vented spleen |
Here at soundsxp, we like to keep a lid on our emotions. We're passionate about good music but try not to let our dislikes cause us undue stress. But some things are like a red rag to a bull and no matter how many cold showers we take, we cannot settle until we have given the culprit a right good hoofing here... |
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current victim... | |||||||||||||||||
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John Lydon Actually,
now I come to think of it, quite a few of pops not-so-good could also
improve the lot of mankind by signing up for the James Dean School of Driving. So
I offer the following list in the forlorn hope that those named will take the hint and
retire to Costa del Blowfly. Will
Young nice lad, time to die. The
deaths of all or any of the above would undoubtedly put a smile on the lips of music fans
everywhere. And in case they prove reluctant
to kick the oxygen habit, I have two words guaranteed to get them sprinting down the
chemists for a family-sized bottle of paracetemol: John Lydon. You
see, with most pop stars, the sad thing is looking on as age humbles them. Over
the years they become more conventional; they mellow, give up the booze and drugs, start
playing acoustic sets and endorsing airline companies or family saloons. Just think of Elvis or Lou Reed or Leo Sayer. But Lydon has never changed. Sure, hes put on a bit of weight over the
years, but basically hes still the same snot-nosed, vitriolic little git he always
was. And the result is quite appalling. The point was that he was young and angry and scared the
hell out of Daily Mail readers. That was
enough. It was more than enough.
Well,
one out of five isnt bad. You feel kind
of grateful when he shuts up about his past, but only for a moment, because its
usually at this point that he embarks on a lengthy analysis of societys
failings. Oh my God. John clearly fancies himself the Spengler of
Finsbury Park, but sometimes you cant help wishing that his childhood meningitis had
lasted, say, thirty-five years. Here he is on modern politics: These
days we have a seesaw effect on a completely level playing field. I prefer the yin and the
yang of a more rugged terrain. You have to have the choice and the variety, otherwise you
get blandness." And heres Lydons
thoughtful critique of Tony Blair: Tony Blair is evil
to me, he always was. He looks like a soup terrine and he's full of bile. He's a
liar. Of course, John never goes so far as
to offer any solutions to the worlds
problems at least, nothing beyond the odd dismal cliché about fighting apathy and
not trusting people in authority. Perhaps he feels we should all sod off to
LA like he did and make millions of pounds through property speculation. Class war,
eh? Dontcha just love it? Finally, when Lydons finished
enlightening us about politics he can revert to what he really does best: being rude to
people. Whether its in interviews, at awards ceremonies or on Richard
and Judy, the man is an unfailing source of petulance and paranoia. When a reader of
Q magazine recently asked him if he could recommend a decent pub in Finsbury Park, John
refused to give the obvious answer (ie: no theyre all full of wankers
like me). Instead, he responded with a bizarre tirade, accusing the bloke (who
was simply listed as living in London) of being a yuppie looking to destroy
local, working class communities by, er, visiting pubs that werent near where he
lived. Obviously, these working class communities arent as robust as wed
thought. Equally innocent questions from other
readers were given a similar treatment and, as usual with John, I found myself groaning
Oh grow up! roughly twice per reply. But of course growing up is
precisely what John has failed to do. Hes
a middle-aged multi-millionaire desperately trying to pretend (to the public and himself)
that hes still an enfant terrible.
Its a uniquely depressing sight. John Lydon is a lesson to us all. The very same qualities that once made him a
hurricane-blast of fresh air have turned him into a self-serving, opinionated braggart
a sad, embarrassing joke of a man still dining out on his one true moment of
greatness a quarter of a century ago. No one could claim that Sid Vicious
was a greater punk icon than Johnny Rotten, but in two ways Sid had John beaten cold. For a start, he had the good grace to top himself
when he saw just how pathetic his squalid life had become. Its an
example that many in pop could profitably follow. And
secondly, unlike John, Sid once managed to say something that was genuinely funny: Interviewer: Do you think of the man on the street when you write your
songs? Sid: Nah! Ive met the man on the
street hes a cunt. And now, twenty-five years on, we
know exactly who that man on the street really was. |
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Top Twenty Worst Singles Ever
1-10: Imagine - John
Lennon. To quote Stan "The Man" Lee: 'nuff said. 11. Blue Monday -
New Order. I can clearly remember the first time I ever heard this. It was on
Annie Nightingale's Sunday Night show in 1982. I didn't catch Annie's introduction
so at first I had no idea who it was by. I thought, "what is this boring,
sub-standard disco shit?" Then I heard Barny's vocal, realised it was New Order
and thought, "Christ! I'd better find some way of liking this pap."
