Saturday [14 till close of play]

(1558) Almost evening all.

22.  Down the rabbit hole

The less elevated music of any era, meaning the popular music of the day, tells me more about that era than the more noble classics … it comes and goes in phases, such as the 20s jazz era … and then how it changed after that in the 30s, moved to big band and swing.

I was never one for just pop, e.g. Dione Warwick’s “wo wo wo wo … do you know the way to San Jose” or Petula Clark’s Downtown, though some hits stood out, e.g. Norman Greenbaum or Judy in Disguise … with Glasses.  If I go to any greatest song list and it has anything on the list after 1997, it means little to me, except three or four songs total.  Autotune or pitch correction has really killed popular music.

My parents … to name some songs … somewhere over … Perry Como … Il Silenzio … Strangers … even fun songs … I was too young, started to listen, never heard 50s rock like Little Richard unless on the radio occasionally … that was much later for me.

This could go on forever … essentially, as each song came out, I pretty much heard it, as did my mates and gal friends. Donovan was a major one for us late 60s. This is the first song our garage band played.

Beatles faded, Stones, in came the Eagles, Bad Company, Roxy Music, my radio show started:

Krautrock, alternative, things esoteric but still melodic … and here is the point I think I’m getting to, readers, by degrees … music fragmented, yes, songs even became discordant but still returned to the melodic by the end.  There were even sort of melodic songs, rhythmic at least, in 2010-12:

But something happened before that, inbetween, a brief decade perhaps, where the music became awful … it was almost as if they were in deep depression, on narcotics, the guitar played pretty much one chord throughout, e.g. this Nirvana thing … I listened as long as I could … now how had I missed that entire era?

I mean, it was okish but like the noisepop of the early 90s, deeply, darkly depressed … even Pulp’s lyrics were depressing with nothing in their lives, girls all hoes … this was similar … music to slash your wrists by.

Why? Then I realised … it was not so much an era, it was a generation … and the reason I’d missed this generation completely was threefold … I had been teaching secondary and the female music was everywhere but not the heavier boy music, then I went to Russia and same sort of thing … so for years it was Backstreet Boys, Take That, Macarena but lad music itself was missing. Lads were missing themselves, full stop … females were everywhere.

This evening, I’ve been reposting you here plus Toodles while there’s a food thing going on with Liverpool, Norfolk and Bradford lasses and me, plus on our landing are standing a Zoomer guy and a late Millennial guy and we’re discussing this very music. 

Millennial said Nirvana were quite old. Well yes, they were … so how had I missed them? But both he and I agreed the music was not too good.  I do think it’s generational … he pointed out that the next half generation has a different feel to it, outlook etc. … the one closest to us. So Gen X might not be impressed by Millennial culture.

Anyway, where has this got me, this rant? Where’s it got you? Probably nowhere. So, to finish up, any song every currently living generation would all like?  What can I run below that all generations would not turn away from?

How about Pre-Boomer Leonard Cohen sung by a Gen Xer:

… plus by a Zoomer:

21.  Steve

War Room snippets...

a.  Laura Jacobs Discusses The Declining Birthrates In Western Civilization | https://rumble.com/v4rseul-laura-jacobs-discusses-the-declining-birthrates-in-western-civilization.html

b.  Mike Davis: "This Is A Criminal Conspiracy To Violate Rights" | https://rumble.com/v4rsh4i-mike-davis-this-is-a-criminal-conspiracy-to-violate-rights.html

c.  Dr Kevin Roberts: "The Administrative State And All It's Abuses Is A Creation Of Congress" | https://rumble.com/v4rr1w3-dr.-kevin-roberts-the-administrative-state-and-all-its-abuses-is-a-creation.html

d.  Jeremy Carl Discusses His New Book 'The Unprotected Class' And Anti White Racism | https://rumble.com/v4rrxaz-jeremy-carl-discusses-his-new-book-the-unprotected-class-and-anti-white-rac.html

20.  Andy

Time to steal the lead from the church roof?

https://www.churchofengland.org/media/finance-news/church-commissioners-appoints-laura-moss-bromage-planet-lead

19.  About to dive down a rabbit hole

… plus work out when to run Andy and Steve again. You see, I started the last post early, which caught Steve short. Usually, anything with urls goes in the next post but this time, there isn’t one … except tomorrow morning, which is too late.

