Matthew Horton reads too much into
yesterday’s comment pieces.
Interesting - if slight - editorial schism on the Guardian site this week,
where hooded claw Maggoty Lamb (via the late Charlie Gillett) pinpoints the
mid-80s demise of the NME to its desertion of black music, while Michael Hann,
current editor of the physical Guardian's Friday Film & Music pullout, lets
slip the dropping of UK urban albums from his reviews section. In the comments
area of a piece about divisive cash-for-reviews company The Men From The Press,
Hann admits his roster of writers lacks specialist knowledge of R&B and hip
hop, so prefers to avoid rather than cover with half an arse.
The Guardian's shift is governed by market forces, of course - if budgets are
slashed, niche freelancers go down the tubes, and their niche concerns with
them. Hann is at pains to point out that urban music is given ample space in
dedicated features, and fair enough, but these are necessarily occasional. At
the same time, last Friday's reviews included albums by bastions of commerce
Wooden Shjips, The Ruby Suns and Peggy Sue; hardly sops to the advertisers.
Hann steers a strong team of writers, but if he's losing whole genres because
he cannot afford to pay specialist freelancers, perhaps the contracted group
needs a shake-up instead?
Naturally, the Guardian is not obliged to cover anything it doesn't think its
readers want. Still, there's a sense of glee in Maggoty Lamb's reporting of
Gillett's told-you-so to the NME (and its immediate rivals). As ML says,
Gillett decried the established rock press's blithe avoidance of black music,
flinging the accusation that they had "abandoned everything [they] were
meant to be doing" and confessing he was "glad" that the more
inclusive likes of Smash Hits had triumphed in the landgrab.
Its rivals have gone the way of all inkies, but the NME ploughs on in its
pallor, unrecognisable from the weighty wodge of rancorous paper that in 1985
voted Marvin Gaye's What's Going On the greatest album of all time. They know
what their readers want. But do their readers know themselves? Opportunistic
flirtations with Arctic Monkeys and Calvin Harris, plus a shrewd willingness to
play the game, have flipped Dizzee Rascal into the mainstream, onto the NME's
cover and over the indie kids' kneejerk defences. He needn't be a one-off.
Until there's a sea-change in editorial policy, there can be more happy
confluences of events.
Presumably Film & Music's readers are neither buying the Friday paper for
its dense coverage of urban music, nor turning away for any lack of it, but it
couldn't hurt to have the variety. Even if the newspaper has no moral (or
commercial) reason to bear responsibility for black music's national profile,
the fact that its contributors can recognise - by mild endorsement of opinion -
the potential pitfalls of tacit sacrifice of an entire genre surely calls for
some searching of the soul.
Fleetwood Mac aren’t
all about Rumours, and Tusk wasn’t the crazed disaster of lore. Ed Whatley kicks over some statues.
My copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was bought from the Music & Video
Exchange in London's
fashionable Notting Hill Gate. On the sticker was the price, and some wag's
inscription – "Better than Pet Sounds". Pet Sounds is of course
critical shorthand for "best of top 5 shoo-in", and Brian Wilson's
name spoken only in hushed, awed tones.
In the years since, more and more people have come to agree. And the
mega-multi-maxi-selling slice of pure 70s soft gold has gone from critically
discarded guilty pleasure back to the top of any music fan’s iCanon, sometimes
accompanied by its predecessor, the eponymous first outing for the Rumours
line-up.
But let's go a little further. Fleetwood Mac were the greatest band of the
American 70s. That they managed this while selling over 40 million albums is
proof that sometimes the man in the street gets it spectacularly right. The reason they were the greatest is Lindsey
Buckingham. And while his silverspring genius was all over Fleetwood Mac and
Rumours, it's the records that bookended those two that seal the deal. Tusk - a
four million seller you always saw in charity shops throughout the 90s, and
Buckingham Nicks - Lindsey and Stevie's little known pre-Mac flop.
