Glastonbury Festival 2009 (Part 2)

Michael Eavis has been quoted as saying that he thought this year’s Glastonbury Festival was the best yet, but he would say that, wouldn’t he? Nevertheless, looking at the headline line-up of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and a reformed Blur, you feel he may have a point. Certainly, there was a good feeling about this year’s event and I for one enjoyed it immensely. It has made my task of picking my favourite three acts humongously difficult and I have thought long and hard about it, as well as going to the BBC website to see highlights of bands for the second time just to make sure. In the end, I have just had to go with what I enjoyed on a personal level rather than what was clearly good stuff but didn’t touch me in the same way. So here goes in time honoured reverse order:

In third place is Florence And The Machine who played to a huge crowd on the John Peel Stage. This is a controversial choice for me because a) they didn’t quite meet the hype put around by the media, and b) Florence’s singing was a little wayward at times. But what sealed their place on the podium was the performance. Florence prowled the stage like a wild animal and every feral snarl and leap was a captivating watch. This is what separates live music from MTV video. There was nothing choreographed, nothing thought about for more than a nanosecond just pure instinct – it’s called star quality and Ms Welch has it. Pity the music wasn’t a bit better but the performance was captivating and for that reason alone they get my vote.

In second is Bruce Springsteen. I am not a Boss fan and have never seen him play live but I sat through nearly an hour and a half of his set without knowing most of the songs and still loved it. I dare say that the size of the Glastonbury set up was not too daunting for Bruce – he’s probably played to bigger audiences before but somehow the occasion seemed to get to him and he looked like he was savouring every minute of it. He sang, he danced, he played guitar and risked life and limb in the audience and it was clearly as much fun as his old mate Joe Strummer had told him it would be. A true icon.

And so to the top spot and after much heart searching I’ve given it to Bat For Lashes who played the Other Stage on Sunday night. Never have I enjoyed seeing someone whom I wasn’t quite sure about blossom so assuredly on stage. Natasha Khan and her fabulous backing band (including Charlotte Hatherley on guitars, basses and keys) have elevated the nursery school music lesson to epic heights. All manner of strange percussion instruments were rattled and shook, ancient keyboards were prodded and a staggering variety of drums thumped, yet despite the musical complexity somehow you felt you could join in if only you had a detergent bottle filled with rice.

The playing was highly inventive, especially the drumming and Nat’s vocals were cool and beautiful. Top stuff.

There are so many other bands that have had to be relegated to the ‘Highly Commended’ category that I would have to continue this post into part 3 but mention in dispatches should go to Neil Young, Blur, Ting Tings, Crosby Stills and Nash, Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Lady GaGa, all of whom I enjoyed unreservedly.

Follow that Mr Eavis.

Glastonbury Festival 2009 (Part 1)

The end of June is always a time ripe with anticipation chez Music Obsessive. Down on Eavis farm, the tents are erected, the stages built and the cows fitted with ear-defenders. Elsewhere, travellers are checking their backpacks for wellies, toothpaste, ridiculous comedy costumes and TV camera blocking flags – yes it’s the Glastonbury Festival 2009. After last year when I felt that age was finally catching up with me and apathy was the thief at the door, I was a little apprehensive, but having just watched a marathon 20-odd hours of TV coverage (another sterling job by the BBC) I am glad to say that this year was a cracker. So much so that I am splitting this post into two parts. Part 2, with my now globally famous top three Glasto acts awards to follow…

This year was marked by several aspects that are worthy of comment. First up, this was the year when I was out-manoeuvred by my own 9 year old daughter. Up until this point, I have been carefully educating her in the ways of rock ‘n’ roll whilst steadfastly retaining my God-like status as ultimate rock bore and fountain of all knowledge when it comes to knowing who wrote what and which obscure album it can be found on…but no longer. There we were watching Lily Allen’s rather lacklustre set on Friday afternoon when Lily went into the song ‘Womanizer’. At this point The Daughter affirmed with some conviction that this was a Britney Spears song. No, no, no, said I (with admittedly some smugness), I think you’ll find this on Lily’s album, ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’. But to be on the safe side I sneakily checked later and... I was wrong! It appears on Ms Spears’ latest effort, ‘Circus’. Damn! My cover has been blown and may never recover.