So items 20 and 21 will be those in a few minutes.

Now, this rabbit hole … it involves music and I can already hear you groan … the last two evenings at this place have not been all that auspicious. So, provided I keep it to, say three overall, plus many linked songs, I plan to answer a question to myself … how come I, who have always been interested in alternative rock or pop, who had a radio programme in the 70s … how come I missed out completely on one particular decade of popular music … how did it happen?

Also, how did I escape that no-music jail and start listening again?

The last thing I want to do is write some turgid dissertation on songs you yourselves have not heard and even if you had, they’d done nothing for you.  Let alone who only like classical or jazz. Also, the chances of offending you are high … that earlier post about ultramarine would not have gone down well, esp. with those who adore the colour bright red.  I do suspect I know why one particular sub-era of popular songs passed me by and that’s a whole age group of N.O. readers … yikes, don’t wish to offend.

For example, I just listened to some band called Nirvana for the first time … first time really listened with an open mind, plus another called Oasis with two brothers.  In the 90s, I was stepping out with a gal who was a mad keen Oasis fan but I still don’t think I’ve ever knowingly listened to any of their songs.  Yet Pulp I’ve heard much of.  Just listening to some guy called Jeff Buckley who apparently sings more than Hallelujah.

Anyway, more on that whenever …it won’t be a short post.

18.  Some pre-dinner doggerel just for you

17.  It’s all Greek to me

16.  You have too much unused space in your home

If you won’t be reasonable and sell at fire price, then we’ll just allocate two or three fine young chaps from Somalia or Albania … you’ll get along just fine. What’s your daughter or granddaughter count at your place by the way?

15.  My DEI story - the diversity DA

14.  This Horizontal Harris diversity hire

Andy:

Kamala's Secret Service agents BRAWL: Armed agent assigned to Vice President gets into a fight with a colleague and has gun taken off him
An armed Secret Service officer assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris was removed from duty after he got into a physical fight with fellow agents on Monday, according to reports.

The agent, whose identity has not been revealed, began fighting fellow officers Monday morning after appearing for duty at Joint Base Andrew before the vice president arrived for a planned trip to Wisconsin, according to the Washington Examiner.

Sources said the special agent in charge and a detail shift supervisor tried to calm the agent after the official began exhibiting aggressive behavior, but the agent in question tackled the Senior Agent in Charge of security detail and began punching him.

Steve:

As previously reported, an armed Secret Service agent assigned to Kamala Harris got into a physical fight with other agents at Joint Base Andrews on Monday morning.

According to reports, the problem agent, identified as Michelle Herczeg, began acting aggressively, speaking gibberish and shouting incoherently at other agents while they were near the lounge at JBA.

Herczeg reportedly threw menstrual pads at another agent before getting into a brawl a JBA.

RealClearPolitics reported that Herczeg grabbed a male agent’s personal cell phone and began deleting apps on it before she completely melted down.

JH: I presume when asked to comment, Harris cackled.

John McCormack

Irish Mike writes:

On Sunday, November 27, 1938, the great Irish tenor, John McCormack, gave his farewell concert at Royal Albert Hall in London. Thus ended a truly remarkable career that spanned nearly four decades. More than 11,000 people filled the vast hall as hundreds outside were turned away. Although he was not the singer that he was in his prime 20 years earlier, by all accounts of the event, John McCormack gave an astonishing performance. It was noted that, including encores, he sang an incredible 27 songs and did not leave a dry eye in the house.

There are some commenters that one does wonder about:

Is it live ? Appears to be old recordings and canned clapping but photos and articles are excellent.  I also recall a London concert after his illness and during the Anglo-Irish war c. 1921 when he had great reservations he'd be booed but he wasn't.