For several years I struggled to do just that but eventually I had to throw in the
towel. Even for the time the drum pattern was ridiculously wooden, the bass riff
seemed to have been made up on the spot, the synths chugged along in that terrible
"Euro-disco" rhythm, and the lyrics were the clearest indication yet that Barny
was no Ian Curtis. Oh, and let's not forget those awful syn-drums. Lazy,
amateur rubbish from start to finish and, for my money, the low point of New Order's
career. 12. Wonderwall - Oasis.
"Be Here Now" created a stench so strong that even their sheep-like fans
had to admit the game was up. But decomposition had started long before and for
those of us with sensitive noses "What's the Story..." was an album redolent of
death. Nowhere was this more evident than on "Wonderwall". And
here's a list of adjectives that will have to stand in for a proper critique: stodgy,
over-long, pretentious, boring, brainless... yes, it was all this and more. 13. Bitter Sweet Symphony
- The Verve. The only reason for this song's existence was to keep the flies off
"Wonderwall". Look, people, it's a fucking soft-metal torch-song ballard
for Christ's sake! Ap-palling. 14. Common People - Pulp.
Let me see now, Jarvis cops off with some Art College rich-bitch and is amazed to
find she doesn't understand life at the bottom of the pile. Well what exactly did he
expect? And his ignorance is supposed to be a justification for 4 minutes of
inverted snobbery? I don't think so. Listening to this song is like being
trapped in one of those awful student "I'm more working class than you are"
conversations. Add to this Cocker's reliably terrible singing and you have all the
ingredients of a truely rubbish song. 15. Babylon - David Gray.
Music for people who don't like music. 16. Girlfriend in a Coma
- the Smiths. The sound of a punctured football slowly deflating. A musical
demonstration of the Law of Thermodynamics. Sad, just sad. 17. Changin' Man - Paul
Weller. After years - nay, decades - of peddling flimsy, white-boy soul retreads,
this git has the sheer nerve to class himself as a "changin' man". Maybe
he only did it because "Steve Windwood's Bastard Idiot Son" wasn't such a good
title. 18. Ideal for Life
- Manic Street Preachers. Self-righteous, Welsh Socialists. Everybody, run for
your lives! There
should be two more to make up the twenty, but I opened a vein round about
"Babylon" and I'm starting to feel dizzy and weak. |
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George
Harrison They say you shouldnt speak ill of the dead, but lets examine the facts: 1. The dead cant argue back. And more importantly: 2. They cant sue your ass. Seems to me like the dead are just asking for it. So with this cheery thought in mind, heres a collection of sour miss-representations and downright lies about everybodys third-favourite Beatle: George Harrison. George joined legendary skiffle combo The Silver Beatles in 1959 at the tender age of six when John Lennon mistook him for Derek Guyler. Already showing signs of his later philosophical persona, Georges response when offered the hottest job in pop was reportedly: Spose so. How much does it pay? Shut up, George, said Paul and the matter was deemed closed. Six months later, and renamed The Fab Five, The Beatles, as they were now known, headed for Hamburgs famous Cavern Club. It was here that George (who, after a growth spurt, was now 17) was introduced to such adult pleasures as long trousers and joined-up handwriting. And it was while experimenting with his trousers that George wrote his first ever song: I Love You, John, in a Very Sexual Manner. He played it to the rest of the band, who sat in awe-struck silence. Shut up, George, said Paul and the matter was deemed closed. For a long time the band agonised over Georges nickname. John suggested The Grumpy One. Paul thought he should be known as The Silent One and play with his guitar unplugged, but that role had already been bagsied by Pete Sutcliffe, who jealously guarded his position as the groups Talent-Free Zone. A standoff developed that was only broken by tragedy when Sutcliffe died of a German girlfriend. So George became The Silent One, though he amended this to The Quiet One behind Pauls