The second aspect concerns guitars. It was noticeable that only the more, ahem, mature acts still play guitar solos and that the younger generation still spurn them like the plague. This seems to date back to the mid-1970s when musical dexterity and especially guitar dexterity suddenly went out of fashion big-time. But now? Why is this grudge still perpetuating itself down the generations like a family curse? ‘Don’t-ee be playing that there geetar solo m’boy lest ye be struck down by the devil’. Anyway, it was great to hear some proper solos. Hat’s off to the likes of Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Francis Rossi and The Boss.

Also, it is interesting to note that all hoary old rockers play guitars which are battered to within an inch of their life. There seems to be a sort of reverse logic here where long-lived and presumably successful musicians spend no money on their tools of trade, preferring the ‘comfy shoes’ instruments that they are used to. Perhaps there is a natural life cycle where all bands start out with cheap instruments, then when they are successful they buy a new one every week, just because they can, only to revert to an old faithful when in their dotage. Someone should do a thesis on it.

Next up – the Music Obsessive Awards, stay tuned!

Another Three Bite the Dust...

It is often said that bad things come in threes and so it has occurred. There I was, sat down to write about the passing of a relatively minor star, in global terms, from my childhood when suddenly, two more slightly better known personages also leave this mortal coil. You know who I mean, but more of them later.

My original post was to be about Duke D’Mond (b. Richard Palmer), singer with one of those rarest of bands, the comedy group. In their heyday in the 1960s, The Barron Knights – for it was they – produced a string of hit singles with the same formula. They would take a theme and then impersonate groups of the day rendering a verse or two of their current hit with words suitably altered to raise a laugh or two. This required several skills; vocal impersonation, visual impersonation and comic lyric writing as well as being a competent band in their own right.

The Searchers, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Bachelors, The Rolling Stones and even The Beatles were parodied mercilessly. The Dukes’ vocal ability and uncannily hilarious impersonation of Mick Jagger will remain with me always. Duke died in April this year aged 66.

The second death was that of Farrah Fawcett and to anyone who remembers Charlie’s Angels (no, not the dreadful film) she will forever be the blonde one in an enjoyable yet highly improbable TV series. To die of cancer is most people’s nightmare and it is so sad to see a once vivacious person struck down and reduced to a shadow of her former self. Certainly for me, she will live on as the iconic 1976 poster, bedecked in red swimsuit, head tilted back to allow her mane of unruly curls to cascade around that million watt smile.

And so to Michael Jackson. In truth, the real Michael Jackson died about twenty years ago, but that doesn’t lessen the shock that such a talent should be cut down at age 50. I’m probably of the wrong generation but Michael was never really part of my growing up and although I own ‘Thriller’ along with most of the planet, I was only really aware of him from the sidelines. Nevertheless, I hope that his work from the 70s and 80s will be his epitaph and not the ‘wacko’ exploits of his later years.

Two thoughts spring to mind on his passing. First, what will happen to his children (although whether they are really ‘his’ remains to be seen – I see no evidence of black genes in their appearance)? I feel dreadfully for them, now at the centre of a global media circus yet again. Second, will Paul McCartney see the remaining rights to the Beatles songs returned to him?

Whatever the outcome, what unites all three of these people is age. None of them reached the biblical 70 and this seems to be happening more and more, yet we are told that life expectancy is increasing. Perhaps it is - but not for the famous.

The Old Grey Whistle Test

For those of you that remember the 1970s, even if it was through a haze of chemical substances, The 'Old Grey Whistle Test' was the must-watch TV music programme of the day. During a period when rock ruled the album chart and pop ruled the singles chart and never the twain met, it featured all those 'album' bands that never got airtime on daytime radio. I remember rushing home from the pub on a Thursday night to watch it every week without fail. It had a dead-pan serious, almost dour, presentation that was widely parodied in later years, but hey, at least someone was taking pop music seriously!

I watched a repeated episode recently because it featured US girl-rockers, Fanny and was surprised how downbeat the presentation was compared to today’s TV-on-speed manic-ness. The episode hailed from the very first series in 1971 when the presenter was journalist Richard Williams. If you thought that subsequent presenter, ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris was laid back, this guy was almost horizontal. The programme featured three ‘live’ spots, a couple of extracts from publicly available films and two or three album tracks fronted by clips from ancient silent or ‘art’ films, plus a rather feeble interview with Elton John and Bernie Taupin at the very beginning of their career. Each segment was introduced simply by Mr Williams who then presumably had a snooze before the next link.