Irish Mike replied:

Hi, Nigel! No, the concert is just a facsimile of what I thought it may have happened. I used recordings of the available songs listed on the program and plugged in the applause. Unfortunately, nobody had the foresight to record the performance at the time. Such a pity! Thank you for your kind remarks!

Coals to Newcastle

This Thursday afternoon timeslot, supposedly a break from world issues, can also by definition not be a break … as reactors to music videos “back in the day” bring their own upbringing and socialisation into their calls, especially when Gen X to Zoomers.

On top of that, readers and contributors at N.O. also bring quite different life histories to the table, as was seen in the Protestant Catholic issue last evening, let alone the atheist rationalist normie perspective … meanwhile, armies of fighting age men pour in to exploit the division … not even awaiting the word but already stabbing and raping, burning old churches or forcing them to convert to mosques.

Charming. Really great situation. In the midst of all this is music and my aim just currently, not for much longer, is to find music, even popular songs, which stand the test of time … that is, they appeal across generations, cultures, nations, genres … to many.

“To many” is the crucial part here because even within, say, classical, we saw the division between harpsichord hardliners and piano hardliners. My contention, within a given “classic” is that key, tone, notes, mood must all meet expectations of the ear, that ears are remarkably similar across blacks, whites, old, young … I’ve seen it over and over and over in reaction videos:

… plus many more from America to eastern Europe. Today’s begins with what’s regarded as a rock/pop “classic” by Santana … Evil Ways … and how completely different cultures all see something in it as special … why? Some written reviews described Santana as blending jazz and blues with Latin and African rhythms, plus that guitar work.

All right, said I … let me find an actual African reactor and an actual Latina reactor and see how they take it … preferably a younger person, tabula rasa, hearing for the first time, remembering of course:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/borrowed-notes-the-complicated-cross-atlantic-evolution-of-black-magic-woman

Those are quite some reactions.  

For part two below, my aim was not cross-cultural, except across generations … it’s a younger English man (as he explains) and an English Scottish woman (itself quite a crossbreeding) reacting to a classic concert … Dire Straits’ Alchemy performance in London in 1983:

I’ve already run the performance in cross-pond reactions here and it’s been universally admired by classic rock aficianados as a gem of collaborative playing by masters of their own instruments, somehow gelling into a tour de force where everyone in that hall was having a blast:

My final look is at the “chick” in this last reaction herself. Of the four, that Millennial displays all the things we’ve written about … good and bad … almost impossible to marry but if married, almost impossible to stay with, being so openly into herself, subject to all sorts of ailments … the sort of thing that resulted in those previous vlogs:

But there are also plenty about today’s broken and pussified boys … and the evil which has been perpetrated upon entire new generations. Nuff on that.

[top 25] popular songs since the 50s

It was a tough job, tougher than I first thought - you see, it wasn't whether I liked the song or not. It was whether it took the world by storm at the time, whether it crossed generations and whether it is still played and sung today. In no particular order:

Zero Shaddap You Face, Joe Dolce, 1 Stairway-to-Heaven, Led Zeppelin, 2 Hotel California, The Eagles, 3 Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys, 4 Nights in White Satin, Moody Blues, 5 River Deep - Mountain High, Ike and Tina Turner

6 Let It Be, The Beatles, 7 Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley, 8 Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon and Garfunkel, 9 Whiter Shade of Pale, Procol Harum, 10 When a Man Loves a Woman, Percy Sledge

11 The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan, 12 Every Breath You Take, The Police, 13 Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, 14 Bad, Michael Jackson, 15 Light My Fire, The Doors

16 Gloria, Them, 17 Mama Mia, Abba, 18 Crying, Roy Orbison, 19 Eye of the Tiger, Survivor, 20 The Twist, Chubby Checker

21 Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd, 22 My Generation, The Who, 23 Space Oddity, David Bowie, 24 American Pie, Don McLean, 25 Maggie May, Rod Stewart.

