I feel my eyes gently closing. It's fine, it's fine... nobody can see me, it's dark after all. Maybe that's why theatres turn the house lights off during the performance... how many plays have I seen. in my life? Over 500? No, probably about 250... How does that compare with albums I've heard... My thoughts start running together into a scrambled mush and I momentarily lose consciousness. Suddenly I jolt back upright... Shit! It's OK, it's OK, nobody saw. Oh look there's Tony Parsons and Miranda Sawyer sitting in front of us. Wonder what they think of it... Concentrate, concentrate, you're reviewing it too, remember.
Christ this is boring. I mean, really - imagine having paid proper West End prices for this. It's awful. How much longer? This has to be the longest hour and 40 minutes I've endured since, well certainly since that terrible thing on Monday at the Soho Theatre. No, actually this is much worse, because the cast is so good - what the hell were they thinking?!
It's tragic isn't it, that people put so much effort and money into artistic endeavours which fail to produce any joy in the audience. I remember at my first A&R job watching my boss who has spent a year putting together Ian McCulloch's debut solo record ranting at its press reception: "Who the fuck do they think they are? What the fuck would they know about making records? You spend a year making a record only for some c**t to spend 20 minutes pulling it apart..."
The balance is wrong isn't it? All that time producing something should at least be rewarded with some respect by those whose job it is to pass judgement. Yet every music critic has stories of events they have reviewed without necessarily being present. It's easily done, though: at around the same time my boss was ranting about the minimum effort the journalists were making on his McCulluch album, I pretended to attend a ULU show by the Flatmates. I couldn't go for some reason and frankly, I didn't think they were any good anyway. At the time they were at being checked out by the majors in the wake of bands like The Wedding Present doing well. I knew I would be asked what they were like during the weekly A&R meeting, so I spoke to another A&R mate about the show. A good move. It turned out that the band had had a fight and split up on stage.
But reading reviews - particularly the snide singles reviews that are trying to emulate the wittier writers - can be a wholeheartedly tawdry affair: poorly paid, disinterested hacks, trying to quickly wade through a pile of stuff that no one will be buying anyway. Indeed, I am reliably informed that some critics don't even bother phoning the PRs for good quality copies of the tracks to review - they do it all off the videos on Youtube.
But I can always forgive negativity about a band or show or restaurant or book as long as there is some wit - humorous or otherwise. Certainly from having been on the other side of the critics for so long, I never minded if say...oooh let's pick a band out of the blue shall we... Sleeper, got unfavourable reviews as long as they were humorous. Actually I tell a lie, I did use to get quite annoyed at times. Once I wrote to Laura Lee Davies at Time Out when she accused Louise Wener of being sexist when she told feminists to "Shut up and shave". Lee Davies was unfamiliar with the quotation from Alan Partridge. My letter got published in Time Out the following week with the inevitable paragraph by Lee Davies underneath, which somehow manged to put her in the right and illustrate how very wrong I was. Whoever was right though, Louise was funniest - so she wins in my book.
Humour does seem to be the underlying currency in Guardian Guide. And I'm not just saying this because I've had a couple of thing in there recently (one on My Bloody Valentine and one on a well known brand of flu drug). Having said that, I wrote something on the Guardian blog last week and boy, does humour sometimes get lost there. The piece I wrote was pegged on the story about Bob Dylan' stinky portaloo and was about when pop stars seemingly go off-message. I got absolutely Tourretted by a Dylanologist: How dare I? Didn't I know that Dylan never had a message? Had I not seen the films? Read the books? And who the hell did I think I was?
Ah well. You can't please all the people ... And I did in fact have my fair share of people-pleasing over the weekend. It was Robyn's 45th birthday and I organised a surprise birthday party for her - something I have never done before. It was a brief glimpse of what life must have been like for Bob Geldof and I'm still a bit shell shocked. Also I'm amazed that it managed to remain a surprise after the catalogue of gaffs in the run up e.g. someone texting their husband about it but texting Robyn by mistake - a text I had to intercept and delete at 7am while Robyn was in the shower, or another friend who said to her: "see you on Saturday, then!" "Oh, are we seeing you then?" she asked "Ooh er, no... no, actually I'm thinking of someone else - silly me!"
Anyway it worked. As did the idea of everyone bringing a 7" single instead of a birthday card. Again this was astonishing, considering the amount of confusion the sentence, "bring a 45 rpm single" caused. "Can we bring CDs?" was one request. "Can't I give her a record token so she can buy what she wants?" another. I don't know, is the link between between the age 45 and 45 rpm that hard? It's probably me, living in the bubble of pop music these things are second nature to me. Everyone else has grown up and got proper lives.
I expected a slew of Paul Young's Wherever I Lay My Hats but instead Robyn was given some classics, all of them personalised by hand-written dedications on the sleeves and all of which we played on the turntable I set up on the stage. Here are the 10 most popular 45s played- some of them even had kids dancing:
1 Low Rider by War
2 I Want You Back by Jackson 5 (bit scratched this one)
3 King of The Road by Roger Miller (very kid-friendly apart from the line about cigarettes)
4 Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Statton
5 What Difference Does It Make by the Smiths (not in the Terrence Stamp sleeve sadly, but good effort for bringing this one)
6 Nowhere to Run by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
7 Leader of the Park by the Shangri-Las
8 Georgy Girl by The Seekers
9 White Horses by Jackie
10 Cars by Gary Numan
I'm glad the party went so well because it was on Robyn's actual birthday that we went to the boring play I describe above. It was Madame De Sade, the latest of the Donmar's West End productions, starring Judi Dench, Francis Barber and Rosamund Pike. With a cast like that and the Marquis De Sade as a topic what could possibly go wrong? We we both really excited - not least to get out of the house together sans enfants and span some time as a couple. But what a stinker. All that effort, all those hours' rehearsal... And then some badly paid bloke - on his wife's birthday no less! - puts the boot in. Bloody critics.