back. Spurred on by his new status within the group, George wrote his second song, Can I Have Raise, Please? which was thought so good that it wasnt included on the bands first LP. Already wise beyond his years, George responded by sulking and drawing rude pictures of McCartney in his lyric book. With such creativity on hand not to mention Harrisons famously poor guitar playing it was hardly surprising that the Beatles skyrocketed to success. First they won over Britain with a number of songs not written by George. And then, cleverly riding the wave of euphoria caused by the death of President Kennedy, they conquered the States. But, for a quiet, spiritual man like Harrison, the fame, the girls and the money were simply not enough. He was often heard to lament, We must get more fame and girls and money. Although such pearls of wisdom were seldom reported by a trivia-dominated press, the full transcript of conversations at that time reveals the hidden yet powerful influence of The Quiet One:
It was at this point in the Fab Fours history that Ringo gained his first mention in my article. Unfortunately, it was also to be his last. But Georges restless Shamans soul meant he was always searching for new ways to impress John. And in 1965 he found just what he was looking for when he stumbled upon a reasonably-priced sitar at a car boot sale in Ongar. As soon as he saw it, George knew it must be his money was no object and after two hours of polite haggling, he finally held the precious object in his hands. Three weeks of practice later, and it was clear that George was destined to be even worse at the sitar than he was at the guitar. But fortunately none of the other Beatles could tell the difference. His mind enlightened by the rusty twang of his Indian banjo, George set to work on a new batch of songs. In Taxman, he showed astounding clairvoyant powers by ripping off The Jams Start! twenty years before Paul Weller was even born. Its spiritually complex tale of a multi-millionaire scouser complaining about his taxes struck a deep chord with black-marketeers everywhere. And then there was Love To You which, unfortunately, The Jam had no part in. But at least it provided George with the opportunity to display his full talent for lyric writing: Ill make
love to you Similarly enlightened songs were to follow: Within You, Without You where the multi-millionaire scouser bemoans the materialist nature of society; then there was Piggies where the multi-millionaire scouser bemoans the materialist nature of society; and, of course, All Things Must Pass where the multi-millionaire scouser bemoans the materialist nature of society. Best of all was probably While Eric Claptons Guitar Gently Weeps with its groundbreaking use of bathos: I look at you
all see the love there thats sleeping A lesser songwriter Paul, for example wouldve taken the conventional route and put the weak line at the start rather than emphasising it by putting it at the end. But, as ever, George travelled his own road. Yet just when it looked like Harrisons creative talent was about to eclipse that of Lennon and McCartney, his life entered a strange new phase. On December 3rd 1968, acting on instructions from higher powers, he kidnapped Patti Hurst and after a brief siege they were married by the Dalai Lama. Always one to eschew convention, George refused to be the groom at his own wedding. Instead he took the role of father of the bride and gave away his fiancé to best man Eric Clapton. As a tribute, Eric composed the song Lady in Red about his lovely new wife. Patti was later inducted into the paramilitary wing of the Natural Law Party, an organisation so secret that it didnt even exist. Georges erratic behaviour caused increasing tensions within the group but the end only came when he, John, Paul and Yoko all entered a beard-growing competition. A stark-naked Yoko beat the other three literally standing on her head. It was the final straw. Now free to count his money (sorry, pursue his solo career), George proved that his clairvoyance worked backwards as well as forwards when he recorded My Sweet Lord. This feat so impressed the Chiffons lawyers that they took him to court to prove hed mystically foreseen the song Hes So Fine ten years after it was originally recorded. The public were equally impressed and carried George shoulder-high to the top of the charts. He released a string of albums. Well, probably one or two. To tell you the truth, no one can quite remember. The final few years of his life were spent busking on the tube with Don Estelle, levitating and financing films that he later regretted making. On December 19th 2001 The Quiet One became The Extremely Quiet One when George Harrison died of Bad Karma. His last words were Love each other more. Shut up, George, said Paul and the matter was deemed to be closed. |