The ones I couldn't squeeze into the list were:

Everything I do [I Do for You], Bryan Adams, Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan, I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston, I Want It That Way, Backstreet Boys, No Woman, No Cry, Bob Marley and the Wailers, You've Lost That Lovin, Feelin', The Righteous Brothers, All Along the Watchtower, Jimi Hendrix, Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On, Jerry Lee Lewis

Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin, Mr. Tambourine Man, The Byrds, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye, Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis, Blitzkrieg Bop, Ramones, Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan, House of the Rising Sun, The Animals, Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf, Dancing Queen, Abba, EMI, The Sex Pistols

Wild Thing, The Troggs, Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen, The End, The Doors, La Bamba, Ritchie Valens, Unchained Melody, The Righteous Brothers, I Got You Babe, Sonny and Cher, Under the Boardwalk, The Drifters, Papa Don't Preach, Madonna, Everybody's Talking, Harry Nilsson

Respect, Aretha Franklin, Candle in the Wind, Elton John, Hey Jude, The Beatles, Walk Like An Egyptian, The Bangles , Ruby Tuesday, The Rolling Stones, The Joker, Steve Miller Band, Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n Roll, Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Love Hurts, Nazareth.

[touch and go] find you very attractive

The test of an ongoing concern of any note is if it is readily accessible in Wiki.

Touch and Go are not so accessible unless you type in all the words Touch and Go Band Wikipedia.

The thing is, they never really were a band, let alone that there is an entity called Touch and Go Records as well [not them] and heaps of Touch 'n Go other things. So it's a labour of love but finally worth the effort. And even if you do get into their personal site, it says not too much.

They themselves say, in their blurb, which has definitely changed from the scratchy liner notes in the early 2000s:

Touch And Go is the progeny of an unholy alliance between television composer David Lowe, veteran radio presenter and music journalist Charlie Gillett and co-founder of Oval Music, Gordon Nelki. The trio conceived a new concept based around largely instrumental jazz-based tunes with an ‘economical’ use of lyrics — quite unconventional by today’s chart standards.

Would You…? [uses] a sampled vocal clip and trumpet jazz licks played by James Lynch, over a Latin rhythm.

And the girl? The sultry voice behind the success of the project?


Her name is Vanessa Lancaster and she's a UK based "voice-over artist for numerous UK TV commercials and has modelled both on the catwalk and for beauty products. Her other television credits include Emu’s World for ITV and the James Bond movie Octopussy."

The trumpeter, James Lynch, is one of the UK's top session musicians, appearing in a lot of shows , including with the BBC and has also toured with the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams.

So you've got the picture - a studio project without a face but a fun one nonetheless and a unique sound for all that. And that girl .....


Now cut to the 2000s. Clearly, David Lowe felt that it would all just fade away but Eastern Europe had other ideas, expecially the Ukraine and there was a demand for a human presence as some sort of face for the "band" - Eastern Europeans don't fully understand music they can't "see".

While David Lowe "writes [most] of the material, produces, arranges, and plays drums, keyboards, and most of the bass, as well as doing some of the vocals. Most of the parts are filled in by a cast of various musicians, none of them part of Touch and Go officially, contributing vocalists, brass, and wind parts, guitar, and violin," Vanessa and James front the "band" and co-write songs.


Now, here's the thing again - Vanessa Lancaster just don't gel in my mind as a vamp singer - look at that body language. She comes across to me as a happy girl, flattered to be included in something as much fun as an ongoing Europe-wide touring band. I mean, she clearly doesn't get down and dirty - look at the way both of them are dressed and he's the epitome of the cleancut Brit TV show session muso. And yet they sing:

I find you very attractive ... would you go to bed with me?

Vanessa was taken to task about this by the host of a late show in Bulgaria, Slavi Trifonov, who was keen to know if she often asked strangers to sleep with her.

She replied that when they wrote the lyrics they were looking for the craziest questions that they could ask somebody. The songs are often constructed around the sort of come-on lines used at the social get-togethers of the well-heeled and fashionable, added Lynch.

