Rage against the machine have become the most unlikeliest Christmas number one artists since Pink Floyd got to the top spot 30 years ago with Another Brick in the Wall, another anti-establishment song about alienation. There followed 30 years of mawkish slush.
This victory for the Californian rap-metal band may be seen as a victory for the underdog – for the passionate, politically motivated artist, taking a stand against the manufactured pop of the Simon Cowell factory – a glorified Karoke plant. In many ways it is – people are sick of the constant monopolization of our culture and this is an easy target at which to express our dissatisfaction, there is a much bigger underlying malaise to all of this. For all the rage directed at Simon Cowell and his X Factor puppets one can only feel that this cause de celebre is a matter of persecution. He is not an evil man that is trying to destroy our culture from within, he is just maximizing his talent for creating brands and profiting from his ability of knowing what the public wants. He’s in the entertainment industry and if he didn’t do it someone else would, it’s popular mainstream TV – he’s never professed at being the avatar for bold, brilliant and alternative new music. Ironically he has managed to popularize music by bringing pop back to prime time TV and financially help an ailing industry. The PR that both artists received during the chart battle was almost blanket coverage – assisting huge sales for all the parties involved, so know one really lost out, apart from Simon Cowell’s image, although he’s use to being vilified – society always needs someone to blame!
It’s fast approaching the end of the year and all the votes have been cast, the lists drawn up and the debates have started to rage. With all the music publications releasing their definitive verdicts on the greatest and most influential albums of the last ten years it is interesting to reflect on what the critics think have shaped our cultural lives.
For quantitive purposes, the top twenty from five different publications – Uncut, NME, Rolling Stone, The Guardian and The Times – were analysed. During the last ten years the music industry has become unrecognisable, imploding in the face of internet democracy and becoming a free territory, unshackled from the corporate system but unsure of what the future might hold. This has been reflected in the explosion of artistic creativity and expression, particularly in the last 3 years. We are definitely leaving this decade in a much healthier musical state than the last!!
The Strokes – Is this It, seems to be universally acknowledged as the most influential album in the last ten years. Four of the publications featured it in their top five - with only The Times placing it outside at number 6. This is the only album to achieve this blanket acclaim. No surprises that Radiohead feature strongly in all of the top twenty lists, constantly evolving they have become even more adventurous and inspiring this decade than the last. Kid A consistently features more than any other album, deservedly so, although Uncut doesn’t list it until number 25, shame on you. Other albums that deserve to be uttered in the same sentence as great and that keep cropping up in most of the lists are: Arcade Fire – Funeral (although not in The Times), Amy Winehouse – Back to Black and The White Stripes – Elephant ( although NMEonly rate it as their 18th best album and Uncut regard White Blood Cells as better, so much better in fact that it is listed as their greatest album of the decade!)
Their were a few misplaced surprises in some of the lists. Most notably, The Times (again): Coldplay - number 17 with Viva la Vida, Hot Chip – number 14 with Made in the dark and Britney Spears – number 5 with Blackout. What were they thinking? The Guardianwith Lily Allen at number 20!! Uncut with 2 Bob Dylan albums in the top 10 – I know he’s made a bit of a return to form lately but trying to get past that sandpaper voice and old-time Americana is hard enough let alone distinguishing it as some of the best music of the last 10 years.
Another strange fact is the lack of albums from the last 2 -3 years. Is this because they haven’t had time to filter into popular culture or that maybe the last couple of years, although challenging and exciting, has maybe been too experimental to be classified as great. The only artists to feature from the last 2 years are: Burial, Coldplay, Elbow and Fleet Foxes.
Noticeable absentees from the lists:
Sigur Ross – Takk – the film and television soundtrack of the last five years.
Damien Rice – O - emotionally charged and critically acclaimed at the time – although everyone seems to have forgotten this beautifully heart wrenching record.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers – By The Way - Maybe because they’re a corporate band but few artists have delivered such a warm and harmonious rock album.
Gorillaz – Demon Days ( The Guardian did place this album at a deserved number 11) – A pop classic, full of dark and cultural undertones. Shadowed Damien’s work with Blur.
Daft Punk – Discovery – A futuristic dance album that set the electronic template for the rest of the decade, its influence has been underappreciated.
With the news coming through this week that Susan Boyle has become the fastest selling debut artist in UK history- it is both a wonderful surprise and a thoroughly depressing realisation! Selling more than 411,000 in just seven days is an incredible achievement for an established artist let alone one who no one knew about a year ago! Boyle mania has taken off even more in the states with the Scottish spinster selling more than 711, 000 copies of her album in its first week!Her immense popularity is mainly due to her outsider appeal – the everyday woman who dreamt a dream that came real. Maybe there is a little of all of us in Susan Boyle, whether or not we all like to see fairytales come true and our willingness for this unique character to succeed in a music industry built on image and style has ultimately led many people to buy the album. Fundamentally we feel sorry for Susan Boyle and are comforted in the fact that she goes against the grain of everything that is cynical about the industry – she is truly unique, which is almost non-existent in the modern world of pop.
