Will Someone Please Turn That Bloody Rubbish Off!
At the risk of coming over as a tad pompous and holier than thou I have to admit that I cannot find it within myself to enjoy the music of any band or artist that I consider to be in any way, shape or form of the asshole persuasion…and hearing the first couple of bars of any said musicians rancid output generally has me careening across the room (regardless of whoever might be in the way) in search of the dump switch.
For example, I accept that Ol’ Blue Eyes might very well have been the greatest crooner of his generation but are there not a whole stack of biographies literally brimming over with tales that suggest he was not exactly the nicest person that ever walked the face of the planet? Indeed there are, and I have to admit therefore that I try to avoid his music whenever possible.
Likewise the Fall, whose Mark E. Smith can apparently “smell a vegetarian a mile off”…and who, in Uncut magazine recently boasted about exterminating some squirrels in his back garden. Needless to say he is very much off the Sensible playlist also–anyway us vegetarians smell just fine than you very much…apart from maybe the occasional time when we might have overdone it on the cabbage…which reminds me of a joke I heard this week:
Old lady in a department store lift, doors open and two rich women walk in. One says to the other “Smell that? Christian Dior! $100/oz.” The other says “Smell that? Chanel No.5! $120/oz.” Old lady farts and says “Smell THAT? Brussel Sprouts! .50/lb.”
But enough of that–where was I? Oh yes…records by people I would rather not have my ears defiled by–and the reason I am harping on about it here is that while out for a soiree with some chums the other day, and just after the waiter had delivered a fancy selection of drinks, my ears detected a sound that was most definitely NOT welcome–Phil Collins. Whichever song of his it was I do not recall but it was followed by another…and another. We were commencing a greatest hits tirade…my heart sank.
I’m sure you’ve all been through that one–out with friends in a nice little bar or whatever and you’re just getting settled in and they start playing your least favorite muso–you know, the one that gives you feelings of nausea and the commencement of a foul mood. I hope you bloody well complain–I always do!
You see it’s all very well suggesting (as has been done many a time over the years) that I just ignore the muzak and get on with the task in hand–i.e., enjoying oneself, but as any musician will tell you–for us that would be an impossibility as we register every key change, analyze every drum fill, etc…even at background music volumes. And there are plenty of drum fills in Phil’s work. Boy does he love his paradiddles…or whatever it is they call them in the drummer fraternity.
But it’s not his skin bashing that pisses me off but more important stuff, like when he described punk as being “worthless”…which is a bit rich coming from a bloke in a band famous for nonsensical lyrics…like this Genesis classic “six saintly shrouded men walk across the lawn slowly…a seventh walks in front, cross held high in hand.” Not particularly relevant to a working class youngster in a council estate–in fact I’d go as far as saying that it was the likes of Genesis and Yes that more or less inspired punk, seeing as we had buggerall to identify with there–the only option being to do it yourself…which was pretty much the battle cry of the class of ‘77!
There is ONE thing I like about Collins though…he did put his money where his mouth is when he quit the UK–like he’d promised to do if the Conservatives got booted out of power in the 1997 election. Britain’s loss is Switzerland’s gain…a nice country where the people dress smartly and the trains run on time. Oh, and the taxes are low too…do you think that might have occurred to Phil and any of the other multi-millionaires who relocated to their mountainous retreat?
Of course nobody likes paying bloody taxes, and our scurrilous politicians seem to think there’s no limit to how much of our cash can be grabbed, whether through the IRS or via the cash registers. But this is not the case in Switzerland that leaves its citizens a far larger chunk of their earnings to spend as they see fit. Could the reason be that the Swiss government spends an absolute pittance each year on defense having long ago declared itself a neutral (i.e., peaceful) country–thus negating the purchase of any of the prohibitively costly military equipment required for warfare these days. Give everybody a Swiss Army Knife and a bicycle and tell them to cause havoc if anyone invades was the general idea–and the payoff is the low tax regime which seems to be rather popular with the celebrity tax exile set.
Contrast this to certain other Western governments who are currently in the process of further increasing the already vast amounts they are squandering on their disastrous follies in the Middle East…no wonder all the Fat Cats are stashing their cash abroad where it can’t be confiscated and turned into F-22 Raptors at $300 million a pop.
