Saturday, October 27, 2012

october 24th extract-emitt rhodes



Emitt Rhodes-Side We Seldom Show-Mirror

It’s not really possible or realistic to be writing a book of this nature and not to mention The Beatles. A bit like Elvis, they loom so large over late 20th century popular music that they’re impossible to ignore. Whenever I have a conversation with anyone about music that involves The Beatles, there always seems to be an inherent assumption that one should love or hate The Beatles. It’s a bit like following a football team. What I always find difficult to explain in conversation-and probably in print now-is how important and significant The Beatles were. The moment I mention this; the moment that I say that they were the biggest band ever and that there never will and never can be any group in popular music as influential as The Beatles then a light seems to faintly come on and it’s “ah, so you do love the Beatles then?” type moment. I find this totally exasperating. However much I try to explain that it isn’t really the point,  it always appears as if I’ve burnt my bridges and for all that I may have been raving about the newest album by The Fall or some wildly avant garde Japanese music, I’m really a just a fan of the four loveable moptops.

I do have mixed feeling about The Beatles. They’re just too big; too much of a myth and a monolith. It’s very difficult to work out what the essence of “The Beatles” is. They clearly are so much more than a 1960’s pop band that were commercially successful at the time. It’s not just The Beatles but “The Beatles”. You just can’t get away from them; just when you think that that last word has been said about them then they’re back again, every five years or so, and being cited as the main inspiration behind each successive generation of guitar bands. For a group that broke up forty years ago and didn’t even last for a decade that’s some achievement. They hang over Liverpool like a big cloud and each and every time that music is mentioned in the context of my city, then you know that The Beatles won’t be far behind. As a good example, a perfect example of this that with any television programme abut music in Liverpool and in fact with any documentary about Liverpool, then the stock footage of them playing at the Cavern will be wheeled out yet again.

For a long time the only Beatles albums I had were the Red and the Blue album, but of course I knew all their other songs, just like everybody else does. The Beatles though, didn’t exactly leave behind a massive body of work and their entire output of albums only takes up a small space on my shelves. Every few years of so-usually when they are back in vogue with the hip and fashionable-I pull them off the shelves, dust them down and listen to them all over again, vacillating between jaw-dropping admiration and extreme boredom.
I think that there’s a lot more of writing to be done about The Beatles before the end of the year but for now

  1. Paul McCartney is one of the finest songwriters that Britain has ever produced.
  2. John Lennon was a dickhead.
  3.  Ringo Starr isn’t much better.
  4. George Harrison?
  5. Emitt Rhodes made some of the best songs that Paul McCartney never did.     
   

Thursday, October 25, 2012

headliners for glastonbury 2013..the rolling stones?

there's been alot of speculation recently regarding the rolling stones headlining glastonbury 2013. bearing in mind that I gave them a bit of a battering in this blog some time ago and that I've got a ticket for glastonbury it leaves me in a bit of dilemma if they do play.

do I stick to my guns and see another band while the stones are playing or do I swallow my pride and see what all the fuss is about?

I still think that they are wholly overrated  but the new single is quite good (I'm sort of trying to convince myself at this point...)

Monday, October 8, 2012

glastonbury 2013...ticket..yes!

managed ..more by luck than anything else to get a ticket for glastonbury 2013 yesterday.

this blog therefore will increasingly be skewed towards glastonbury in the next few months I think.

but I'll still try to keep up with the usual mix of over-effusive praise for artists no-one really cares about and try to keep slagging off those ones everyone likes.