However, here lies the oxymoron. Celebrating the fact that the album format still seems to be alive and kicking – the last time an album shifted such a huge amount in its first week in the States was Snoop Dogg in 1993 – and there is still hope for millions of unsigned singers, one can’t help but feel contradiction about the whole frenzy. The content of the album is full of covers, songs that have been played countless times by many different artists across the world. Reconstructed to fit Boyle’s voice but nevertheless they are still unimaginative covers sung with a good albeit not particularly unique voice. So the voice and the songs are fairly inconsequential – it is all about the image and what her image represents, which in an ironic kind of way is what people were rebelling against when they first showed interest in her. The droves of fans who are buying her album are mainly idolizing her because of her (non) image, with very little musical substance – and this is all being engineered by global pop Svengali, Simon Cowell. He has discovered the ultimate pop brand, POP – NON IDOL. So lets all idolize her – it’s a bit like Buddha really!
Michael Eavis has finally got his wish! For years he’s been trying to entice the Irish super-group to Worthy Farm with little effect, now he’s finally landed the deal in conjunction with Glastonbury’s 40th anniversary. Great timing and an excellent result for both parties in more ways than one…….this is the ultimate collision of the music super-brand – most famous, commercially succesful music festival in the world teams up with the biggest, most globally recognised band in the world…….Well not quite…..Since U2 released ‘No line on the horizon’ they’ve seen their world domination falter and diminish quite rapidly – the album has been their slowest selling in the last decade, even with all the blanket publicity and exposure it received. As a live draw their massive popularity has frayed around the edges – Wembley Stadium failed to sell out both nights until a few weeks before the concert and tickets were selling on ebay for less than their face value! This never happened to Muse or The Foo Fighters at Wembley…..Muse recently sold out their latest show at Wembley in 12 minutes.
Maybe the public feel U2 publicity fatigue – or maybe the younger, more relevant bands around have stolen their thunder and their marketing ideas. Whatever the case Glastonbury 2010 feels like the perfect opportunity to remind everyone that they’re still here!
With so many apps appearing on the iPhone – including the new ‘Guitar Toolkit’ and ‘Mini Synth’ it is practically now possible that live performance can be facilitated through just a phone! Maybe in the not-too distant future a whole band will just march on stage, each with their trusty iPhone and conjure a whole gamut of sounds without the use of a single instrument or prop – just with the sacred phone in hand. Of course as visual spectacles go that would be completely anaemic and utterly uninspiring. So thank goodness for bands such as the Flaming Lips for maintaining the theatre of performance and stretching the boundaries of extravagance. Much like ken kesey’s ’Merry Band of Pranksters’ in the 1960’s Wayne Coyne and his cosmic brothers defy convention and celebrate life with a sensory spectacle.
Beginning with each band member appearing from between the thighs of a gyrating girl – the pornographic back screen reveals a secret door from where the band appear and walk down a set of stairs. Coyne goes one step further and in the interests of satisfying fans expectations appears in his now familiar plastic ball – rolling his way across the front of the crowd. First song ‘Race for the Prize’ explodes in balloons and ticker tape and somewhere amongst all the mayhem the band lift the tale of scientific discovery into a celebratory anthem. The band only play a handful of new songs tonight – preferring the more crowd pleasing choices from their last two albums. The popular decision pays off – particularly during the mass sing along of an acoustic ‘Yoshimi’, an energetic ‘ The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah song’ and triumphant set closer ‘Do you realize’. The rest of the set was cleverly interspersed with a few darker moments from their latest album, ‘Embryonic’ with the song ‘Evil’ exuding an element of malevolence with its icy synths and spatial melodrama. These lucid moments of mood and atmospherics were mainly overshadowed by the moments of day-glo intensity and madcap props – Coyne standing on a gorilla’s shoulders during ‘Silver Trembling hands’, confetti falling from the sky while Coyne bangs a glowing gong during Proggy number ‘Pompeii Am’, and an explosion of green lasers after the introspective ‘Fight Test’.
It was an impressive show, even though at times it felt like the gimmicks were overshadowing the music. But that is exactly how a Flaming Lips concert is dreamt up: a marriage of sensory excitement, madcap fun and philosophical musings, all delivered through a psychedelic filter. It takes a little bit more than a phone to achieve this!
Morrissey just doesn’t want to finish a gig at the moment! Twice in two weeks Morrissey has left the stage at the beginning of one of his own shows…..What are we going to get next…..? A fire breaking out at the back of the stalls? A bomb alert perhaps….?
If you didn’t like Morrissey enough to throw your pint at him, surely paying 40 pounds (plus 4 pounds for the pint) to go to the gig is an expensive way of expressing your dislike for the man.