Showing posts with label being a critic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label being a critic. Show all posts
Monday, 23 March 2009
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
"I want to be rich and I want lots of money ..."
Tell you what. An admission - for which I don't stand to gain anything other than ridicule - I haven't heard the current albums by:
The Killers
Razorlight
Kaiser Chiefs
Franz Ferdinand
Lilly Allen
Lady Gaga
White Lies
Anthony & The Johnsons
And this week's number one - the new Bruce Springsteen album
Now, maybe you haven't either, and perhaps you'd consider the quest to hear all new releases in the rock or indie genre a bit on the sad or obsessive side. But I take pride in having my own opinion about current releases, so I don't go around repeating accepted truths about the new Snow Patrol album being a bit dull. For now I'm going to estimate my opinion of these albums (rather like the Tax Office asks you, if you're self-employed, how much you expect to earn), I'll let you know at the end.
Normally I do try to buy new albums - as I documented a couple of weeks ago, I think I bought more music last year than ever before. But also, where I can, I take advantage of knowing some nice people in record companies who will occasionally slip me a promo copy. This year, however, I seem to have lost my mojo. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Blagger's Shuffle - that distinctive linger by the record company's stock cupboard in the hope of someone from the press office finding the key- or these days the digital version thereof, involving an email starting with the line - "Hi ____, how are things?" before brutally cutting to the chase: "I hear the new album from ______ is really good - do you have a spare copy you could send me?"
I'm generally quite good at this, largely because I slip the odd request into what I hope is a much deeper and more profound relationship with my friends with record company jobs. But I have to admit that in the distant past when I worked at Warners and RCA, I was guilty of having relationships with people at other record companies based solely on their ability to furnish me with new releases. This was fine as I represented exactly the same thing to them. Now I have nothing to offer in return other than my scintillating company.
Now I write about music in other places apart from here, I have started getting the occasional thing in the post, which is lovely - I made a point of phoning Genesis' PR when I did that Phil Collins piece on Radio 4 and they sent me the fantastic box set. Hooray for them.
But as that above list testifies to, I've just not had the pluck to ask people for these releases. And why haven't I bought them? OK, OK, OK - I admit, I don't like buying albums I suspect I won't like on the off chance. I know I'll probably like the Lady Gaga, Lilly Allen and Franz albums so they are on my list, but I can't bring myself to buy Razorlight's latest despite wanting to hear it. Stupid? Or prudent?
And before you start accusing me of Limewire ignorance or that I could have checked out a number of these albums on Myspace streamed exclusives - can I point out that I am a father of two? I can't find the web hours to devote to trawling for online exclusives. OK, so I have just started using Spotify which, along with the Onion's updates on Twitter, is my new favourite thing.
And that's probably why I have single-handedly failed to hear these all-important new albums - like the rest of us, I'm spending all of my waking hours trying to make a living.
But here's a thought about time and money: on Monday - the day it snowed in Britain more than it's snowed for 18 years - an interesting report was published. The report concluded that our 'aggressive pursuit of personal success' is apparently now the greatest threat to British children. Now, I haven't read the report and by all accounts a lot of it is idealistic and/or stating the bleedin' obvious, but isn't it ironic that on the same day as it came out, all the schools closed due to the weather. And all those otherwise selfish parents were forced to spend time with their and children making snowmen, tobogganing and having fun. Did you notice how everyone just dropped their important things - largely courtesy of the UK transport network throwing a wobbly and refusing to take them to work - and for a day, and in some cases two days, the rat race was forgotten and snowball fighting was aggressively pursued. Incidentally did you know that it was Groundhog Day on Monday too?
Actually, if I'm totally honest, on Monday, my daughter went and made snowmen with her friends over the road and I stayed at home and aggressively pursued some people to give me writing jobs. Frankly, my time would have been better spent making snowmen with Maddy. Or having another bash at getting my hands on the Lady Gaga album.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh yes, here's my Musebin- style one line reviews of what I expect to think of those albums:
The Killers - a pleasure while its on only to quickly slip into the background, never to be played again. Incidentally, remember glam rock bands in the 70s like The Sweet who had one very androgynous member who looked good in tinfoil whilst the three other fellas posed like reluctant builders in drag? Hmm ...
Razorlight - I honestly really liked the debut album by this lot but the memory of the cheap-suited businessman sitting opposite me on a train to Leeds listening to the last Razorlight album on his laptop, haunts me to this day.
Kaiser Chiefs - I liked approximately 5 seconds of last year's single Never Miss A Beat- the bit about wanting crisps for tea.
Franz Ferdinand - this will be another FF album and I can't wait. Actually, I can wait can't I? And I still am.
Lilly Allen - the single is magnetic. Almost as good as Foundations by Kate Nash. One of those records that you love regardless of who it is but because it's her, it's even better. A pop star to be cherished. If only her dad her suggested signing her when I ran his label.
Lady Gaga - I suspect I will enjoy this like the aforementioned Killers album.
White Lies - the bits I have enjoyed are ones reminiscent of other bands. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or just a sign that I am old?
Anthony & The Johnsons - Like music fans everywhere I will be concentrating hard on liking this whilst secretly hankering after a few more tunes.
The new Bruce Springsteen album - the expression 'a safe pair of hands' springs to mind.
The Killers
Razorlight
Kaiser Chiefs
Franz Ferdinand
Lilly Allen
Lady Gaga
White Lies
Anthony & The Johnsons
And this week's number one - the new Bruce Springsteen album
Now, maybe you haven't either, and perhaps you'd consider the quest to hear all new releases in the rock or indie genre a bit on the sad or obsessive side. But I take pride in having my own opinion about current releases, so I don't go around repeating accepted truths about the new Snow Patrol album being a bit dull. For now I'm going to estimate my opinion of these albums (rather like the Tax Office asks you, if you're self-employed, how much you expect to earn), I'll let you know at the end.
