november 29th extract

Paul McCartney-No More Lonely Nights-All the Best!   

Now here shuffles up someone who has definitely got more than one good song in them. Actually, it’s hard to think of a bad song, a really truly naff and awful song that he’s written. I even include The Frog Chorus, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Mull of Kintyre within that. These, I guess are some songs of McCartney’s that are roundlyand widely seen as beyond the pale, trite, slushy, sentimental and nonsense. I honestly believe that even these songs are ten times better than most other relevant songwriters could come up with. Granted, they aren’t the best songs he’s ever written but there’s a certain amount of charm in there; it’s difficult not to finding yourself humming along to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or ending up with “Mull of Kintyre” going through your head all day ,even if you simply have just heard a snippet. As for the “Frog Chorus”- isn’t it just possible that there might just be a bit of snobbery involved? In the hands of say, Brian Wilson or some other recognised eccentric, it would be considered as a bit of wackiness and even as a clear sign of undoubted genius. However, because it’s a song that Paul McCartney wrote and just because it is Paul McCartney, universal scorn is heaped upon it and perversely it’s seen as a yet another clear sign of his unredeemable naffness.

 There’s another point that should be made along the way. Paul McCartney made much better music post-Beatles when he wasn’t hampered by the other three moptops. To me it’s clear that Wings were a much better band than the Beatles. If you just look at the Beatles albums; “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” are pretty good, there’s bits on “Sgt Peppers” and “The White Album” that are brilliant (but those really are onlythe tracks that McCartney had a strong hand in) and “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” would have been much more coherent and made much more sense as solo McCartney albums. (The early Beatles albums can now easily be discounted as mere historical curios that won’t stand the test of time).Overall, whenever I find myself listening to any Beatles album I end up fast fowarding or skipping quickly through tracks written by Lennon or Harrison to get to McCartney’s songs.  There’s so much wrong with Lennon and Harrison’songs that I could go on and on for ages, but here’s just two examples. Firstly, imagine what it would be like now if some rich pop star wrote and released a song whinging and moaning about how unfair it is that they have to pay so much tax? And on top of this they coated themselves in some mystic Eastern hippy shtick?  Secondly, and this is just stating the obvious, isn’t there just a tinge of irony about a multi-millionaire making even more money by releasing a song imagining there’s no possessions? Lennon was always held up as the true artist within the Beatles but that’s only due to his association with Yoko Ono. He couldn’t write a tune to save his life and when faced with a blank canvas in his solo career to come up with something fresh he banged out a set of tired rock and roll tunes with Phil Spector. It was McCartney who was not only the real tunesmith but the sole member of the band who was (and still is) prepared to try something wilfully uncommercial (see “Carnival of Light” which the release of was nixed by Harrison and his solo work with Youth as The Fireman). On top of this is the fact that Lennon, Harrison and Starr all professed themselves just to be lads from Liverpool and kept banging on about the city years after they all pissed off somewhere else. McCartney is the only one who maintained his links with his birthplace and actually did something of real, lasting value for his hometown.

Listen to any Wings or Paul McCartney solo records in comparison to anything by the Beatles and if it was a choice of one or the other what would it be?   

november 17th extract

Louis Jordan-I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You

There’s an awful lot to be said for any song that uses the word “cabbage” in the lyrics. If it is then rhymed with the word “savage” then you’re getting close to perfection. If you then combine it with someone like the great Louis Jordan then you’re even closer. What’s needed to top it all off, to put the cherry on the icing on the cake is to have someone such as Louis Armstrong duetting with Jordan. That’s what you’ve got with this song-all those elements combined together to produce something that’s probably up there with one of my favourite songs of all time. It only lasts three minutes but it’s impossible to hear without tapping your toes and wishing you owned a really crisp sharp suit in a coulour that would be impossible to wear in the street without fear of ridicule-bright pink say, or maybe an especially lurid shade of green. Purple would do as just as well. This is as close to rap as any record recorded in 1956 could be. The two Louis’ exchange verse for verse in a sort of call-and-response manner. What works particularly well is the contrast between Armstrong’s well known gravelly tones and Jordan’s undoubtably smoother performance. (Actually, anything would be smooth in contrast to Armstrong on this record-he could make Howling Wolf sound like Andy Williams.) Half way through the Jordan’s first verse Armstrong shouts “Talk about it, Jordan, talk about it” and at the end of the first verse Armstrong is chomping at the bit, “Let me talk about it for a while”. Within the middle of Armstrong’s verse, Jordan literally raps over Armsrong’s line about ”There ain’t no point in running, you old rascal you” with “Run,Satch,run!”. It’s fantastic. This is all before the horns and drums kick in big style and Jordan tells them to, “Blow it out, blow it out!” 

november 10th extract-siouxsie & the banshees

Siouxsie & The Banshees- Mirage

Mmm…Siouxsie & The Banshees. The band that launched a thousand Goths. I suppose that they have a lot to answer for. I really can’t be bothered into looking deep into the history of Goth. Did it really start with the Banshees or was it a home for disillusioned metal fans? I’ll bet that there’s a whole bunch of theories and learned papers about it all; there’s probably even a chance to study it at post-grad level at some second tier university.

Whichever way it is and whatever the extent that goth has entered the mainstream-see the Twilight books and films to catch a glimpse of how all-pervasive it’s become-it’s clear to me that goth is one of those subcultures that will hang around for a long time. There’s been thirty or so years of this nonsense and it shows no signs of abating. What is really worrying is that it keeps switching from generation to generation. Most sensible people who have a brief flirtation with goth; an odd dabble with black nail varnish for example or a tendency to only wear black clothes and big boots seem to grow out of it and after a few years spend their Sundays trooping around Ikea for bookcases named Billy. (I wonder if Ikea do a range of sofas called Eldritch; that would be ironic. Or maybe iconic. If they did they’d only be made out of velvet and come in one colour.) Most people don’t hang around in the goth environment for too long. It’s more of a rite of passage. You see the odd few forty year olds desperately hanging on with their crimped hair and bad tattoos but that’s like anything else-there’s still vestiges of 60- year old mods whizzing around on scooters and even older teddy boys refusing to hang up their crepe-soled shoes. But goth is something else altogether. It seems to have gained a life of it’s own and just refuses to stop.

As sub-cultures go though, I don’t actually mind goth too much. I generally feel a bit paternalistic about it. It is ridiculous-there’s no doubt about that but as it’s generally only a fleeting obsession for kids who move onto something else I don’t think that it does much harm. If anything it does make me smile-goths seem to take it all so seriously. I do have a bit of part to play in the inexorable rise of goth though because I was one of the early contributors to the Banshees coffers when I bought their first album. In my defence though, at the time I couldn’t see what it would all lead to. I just thought I was buying an album that had garnered rave reviews and was seen as “disquieting” and “unsettling”. I’ve just listened to it once again merely as background for this piece and putting aside the crystalline production work by Steve Lillywhite (which goes to show that it is actually possible to polish a turd) it now just sounds daft.      

blind willie mctell

I'm writing about Willie McTell today but sometimes mere words can't do justice...

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.     

   

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...)

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.