After Morrissey collapsed at Swindon leisure centre last weekend with breathing difficulties, it seemed thatthe former Smiths man may have to finally slow down and take a pause from his recent touring frenzy. The last few years has seen him unleash countless albums – although many are compilations or reissues – and commit to a constant touring regime. So much so that Morrissey of late had become a bit too ubiquitous – spreading himself thin and turning off all but the partisan fan.
That was until last week when Morrissey collapsed in Swindon – sounds like one of his song titles. Many could see this as the start of a new chapter – reclining into the Hollywood hills and returning to the reclusive lifestyle that served him well for the good part of a decade.
Much to everyone’s surprise he reappeared just 2 days later at The Royal Albert Hall to continue his tour. An incredibly quick recovery for someone who was too unwell to stand up just 2 days before! It can only be one of three things: he has marvellous powers of recuperation, he will battle on for the sake of his fans and honour their loyalty, or he felt his diminishing concert sales and media interest were on the wane and needed a shot in the arm. The fact that he joked about his Swindon collapse at the Albert Hall suggests Morrissey’s self-obssession could have led him to engineer such a madcap stunt. Surely not? No one would crave publicity that much, would they? The poor reviews from the Royal Albert Hall performance offer contrary opinion.
With the decade of the noughties hurtling towards its conclusion it’s now that every music journalist, critic and record exec will look back and trace the musical path of the last ten years, with the return of the art-rock – synth infused – punk ethos of new wave under considerable discussion. Since it returned to our shores it has engulfed every popular music genre with its thirst for groove and its desire to surprise.
The real beauty of this burgeoning scene is its ability to hijack other sounds and perfectly integrate them into its evolving palate. New wave could be tenuously linked to the late 60s with experimental outfits like the Silver Apples – sonic scientists & musical magpies in search of the ultimate spaced-out groove. Although the real birth of the new wave movement is commonly associated with the late 70s to early eighties and beyond, with bands such as Talking Heads, Television and Blondie.
The recent plethora of bands tagged with the new wave sound has featured a diverse range of acts that straddle many popular musical genres – including pop, indie, dance and even folk. Many of the current artists owe much of the recent divergence to James Murphy and his DFA label – who led the way forward with a hybrid sound of punk, electro, rave and funk at the beginning of the decade. Many of the current crop of new wave artists have melded their own particular detached influences into the present zeitgeist of synth-based pop to recreate a constantly evolving montage, which categorizes the core essence of New Wave music.
Following the new wave template for synth based hybridisation is Maps: aka – James Chapman. Performing at Cargo in London on Monday night, with his touring partner August, the sheer scale of influences, sonic exhilaration and underlying groove highlighted the adventurous nature of new wave. Many of the songs were played from his latest album – ‘Turning the mind’ – an album of cathartic symphonies about healing the soul and psyche. There were many influences on display, most notably the melancholic drone of Spiritualized mixed with the euphoric washes of the shoegazing period, set closer ‘Valium in the sunshine‘ converged this sound to dizzying effect. Songs like ‘Let go of the fear‘ and ‘Love will come‘ displayed more of a dance floor vibe – all heavy synths and lifting beats.
Maps showcased the progressive and adaptable charm of new wave – with the ability to reinterpret the synth -based sound to incorporate new influences and tastes in the world of electro, house and shoegaze while charting out a new course of discovery.
The fate of our two most beloved and iconic festivals couldn’t have had a more contrasting week with the fortunes of Reading going up in a puff of smoke!
The last few weeks has seen Reading festival face accusations of poor sound quality, fire-related safety problems and now a fine for breaching the health and safety rules in a separate incident back in 2006, involving power lines, a crane and a couple of electrified workers!
Anyone can see when visiting the Reading site that it is mis-managed and poorly staffed. Having 80,000, mostly adolescents, running around fuelled by alcohol and testostorone inducing hard rock, committing mayhem with no apparent supervision or regulation is like a lighted keg waiting to explode! How has it got to this? We are now in an age of state control CCTV, health and safety overload, bureaucratic – red tape - regulatory officialdom, where everything has to be insured and accountable! Just look at the high security standards strangulating Glastonbury now and one can only beggar belief when examining Reading’s apparent regulatory carte blanche.
Festival Republic has interests firmly in both festivals with an ever increasing stake in Glastonbury. So it is probably a combination of contrasting councils and the personalised atttention to detail that Eavis brings to his own festival. Although surely the wealth of experience that Melvin Benn and Festival Republic possess with festival logistics is about as vast and knowledgable as it is humanly possible – they practically run most of our major events including Latitude and now the Big Chill? It was also Benn who Eavis turned to in his darkest hour of need back in 2001 to help save the festival from over-zealous council safety regulations. Glastonbury was comprimised but ultimately saved from extinction with the new super fence and an increased security presence. At the end of this decade of festival blow out it is now Reading that requires the help of considered and compromised planning! With Glastonbury selling out astonishingly 9 months before the farm gates open it confidently strides into the next decade revitalised, leaving its nearest rival to wait for the smoke to clear.