Uh-huh but there's more.

The song's accompanying video feature[s her] asking the same question to various inanimate objects including an iron and a shopping trolley.

Now I'm already beginning to really like this bit of fun, let alone the duo themselves and the superlatively catchy music but the next part clinched it for me. As the Sofia Echo explained, they visited "Sofia's First English Language School for a question and answer session in a small classroom packed with eager pupils."


Whoa there! This is a sultry nightclub act whose songs have been used by American pole dancing troupe G String Divas, raunchy and heavy with sexual innuendo. And they're invited to a school, to talk with the children? Well, you know, I'd probably ask them too - there's something very attractive about this pair.

Now, in a very minor way, I've also trodden that path. When I first came over here, I was taken to a school to meet "staff and students" and was also very politely mobbed. In their case it differed:

The pupils were keen to know if the two stars liked the school, what they thought about Bulgaria, and if it was difficult to compete in the music business. Lancaster answered and asked the students what they wanted to do in the future and if they found it hard to study English.

I too was mobbed by dozens of kids demanding autographs and I know full well the attraction of Eastern Europe for urbane westerners enjoying something a little different. There's still a fresh eagerness over here and great honour bestowed on guests, which is just lacking back home.


Wiki also notes:

As of 2007, the ensemble is still touring Eastern Europe and performing their popular tracks from the mid 1990s

Members

• Charlie Gillett
• Vanessa Lancaster
• David Lowe
• James Lynch
• Gordon Nelki

Now one of my favourite "bands", Touch and Go's website is here. Google if you'd like to get this music. More here.

[the intensity] of simplicity

A year or two ago, a very kind gentleman and I were discussing New Order's Temptation. I don't know why I didn't mention another of their songs, in the Youtube below.

It had always seemed to me that I was alone in thinking this a very moving song. Simple and simplistic? Yes. Singer unsure of himself after the death of the band's driving force? Yes. A couple of dicey chords here and there? Yes. But none of that is the real point. As one youtube viewer wrote:

A drum beat. A few strings plucked on guitars lead and bass. A finger on a couple of synth keys, and a bloke singing. Basic stuff. So why does it reach into my guts, pull them out and unravel them slowly. It always has though, ever since I first put it on my deck.

... to which someone else replied:

Best comment I've seen on Youtube about any video. Well said, and I feel the same way.

... to which the guy replied:

Well thanks kindly. Very nice of you to say so. My comments came from the heart and I didn't know if I was being a bit naff to say them. But this song, and particularly the release of breath at 4 mins...... just does stuff for me that I can't explain easily.

That was the whole thing with Joy Division/early New Order. I fear quoting Artur Schnabel who said, in 1961:

Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes; grown-ups avoid Mozart because of the great quality of the notes.

I fear putting in that quote because some will deliberately misunderstand that there is no comparison being drawn in any way. One is classic and the other popular music.

And yet, Joy Division/early New Order most certainly had that indefinable something about them. You could play their songs but you could never capture that strange intensity, the intensity of youth, hope, despair, alienation, all those things. Unrequited love, lost love - it all came together in those mournful tones.

I never quite understood why this band had the capacity to move the soul but one afternoon, something happened which compounded the feeling.



I was driving south over the North York Moors, fulfilling a silly idea I had to take a French girl I knew back to France. I don't remember a lot of it but do remember the end of a misty-grey, overcast, threatening afternoon, just before the downpour, the Esk Valley awesome. I also remember the incongruity of the French girl beside me in the car, superb in her unaffectedness and when the song began on the player, just the moors, the vehicle and her in the vicinity, she was moved by the atmosphere, the intensity of the scene and I felt privileged to be part of it.

I wish I had the photo to show you but it's probably lost somewhere in Russia or Sicily now. No matter, the one below is close enough to what she looked like so I think you'd understand why the idea of driving to France did not seem OTT at the time.