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Sting Sorry
for my lengthy absence, but during the writing of this piece I inadvertently listened to
Stings latest single. Im still on medication (ie, the new
Sparklehorse CD), but Im glad to say Im finally returning to full health. And speaking of
medical matters, do you remember when you were a kid and you got chicken pox? It wasnt pleasant at the time, but now you
can almost look back on it with fondness it was all part and parcel of growing up,
a first teetering step down the road towards acne, crabs, arthritis and angina. But what you may not have realised is that,
although the symptoms vanished, your chicken pox never really went away. Right now, right this very minute, it is
lurking in your body, patiently waiting for a chance to be reborn in a new and extremely
nasty guise. You see, chicken pox waits, usually for forty or fifty years,
until you are at your lowest ebb recovering from a heart attack, for example, or
watching Robot Wars Extreme and then it bursts forth as an agonising bout of
shingles. Its exactly
the same in the wonderful world of pop. As a youngster youre bombarded
with all sorts of virulent musical bacteria: The Spice Girls, perhaps, or Eric
Clapton. Most of these turn out to be relatively harmless and after a brief period
of inflammation they fade away, allowing you to recover and get on with your life. But there are some who, like chicken pox, never
quite die completely. They linger on in the lower reaches of the charts; they search
out cameo roles in movies; they build up a small but enduringly dim fan base in the US
(or, if theyre really desperate, Japan). And
all the time theyre waiting for the moment when the corrosive effects of middle-aged
nostalgia have sufficiently weakened the publics immune system. Because for all of
us there comes the day when we look at the charts with a feeling of dread and
incomprehension. What is all this rubbish? we ask
ourselves and mournfully cast about for the brilliant stars who lit up the scene in our
youth. We yearn for a familiar face even the face of someone we used to
loathe. And, right on cue, there he is:
Sting. Yes, after years of
relative dormancy, a nasty case of Sting (popborus profundis) has broken out. Indeed, it threatens to be a worldwide epidemic. A much-hyped new album and single; a CD ROM
Mail-on-Sunday freebie; an AOL-sponsored website; a TOTP2 Special; a documentary on ITV1,
a Lifetimes Achievement Award - no corner of the media remains uninfected. These days it seems that everywhere I go I see
red-eyed citizens staggering under the weight of their disease. They hover in the aisles at HMV, tears trickling
down their cheeks. Hes not so bad, they mutter,
hes certainly lasted well. And,
finally broken, they reach for their wallets. The
struggle has finished. They have won the
victory over themselves. They love Sting. But it doesnt
have to be this way. The Sting virus like the Abba Pox or Tom Jones
Herpes can be fought and beaten. And
the road to recovery begins with a single sentence: Sting is a twat; he
always has been and always will be a twat. Repeat it to
yourself three times a day after meals. Shout it at the TV or radio whenever
hes on. Write an angry letter to your MP. And if thats not enough,
here are a few more bitter pills that might help restore you to musical health. First on the list
has to be the Stingmeisters Ego sorry, I mean his Social Conscience. Remember that insufferable, trendy, self-righteous
English teacher you had at school? Did you ever wonder what would happen if
you cut down a rainforest, turned it into fifty-pound notes and gave them to him?
