Bits and pieces: Culture July 7, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
This I like, from the StonyButter site, photographs of ordinary graffiti from around Dublin. As the photographer, Gregory Dunn, says…
Forget about mindless tagging or New York style graffiti that’s well past its ‘sell-by’ date (and somewhat out of context in a country like Ireland).
Next up the intermittently funny Now Show returns to podcast from the BBC. I kind of like it, and in particular Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt, but it’s a bit hit or miss.
Speaking of which John Harris waxed and waned about the Stone Roses in the Guardian a week or so back. It’s a revealing article, though he’s probably a little too negative, at least by my lights.
That said they burned a bit too bright and then faded out a bit too fast. It’s not that the first album, and more particularly the first raft of 12”’s, aren’t remarkable. But, they never seemed to top them – even if Second Coming had some good moments. Their negative influence on Britpop is perhaps not noted sufficiently, but it was there and they must take some discredit for the rise of an host of poor to awful groups who lacked their experimental bent.
There’s also the fact that for those of us who listened to John Squire’s Seahorses solo album there’s a tendency to reexamine the Rose’s output in a new light. The guitar work on Fools Gold sounds great and it is but when one considers that as his career progressed Squire had an increasing penchant for smothering tracks in Zeppelin lite guitar motifs and so on it slightly loses its lustre – though not too much, hence I’ve included it below. Or to use the technical term, that Squire solo album is near unlistenable.
And yet, and yet, when I see and hear the below I’m prepared to admit that they were a remarkable group. And perhaps they’ll be so again. Let’s hope so.
Here’s an interesting blog which attempts to tease out the science behind science fiction. An useful exercise.
Two months ago I’d never heard of British boy band One Direction. I still wish I hadn’t but some close to me of youthful years find it impossible not to sing their ‘songs’. But this article from Slate is fairly funny in terms of the the tyranny of small differences. They’re breaking big in the US and fans can be categorised in two vehemently antagonistic groups, Directioner’s – the fans who have been with them since the beginning, all of a year or so, and the neophyte Directionators who have only arrived in the last short while. This though slightly worries me…
More and more young fans will close their YouTube missives not with breathless professions of love, but in the way allykilpatrick1598 does: “I have one more word for you Directionators: LEAVE!” These teen girls are among the very first never to have known a world without Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms as a constant source of information, and even more, a constant pressure to broadcast and define yourself—to establish your personal brand—in the most public way. It seems a harbinger of things to come: A future in which we will, at all times and about all things, be either Directioners or Directionators.
Yeah. That’s some future.
The Vatican. Ah, the Vatican. The Vatican as film critic. And fan of… The Blues Brothers. Hmmm… I read some reviews from the Vatican of other films ages back. Must try and dig them out.
And lastly – for the moment – what of this, the ultimate guide to everything you wanted to know about contemporary pop. Oh yeah!
Think the spending years and years outside the studio didnt do the roses any good in fairness, and outside the first album, there was enough other really good stuff (mersey paradise, elephant stone, where angels play etc) for another good album. The early stuff definitely stands the test of time even if they never did top it.
Some of Ian Browns solo stuff isnt bad, but it does rather irk me that some of his fanboys in the media will lavish praise on any turd of a thing he produces. Jesus Christ that Rap/Hip Hop effort (The world is yours I think) was dire.
” there was enough other really good stuff (mersey paradise, elephant stone, where angels play etc) for another good album”
Very true. And it’s not that Second Coming is a disaster, just they seemed to lose the knack for the big ticket numbers… Though Ten Storey Love Song is still great.
Re the solo career, +1
First IB album has some good moments on it.
I couldn’t disagree more about Fools Gold. The bass and drums are great but the guitar playing makes it almost unlistenable, in particular the God-awful wah wah parts.
As someone who loved – loved – the Stone Roses as a teenager, and still has a soft spot for the first half of their first album in particular, the odd thing looking back is how conventional a guitar rock band they actually were. From jangle-rock to Zeppelin fret-worrying, with only a couple of songs which were displayed any other influences or ideas (Fools Gold being the most obvious).
In retrospect, the Happy Mondays were a much more interesting band. I think they also played Dublin on a middle age spread nostalgia tour recently, although on a much smaller scale.