Normally I do try to buy new albums - as I documented a couple of weeks ago, I think I bought more music last year than ever before. But also, where I can, I take advantage of knowing some nice people in record companies who will occasionally slip me a promo copy. This year, however, I seem to have lost my mojo. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Blagger's Shuffle - that distinctive linger by the record company's stock cupboard in the hope of someone from the press office finding the key- or these days the digital version thereof, involving an email starting with the line - "Hi ____, how are things?" before brutally cutting to the chase: "I hear the new album from ______ is really good - do you have a spare copy you could send me?"
I'm generally quite good at this, largely because I slip the odd request into what I hope is a much deeper and more profound relationship with my friends with record company jobs. But I have to admit that in the distant past when I worked at Warners and RCA, I was guilty of having relationships with people at other record companies based solely on their ability to furnish me with new releases. This was fine as I represented exactly the same thing to them. Now I have nothing to offer in return other than my scintillating company.
Now I write about music in other places apart from here, I have started getting the occasional thing in the post, which is lovely - I made a point of phoning Genesis' PR when I did that Phil Collins piece on Radio 4 and they sent me the fantastic box set. Hooray for them.
But as that above list testifies to, I've just not had the pluck to ask people for these releases. And why haven't I bought them? OK, OK, OK - I admit, I don't like buying albums I suspect I won't like on the off chance. I know I'll probably like the Lady Gaga, Lilly Allen and Franz albums so they are on my list, but I can't bring myself to buy Razorlight's latest despite wanting to hear it. Stupid? Or prudent?
And before you start accusing me of Limewire ignorance or that I could have checked out a number of these albums on Myspace streamed exclusives - can I point out that I am a father of two? I can't find the web hours to devote to trawling for online exclusives. OK, so I have just started using Spotify which, along with the Onion's updates on Twitter, is my new favourite thing.
And that's probably why I have single-handedly failed to hear these all-important new albums - like the rest of us, I'm spending all of my waking hours trying to make a living.
But here's a thought about time and money: on Monday - the day it snowed in Britain more than it's snowed for 18 years - an interesting report was published. The report concluded that our 'aggressive pursuit of personal success' is apparently now the greatest threat to British children. Now, I haven't read the report and by all accounts a lot of it is idealistic and/or stating the bleedin' obvious, but isn't it ironic that on the same day as it came out, all the schools closed due to the weather. And all those otherwise selfish parents were forced to spend time with their and children making snowmen, tobogganing and having fun. Did you notice how everyone just dropped their important things - largely courtesy of the UK transport network throwing a wobbly and refusing to take them to work - and for a day, and in some cases two days, the rat race was forgotten and snowball fighting was aggressively pursued. Incidentally did you know that it was Groundhog Day on Monday too?
Actually, if I'm totally honest, on Monday, my daughter went and made snowmen with her friends over the road and I stayed at home and aggressively pursued some people to give me writing jobs. Frankly, my time would have been better spent making snowmen with Maddy. Or having another bash at getting my hands on the Lady Gaga album.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh yes, here's my Musebin- style one line reviews of what I expect to think of those albums:
The Killers - a pleasure while its on only to quickly slip into the background, never to be played again. Incidentally, remember glam rock bands in the 70s like The Sweet who had one very androgynous member who looked good in tinfoil whilst the three other fellas posed like reluctant builders in drag? Hmm ...
Razorlight - I honestly really liked the debut album by this lot but the memory of the cheap-suited businessman sitting opposite me on a train to Leeds listening to the last Razorlight album on his laptop, haunts me to this day.
Kaiser Chiefs - I liked approximately 5 seconds of last year's single Never Miss A Beat- the bit about wanting crisps for tea.
Franz Ferdinand - this will be another FF album and I can't wait. Actually, I can wait can't I? And I still am.
Lilly Allen - the single is magnetic. Almost as good as Foundations by Kate Nash. One of those records that you love regardless of who it is but because it's her, it's even better. A pop star to be cherished. If only her dad her suggested signing her when I ran his label.
Lady Gaga - I suspect I will enjoy this like the aforementioned Killers album.
White Lies - the bits I have enjoyed are ones reminiscent of other bands. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or just a sign that I am old?
Anthony & The Johnsons - Like music fans everywhere I will be concentrating hard on liking this whilst secretly hankering after a few more tunes.
The new Bruce Springsteen album - the expression 'a safe pair of hands' springs to mind.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
"You say you want a resolution..."
We're seven miles up in the air somewhere over the Atlantic when Maddy asks me, "Daddy, what's 'meaning'?"
I've just read her the synopsis of the film Wall-E from the tiny screen in front of us and the final line says words to the effect of: '... and at last the lonely robot finds some meaning in life.' As questions go from five-year olds go - or indeed from anyone at all, "What is meaning?" is the big one. And to get it at 35 thousand feet up in the air on New Year's Day makes it seem all the more poignant. How do I answer a question like that?
We're coming back from a ten day trip to the US to visit Robyn's folks in Virginia. Yes, for those of you wondering what had happened to me since the last blog entry three weeks ago, that's where I've been. And now the holiday and indeed the Holidays are over. Interesting that the American catch-all term for Christmas is being increasingly used over here - I got a number of heartfelt corporate festive greeting texts from friends on my return, none of them mentioning the word Christmas. No doubt if any clients of a non-Christian faith received a greeting containing the word Christ during their hard-won Holiday, they would immediately declare a business fatwa on the offending well-wisher.
Yes, Holiday is over and I didn't even get the chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year but I do hope you all had a good one and didn't spend the time between crackers and Auld Lang Syne worrying about what how terrible 2009 is going to be financially, ecologically and of course for the record business. I spent the time in Virginia in the middle of what they call 'The Boondocks' (trans. 'the back and beyond') not once looking at the Internet, the news on TV, a newspaper or even turning on my mobile phone. Instead I cooked, helped my daughters invent games with the dolls and dug deep into the iPod shuffle for Christmas greats (Hark The Herald Angels Swing by The World's Greatest Jazzband Of Yank Lawson & Bob Haggart got a lot of love) as well as returning to my favourite CDs of the year and of course plenty of Maddy's - incidentally, if you have kids under 10 and haven't heard the Carrie and David's Pop Shop album yet you're in for a treat - it keeps your children off the streets, gives an ex member of Linx some well-deserved earnings and you get the fun of spotting the musical references as they plunder every genre to bring pop alive for kids. More fun than listening to Bon Iver, I Grant you.
I must stop going on about Bon Iver, I'm sure he's a very talented and likable guy. I actually did try and have another go at the album over Christmas. I figured I was in the middle of a forest, in a log cabin-style house, it was frosty outside with the nearest town, Scottsville, a twenty-minute drive away; aside from the fact that I wasn't on my own with only my beard for company, surely the atmosphere was identical to the one allegedly endured by broken hearted Justin Vernon when he made For Emma? But no, the thing passed me by again. I love simple voice and guitar music, from Iron and Wine and Elliot Smith to Jake Thackray and Bert Jansch but, for me, there is something missing about For Emma, Ever Ago. I just don't like the fella's singing, it sounds like he's putting on mannerisms, as if his voice isn't his own. And it's double tracked a lot too (e.g on The Wolves) which is always suspicious. And of course, my hackles are always raised when something is universally praised by music critics - every one of them falling for the dubious mythology of the tortured artist doing it for love and making it all my himself in a shed. I'm sure he did, but that doesn't automatically make it 'haunting' and 'beautiful'. I'll give it this though, I do quite like the final track Re: Stacks. But what an annoying indie song-title...
Consensus terrorism as Douglas Coupland calls it, is always rife in the press. I've mentioned it here before, it's when a couple of leading critics set an opinion , which is then followed by all the lesser journalists out of laziness or fear of getting it wrong, then the public follows suit and before you know it, people are either afraid to admit to liking Coldplay or fearful of saying they don't think Pet Sounds is the greatest album ever made. Given that I had time to reflect over things during my holiday in Les Boondocks, I concluded that this is one of the things that obsessess me and is perhaps the underlying motivation in everything I write.
I was angry about consensus terrorism as an A&R man, finding myself quite often very against whatever artists who were getting other A&R folk in a lather, and looking for inspiration elsewhere. Often I was wrong, and whoever it was I didn't care for (e.g. recently The Klaxons, or years ago, Suede) became huge and I actually ended up quite liking their stuff but just as often I was right (Where are The Twang now? And I'll be surprised if we'll hear much more of the Courteeners in 2009).
But why should I care about what 15-year olds listen to? I feel like I'm already father to a teenager as Maddy now wanders round the house singing Fabulous like Sharpay in High School Musical 2. When I started this blog a year ago (yes, amazingly it's been 12 months! I would hold some sort of event for its birthday, invite all of you and bathe in glory if I was the sort of person I dislike . Incidentally, I have to admit the popularity of A&Rmchair is one of the most pleasing things about 2008 for me and, as the risk of sounding like Halle Berry at the Oscars thank you all for reading it in such numbers with such regularity.
But I am digressing again. What I was about to say was that a year ago one of the first entries here was about me getting stopped by a beautiful girl who was collecting for The Samaritans outside Farringdon station. After having done the usual bloke thing of assuming that she had collared me because she found my rather splendid looks beguiling, was told that I reminded her of one of her dad's mates. Since then, I have rebuilt my confidence back to being convinced of my adorability. I've done this by means of growing a beard (see, me and that Bon Iver, we've got more in common than you might think).
The beard happened over the summer by accident really; we were on holiday and I just didn't shave for a week. Then, on being complemented by my wife, I kept growing it until, in her words, it 'got a bit Mick Fleetwood' whereupon I trimmed it rather than the usual post-holiday clean shave. Now six months on and I have embraced being a beardy. I never thought I'd be one - my dad has always had a beard and I whilst I always thought it looked good on him, I was on the side of Roald Dahl who disliked them so much he included a whole chapter on them in The Twits. I wear the beard now with pride. But with it come all sorts of new responsibilities - like the wiping away of toothpaste after brushing, or the disentangling of toasty crumbs. Also, I now have to think about the way I dress because it makes me look grown up. I've been to the Old Blue Last many times and stood at the bar next to lots of bearded-up Hoxtonites, but I am aware that if I went now, I could not pass for one of the Mystery Jets unless I was the dad. The beard is not some facial equivalent of a leather jacket and girlfriend 20 years my junior.
This notion crystallised while we were in America. We were doing a shop for kids' clothes at a store called Old Navy which is like a kind of low rent Gap. I wandered off to have a look at the Men's section and found a whole load of T-shirts for $7 each (American T-shirts are always a bargain, it's almost as if they are subsidised along with the petrol). These shirts were individually designed, some had messages, others hand drawn Mo-Wax-style creatures or line drawings, here's one I really liked and tried on. It was then that it hit me: I realised that while I am still fortunate enough to have a waist and reasonably broad shoulders, I just can't pull off the logo T-shirt anymore with the beard (PB). In fact, I'm now not sure if I could even pre-beard (BB) It was a big revelation, to be honest, as I am a huge fan of graphic design on T-shirts, but right there and then I made the decision that I was no longer going to wear shirts like that anymore. I may not be mutton, but I'm damn sure not going to sink into some ignoble middle youth. So there's a New Year's resolution - along with all the others that I'm not going to share here. If you do see me out in a T-shirt, it won't have a graphic design on it. If it does, I hereby give you the right to say, "Oi, grandad! Get yourself something nice from Marks & Spencers instead!"
So what about meaning in life? What did I say to Maddy, who wanted to know about meaning all those feet up in the air? I said this: meaning is your friends, it's knowing that you're not alone - just like Wall-E in the film, which we watched about five minutes of before Maddy got too scared. I told her we were finally going to see her friend Katie who lives next door to us in Walthamstow. Katie, whose name Maddy had mentioned almost every day of the trip, normally in the sentence: "I'm bored, I want to go home, I want to see Katie!" It's about me going out with for the annual Scared Hitless Christmas lunch with two of my oldest mates both of whom are now hugely successful in the music business and being able to talk and laugh as equals for three hours and not notice the time pass or indeed the time that has passed between us - we realised that we'd been having these Christmas lunches for 14 years. So if meaning in life equals friendship, there's another resolution for all of us in 2009: think less about your office desk, your inbox and making money, and see more of your friends. Happy new year!
I've just read her the synopsis of the film Wall-E from the tiny screen in front of us and the final line says words to the effect of: '... and at last the lonely robot finds some meaning in life.' As questions go from five-year olds go - or indeed from anyone at all, "What is meaning?" is the big one. And to get it at 35 thousand feet up in the air on New Year's Day makes it seem all the more poignant. How do I answer a question like that?
We're coming back from a ten day trip to the US to visit Robyn's folks in Virginia. Yes, for those of you wondering what had happened to me since the last blog entry three weeks ago, that's where I've been. And now the holiday and indeed the Holidays are over. Interesting that the American catch-all term for Christmas is being increasingly used over here - I got a number of heartfelt corporate festive greeting texts from friends on my return, none of them mentioning the word Christmas. No doubt if any clients of a non-Christian faith received a greeting containing the word Christ during their hard-won Holiday, they would immediately declare a business fatwa on the offending well-wisher.
Yes, Holiday is over and I didn't even get the chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year but I do hope you all had a good one and didn't spend the time between crackers and Auld Lang Syne worrying about what how terrible 2009 is going to be financially, ecologically and of course for the record business. I spent the time in Virginia in the middle of what they call 'The Boondocks' (trans. 'the back and beyond') not once looking at the Internet, the news on TV, a newspaper or even turning on my mobile phone. Instead I cooked, helped my daughters invent games with the dolls and dug deep into the iPod shuffle for Christmas greats (Hark The Herald Angels Swing by The World's Greatest Jazzband Of Yank Lawson & Bob Haggart got a lot of love) as well as returning to my favourite CDs of the year and of course plenty of Maddy's - incidentally, if you have kids under 10 and haven't heard the Carrie and David's Pop Shop album yet you're in for a treat - it keeps your children off the streets, gives an ex member of Linx some well-deserved earnings and you get the fun of spotting the musical references as they plunder every genre to bring pop alive for kids. More fun than listening to Bon Iver, I Grant you.
I must stop going on about Bon Iver, I'm sure he's a very talented and likable guy. I actually did try and have another go at the album over Christmas. I figured I was in the middle of a forest, in a log cabin-style house, it was frosty outside with the nearest town, Scottsville, a twenty-minute drive away; aside from the fact that I wasn't on my own with only my beard for company, surely the atmosphere was identical to the one allegedly endured by broken hearted Justin Vernon when he made For Emma? But no, the thing passed me by again. I love simple voice and guitar music, from Iron and Wine and Elliot Smith to Jake Thackray and Bert Jansch but, for me, there is something missing about For Emma, Ever Ago. I just don't like the fella's singing, it sounds like he's putting on mannerisms, as if his voice isn't his own. And it's double tracked a lot too (e.g on The Wolves) which is always suspicious. And of course, my hackles are always raised when something is universally praised by music critics - every one of them falling for the dubious mythology of the tortured artist doing it for love and making it all my himself in a shed. I'm sure he did, but that doesn't automatically make it 'haunting' and 'beautiful'. I'll give it this though, I do quite like the final track Re: Stacks. But what an annoying indie song-title...
Consensus terrorism as Douglas Coupland calls it, is always rife in the press. I've mentioned it here before, it's when a couple of leading critics set an opinion , which is then followed by all the lesser journalists out of laziness or fear of getting it wrong, then the public follows suit and before you know it, people are either afraid to admit to liking Coldplay or fearful of saying they don't think Pet Sounds is the greatest album ever made. Given that I had time to reflect over things during my holiday in Les Boondocks, I concluded that this is one of the things that obsessess me and is perhaps the underlying motivation in everything I write.
I was angry about consensus terrorism as an A&R man, finding myself quite often very against whatever artists who were getting other A&R folk in a lather, and looking for inspiration elsewhere. Often I was wrong, and whoever it was I didn't care for (e.g. recently The Klaxons, or years ago, Suede) became huge and I actually ended up quite liking their stuff but just as often I was right (Where are The Twang now? And I'll be surprised if we'll hear much more of the Courteeners in 2009).
But why should I care about what 15-year olds listen to? I feel like I'm already father to a teenager as Maddy now wanders round the house singing Fabulous like Sharpay in High School Musical 2. When I started this blog a year ago (yes, amazingly it's been 12 months! I would hold some sort of event for its birthday, invite all of you and bathe in glory if I was the sort of person I dislike . Incidentally, I have to admit the popularity of A&Rmchair is one of the most pleasing things about 2008 for me and, as the risk of sounding like Halle Berry at the Oscars thank you all for reading it in such numbers with such regularity.
But I am digressing again. What I was about to say was that a year ago one of the first entries here was about me getting stopped by a beautiful girl who was collecting for The Samaritans outside Farringdon station. After having done the usual bloke thing of assuming that she had collared me because she found my rather splendid looks beguiling, was told that I reminded her of one of her dad's mates. Since then, I have rebuilt my confidence back to being convinced of my adorability. I've done this by means of growing a beard (see, me and that Bon Iver, we've got more in common than you might think).
The beard happened over the summer by accident really; we were on holiday and I just didn't shave for a week. Then, on being complemented by my wife, I kept growing it until, in her words, it 'got a bit Mick Fleetwood' whereupon I trimmed it rather than the usual post-holiday clean shave. Now six months on and I have embraced being a beardy. I never thought I'd be one - my dad has always had a beard and I whilst I always thought it looked good on him, I was on the side of Roald Dahl who disliked them so much he included a whole chapter on them in The Twits. I wear the beard now with pride. But with it come all sorts of new responsibilities - like the wiping away of toothpaste after brushing, or the disentangling of toasty crumbs. Also, I now have to think about the way I dress because it makes me look grown up. I've been to the Old Blue Last many times and stood at the bar next to lots of bearded-up Hoxtonites, but I am aware that if I went now, I could not pass for one of the Mystery Jets unless I was the dad. The beard is not some facial equivalent of a leather jacket and girlfriend 20 years my junior.
This notion crystallised while we were in America. We were doing a shop for kids' clothes at a store called Old Navy which is like a kind of low rent Gap. I wandered off to have a look at the Men's section and found a whole load of T-shirts for $7 each (American T-shirts are always a bargain, it's almost as if they are subsidised along with the petrol). These shirts were individually designed, some had messages, others hand drawn Mo-Wax-style creatures or line drawings, here's one I really liked and tried on. It was then that it hit me: I realised that while I am still fortunate enough to have a waist and reasonably broad shoulders, I just can't pull off the logo T-shirt anymore with the beard (PB). In fact, I'm now not sure if I could even pre-beard (BB) It was a big revelation, to be honest, as I am a huge fan of graphic design on T-shirts, but right there and then I made the decision that I was no longer going to wear shirts like that anymore. I may not be mutton, but I'm damn sure not going to sink into some ignoble middle youth. So there's a New Year's resolution - along with all the others that I'm not going to share here. If you do see me out in a T-shirt, it won't have a graphic design on it. If it does, I hereby give you the right to say, "Oi, grandad! Get yourself something nice from Marks & Spencers instead!"
So what about meaning in life? What did I say to Maddy, who wanted to know about meaning all those feet up in the air? I said this: meaning is your friends, it's knowing that you're not alone - just like Wall-E in the film, which we watched about five minutes of before Maddy got too scared. I told her we were finally going to see her friend Katie who lives next door to us in Walthamstow. Katie, whose name Maddy had mentioned almost every day of the trip, normally in the sentence: "I'm bored, I want to go home, I want to see Katie!" It's about me going out with for the annual Scared Hitless Christmas lunch with two of my oldest mates both of whom are now hugely successful in the music business and being able to talk and laugh as equals for three hours and not notice the time pass or indeed the time that has passed between us - we realised that we'd been having these Christmas lunches for 14 years. So if meaning in life equals friendship, there's another resolution for all of us in 2009: think less about your office desk, your inbox and making money, and see more of your friends. Happy new year!
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Good taste: it's all a matter of taste
Quick! While it's there, have a listen to me saying how great Phil Collins is on national radio. That's right, last Friday, I was back on Radio 4, gently closing the door marked Credibility on my musical taste via the medium of Front Row.
Are you still reading this? I suspect that some of you may be thinking - where is this going? What is he going to reveal to us next? I mean, I know he signed Sleeper but Jesus, does he really need to show us his dirty sock draw?
A friend of mine who is a bit older than me was at Art School in the 70s when punk arrived. He told me recently what it was like there when the Clash and the Sex Pistols arrived - most of his mates were listening to Gong, Genesis and Yes and punk was rejected by most of them because they 'couldn't play their instruments'. There was a status that these groups had which you just couldn't knock. Recently he had a argument with a famous dance crossover artist about the unknockable status of the Clash - this musician was suggesting that you simply couldn't say anything negative about the band - they were the benchmark. But, said my friend, all you are doing is is what my old mates at art school did about Gong - you are adding to a consensus of what constitutes good taste - which is based on nothing more than random opinion.
I went to the Royal Opera House this week to review a production of Hansel and Gretel. It was the first time I'd been to the ROH despite the fact that I've lived in London all my life so just going inside the building was a treat - brimming with posh old ladies eating Green & Blacks. The review I wrote was a fairly accurate description of what I felt about the show (a good night out) but if I'd had been a little more courageous I would have said- you know what, it really only got going in Act 111; I was pretty bored by Acts 1 and 11 - I mean, where was the drama? Where was the jeopardy? And frankly where was the trail of breadcrumbs? And I'm sure a lot of the punters there were thinking the same thing but the fact that the seats are the price of a weekly supermarket trip meant that they were clinging on to every morsel of proffered entertainment as if it was their last, laughing at things that had they been on the telly, wouldn't have raised a smile. And one last thing - you know the gingerbread cottage that the children eat in the story? Well in this production, it was a dolls house- two mouthfulls of digestive biscuit and it had pretty much gone; like Stone Henge in Spinal Tap. Sort it out! But there you go, I'm in print (next week) saying it's a good night out. Coward.
There you are - that's how eclectic my taste is opera, Slipknot ... Keane. Next week I'm reviewing two ballet productions. It's all entertainment, catering for different tastes, maybe, but all of it is of merit and shouldn't be dismissed as worthless just because someone with alleged 'Good Taste' has set the consensus that it's no good. My mum is swayed by this sort of thing a lot: "Oh, it's not been very well reviewed, has it..." she'll say about a film or a play and I'll say, "Oh really, what did they say about it?"
And she'll answer, "Well, I don't really remember but they didn't like it."
"Just one review?"
"Yes, it was in the... Evening Standard, I think." (or whatever paper she happens to have seen that week)
"Oh right - who wrote it?"
"Oh I don't know. Anyway, they didn't like it."
And that's that. End of story. All that time and effort by the creators and just because someone got in print and didn't like it, thousands of people like my mum spread the vague word that it's not worth bothering with the film/book/play/album. My old head of A&R used to get so wound up by bad reviews - comparing the amount of energy, care, and creativity and of course cash that goes into making and releasing an album, with the solitary figure in a room, getting paid 30p a word for writing, "It's a bit rubbish."
So, when I say I like Genesis, The Feeling and Keane, I'm not trying to be contentious. I'm just saying, they may not be for you, but they are not entirely without merit. And liking them shouldn't make you remove me from your Christmas card list. I could tell you that in amongst my current listening is Soft Machine, The Rich Kids, Jake Thackray and Fleet Foxes. Some of these you might like - there is merit in all things. Apart from James Blunt, obviously. Now he really is rubbish.
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Out on the town
The bloke in front is really annoying me now. Earlier on during the set, he was a mild irritation - a fly buzzing in the background, occasionally knocking against the windowpane - now he's a next door neighbour undertaking a major DIY job at 10pm on a Sunday night.
There he is, right in front of where we're standing - quite near the front of the stage in fact - chatting to his mates, leaping about all over the place to pull 'amusing' faces at girls, raising his arm in the air and doing some weird flicky thing with his fingers when he hears a song he thinks he recognises; except the flicky thing is neither in time with the music nor in keeping with the fact that he's at a Goldfrapp show. Kasabian, maybe, Oasis definitely - but not Goldfrapp.
Where do these people come from? I wonder. And at what point do they decide, yeah, you know what I'm going to pay thirty quid to see that dirty bird with the lalalala song who isn't Kylie - what's her name? Sounds a bit like one of those Starbucks coffees...
I'm aware I'm sounding like some old fella at the back who shushes people at Bert Jansch gigs but you know, if you come to a gig, get in the spirit of the thing! I'm here with someone who works at EMI and so traditionally we should be the annoying freeloaders who don't appreciate the ticket price and talk in loud voices all the way through the show. But actually we're both real fans. Much earlier in the year, I waxed in this very blog about Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp and I still stand by what I wrote - it's one of the albums of the year and no doubt will end up in many end of year Best Album lists. Mind you, it will be at position 87 much further behind more superficially exciting stuff like Glasvegas or Bon Iver - neither of whom, incidentally, I have been able to listen to more than once. But that's pop for you.
Talking of overrated things, I went to see Damon Alban's Monkey opera last week. I was reviewing it, so again, you could argue that my opinion doesn't hold as much weight as someone who paid good money for a ticket, but I have to say I really didn't like as much as I thought I was going to. Maybe it was the whole expectation thing - everyone I know who had seen it either in Manchester or at the Royal Opera House or in one case, Paris, darling! Everyone was raving. The costume, the music, the choreography... oh what a tremendous show, they all said.
My view... well, you can read the review. When I phoned in the star rating (three out of five) so they could have this for their editorial meeting, I distinctively got the impression that they were surprised I hadn't shouted "Five! No, fuck it, six out of five - it's a mindblower, my friends, start queuing now before it's too late!"
And who could blame them? Everyone else seems to have loved it and you know what, it is spectacular and the music and costumes are good, but come on, if it's supposed to have a story then let's have that made preeminent. As it was, even if you religiously read the surtitles (the show is in Mandarin, Parklife fans) you mainly got the libretto which only embellished a story you were supposed to already familiar with. On the subject of the surtitles by the way, they weren't 'sur' at all but 'side' - the stage was flanked with screens which forced any audience member keen on finding out what the hell was going on to constantly turn his head from stage to screen and back again; the cast must have thought they were watching crowd at Wimbledon. Monkey Tennis indeed.
Come to think of it, the side-titles were the wayward star of the opening night: during one particularly incomprehensible Mandarin moment, we swiveled our heads round to find out what had just been said and were greeted with a random string of letters splayed across the screen "ttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.. aaaa" as if a small child had been given free rein with the keyboard in the backstage side-titles suite. This was quickly replaced with the blank screen familiar to anyone who has had Powerpoint presentation issues. Shortly after this, we were treated to the sight of Damon's manager panicking past us towards the side-title suite with a large dose of Short Shrift.
I went out to see some new stuff last week too. I missed cutesy Brooklyn threepiece Chairlift at the Dublin Castle who lots of people seem to be looking at because I was having an interesting conversation in the restaurant over the road (one of the bonuses of being an A&R spectator is that if I don't fancy going I don't have to - brilliant!) Next night, I was asked out by a mate to see some more new groups that the industry are currently foaming up over.
First up, we went to Bar Rumba on Shaftsbury Avenue - not the usual venue you'd expect to find the future of music - a basement underneath the cinema and shopping centre. The band were female fronted and called Pageboy. My heart sank during the first song because the singer - seemingly styled by the Partridge Family in high-cut flared jeans with braces and fringe over her eyes - had one of those voices which is keen on revealing everything in one line of a song - vowel-stretching, yeah-ing, yelping and showing plenty of Come Awns, she was intent on proving just how damn good a voice she had. In my head I was forming sentences like Duffy singing for Toploader, but once the second song began it was as if the voice felt its work was done and the human being could come out and it was actually pretty good - more like Ann Peebles or Amy Winehouse, authentic, soulful and melodic. Bizarrely, I was greeted Bob Stanley who was watching Pageboy too. Kind of like seeing John Martyn at a McFly show.
Next up we braved the doors at the Hoxton Bar and Grill and got away with not having the right trousers. We were there to see the brilliantly-named Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, an inevitably East London threepiece who turned out to be a Klaxons-with-rapping combo with a neat line in chorus and very strong voices. Handsome fellas too - although the keyboard player had something of the night about him.
Still, at Monkey, at Pageboy and indeed in a club almost entirely full of Hoxton fashionista (the type who all have three jobs - DJ, photographer, club promoter - as well as three simultaneous haircuts) I fortunately didn't encounter anyone remotely as irritating as the gurning buffoon at Goldfrapp. Of course, mid set, as the fawn and stag mask-wearing backing vocalists stood back for some wonderfully pervy folk dancing (a brilliant juxtaposition of maypole- and pole-dancing) I walked up to him and had a word. He was instantly subdued and massively apologetic, promising never to behave like such a twat again and everyone around me slapped me on the shoulder and offered to buy me a pint.