Well now you know. When it comes to
Just Causes, no matter how unqualified he is, the Stingster feels compelled to spray us
with his arse-gravy wisdom. He likes to describe himself as
naïve, but in reality hes just superficial. Hes against Bad Things (torture,
deforestation) and in favour of Good Things (love, native conmen who keep the
family dinner service in their mouths) a stance so general and fuzzy as to be
totally pointless. At no considerable risk to himself, he pours forth this vacuous
benevolence so that people whose idea of charity work is staying in to watch Red Nose Day
can bask in the diffuse light of his non-specific love. Yes folks, Sting cares, so
you dont have to. And yet, for all
this headline-grabbing altruism, what happens when he meets a real case of social
deprivation in his own back yard? In the excruciating sleeve notes to Nothing
Like the Sun, St Stingus tells a rather revealing story. Hes accosted by a
tramp on Highgate Hill who simply wants to point out the beauty of the moon. How does the Pop Prince of Hearts respond? Does he offer to put him up for the night? Does he insist he pays for the fellow to have a
square meal and a decent wash? Does he give
him a fiver? A pound? Twenty pence, for
the love of God? No. Faced with the
unglamorous toxic breath of everyday poverty, Our Lady of Sting mutters a bit
of Shakespeare at him and buggers off as quickly as possible. As PJ ORourke put it: Everybody wants
to save the world, but nobody wants to help mom with the washing up. Next up, it has to
be Stings ego sorry, I mean his lyrics. Oh my God, his
lyrics. Pope said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. With Sting
its positively lethal. His swotty determination to display the breadth of his
knowledge (things they would not teach me back in
college),
coupled with an awesome inability to write, has led to a lyrical holocaust. Indeed,
for a man so active in the fight against torture, you have to wonder about the amount of
verbal pain he gleefully inflicts on the record-buying public. Where Hitler had Mein
Kampf, Stingolini has the Penguin Rhyming Dictionary.
And while Amnesty International remains curiously silent on the subject, I feel it
my duty to remind the world of his brutal atrocities. Heres an
example of the great man at work, taken from a file marked hideously botched
cultural references. One day
Stingspeare reads Lolita and what do we get? We get this: He starts to shake
and cough Its not just
that cough and Nabakov is a rhyme that would make Suggs snap his
crayon in two; its the clunking, awkward phrasing which suggests everyones
heard of Nabakov while no-ones heard of Lolita roughly 100% wrong, so
far as I can see, but then accuracy takes a backseat when Sting needs to crowbar in
another example of his encyclopaedic wisdom. But to spend long
on the inadequacies of Dont Stand so Close would be like a mountaineer
planting a flag at the top of a foothill while Mount Everest towered in the background. I refer, of course, to Russians,
Stingskis moving plea for peace and understanding between the East and the West. At least, it might be moving were it not
for the harrowing crassness of the lyrics. Oh, and its music. In Don Juan,
Lord Byron famously rhymes intellectual with hen-peckd you
all but and if you ever read this, Sting, please, please take note
he was trying to be funny. Hed realised that some rhymes
were so bad they made people laugh. Yet in Russians,
Sting pulls off the seemingly impossible feat of using rhymes that make Don Juan
look like Paradise Lost while at the same time coming across as dour and
self-righteous. Read em and weep: We share the same biology Okay, so I may have transplanted that last couplet from
another song, but you get the general idea. Only Sting couldve failed to see
that using a rhyme as inadvertently funny as biology/ideology might undermine
the message of his song. And only Sting
couldve failed to see that a stream of trite doggerel about universal brotherhood
added nothing to anybodys understanding of East/West politics. And only Sting
couldve failed to see that using a tedious dirge as a melody was not justified
simply because it sounded vaguely Russian. Only Sting, folks, only Sting. Finally, I cant leave without a brief mention of
Stings ego sorry, I mean his music. Heres a quote from his own
website (AOL keyword: cünt) which says more than mere words ever could: Sting has become synonymous with a kind of musical
approach that knows no boundaries, limits, genres. Proud to number Branford Marsalis,
Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, as well as Miles Davis arranger Gil Evans and Algerian singer
Cheb Mami among his collaborators, Sting has already achieved a legacy of music that, like
its creator, resists easy definition. I hope you
didnt have a heavy meal before reading that. The glancing nod towards
Miles Davis is particularly vomit inducing. Where
Davis was innovative to the point of insanity, Sting is one of pops great
reactionaries, reducing all the music of the world into a tepid, grey broth while at the
same time throwing his influences at his audience like a skip-load of cobbles. As
for his music resisting easy definition, allow me to take a stab at pinning it down:
Egomania. There - problem solved. So what have we
learnt from all this? If I had to extract a single lesson from the seething
atrocity of the Great Mans career, it would be the following: whores and public
buildings become respectable if they stick around long enough. The same isnt
true of Nazi war criminals. Except for Sting. |
