Music Blog

The Guardian Music Blog ponders that ‘Great British Institution’, BBC2′s “Later With Jools Holland”.

It’s unashamedly part of what you might call the middle-age-ification of rock music, light entertainment aimed squarely at people who don’t do gigs any more. Thus it doesn’t exist in order to be shocking or challenging or life-changing, hence the weird, fusty atmosphere that emanates from every edition.

Ah. That explains why I don’t like the programme; I am in the minority of my age group that still goes to gigs.

For all the artists are playing live, there’s a distinct lack of spontaneity about the show, which may explain why, if you were to compile a list of legendary moments in music television … not one of them would come from Later. You watch it safe in the knowledge that nothing untoward or unforeseen is going to happen.

The only spontanious moment I can ever remember was when Justin Hawkins of The Darkness frightened Sam Brown by jumping on the Steinway right behind her to play a not-terribly-good guitar solo.

Then they pose this question:

Which leads me to ask: if you had control over the show’s booking policy for one programme, which six acts would you chose to fill the coveted slots?

Two rules:

• You can’t bring anyone back from the dead – so no James Brown, John Lennon or, indeed, jam session featuring Joy Division and Jeremy Beadle.
• Nominate one of your guests to take part in the deathless trial-by-boogie-woogie that is the inevitable live collaboration with Mr Holland.

I considered this one for, well, at least five minutes, and came up with the following list, based on artists I’ve seen live in the past couple of years.

• Porcupine Tree
• Mostly Autumn
• Marillion
• The Reasoning
• Anne Marie Helder
• Opeth

A well-balanced list, I think. Prog, metal and prog-metal . Of course, I’d fall of my chair in shock if anyone on that list ever got on to the show.

I’ll nominate Opeth for the trial by boogie-woogie, on the grounds that they’ll play so loudly you won’t actually be able to hear Jools’ Steinway.

That awful NME-school hack scribbler is at it again.

Is there a sadder site in the world than a teenager stood on the fringes of a moshpit with his mum? First gigs shouldn’t be in the company of trendy uncles. They should involve forged ID, underage drinking and the sheer thrill of knowing you shouldn’t be there.

Oh dear…

You get an email reciept for the pre-order of Mostly Autumn’s new album “Glass Shadows” 49 minutes before getting the email from mostly-autumn.com announcing the pre-order of said album.

Yes, I’m taking a gamble that they’re taking on board my constructive criticism on the official forum.

I know NRT won’t agree with me, but things like this Guardian Music Blog piece convince me that the war against lazy NME-consensus music journalism is still worth fighting.

Summary, hack music critic gets out the big book of punk-era cliches when dismissing Pink Floyd, and gets roundly clobbered by commenters who correctly inform him that he’s talking complete and utter bollocks.

He starts with the mother of all bad clichés

In 1976, purging Britain of progressive rock was so urgently necessary that putting Pink Floyd, Genesis and their public school ilk up against the metaphorical wall and shooting them was the only way forward.

When taken to task over this, he has to resort to the old Cliché-O-Matic again:

… extended guitar solos, inflatable pigs, pretentious concept albums, expensive studios, stadium gigs, albums in gatefold sleeves, dim-witted social commentary, rock songs that last longer than three minutes. All these things are as objectionable now as they were in 1976.

But the fun bit is watching the commenters comprehensively taking his second-hand arguments apart, even those that don’t actually like Pink Floyd. Far more people will read that and come to the conclusion that the author of the article is an ignorant twit than will come away with negative impressions about Pink Floyd. One small victory…

I’ve already listed my best albums of the year. But in a year in which I’ve gone to 31 gigs (more than double last year), they deserve a ‘best of’ as well.

This list is in chronological order because it’s going to be too hard to rank them in order

• Marillion, The Forum, London. I’ve seen Marillion quite a few times in the past three or four years, but this one, one of two filmed for the DVD “Somewhere in London” was the best I’ve seen them for two decades. I think you have to go back to The Garden Party at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1986 for a Marillion gig as memorable. The band were on top form, and the atmosphere absolutely electric. Jaded London audiences my foot.