Rogue “were”. That should read:
“From jangle-rock to Zeppelin fret-worrying, with only a couple of songs which displayed any other influences or ideas (Fools Gold being the most obvious). “
Begging You from the Second Coming isn’t all that generic
That’s a good point from Mark P. There’s an awful lot written about The Stone Roses and their melding of dance and rock when for most of their career they were a classic C86 band, maybe the best C86 band of all. Fools Gold is actually something of an anomaly in their canon and perhaps over-praised because of what it represents rather than what it sounds like.
While everyone else was at The Stone Roses, I went to see The Phantom Of The Opera in the Grand Canal Theatre and had a whale of a time. The place was packed and everyone seemed to be thoroughly entertained.
Hah, that’s a bit of a difference, Phantom Of the Opera. Perhaps you should write that musicals post!
But taking both your points, I hope that’s sort of inferred in the original post I did above. I’m not as averse to the wah wah guitar as Mark P (not least because I think it can be seen as a respectful and celebratory opening in what was broadly a fairly white genre hitherto to black music, ie funk. Oddly the Field Mice mentioned elsewhere today did something not dissimilar in their dance experimentation, but their was a colder aesthetic) but as I was saying in the OP I think that Squire drew the wrong conclusion from the plaudits and decided that was the way to go, smothering the tracks and in the process going down a blind alley.
it’s definitely true that the Stone Roses were much much more traditional than people give them credit for. And yeah, bang in there as a C86 band.
This too gives me pause for thought when I think of the Stone Roses… from C86 the original tape Primal Scream…
I’m always amused to hear what Primal Scream sounded like before they lent their name to an Andrew Weatherall record.
Well some would say that Made of Stone sounds remarkably like the vocal line in Velocity Girl. Actually most would say.
I’m convinced that Weatherall was deliberately mocking them, towards the end of ‘Loaded’ when he leaves in a bit from the original song of Gillespie going ‘ah, yeah!’ it’s a producer’s equivalent of a smirking wink. On the ‘Jailbird’ EP, it was very cruel to put the PS version of the song alongside Weatherall’s, listening to them in sequence is a bit like watching Ireland play Spain, it makes me wince on their behalf. I’ll say one thing for Gillespie though, for someone who clearly didn’t have a note in his head (just listen to his drumming on Psychocandy for proof), he had a knack for getting people with talent around him.
There’s an awful lot written about The Stone Roses and their melding of dance and rock when for most of their career they were a classic C86 band
Yes, exactly. It seems that the coexistence of rock bands and dance music within the same “scene”, even the fact that rock musicians liked dance music, was enough to have those musicians awarded points for experimenting with and synthesizing (sorry) the two without them having to go to the bother of actually changing anything musically from the four piece rock template.
The Happy Mondays were something of an exception, but the boundaries they were pushing at in musical terms weren’t those between rock music and electronic dance music particularly, either. The dance music they were borrowing from was American black music. And their other obvious “outside” influence was krautrock.
Much of the eulogising was down to a music press ecstatic with the return to prominence of guitars, front-men and all the other stuff that hadn’t changed in five decades
Good point by OR. I was in London at the time and there was something of a panic in the music papers about Acid House and all that flowed from it, given how unlike gigs the original raves were and the faceless quality of the first hit house records, before the cult of the superstar DJ was created. There was a kind of snooty response by indie fans originally as far as I recall to dance records which were not real music blah blah etc etc. The people who were into the rave scene initially tended to be what we used to call ‘soul boys,’ people whose previous interests had been jazz-funk and black music in general. I was working in Essex at the time and it was a bit of a culture shock to meet so many people who disdained rock and loved all forms of dance music. They tended to be the pioneers in embracing house, because they’d always preferred clubs to gigs anyway.
Madchester, Baggy, whatever you call it, fine though much of it was, was a way for indie fans to find a way into dance music.
This retrospective love of the dance scene, mocked in the old ‘there’s always been a dance element to our music,’ phrase wasn’t peculiar to indie fans. I remember reading an interview with Boy George at the time who dismissed the dance clubs as being full of lumpen football loving hooligans though he later embraced the scene completely. My memory of going to clubs like Spectrum, Land of Oz etc. was that they were extremely geezery and much tougher than the mythology about hard chaws instantly converting to love and peace under the influence of E.
The strange thing about coming home to Ireland at the time was that the big thing here was ‘Raggle-Taggle,’ basically pub rock played by lads with long hair who’d read a couple of lines of Yeats and got drunk in Connemara, There was much snotty comment about the Irish rock scribes about the mindless drug loving hedonism of the English with their love of stuff made on machines rather than on guitars. It’s interesting that there’s never been a significant Irish dance act, perhaps because the scene has never seemed as organic here as it was in the English cities. Maybe the lack, by comparison with London, of a thriving gay club scene or very many black people had something to do with this.
England, on the other hand, doesn’t really have any equivalent to those sensitive introspective types who clog up the likes of Whelans and are the spiritual heirs of Raggle Taggle, making ‘real music’ with ‘real instruments.’ The Frames are the exception being, against all the odds, extremely talented.
You’re all being way too analytical by far. The Stone Roses for me are part of the soundtrack of what being 25 years old was, living in London where the sun was always shining, the beer and craic was always good, the brightly coloured oversized t-shirts and just the groove and joy of youth. So the gig the other night was pure nostalgia. And that’s just fine. Been listening to the first album almost non-stop over the past few days and apart from the beat in “I am the Resurrection”, which is just a wonderful wonderful tune, I’m thinking that my favourite part of the album is the chorus of “This is the One”, it’s almost a football terrace chant, but it’s pure emotion, we’ve all been there, wonderful stuff.
You’re probably right – we are over analysing it! Though in fairness I still come down on the side (and Mark P and EC) of them being a great band and perhaps for many of the same reasons as yourself and at much the same time.
Funnily enough This Is The One is my own favourite song on the album, for some reason the moment when Brown sings, ‘I’d like to leave the country for a month of Sundays,’ always makes me feel somewhat emotional.
Perhaps we are being over analytical, on the other hand I’d imagine that CLR is largely made up of people for whom analysis, of politics, music, sport whatever, is a lot of fun in itself.
However I feel I must add a few comments without which any thread containing a Youtube music video is completely inauthentic.
1. I am five years old but I still love this music.
2. This is much better than rap.
3. Some boasting about taking drugs.
4. Why do only a million people like this?
5. The Stone Roses are much better than Justin Bieber.
EC, you’re right about the analytical streak of course, but some stuff transcends analysis in a belt it out at the top of your lungs kind of way, well for me anyhow.
And on 5. above, the Stone Roses are also better than Artic Monkeys, though as breath taking first albums go they did give them a run for their money.
On slightly different note, we were down in the Phoenix Park again this afternoon for a cycle with the kids’ cousins from Galway, and oh to be young again, it looked like the craic in a really messy great to not give a shit in the sunshine just enjoy the occasion kind if way. Younger crowd than the Stone Roses gig anyway. No doubt in 20+ years they’ll be reminiscing about it on the CLR…the good old days.
6. Grant theft auto sent me here!
7. Something about whether it’s dubstep or not
8. Racist
Heheh. That’s a great run down. And all too true, particularly 8 unfortunately.
There’s really only one arbiter, on which it’s impossible to cheat: would you sing it in the shower?
Correct, good point well made. And yes.
Another great arbiter occurs when you buy an MP3 player and are faced with the dilemma of which thousand songs from the collection make the cut, a vital decision if like myself you spend a lot of time on public transport. I ended up being quite surprised by which music I really liked and which I claimed I liked but really could do without when push came to shove.
Go on…
I know the dilemma myself. There’s the thing too of having more music on a player than I could ever listen to even across a week but still having that… ‘ah, I’ll put that in, and that, and that… just in case.’ And I still never listen to it.
Yeah, I think in fairness, origninality and innovation is great, but I dont think not being incredible orignial is fatal to being a great band or not. EG Brude Springsteen is great, but didnt exactly reinvent the wheel
It’s odd, I’ve always liked second generation bands in various genres. Punks a good example. Pistols, great, Damned, great and so on. But some of the next wave were as good in different ways, and sometimes more interesting, the Ruts, etc, etc. And even though they’re more post-punk the same is true of Joy Division, the Psychedelic Furs, the Associates and so on and so on (though arguably Joy Division were original/innovative).
‘There was much snotty comment about the Irish rock scribes about the mindless drug loving hedonism of the English with their love of stuff made on machines rather than on guitars.’
Yeah, remember Power of Dreams boasting about having ‘never been to Manchester’.
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was wondering what all is required to get setup? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost
a pretty penny? I’m not very internet smart so I’m not 100% certain. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you