[national stereotypes] n2 - the glaswegian

Glasgow, European City of Culture, 1990

The city itself is a mishmash, described in this article on its reign as European Capital of Culture:

The City fathers still bend over backwards to accommodate commercial interests; new buildings--commercial and residential--of abysmal quality are allowed, and the old are still allowed to decay and tumble. Glasgow has always had a strong American character, reflected in particular in its early-twentieth-century architecture, but today much of the city looks like parts of Detroit.

hingie

A traditional activity in tenement buildings, to have a hingie is to lean out of an open window in a flat and pass the time of day by watching the comings and goings in the street, occasionally conversing with passers-by or occupants of other open windows.

The stone-built tenement is a major feature of Glasgow's urban landscape, [b]uilt in large numbers from the mid-1800s to the early years of the twentieth century to accommodate the city's growing population.

The local humour's a good guide to a city's reputation:

Glaswegians consider Edinburgh to be in the east - the Far East. Edinburghers consider Glasgow to be in the west - the Wild West. How do you know when you're staying in Glasgow? When you call the hotel desk and say "I've gotta leak in my sink" and the response is "go ahead".

Glasgow teachers are known to use the following translations for the remarks they make on pupils' report cards:

"A born leader" - Runs a protection racket
"Easy-going" - Bone idle
"Helpful" - A creep
"Reliable" - Informs on his friends
"A rather solitary child" - He smells
"Popular in the playground" - Sells pornography

Rab C. Nesbitt [pictured] gives an insight into Glasgow and in particular, Govan:

Ian Pattison's scripts mercilessly poke fun at the more sanctimonious tendencies of nationalism, such as tartan wearing exiles, folk songs from the Hebrides, and the worst aspects of the 'remember Culloden' victim mentality. However the failings of the proletariat are satirised too - working-class culture and its limitations are hardly romanticised through Rab and his drinking pals, who often proudly refer to themselves as 'scum'.

Rab: "Mary, we huv knain each other tae long to let a pound ae dead meat tae come between us".

Mary: "Let's leave oor sex life oota this."





If you'd like to see the whole episode, Part 2 is here and Part 3 here. The language - a bit of background:

Northeast English, spoken throughout the traditional counties of Northumberland and County Durham , shares other features with Scots which have not been described above.As well as the main dialects, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow (see Glasgow patter) have local variations on an anglicised form of Central Scots.

Glaswegian is a bit more specific, described thus:

Glasgow patter has evolved over the centuries amongst the working classes, Irish immigrants and passing seamen in the dockyards. The dialect is anglicised west central lowland Scots or Scottish English depending on viewpoint, and features a varied mix of typical Scots expressions and vocabulary, as well as some examples of rhyming slang, local cultural references and street slang.

Some examples:

Buckie/Bucky — Buckfast Tonic Wine - cheap, strong, fortified wine popular with many teenagers.

Cleek — To refer to picking up a partner of the opposite sex, cleek being the Scots word for a hook or crook referring to the linking of arms. A more colourful theory is that it originates from late night kissing couples on tenement doorsteps and knocking milk bottles to make a clinking sound.

Dreepie - hanging from the edge of a roof so that your feet are as close as possible to the ground.

Electric soup — see buckie, also a Scottish comic book. Anything more alcoholic than tasty. To 'be on the electric soup' has an implication of loss of faculty.

Hauners — A helping hand in a playground fight.

Jeg — Any carbonated soft drink.

Mad wi it — Drunk or intoxicated.

Mintit - Cool/amazing.

Particks — A term for breasts which came about through a number of slang words, an area of the city and a pub (The Partick Smiddy).

So that's the Glaswegian and his life and as Rab explains to his wain:

"You'll be skint, battered, exploited, lied to, cheated and despised. But at least you'll no' be bored."

'Narodniye' Russian bands

When your Russian keyboard has died and you're looking for songs from the 90s from over there, na russkom, it's not an easy task, especially if the band itself doesn't list them - speaking of gruppa lyube there.