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back to top or next victim | It must be a dull grind, working in the music industry these days. Time was when finding a new act and making it famous was a challenge. Record company offices were full of A&R men obsessively searching for a way to market Adam and the Ants (solution: one white stripe, two drummers), or convince people that Nik Kershaw was the answer to their prayers (solution: amputate the c from his Christian name). You see, in those days people still didnt fully understand the Pop Beast, and consequently there was room for experimentation and innovation. Today, things are very different. Like the human genome, pop music has been mapped and charted, analysed, digitised and ground down into its basic building blocks. Want to make another million? Just get a few healthy-looking Irish teenagers, send them to dance classes for a few months, and then sit back and watch the mulah roll in. (Actually, this may soon change as, according to my calculations, by the year 2005 every single teenager in Ireland will be in a group. At this point, record companies will have to look to other Catholic countries for their protégés, which is good news for fans of the panpipes.) If that fails, just pick a soap star any soap star and stick a microphone in front of them. Its easy money, but its not exactly exciting. So to liven things up, I imagine that todays A&R man sets himself artificial challenges. He amuses himself by seeing just how devoid of originality or charisma an act has to be before the record-buying public says, No thanks; wed rather spend our money on cyanide tablets. Surely this is the only explanation of how Toploader found themselves with a recording contract? But then one day an A&R man yelps with excitement. He rushes into his colleagues office, flushed and breathless. Ive found him! he gasps. Found who? The worlds most unmarketable act. Hes anodyne, derivative and blander than a mashed potato sandwich. At last, a real challenge! But dont forget, we made stars out of Travis. No, this is worse much, much worse. And look! Here he comes now! At this point, an empty taxi pulls up and out steps David Gray. Ah yes, David Gray, the aptest name in music; the shy young jockey riding the knackered horse of pop down the quiet lane to the abattoir. If youre not young enough to like dance music and not gay enough to like Steps, then Gray must be your man that, at least, is the Official Line from the music industry. But the most insulting thing indeed, the truly staggering thing is that people seem to have accepted this drivel with barely a murmur of dissent. Over a million copies of White Ladder have been sold in the UK alone, a statistic which, frankly, makes me scared to go outdoors. Theyre out there walking around This is not so much a pop phenomenon as a musical Dawn of the Dead. I wish I could describe for you in searing detail the full horror of the mans music, but really it cant be done. Its like trying to describe cellophane. Guitars are strummed (not too vigorously, please), keyboards are fingered (minor chords only), drums are tapped (keep it down you might wake the neighbours). And over the top of this sterile, soul-lite wash, Gray sings like Sir Elton John having a particularly heavy period. Theres no melody as such, just an aimless meandering of notes which happen to be in the correct key. The lyrics are trite commonplaces about loneliness and love, no better and no worse than the average sixth-formers poetry (compare Grays lyrics to the startling, unsettling images used by Mark Linkous and you begin to see just how woefully mundane his output really is). Please forgive me if I act a little strange sings Gray. You get the feeling that, with David, acting a little strange involves having three sugars in his tea rather than his usual two. Thats just how bonkers the guy really is. The man and his music speak for themselves, but if youre still not convinced just look at the company he keeps. You may recall that a little while ago the Daily Telegraph that feisty champion of the radical pop zeitgeist was so taken with Grays innovative mix of tapioca and couscous that it decided to give away some of his aural semolina free to its readers. Now, it ought to be axiomatic that any performer supported by the Telegraph is a coffee-coloured stain on the place mat of Humanity. But in case you missed this Everest-sized clue, the Telegraphs advert spelled it out in neon. A sober-suited, middle-aged man walks into a newsagents to buy a copy of the Telegraph. But the (equally middle-aged) newsagent doesnt notice him because hes listening with rapt attention to music on his headphones. This music turns out to be David Grays. The Suit and the newsagent spout some supposedly incongruous lines about how they both love his bitter-sweet, soulful intensity (!). The Suit buys his Telegraph and saunters back to his car where hell doubtless pop on the Gray CD and hum along while he drives to his Team Meeting or corporate awayday. Now, you may think this was a bit of a joke an attempt to subvert the Telegraphs stuffy image by highlighting the gap between that image and the actual product on offer. But, of course, in reality the joke works in the other direction. What the advert really says is: you may think youre hip and cool but if you like David Gray youre a boring old fart who ought to read the Daily Telegraph. David Gray produces music for people with beige-coloured souls; its milky gruel for those who cant cope with solid food any more; its the perfect soundtrack for one of those adverts that tries to sell a car as a spiritual experience. And whenever I attempt to listen to it all I can hear is the sound of accountants thumbing twenty-quid notes. Someone once said that what the public want is mediocrity but mediocrity of the highest order. With David Gray, they seem to have decided that one out of two is good enough for them.
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Every now and then in fact, with monotonous
regularity Channel 4 and Beeb 2 take time off from producing high-quality
entertainment such as Orrible or Celebrity Big Brother, and instead
fall back on that polyfiller of the airwaves: the Pointless Pop List. The top ten punk bands, the top ten soul divas,
the top ten rock paedophiles theyve all been featured (what do you mean, you
never saw that last one?). Usually the lists are pretty solid. Oh, you might
complain that the Undertones werent really punk, or that Billy Piper
wasnt technically a child, but in general you have to agree that the usual
suspects are all present and correct. However, theres one list that TV
programmes, pop magazines and, indeed, webzines always get wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but horrendously, totally,
one hundred per cent wrong. That list is, of course, the Top Ten Worst Songs of All
Time. Fortunately, Im here to put things straight. The mistake that everyone makes in compiling this list is to fail to judge a song in terms of its own ambitions. Thats why its always choc-full of harmless trash like The Birdie Song or Ive Got a Brand New Combined Harvester. Yes, of course Agadoo is a mindless, irritating waste of three minutes, but thats more or less what it sets out to be. Do you really believe Black Lace thought they were producing the new Hey Jude when they recorded the song? Trust me, there are worse songs out there much, much worse. And theyre usually the very ones adored by those people who think they have taste because they realise that Sugar Sugar isnt pops equivalent of Finnegans Wake. So lets get it straight: Save Your Love is not one of the worst songs of all time, but Wonderwall is. SYL is cheesy and kitsch, but thats all. Wonderwall, on the other hand, is stale, pretentious, lumpen doggerel masquerading as a bittersweet emotional tour de force. SYL is fooling no one, but Wonderwall is a massive con from its stodgy start to its well-overdue finish. Even so, Wonderwall wouldnt make it into my list of the Top Ten Worst Songs of All Time because my list would look like this: 1. Imagine John Lennon 2. Imagine John Lennon 3. Imagine John Lennon 4. Imagine John Lennon 5. Imagine John Lennon 6. Imagine John Lennon 7. Imagine John Lennon 8. Imagine John Lennon 9. Imagine John Lennon 10. Imagine John Lennon Yes, Imagine, that simple, moving hymn to
well, what, exactly? Aye, theres the rub. Musically, the backing track
is mundane enough. With its Chas and Dave piano, lumpy percussion (did the Plastic
Ono Band put shag-pile over their drums or what?) and elevator-music string section, it
burbles along like Bob Dylan on temazepam. Dull,
but not appalling. The first real sign of trouble comes from Lennons
vocals. For some reason, he chooses to use his eerie glider voice, the
one harnessed to such creepy effect on Im Only Sleeping and A Day in the
Life. Okay, for Imagine it has an
appropriately wistful feel to it, but this is more than matched by a certain sinister,
spaced-out quality. At times its almost like a drug-addled lunatic is trying
to persuade you to walk down a dark ally with him. And only two words can do justice
to the feeling I get when Lennon sings, I hope someday youll join
us. And those two words are: David Koresh. However, worrying though that is, to get a true handle on
the cosmic awfulness of this song you have to turn to the lyrics. Imagine is Lennons Republic, his
perfect world, and it doesnt sound like the sort of place youd want to visit
on holiday, let alone live in. Indeed, its hard to conceive of a more
soulless, anaemic vision of life than the one Lennon gives us here. No heaven, no
hell, no countries (ah, countries; theyre evil, arent they), no possessions
(yes, folks, its another pop millionaire lecturing us on how materialistic we are
Phil Collins and Alanis Morrisette get in line), no religion, nothing to kill or
die for
its the very definition of a pointless existence. Typically, John is annoyingly vague about what wed actually do in his anarcho-syndicalist Nirvana. Wed live for today apparently, and when we got tired of that we could try living life in peace for a while. The only other clues about the itinerary in Lennon Land come from the songs video. If this is to be believed, then the timetable is something like: 9am. Dress in white. 9.15am. Open windows in white room. 9.16am. Look out of windows. And thats it. Doubtless, thered be plenty
of white powder on hand for those who couldnt stand this blistering pace without the
aid of sedatives. Lets be clear about this. Lennon is trying to sell us his vision of a
perfect world, but its a vision which is as morally bankrupt as it is banal. Its a vision where empty platitudes about
peace take the place of real thought, real insight. And from where Im standing, Lennons
perfect world looks very much like Hell. You may object that Im going over the top, that Imagine is just a nice song and theres no need to be so nasty. But I say, No! If it were merely thought of as a nice song thered be no problem. But Imagine is held up everywhere as a shining beacon of pop profundity to set against the madness of the modern world. Theyre even teaching it in schools, for Gods sake! Well, I for one stand squarely with the modern world. It may be full of injustice, greed and downright evil, but its the only world weve got and we wont make it any better by poncing about in white rooms and shacking up with second-rate Japanese performance artists. You may say-ay-ay-ay Im a dreamer? No, John, I say-ay-ay-ay youre a tosser.
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If we're talking about Later with Jools Holland, it's time
to get a bit philosophical, so bear with me. David Hume (I think) pointed out that if
God's love for mankind is infinite then it is also meaningless. He loves everyone
indiscriminately and if he only loved them half as much he'd still love them the same
amount because infinity divided by two equals infinity. It's kind of the same with
Jools Holland's love for music. It's eclecticism gone mental. Are you a bunch
of spotty herberts with a twin-deck and trendy t-shirts? Jools loves you. Are
you a ninety year-old African village elder with a drum made of rebus intestine and a
voice with the melodic capability of Professor Stephen Hawkins? Jools loves
you. Do you play innovative jazz-anthrax fusion? Jools will jam with you in the
studio, adding his tired line of mediocre boogie-woogie licks to the already hopelessly
confused mess you call your "sound". In short, Later with Jools Holland
has done away with the vital notion of "taste" and replaced it with an
all-inclusiveness which is as As if that wasn't bad enough, viewers also have to contend with the host's uniquely repellent personality. Jools is Roland Rivron's less talented brother and every time I see him I know, I just KNOW, that somewhere in Soho a porno cinema is missing its manager. Easily the least important member of Squeeze in the '70s, he later rose without trace through the massed ranks of the damned aka TV Presenters. His early claim to fame was using the word "fuckers" in a live, early-evening plug for The Tube (the show which stared out saying it was going to use local, unknown presenters and ended up with, er, the Joolster and Paula Yates). But his big break came when he somehow blagged the job of fronting a documentary about The Police recording their latest album in Monserrat. Ominously, the programme was titled "Jools Goes to Monserrat" and from the opening seconds it was clear this wasn't going to be a programme about The Police. Now, under normal circumstances a programme's not being about The Police would be an occasion for national rejoicing, but, incredibly, ITV had managed to find something even less appealing than Sting's Geordie-Jamaican vocals: a programme which focused on the talentless presenter rather than the abysmal subjects. That formula has been the staple of JH interviews ever since. No matter who he's talking to and no matter how obsequious his manner, it's always Jools who remains the focus of attention, for beneath his humble, selfless love of all types of music lies an ego the size of Frank Zappa's back catalogue. Ever since the Monserrat debacle, his smug grin and Billy Mitchell haircut have dogged our screens with all the tenacity of a malignant tumour refusing to respond to radiotherapy. Frankly, my dear, I could eat a ToTP video and shit a better programme than Later With Jools Holland. |
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All cyber-maulings by Phil Cartwright |