Tusk is a ridiculous record. It's
three entirely different albums made to hang out with each other like a brat, a
teen and tween at a family gathering. Who, it turns out, get along like a house
on fire. Christine McVie plays her haunted blues ballads, dressed up in the
slickest LA finery, straight and grave. Stevie Nicks' confidence and ability
peak on reverb and white magic masterpieces like Sara and Beautiful Child.
Then there's Lindsey - the brat, ADDing all over the place on 40 cups of squash
(all right, it wasn't squash). Some of his songs sound like a rat in a box,
screeching and hitting the sides. The tightest, best musicians in LA making up
what they thought punk sounded like without ever having heard it. His gift for
the mellifluous doesn't get a look-in. This is the sound of someone flicking
the Vs at a decade of he and his contemporaries flattening everything into a
haze of FM bliss, but unable to stop it sounding just as glorious.
Six years previously, at the other end of the landslide of success, you have
Buckingham Nicks. Free of the celeb rhythm section, this is the purest shot of
Lindsey you can get. It is diaphanous finger-picked blissed-out magic from
start to finish. If you're a guitarist, you'd better be up to scratch if you
name a song Django and you don't want to end up shooting rats in a train yard.
For some unimaginable reason, it's been out of print for years. But do yourself
a solid and download it.
You might want to make a case for someone else being the greatest of the era.
Neil Young, Dylan, Steely Dan, Wonder. I'm sticking with Lindsey and Stevie.
Po-faced into the 21st century, Pink Floyd have won the fight to stop people downloading the more,
erm, obvious singles from their albums – instead you have to take their grand
opusesuses in full. Chalk one up for the old long-player.
After rigorous analysis, we’ve chosen three other albums that should only be
ingested in all their glory – plus three more that could do with some paring
down, and another three that should be hung, drawn and quartered until their
one good track is all that remains. If you’ve a mind, feel free to add to any
category in the egalitarian comments box.
ALL KILLER
Frank Sinatra/Songs For Swinging Lovers Arguably it's the first modern album, the first record to be intended to work
as a coherent whole. It remains incredibly difficult to stop it midway through.
Imagine someone stopping It Happened In Monterrey. That person would have all
the soul of Moyles.
The Avalanches/Since I Left You
Obviously best taken in one gulp because it's a
seamless mix, Since I Left You also knows the value of sequencing, the cranking
thrills of Flight Tonight, Close To You and Diners Only exploding into A
Different Feeling. Elsewhere it's a voyage through the tropics and the skittish
imagination of some gifted, one-shot Australian boys.
Spank Rock/YoYoYoYoYo East Baltimore/Philly party geniuses go in hard from the start and don't let up
at any point. A rap/dance/electro record without a single wasted second, it
doesn't require sustained listening, but it does demand it. Dirty, in all the
best senses of the word.
KILLER/FILLER
Kanye West/The College Dropout
Lovely chip on your shoulder there, Kanye, but does
it really require a dozen skits to emphasise? They trip the impetus of all
those finely crafted, sped-up-soul-sample, hook-sprinkled beauties. That goes
for the rest of you too, hip hop albums.
Bob Dylan/New Morning
Bucolic, touching reflections on family life and
love, uplifting country tunes and oddly fitting gospel backing singers (some of
whom Bob was, of course, knocking off). It also provides the soundtrack for The
Dude's psychedelic bowling alley trip in The Big Lebowski, and you can't argue
with that sort of accolade. The problem is, halfway through, you get If Dogs
Run Free. A wandering, pointless ditty, pretty bad in itself, but rendered unlistenable
when the scooby-doo scat singing starts
in the background. Like walking through a beautiful field of corn with your
best girl, and twatting your foot on a rock halfway through.
The Beatles/Any Beatles Album You can always drop at least one song. Always. Whether it’s a Ringo nursery
rhyme, an exhausting George sitarathon or a Paul/John twee beast. And they're
the most important albums in rock music history. Which demonstrates how hard it
is to achieve the perfect record - and the rather pointless nature of this
category.
FILLER WITH A LURKING KILLER
Paul Simon/One Trick Pony Oh dear. When you listen to Paul's Best Ofs you think whatever album Late In
The Evening came from must be pretty special. But then you listen to it. It's
the Paul-written soundtrack to a Paul-written film about a man who may or may
not be Paul but is Paul who is struggling because of his musical principles (man)
and his boss, who is surely played by Rip Torn. And the album's not pretty
special, it turns out. Not pretty special at all. Oh well. What doesn't kill
you makes you stronger. Ricky Gervais did a second series of Extras. Paul did
not make a sequel to Late In The Evening.
Jamiroquai/Emergency On Planet Earth
When You Gonna Learn? is a wildly exciting debut
single, cherrypicking the best of acid jazz and 1970s Wondery funk and crazying
it up with didgeridoo. The rest of the album is doobie-dooden-doo indulgent
slop with all the questing groovy soul of Ed Miliband.
Extreme/Pornograffiti
OK, More Than Words may not be to your taste.
But 20 years on, the thought of all those power ballad fans rushing out to buy
the album, only to discover a funk-metal horrorshow filled with unpleasant
guitar wanking from the ludicrous Nuno Bettencourt, is still hilarious. Or
perhaps that only happened at Shabby's school.
Once
upon a time they were inseparable, but then Jay-Z did an awful thing and Ed Whatley knew it was the end for them.
All of us have had that moment in a relationship. You’ve loved each other for a
long time, gone through good and bad, had some great times on cold nights in or
hot summer holidays. Helped each other through the shaky times, sticking
together even when you’ve had fallings out, let all those bad habits go and
still loved the make-up sex. But there’s that one moment, when you know, you
just know – it’s over. The person you loved has gone.
This year Jay-Z released a single, Young Forever. Oh God. Like a tearful
girlfriend confessing she’s been cheating after a day you’d set aside to just,
you know, hang out, like we used to, this song sat at the end of Blueprint 3,
Jay’s most recent album. Blueprint 3 isn’t bad, but it does have the whiff of
someone trying to make stadium hip hop. Of trying to get into Bono World.
Coldplay World. The world where Eno produces your album in between grotesque
charity events sponsored by Apple and attended by Naomi Campbell. See, Kanye West
and Jay worked out a couple of albums ago that if they were going to fulfil
their multi-million dollar live contracts they needed to start rapping slower.
Because in the same way that Led Zeppelin clocked in the 70s that you needed to
be loud as hell, and U2 realised in the 80s that you needed space between the
sounds, and Coldplay realised in the Noughties that you needed simple melodies
to get across to 100,000 people a night, you can’t rap quick and complex in an
icy barn to people who haven’t been listening properly. It. Has. To. Be. Slow.
And it can’t be too specific. And it can’t upset your sponsors. OK, all records
are made within parameters, that’s the nature of creation. But those are some
chokers.
So OK, she’s been hanging out with some new people. So OK, her career’s more
important than you; fair enough, you don’t own her. And look, you’ve had so
many great times together, like all those parties you went to (Give It 2 Me),
like all those good times in the sack (Big Pimpin’), like the time she kept
your head up when you were all broke down (Blueprint). But this song, this Young
Forever, she’s in flagrante dressed as a nun with his sexual effluent all over
her face. And the pictures are all over the internet. There’s no going back.
This song, this bloody song. A cover – not a sample, not an interpolation, a
frigging cover. A cover of an extraordinarily awful 80s pop turd bemoaning
impending nuclear doom, a doom that could be no worse than this glum and keening
gauche-fest. Played on awful portentous synths with a totally perfunctory
"beat", the hook is sung by Brit cipher Mr Hudson, sounding like an
autotuned duck with no sense of irony. And Jay? The greatest lyricist of his
generation?
"Fear not when, fear not why, Fear not much while we’re alive, Life is for living not living up tight, See ya somewhere up in the sky"
Below piss poor. A nod to drug-dealing later in the song. Wow. As bland, anodyne
and pointless as the worst Snow Patrol atrocity. It’s over. I’m sorry. I loved
you. It’s over.
And who can I start seeing now? Drake? Drake?
All she talks about is house prices. Lil Wayne’s druggy stream of consciousness
blither? I might as well shack up with Crazy Katy in the squat. Eminem? She
just isn’t... she used to be pretty.
I think I’m just going to have to stay in rap celibacy for a bit. Let the
wounds heal.
Were band t-shirts infra
dig in the second half of the 90s? What drives someone to wear a sexist Def
Leppard cartoon on their chest? All these questions and more left unanswered as
Matthew Horton remembers his
wardrobe.
The Cult x 2 (1987-1988; 1987-1994) My first band t-shirt was a rather dramatic, 3D-effect gothic-lettered Cult
Electric top. I was a pop kid while everyone around me went METAL, but I could
get on board with The Cult’s gonzo riffs. When our black-denim-clad crew
swaggered off to Hello Wembley! Arena to see them for our first gig, I bought
another to prove I’d been. My mate Dave borrowed the first t-shirt and lost it;
the second made it to the mid 90s.
U2 (1987-early 90s) A grey Joshua Tree number that was way cool at the time. OK, it wasn’t.
Def Leppard (1988-1988) Still subject to my METAL (well, poodly ersatz metal) friends, I saw this bunch
of jokers at Wembley as well. Worst gig I’ve ever experienced. Naturally, I
bought a t-shirt featuring a comic strip about blue-titted naked fembots.
Lloyd Cole & The
Commotions (1988-early 90s) Metallers shaken off, I went all boho-intellectual with this natty garment
showing half of Lloyd’s beautiful face.
De La Soul (1989-mid 90s) Lurid green monstrosity with “Daisy Age” and, erm, a daisy on it.
James (1990-death of baggy clearout) The classic “Come” long-sleever. I wore it on my first day at
university and everyone thought I was from Manchester. Good conversation-starter,
although the conversations soon revealed I was a Home Counties posho.
World Of Twist (1991-present?) This one may still be at my folks’ house. Must be worth a FORTUNE. It’s another
long-sleever, with fag packet design and that unquantifiable no-hoper cachet.
Ocean Colour Scene (1991-present?) I suspect this is still knocking about too, but caked in the mud of the Bristol
Downs after it became my football top. OCS were laughable for a different
reason back then – as baggy latecomers – but we thought Sway was pretty groovy.
Again, it wasn’t.
Primal Scream (2000-present) A lovely thing, this. Red t-shirt with the Screamadelica logo embroidered in
the centre. Fucking massive, unwearable.
Flaming Lips (2000-2000) Useless cartoony thing bought when sauced and binned within days.
The Avalanches (2001-?) I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve thrown this abstract, melancholy, melting
green beauty away.
Blur (2003-2006) Definitely thrown this nasty, cheap, camouflage Think Tank knock-off away.
Marvin Gaye Ringo Starr Brian Wilson (2004-present) Arty monochrome efforts from Sparratease (who I can’t find anymore). Fine
designs and durable material, although Brian’s started peeling a bit.
Typically.
Radiohead (2003-bottom drawer) Badly fitting khaki t-shirt, woven from disaffection.
Bob Dylan (2006-2008) Sparratease again, but they’d scrimped on material. As the neck began to
throttle me after successive washes, I scrapped it. Shame. A Bob/record label
merge on bright orange, it looked HOT.
Sugababes (2006-present) This is the wry Keisha&Mutya&Siobhan&Heidi&Amelle one.
Needs amending.
Scritti Politti (2006-present) Bought on a wave of giddiness at White Bread Black Beer comeback. It’s green!
Duran Duran (2009-present) Retro 1984 perfectly shaped tour shirt purchased without a whiff of irony.
Fuck Buttons (2009-present) Hey, I’m still down with the kids.
Go on, unburden your own wardrobe secrets in the comments box below, or
Matthew will look even more foolish than he does already.