Some of the lyrics:

Very, very rough translation:

Wednesday [10 to 12]

12.  One of my fave songs from Eat a Peach

https://youtu.be/wwyXQn9g40I

Sometimes a song is lifted way above the ordinary and this one always had the potential for that with two genuine lead guitarists - Duane Allman and Dickey Betts - in the same band.  

The usual way is an agreement to play lead on alternate songs but here, they both play lead - Duane in the first half with Dickey here and there, then Betts takes over.  For mine, there was just something about Duane A’s playing.

11.  Rossa's mother

[hate the music] different strokes

There came a time in the late 60s or early 70s when popular music [not in the sense of "pop" but of music people listened to and enjoyed] fragmented.

I don't know when you'd date it from but the situation which had existed where a new song was released in either America or Swinging Britain and every teenager in the world discussed it seemed to … well … fragment.

Woody

Now some people listened to Uriah Heep or Ten Years After and some didn't. Everyone still listened to Zep, Floyd and Deep Purple and even had time for JJ Cale and the Eagles. But coming in from the edges were John Cale, Lou Reed, Nazareth and of course - punk.

Now some wouldn't give Wings airtime and others loved it. Deutsch Kosmik Musik and Hawkwind left many cold. We probably didn't realize how bad it had got until the late 70s when, if you went to a party, someone would put some track on and expect everyone would dance to it but some other guy would go over, take it off and put on another genre and so on.

Woody

My first inkling was around 1980 in London when I'd play Selecter and the Specials, the Beat and Bad Manners, Splodginessabounds and other garage groups hawked about by musicians on the street plus, strangely, Fairport Convention - a vibrant time but not everyone's cup of tea.

And there was music I wouldn't sully my player with. So when I read this article yesterday, though I didn't agree with his targets necessarily, I had to chuckle at his sentiments:

I consider myself a fairly pluralistic cosmopolitan fellow when it comes to music … but there are some musics and sounds that I find unendurable and I actually resent the fact that they even exist. So here's Part One of an ongoing series of Crimes Against Music.

Dixieland/Trad Jazz image: Code words for white guys with moustaches, straw boaters, bowties and striped shirts pretending to be playing a rudimentary form of New Orleans jaunty jazz. Banjo, trombone, tuba and clarinet all in one band and all playing at once! Hand me a blindfold and earplugs please.

Woody

The Piano Accordion: [I]t's a contraption from hell that sounds like an emphysemic portable home organ and when played looks like a fat man having a difficult bowel movement and playing with his own nipples. Oh yes, and smiling at us while he does it!

White People Playing Faux Reggae: Eric started it all [and] performed it as if he was anaesthetized from the neck down … It's not simple, it's subtle, it's not in the beat it's in the spaces in between, it's not rhythm it's riddem.

Wordless Choruses: The last resort for lazy uninspired songwriters who insult people's intelligence by singing baby talk instead of using coherent language. Sting's De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. I rest my case.

Woody

Prog Rock: [I]n the early 70s, a bunch of otherwise useless Art College and University bearded white boy wannabes abandoned song, melody, meaning and purpose for pretension, pomp and meander, often over a whole side of an album! With frequent, frightfully clever, time changes and Year 10 poetic doggerel castratoed above it all, they often consorted with symphony orchestras to legitimize their own plunkings.

Jazz Fusion: [O]ften with too-clever-by-half "complex" time signatures, rhythmic patterns, and extended track lengths … draining all character and integrity out of both. Don't you hate virtuosos? They never shut up and play the music but instead are full of "Gee Wiz Hey Mum Look At Me!" tricks and technique. Once they got hold of synthesizers there was no hope, it was like giving whisky to the Indians!

Woody

And so on.

A good article but it makes me wonder what your own pet hates are. For the record, mine include saccharine sweet 60s, three piece, thin combo songs, bland super-serious Yes or ELR, bland Billy Joel whom we're told is the last word in cool, Gary Glitter and that whole 70s yuk, Sweet and that ilk, Supertramp and Supergroups, ageing rockstars, Wings, boring, thumping clubbing music [except for some trance] and my pet hate - those 90s and 00s stars who think they have to throw the voice about and hack up good songs to impress. These last you always see "singing" at superbowls in some sort of "how long can you yodel the one word" contest.