• Mostly Autumn, The Met Theatre, Bury. I’ve seen this band a grand total of nine times in 2007. There have been several memorable one; that raw emotional one at Cardiff, the triumphal Christmas show at The Astoria, and their blazing set on the Sunday night of the fan convention in Bournemouth. But the best of all was the final night of the spring tour in Bury, a flawless but emotional performance and an incredible atmosphere.

• The Reasoning, The Borderline, London. For me, The Reasoning are the new band of 2007. In January I travelled down to Swansea to see their very first live appearance, a somewhat tentative and hesitant show that nevertheless got better as the evening wore on. By September they’d transformed into quite different band, the perfect combination of energy, emotion and tightness. This is probably the last time we’ll see them playing venues this small in the capital; I’m sure they’re bound for much bigger things in the coming year.

• Fish, Academy 2, Manchester. If Marillion turned in their best live performance for two decades, the same might also be true of their former frontman. Postponed from the original date two weeks earlier because of a bout of vital larnygitis, the rescheduled show saw the big Scotsman in fine voice, belting out a setlist made up from a mix of his new album, his solo back catalogue, and the classic “Clutching at Straws” which stands up remarkably well after 20 years.

• Rush, MEN Arena, Manchester. They may be old, but the Canadian trio demonstrated without any shadow of a doubt they can still cut it live, and have the stamina for a flawless three hour show. This tour they skipped ther 70s prog epics in favour of their more streamlined early 80s work, which have stood the test of time well. And their new album, from which they played a lot, stands up well live.

• Twelfth Night, The Albany, Deptford. Led Zeppellin? For me, the reunion of the year was that of 80s neo-proggers I remember from some of my earliest gigs in Reading in the early 80s. The result was far better than either band or audience had expected; 10 minute prog epics like “We Are Sane” turning into singalongs with the audience louder than the PA.

Two posts on music and genres caught my eye. One is rather snobbish piece by Tristan Jakob-Hoff bemoaning the increasing popularity of “Crossover”.

The word “crossover” is enough to send chills down the spines of even the most resilient of music lovers, implying as it does the debasement of a beloved musical genre for the benefit of a wider population incapable of appreciating it in its pure form. The worst offender against taste and decency is, of course, classical crossover, which takes the most life-enhancing of all art forms and repackages it as a bunch of otiose orchestral arrangements fronted by toothsome poppets selling out their much vaunted “classical training” to cringingly vulgar renditions of My Heart Will Go On and O Sole Mio.

In complete contrast, Brian Micklethwait considers the rigid divide between “classical” and “popular” music to be a historical aberration, caused by the invention of recording technology. During the 20th century, “Popular” music explored the potential of recording and electronics, while “classical” spent it’s time creating recordings of the musical canon of previous centuries. But that’s now coming to an end because, as Mickelthwait says:

The classical recording enterprise is now basically concluded. Oh, there are still occasional gems to be found in among the dross at the battle of the barrel. But, the great works are now recorded, and re-recording them again and again cannot count for as much now as making similar recordings did fifty years ago when classical fans were still hungry to hear their core repertoire. “Classical” musicians must now look to create new repertoire of a sort that can earn them a living, the inverted commas there being because a lot of them won’t really be “classical” musicians anymore and are becoming a lot more like pop musicians, from whom they have much to learn. The music profession will once more be a single (if huge and sprawling) entity, full of varieties of taste and of technique, but without that cavernous gulf that divided it during the twentieth century.

I think he’s right. In the future, we’ll still have both uplifting art and mass-produced dross, they’ll be opposite ends of a continuous spectrum rather than two separate universes. Of course many rock fans have known this all along; I have to wonder if the likes of Tristan Jakob-Hoff is aware of any rock and pop other than the lowest common denominator stuff played on daytime radio. Personally I’ve always thought that future generations will consider Roger Waters to be one of the most significant composers of the 20th century.