But you know what? I actually found it quite relaxing to watch. There were no extended links to continually tell you what you had just seen, thus wasting prime music minutes and there were no constant stay-tuned-because-we-have-coming-up tirades. Why is TV is obsessed with telling you things over and over again as if to someone with an IQ of 10 or impaired hearing. In this programme, if you missed it the first time – tough! Even better, no one shouted at you and all the information you needed about the song, artist and a bit of background was forthcoming. It’s so simple really, why can’t TV presenters do that now?

By the end of the programme I was yearning for more relaxed TV. No shouting, no constant repetition, no ego-centric hosts. If TV reflects society then it just goes to show what an overloaded, rushed and breathless society we have become. And technology was supposed to improve our lives and give us more leisure to enjoy the good things. Huh!

For the Love of Pop

I know I keep harping on about this, but just why is it that my generation and those closely aligned to it (that is, those born in the post-war period up to say the 1970s) hold popular music so close to their heart? The more I meet people who match the age criteria the more I am convinced that this is the case. Somehow, with a few exceptions, later generations just don’t get it. In an effort to get to the bottom of this conundrum I have compiled a list of three possible reasons. These are personal to my own experience but may hit a common chord - let the debate begin!

1. In the twenty year stretch between 1955 and 1975, pop music could be construed as ‘new’. Those of us growing up during this period were experiencing something that had not occurred before and therefore, more importantly, our parents had no previous experience of it. The music was fresh and inventive, nobody knew where it was going and it belonged to the young. The musical generation gap had been born and it was important.

2. During the same period, there was very little else to divert attention. There were no computers, video games, DVD players, gameboys, theme parks, paintballing or virtual reality games and so on. Apart from radio, films (which meant going to the cinema) and television (limited to 3 channels in the UK) there was not much else to talk about. Also, radio, TV and films were still largely in the grip of the older generation, at least initially. Music wasn’t.

3. But crucially, there was a sense of community. When pop music first became a marketable product in the 1950s and 1960s, the numbers of single and LP releases were small compared to today. By watching a weekly music TV programme, like Top of the Pops, a viewer became conscious of a good percentage of what was available to buy that week. The number of artists active was relatively small and anyone with an interest could be aware of the majority of them. Hence, the entire country was in the same position of knowledge and there was a feeling of ‘community’. These days there is so much music available across countless genres that the populous as a whole has no chance whatsoever of having a common footing. The singles charts barely exist and change wholesale from week to week and even those still interested cannot know about everything that goes on. There is no touchstone that a whole generation can refer to.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that reason 3 holds the key to why a whole generation or two have such a soft spot for music, it was the glue that bound us together and to a large degree still does.

California Dreamin'

The Susan Boyle saga has just underlined how utterly obsessed we all are with image these days. If she was an absolute stunner in her late twenties, no one would’ve been the least surprised that she could sing, but as it is we were - and we’re all guilty. In fact we probably wouldn’t have noticed if she could sing or not as image is everything. If someone looks like a star then they are 90% there.

It wasn’t always like this. Younger readers may be surprised to learn that, back in the primeval days of popular culture, music tended to be made by musicians, no matter what their appearance, rather than image conscious wannabes. I know this is a concept that is difficult to grasp, but just run with it. I watched a documentary about the Mamas and Papas recently which just about proves this contention. I mean, just look at them: a six-foot plus beanpole with a ridiculous fur hat, a hippy boy with a equally ridiculous beard, an overweight badly dressed woman who can’t dance and an impossibly beautiful one who seems hopelessly out of place. Who, these days, would take them on? Yet when they open their mouths a special kind of magic is produced. If anyone tells me that ‘California Dreamin’ is not a classic pop anthem then I will be forced to stab them with a sharp stick.

During this period of pop, no one really cared what people looked like as long as they had talent – which was just as well for some of them. The bug-eyed drummer with Manfred Mann haunts me to this day. But I can’t help thinking that if Girls Aloud were a bunch of ill-dressed plain janes we wouldn’t be giving them a second look, singing talent or no and this is where it has all gone wrong. Most bands that were forged during the 60s and 70s and subsequently became universal megastars were hardly model material. Have a good look at the members of Led Zeppelin, Who, Pink Floyd etc and tell me truthfully they’d make through today’s talent shows on looks alone. Perhaps I’m being a little unkind but compared to say, Take That and the previously mentioned Girls Aloud, they wouldn’t’ve got a look in. But as they were mainly heard and not seen, image didn’t really matter.

What we need is a return to musicianship and a bit less of the image obsessed culture the MTV generation has foisted upon us. Then perhaps music would dredge itself out of the mire it is currently drowning in.