I sincerely hope that as the wine waiter uncorks a celebratory bottle of bubbly at the Collins local that Phil’s ears prick up…after someone with a sense of humor changes the piped music…and put on possibly his least favorite. THE DAMNED!
Captain Sensible is the guitarist of rabble rousers the Damned who kick started the UK punk scene of 1977 along with the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with whom they shared many a stage. Highly rated examples of the Damned on vinyl are “Damned Damned Damned” and “Machine Gun Etiquette”, the latter of which combined their rifftastic version of punk rock with a generous dollop of pysychedelia–a common theme in Mr. Sensible’s work. Mr. S also had a successful (if unlikely) solo career in the ’80s and toured the USA as a rap artist (I kid you not…) when his single “Wot” found itself high in the Billboard Dance Charts. He recently formed his own political organisation, The Blah! Party, as a direct result of Tony Blair’s warmongering. Captain is still touring with the Damned who are planning some recording soon–so if there’s any labels out there……
www.captainsensible.com
On April 3rd, the Stone Temple Pilots officially declared that the band will reunite to launch a massive 2008 concert tour with 65 North American dates. This would be the first national tour for Stone Temple Pilots in almost eight years. And just last week, classic rock legends Fleetwood Mac announced that they are planning one “final” tour, slated for early 2009. Interestingly, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and co. may be joined by pop-rocker Sheryl Crow, who has publicly expressed interest in joining the band. These tour announcement shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the recent rash of classic rock heroes that have decided to un-retire one-last-time.
For a while now, music fans of a certain age have been experiencing an eerie deja-vu with the violent resurgence of the reunion tour. Bands that ruled the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s (and still rule most commercial classic rock radio) have somehow been coming back together to profit hugely from playing arenas. Fans with school-age children and large vinyl collections have been paying a lot to see their childhood heroes play the songs they loved (a quarter century ago), be they botoxed, stuffed or post-surgery. From the misty mountain top came Led Zeppelin, blowing audiences in London away. The Police wrapped their fans around their finger yet again and walked away with the top-grossing concert of 2007, earning $131.9 million. That reunion tour was apparently amazing enough to warrant its own Wikipedia entry. Van Halen, another band most people thought they would never get to see, took in $56.7 million. A Peter Gabriel-less Genesis (what?) earned $47.6 million. Few people thought they would ever see Tommy Lee and Nikki Six playing in the same band again–they were a surprise top grosser with $40 million in 2005. The Eagles always make good money when it comes to touring. Everyone knows these stories, and the well publicized successes certainly aren’t going to stop every other old fart with a lengthy back catalog from trying to do the same.
A good question that comes out of this is, what new bands (read: formed this century) will get to enjoy this second life? It’s hard to say, in an age when bands form, toil for a few years in relative anonymity, perhaps get a bit of buzz, and then no one bothers to see them a second time. Maybe today’s bands can’t maintain the same quality, maybe audiences are too fickle, maybe drugs get them to the point where touring is dangerous or visas don’t get granted (sorry, Lilly Allen).
An answer somehow lies in newer bands breaking up, then re-forming under different lineups. Think of it as a Venn diagram of musicians (or maybe just make an entirely new kind of chart). Take Drive Like Jehu, for example. Formed in 1990, they were an amazing band with as much influence as Fugazi but somehow even deeper underground. DLJ members Rick Froberg and John Reis (née Speedo) parted ways, but Speedo went on to form Rocket From the Crypt, which sadly disbanded in 2005. The band Hot Snakes sprang up in between, running in 1999-2005, with Froberg and Reis at the helm (almost a DLJ reunion!). Today, Froberg and Reis have their own bands: Obits (touring the east coast now) and The Night Marchers (fresh off a bunch of dates at SXSW, with a release pending on Reis’ label, Swami).
So while it’s exceedingly rare for a band today to get to the level that The Police originally did–much less the chance to do it again twenty years later for $100 mil–keep an eye on the bands that keep going at an “indie” level. For them, as for the superstars of the past, breaking up and getting back together really just means working hard and taking breaks in between.