Trance - Dance, Ambient, Junglist, Drum and Bass, Grime and so on, as movements splintered and labels gradually morphed.
Millenial awakenings led to the decline of the drug-addled payola - ridden muzak biz, where glad-handing and cheeky lines of marching powder fuelled an increasingly deluded industry full of inflated egos and precious little talent...
...so here we are, painfully aware that perhaps there really is nothing more to explore - I think it was Paul Weller who once said that by the year 2000, all possible chord combinations would have been used: and he's the Modfather, so he should know-
But then he also gave us 'The Cappucino Kid', so maybe not -
- so here in our post millenial hangover, are we condemned to re-hash everything that went before ?
Don't get me wrong - I've used and abused sampler technology too - but I say use what's gone before by all means, but add something new.
Give it a twist.
...and that seems to be the problem.
There's no twist anywhere
Apathy has descended upon us...
There's an overwhelming sense of - to quote Bohemian Rhapsody: nothing really matters anymore.
Discuss...
You may have read my rant recently where I got on one (as they say) with regard to spammers and bots misappropriating my magical words and thereby bringing a premature end to my blogging in the free world (which was almost a joke, for those who recall the song by Neil Young...)
Speaking of which, what happened to music ?
I mean - I'm old and out of the loop - at 50 something, I should perhaps be grateful for pastoral symphonies and suchlike, to ease the pain of life in a harsh, unforgiving world.
For those of you protesting that 50 - something is not old ; when I was eternally 21 , anything over thirty was old, so I am technically a listed building.
All the hoary cliches of my punky mis-spent youth are now true.
I am that old fart that I shouldn't trust.
Though I'm not a 'hippy'...
but Peace anyway.
I am only grateful that age is less of a cliché than it once was.
Besides, I was reared on the musical dabblings of John Peel, and he was timeless
But the music, man.
What happened ?
Since 'home taping is killing music', it's been going downhill
 |
| Actually, it was a number of things, including the internet... |
I've always been wary of the charts (payola man, breadheads and cocaine)
But the situation has spiralled downwards -
The birth of CDs, the death of tapes,
The advent of Mpegs , torrents and Spotify .
The death of vinyl - now making a comeback, hurrah - but boo as I will have to re-invest in turntables .
and grooving to Punky - Reggie music
my mainstream was The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and The Jam.
With a side order of The Damned , Wire, The Gang Of Four, The Mekons , XTC , etcetera.
Later flavours included The Swell Maps, The Normal, Patrik Fitzgerald, early Ultravox.
Stateside we had Devo with their buttoned - up version of Satisfaction
Novelty nonsense The Dickies .
Guilty Pleasures were The Vibrators and The Tubes.
It's already getting messy, and I haven't mentioned so many ...
For melodic, old school moments, Mr David Bowie.
For more challenging old school, proto-punks The Velvet Underground.
Back in the U.K., The Soft Boys.
Oh, and Queen, now and again - though I never quite got their angle ...
As my personal musical tastes expanded, I discovered the joys of reggae, psychedelia, blues, mod and metal.
I had mind expanding moments with Captain Beefheart and Mr Barrett...and I was a sucker for coloured vinyl and gimmicks from John Cooper Clarke to Dr Feelgood.
 |
| Not to Scale |
It was an incredible world with a wealth of stuff.
I always assumed that as I
I also grooved on the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces, etc
These groups were endemic and are mostly timeless - but what happened to music ?
Punk became 'New Wave' with a slightly wider remit and real grassroots d.i.y and more influences - even the dressing- up box as Adam And The Ants morphed into pirates followed by the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and Visage leading to the New Romantics and the rise of Goth, which was led by The Mission, Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy, All About Eve , Bauhaus and The Cure.
As the Eighties became the Nineties, dance music mashed and mangled choice moments from years gone by - eventually creating loved up baggy - swagger.
I never quite got the angle of people like the Happy Mondays, who seemed more of a gang than a band. Plenty of fashion and attitude, but not so hot on the ditties, in my opinion- but they were part of the burgeoning u.k.dance 'scene' in the early Nineties, which felt like more of a protest, with endless illegal raves organised in secret, and 'cat and mouse' games with the authorities...one of the beauties of this rebellion was the sense of unity, and the fact that you could be happy drinking water all night long...
The 'House' scene diverged, with Euro-House, Acid-House, Hard-House and probably Wendy House.
Trance - Dance, Ambient, Junglist, Drum and Bass, Grime and so on, as movements splintered and labels gradually morphed.
Millenial awakenings led to the decline of the drug-addled payola - ridden muzak biz, where glad-handing and cheeky lines of marching powder fuelled an increasingly deluded industry full of inflated egos and precious little talent...
...so here we are, painfully aware that perhaps there really is nothing more to explore - I think it was Paul Weller who once said that by the year 2000, all possible chord combinations would have been used: and he's the Modfather, so he should know-
But then he also gave us 'The Cappucino Kid', so maybe not -
- so here in our post millenial hangover, are we condemned to re-hash everything that went before ?
Don't get me wrong - I've used and abused sampler technology too - but I say use what's gone before by all means, but add something new.
Give it a twist.
...and that seems to be the problem.
There's no twist anywhere
Apathy has descended upon us...
There's an overwhelming sense of - to quote Bohemian Rhapsody: nothing really matters anymore.
Discuss...
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