Tinny

I s'pose my pet hates come down to any singers with giant egos or chips on their shoulders for no genuine reason and my pet loves are those who are genuine, humble and consistently high quality.

Songs which ... well ... we just can’t

What I mean here is they were massively popular, maybe even really nice people, e.g. Karen Carpenter, maybe your better half adored him/her/them and you went along with it because it was ‘the right thing to do’, everyone did ... but truly, it was a chore to listen.  You look across and he/she is singing and bouncing away and even as a curmudgeon ... you don’t have the heart to spoil it.

What brought this on was the Petersens covering Top of the World just now.  Seriously, I just went all dazed. Numb.

[viktor tsoi] ddt and samizdata

This is a really tall order - not just to explain something outside the experience of most but to make it interesting. Even if one person is interested, that would be a good thing.

Picture the early 1980s USSR and the attitude to the rock music phenomenon. My Russian friend told me tales of how the samizdat worked [a term which has now been used for a popular blog on the net] and it has been put well by Vladimir Bukovsky as:

"I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it."

It was a fraught enterprise and somewhere along the line, the first and maybe last true Russian rock star began to play and his tapes were distributed underground across the country. This was Виктор Цой [Viktor Tsoi]. Jim Morrison, Velvet Underground and Hendrix were seen as rebels and could be arrested for obscenity, drugs and sedition but the whole process was benign by comparison to Russia.

This is why singers like Tsoi, who stayed true to his musical roots, sang about everyday life and never sold out, was so appreciated by those now in their late 40s and is being rediscovered by the younger generation today. I didn't get much of a chance to get into his music over there but I do have a few tracks, of which this is one of the softer songs:

Boomp3.com

A group from the same era, ДДТ [DDT], was influenced by Tsoi as well as striking out in a highly individual manner, perhaps their greatest strength being the lead Юрий Шевчук [Yuri Shevchuk]. DDT went through a similar fate to Tsoi, with concerts censored and always the threat of an official clampdown.

Whereas Tsoi was killed in a car accident, DDT went on to greater things and became probably the most revered band in Russia, not so much for the music but for the highly evocative and thoughtful lyrics and the sheer humanity of their material. To give you an idea, Wiki says:

In the beginning of 1995, a new album, Это все [eto vsyo] (that's all). was recorded. In January, Shevchuk went on a mission of peace to Chechnya, where he performed in 50 concerts for the Russian troops and Chechen citizens alike. In the spring and summer of 2002, 10 out of 11 concerts that the band played were benefits for various social and cultural organizations.

You can imagine the effect this would have had on the ordinary Russian and I'd like to tell you about New Year in 2001 or 2002, I can't remember. My girlfriend of the time, her family and I went down to a beach house [it was only minus 10 so not too cold]. We built a fire and got vodkaring, then the teenagers in the house beside us came over and when they learned I was foreign, presented me with a DDT album. The music apparently had no generational barriers.

Perhaps the best way to show the reverence that certain groups and artists have in Russia, largely due to their difficult past, is to post the clip below. It's not the best version I've heard of this song, especially the campy bit towards the end but you have to understand that this was a tribute to and by an aging star last year, so hopefully it can be forgiven. The words:

Это все, что остaнется после меня
Это все, что возьму я с собой

... roughly translate as "that's all that's left after me; that's all that I take with me":




It's sad that a recent commenter, I'm sure atypical of our country as a whole, recently chose to leave a comment on my blog: "You're not with those Russian twats now; you're in Britain, mate."

Perhaps a course in understanding wouldn't go amiss for him. Perhaps he could go over there for a month or two and see at first hand that people are people, wherever they are.

Carols

If this is one day ahead, it's because there's a nice one for Christmas Eve which puts this back one day.

https://youtu.be/zNHd22IW8b0

Wiki: