Killing in the Name of Reality TV

So, Rage Against The Machine for Christmas Number One – the battle is heating up. RATM have predictably stoked the fires with a controversial BBC Radio 5 appearance, during which they swore in the famous chorus to “Killing in the Name of”. Enter stage left: an enraged middle England clutching their Daily Mails aloft like the burning brands of the Gothic lynch mob, objecting that the “nice, young boy” (X Factor Joe) is being blocked from his unassailable right, to be Christmas Number One because he won the X Factor. Now, let’s be honest, the F Word is not exactly shocking these days and, while it maybe is not particularly desirable on a national radio breakfast show, it is not really the moral disaster of the decade. What is really going on is that people are missing the point. It’s not about RATM being at the top of the charts, or about some hate campaign against Joe McElderry and Simon Cowell: the push to get “Killing in the Name of” to number one is a backlash against another stodgy, Kareoke-lite song being Christmas Number One.

Cowell himself labelled the campaign as “stupid” and “cynical” (the irony of him branding the grassroots backing of a genuinely great song as cynical should not be left un-noted, especially when compared to the previous two years’ fare from his protegées). But perhaps he should be looking, not at the vitriol directed his way, but at this year’s song, “The Climb”, and at last year’s horrendous cover version of “Hallelujah”. Neither song is, in any way, a good piece of music. Ignore the fact that “Hallelujah”, the original, was a great piece of song writing, and what you are left with is two very ordinary singers, preying on a captive audience, who are compelled to buy the single out of a love for the X Factor, not the songs themselves. Leona Lewis had an unarguably captivating voice, but Joe McElderry sounds about as snore-inducing as he looks. Also, speaking of “cynical”, perhaps Cowell should wonder how much the boy’s choir boy looks will affect record sales.

It will be a great day for pop if RATM do win this chart battle. Not because a “rebel anthem” won the nation’s hearts, rather than Cowell’s conveyor belt smaltz, but instead because the record buying public gave itself a voice against the calculated stream of shit being pumped its way. RATM's political activity has perhaps drawn attention away from this fact, conjuring up images of teenagers with Che Guevara posters. The noughties has been a decade of inventive and interesting British pop, but it has also been the decade that reality TV undermined all the progress of bands such as Girls Aloud or Elbow by conning a gullible British public into believing that they needed to buy the next over-produced, bland offering from the school of Cowell. Perhaps, if RATM do win it might actually spark a return to days when songs like “Day Tripper”, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” were Christmas Number Ones rather than just another CD on the January trash pile.

Pearl Jam - Backspacer

Pearl Jam are one of those bands – their fans follow them with a fervour most artists can only dream of, as the rapturous reception of their epic, August gig at the O2 showed. But, for the majority of people Pearl Jam are a band who haven’t mattered since 1994 and the death of grunge with its poster boy, Kurt Cobain. The problem is that too many people still agree with the Nirvana frontman’s opinion, that Pearl Jam were nothing more than a corporate-rock cash-in on Seattle’s Generation X explosion – an opinion shared by certain British music magazines for too long now. Their many critics conveniently overlook the succession of fantastic, progressive albums that the band has produced since their 1991 debut, Ten. It is, perhaps, a slightly blinkered attitude to judge a band solely on the basis of a debut, which itself is consistently misunderstood. The band’s evident influences from classic rock in a movement more indebted to punk, worked against them at the time, despite the fact that Nirvana themselves played “Heartbreaker”, by Led Zeppelin, as a live staple throughout their early years. What too many people missed, or preferred to overlook, were the evocative themes and great songs behind what was probably an unfortunately produced album.

From Vs to their eponymous effort of 2006, Pearl Jam have produced deep and moving albums covering themes both personal and political, albums which were honest and gracious without the meaningless posturing of too many bands of recent times. Backspacer, their most recent release, is perhaps the album which can change one opinion of the band as grumpy, old ex-alt-rockers. From the surf-punk opening of first track, “Gonna See My Friend”, to the shivering closer, “The End”, Backspacer is the sound of a band revelling in the companionship and joy of playing music together - Eddie Vedder even sounds happy! While, dissatisfaction and a feeling of “us against the world”, has always been integral to the Pearl Jam sound, this time round the true heirs to the title, “The Last Gang in Town”, have put their battles behind them and made an album for themselves and it sounds incredible. “Got Some” is a perfect slice of melodic punk seeing Mike McCready in explosive form as Vedder howls the lyrics with passion, while “The Fixer” is probably the poppiest song the band have ever done and that is by no means a bad thing as it sounds electrifying. Perhaps the highlight for this reviewer is “The End”, a contemplation of the fleeting nature of mortality and an achingly beautiful song with the fragility and frailty of its subject matter.

There is a slightly ominous side note to this album though, as the listener experiences the silence following the closing track. Backspacer sounds suspiciously like a goodbye, with its themes of hope, joy and parting culminating in a song entitled “The End”. We can only pray this is not the case because if they continue to produce records this good and this imbued with life, modern music would miss them greatly. Backspacer is the shortest album Pearl Jam have put out so far, clocking in at just over thirty-six minutes in length, but the band pack as much into that time as possible. The songs are exceptional, the passion still burns with as much fire as ever and although Pearl Jam are not exactly breaking new ground with this record, if this is what the old ground sounds like then I’m very happy to be staying there.

Problems of a Digital Age

As techies’ whispers echo across the boundless expanse of cyberspace, that a Spotify-killer has been spawned in the great halls of Google…don’t you just love the dramatic terms that technological news bulletins use? A Spotify-killer? It creates an image of the internet sensation of 2009 as a great and brutal Goliath, ruling a virtual kingdom, pillaging villages and stealing all the best music for itself - like some King Kong stealing La Roux away to the top of a digital skyscraper – with Google’s new LaLa streaming service running around in sandals with a virtual sling. Spotify does seem to have somewhat of a monopoly on the digitally streamed music market however, and to top it all off, they’ve gone and done what every other new media project has done: they’ve got themselves an app for the iPhone. Now at the risk of sounding like a utter luddite I have absolutely no clue what Google’s new LaLa system does, other than the fact that it has a vaguely amusing name; much like Boris Johnson – he’s quite funny but I have no idea what he’s for.

But I don’t really want to talk about LaLa because I won’t understand why it’s better or worse, and because I quite like Spotify: if all its claims about paying artists for their songs, and about combating piracy are true, it’s probably a good thing at a time of dwindling music sales. In my last job, I pretty much listened exclusively to Spotify with certain artists and playlists on shuffle and, for that, it’s perfect. My problem with it is one that verges on being one of those mind-numbing “back-in-the-day” rants that men, who you only thought existed in Last of the Summer Wine, subject you to in the pub at closing time. Just like my parents experienced the joy of buying a vinyl record and opening it up to all the artwork and detail that came with Electric Ladyland or Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I still remember the shiver of pleasure I got ripping the cellophane off the CD that I had just bought and placing it, almost reverently, into the stereo for the first time. I would sit there and listen to it while reading the album sleeve, whether it was reading the lyrics, or looking at the artwork.

The convenience of having Spotify or iTunes just a click away is something that is very easy to succumb to. Indeed, I used iTunes almost exclusively in my last year of university, and with Spotify on phones, who needs an iPod? And of course there’s nothing wrong with this as long the artists still get paid, because, while there are those who would argue that art should be free and available to anyone, those people need to drag themselves out of their posturing bohemianism and respect the amount of work that recording and touring musicians put in, to get their art out there. As Frank Turner put it, “recording isn't free, instruments aren't free, session players, producers, engineers, artists aren't free”¹. However, that’s not what this discussion is about, and I don’t want to argue there is anything wrong with legal media for listening to music and discovering new artists. What I would say though, is that at the end of that year, I had just finished my dissertation and had some time to kill, in which I ordered a CD on a whim - The Gaslight Anthem, The’59 Sound - and I experienced that almost childish sensation again: I sat in my rather dreary student living room with a beer, took a breath and removed the packaging. I placed the CD on the wheel, hit ‘play’ and took out the album sleeve. For an afternoon, I rediscovered that feeling of really listening to a new CD - not while I was driving, not while I was working on anything else - just listening to great music. So next time you’re on iTunes getting your next hit of whatever it is you listen to, remember what listening to a CD for that first special time felt like and maybe consider trying that again, because if people stop buying CDs, the little things, like the artwork, like the anticipation as the wheel starts to spin will disappear and I hope that, like me, you think that would be a very sad thing.

¹Frank Turner, http://www.frank-turner.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

A Tired and Bored Hallelujah

What is it about that song? In fact what is the obsession with mediocre artists covering great songs, or great artists doing mediocre covers of great songs? Now I may be about to commit journalistic suicide with what I’m about to say, but I don’t particularly like Leonard Cohen’s original version of Hallelujah. And before I get lynched for having the gall to say that about one of the most iconic songs of all time, in my defence, I think, lyrically, it is a remarkable song but it’s just too dated now. Unlike the rawness of Dylan and Neil Young, or even the tongue-firmly-in-cheek folk of Arlo Guthrie, the production and arrangement of the song just don’t stand up alongside the version: Jeff Buckley’s achingly, stripped-bare 1994 cover, which itself was based on John Cale’s take on the song. Is it really committing musical blasphemy to say that it sounds like he had Mark Knopffler, the king of easy listening guitar, playing on the solo? I’ve spoken to enough people who think Buckley’s cover is the original that I almost wish it was – it sounds tortured rather than a slightly edgy Songs of Praise.
Unfortunately, since Buckley produced arguably one of the greatest covers ever, an entire host of artists have tried to cover the song even before Simon Cowell and his identikit “protégée” got their claws into it. Even Rufus Wainwright’s attempt still pales in comparison with the precarious beauty of Buckley’s, so what hope did Alexandra Burke really think she had of bettering the offering on Grace. Before the listener even hears the Mariah Carey-lite vocals, the guitars sound tinny and too gainy – I mean did they even try, or did they just put any old shit down knowing that a British public who still buy the flat pack Indie of The Pigeon Detectives and The Kooks, would lap it up. The record industry, sadly, know that the majority of the music-buying public don’t want anything too risky or in the slightest bit edgy: what they want is the musical equivalent of shit being thrown at a barn door until something sticks. So what could be safer than a cover of an iconic song stripped of all its meaning or subversion by being sung by a reality-TV star surrounded by well-positioned candles. Also, guess who’s decided to start touring again – surprise, surprise its Leonard Cohen – now all we need is Dire Staits to reform after Akon covers Sultans of Swing, wait for it … featuring Elton John.
If we’re being honest there have always been covers, hit and miss – The Byrds murdered Mr. Tambourine Man, but their version of My Backpages was so good that it was the one performed at the Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert, while Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower or Hey Joe set the bar at a new height. So why did any producer let grandmothers’ favourite Jamie Cullam record Lover You Should Have Come Over – “But he’s such a nice boy!” I hear them say. Music was never about nice – Neil Young was a bastard but he made great music and he was never called the “Jazz Hobbit”. So for heaven’s sake, next time you see James Blunt doing Your Song don’t buy it and send a message to artists and producers that if you are going to cover something there is one simple rule that has applied throughout music history – do it better than the original or in a very different and interesting way, otherwise don’t bother.