No, of course that's not what happened. What actually happened was this: I pretended he wasn't there and after a while, aside from occasionally looming up like baboon in a wildlife park, he really didn't bother me. A response, I think you'll agree, very much in keeping with the warped English repression of a Goldfrapp show.
There he is, right in front of where we're standing - quite near the front of the stage in fact - chatting to his mates, leaping about all over the place to pull 'amusing' faces at girls, raising his arm in the air and doing some weird flicky thing with his fingers when he hears a song he thinks he recognises; except the flicky thing is neither in time with the music nor in keeping with the fact that he's at a Goldfrapp show. Kasabian, maybe, Oasis definitely - but not Goldfrapp.
Where do these people come from? I wonder. And at what point do they decide, yeah, you know what I'm going to pay thirty quid to see that dirty bird with the lalalala song who isn't Kylie - what's her name? Sounds a bit like one of those Starbucks coffees...
I'm aware I'm sounding like some old fella at the back who shushes people at Bert Jansch gigs but you know, if you come to a gig, get in the spirit of the thing! I'm here with someone who works at EMI and so traditionally we should be the annoying freeloaders who don't appreciate the ticket price and talk in loud voices all the way through the show. But actually we're both real fans. Much earlier in the year, I waxed in this very blog about Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp and I still stand by what I wrote - it's one of the albums of the year and no doubt will end up in many end of year Best Album lists. Mind you, it will be at position 87 much further behind more superficially exciting stuff like Glasvegas or Bon Iver - neither of whom, incidentally, I have been able to listen to more than once. But that's pop for you.
Talking of overrated things, I went to see Damon Alban's Monkey opera last week. I was reviewing it, so again, you could argue that my opinion doesn't hold as much weight as someone who paid good money for a ticket, but I have to say I really didn't like as much as I thought I was going to. Maybe it was the whole expectation thing - everyone I know who had seen it either in Manchester or at the Royal Opera House or in one case, Paris, darling! Everyone was raving. The costume, the music, the choreography... oh what a tremendous show, they all said.
My view... well, you can read the review. When I phoned in the star rating (three out of five) so they could have this for their editorial meeting, I distinctively got the impression that they were surprised I hadn't shouted "Five! No, fuck it, six out of five - it's a mindblower, my friends, start queuing now before it's too late!"
And who could blame them? Everyone else seems to have loved it and you know what, it is spectacular and the music and costumes are good, but come on, if it's supposed to have a story then let's have that made preeminent. As it was, even if you religiously read the surtitles (the show is in Mandarin, Parklife fans) you mainly got the libretto which only embellished a story you were supposed to already familiar with. On the subject of the surtitles by the way, they weren't 'sur' at all but 'side' - the stage was flanked with screens which forced any audience member keen on finding out what the hell was going on to constantly turn his head from stage to screen and back again; the cast must have thought they were watching crowd at Wimbledon. Monkey Tennis indeed.
Come to think of it, the side-titles were the wayward star of the opening night: during one particularly incomprehensible Mandarin moment, we swiveled our heads round to find out what had just been said and were greeted with a random string of letters splayed across the screen "ttttttttttyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.. aaaa" as if a small child had been given free rein with the keyboard in the backstage side-titles suite. This was quickly replaced with the blank screen familiar to anyone who has had Powerpoint presentation issues. Shortly after this, we were treated to the sight of Damon's manager panicking past us towards the side-title suite with a large dose of Short Shrift.
I went out to see some new stuff last week too. I missed cutesy Brooklyn threepiece Chairlift at the Dublin Castle who lots of people seem to be looking at because I was having an interesting conversation in the restaurant over the road (one of the bonuses of being an A&R spectator is that if I don't fancy going I don't have to - brilliant!) Next night, I was asked out by a mate to see some more new groups that the industry are currently foaming up over.
First up, we went to Bar Rumba on Shaftsbury Avenue - not the usual venue you'd expect to find the future of music - a basement underneath the cinema and shopping centre. The band were female fronted and called Pageboy. My heart sank during the first song because the singer - seemingly styled by the Partridge Family in high-cut flared jeans with braces and fringe over her eyes - had one of those voices which is keen on revealing everything in one line of a song - vowel-stretching, yeah-ing, yelping and showing plenty of Come Awns, she was intent on proving just how damn good a voice she had. In my head I was forming sentences like Duffy singing for Toploader, but once the second song began it was as if the voice felt its work was done and the human being could come out and it was actually pretty good - more like Ann Peebles or Amy Winehouse, authentic, soulful and melodic. Bizarrely, I was greeted Bob Stanley who was watching Pageboy too. Kind of like seeing John Martyn at a McFly show.
Next up we braved the doors at the Hoxton Bar and Grill and got away with not having the right trousers. We were there to see the brilliantly-named Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, an inevitably East London threepiece who turned out to be a Klaxons-with-rapping combo with a neat line in chorus and very strong voices. Handsome fellas too - although the keyboard player had something of the night about him.
Still, at Monkey, at Pageboy and indeed in a club almost entirely full of Hoxton fashionista (the type who all have three jobs - DJ, photographer, club promoter - as well as three simultaneous haircuts) I fortunately didn't encounter anyone remotely as irritating as the gurning buffoon at Goldfrapp. Of course, mid set, as the fawn and stag mask-wearing backing vocalists stood back for some wonderfully pervy folk dancing (a brilliant juxtaposition of maypole- and pole-dancing) I walked up to him and had a word. He was instantly subdued and massively apologetic, promising never to behave like such a twat again and everyone around me slapped me on the shoulder and offered to buy me a pint.
No, of course that's not what happened. What actually happened was this: I pretended he wasn't there and after a while, aside from occasionally looming up like baboon in a wildlife park, he really didn't bother me. A response, I think you'll agree, very much in keeping with the warped English repression of a Goldfrapp show.
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