MSN Music Blog: Dancing About Architecture
Glasto Faces Possible Swine Flu Chop
Guess who’s been reading the tabloids again? According to a report in today’s Sun, the UK’s most famous music festival could be cancelled this summer if the swine flu crisis reaches pandemic proportions.
I hope I don’t live (or die) to regret saying this but I reckon there’s about as much chance of that happening as, well, pigs flying.
Remember bird flu? Killer bees from the continent? Carcinogenic asylum seekers? (OK, I made that last one up).
I’m no conspiracy theorist but when I read stuff like this it’s difficult to ignore the politics of fear theory – ie. the idea that the media colludes (whether knowingly or not) with darker forces who’d rather keep us all scared, compliant, and suggestible.
When the story broke all of two weeks ago, it was all over the news. Fair enough. But the very fact that it’s already comfortably behind Gordon Brown’s gurning on YouTube, the Champions League, and that annoying kid who got the ‘world’s best job’ should tell you everything you need to know.
If you ask me, this Glastonbury story is just another way of spinning it out a bit longer.
I’m not so naive as to think the situation couldn’t get worse. For all I know I’ll be typing my next blog entry from an isolation unit wearing a surgical mask. But until that happens, I’m not going to start worrying whether Glastonbury will be cancelled or not.
And neither should you.
With A Lil Help From My Friends
Today’s Sun has a story about how Lily Allen rescued a substandard vocal performance by Atomic Kitten back in 2001.
Apparently the then-popular girl-band were recording a track called On Me ‘Ead (written by Lily’s dad Keith) for the soundtrack to Brit flick Mike Bassett: England Manager.
The original Atomic Kitten performance wasn’t up to scratch (if you’ll excuse the feline pun) and they didn’t have time to record another given their tight deadlines and the fact one of the band was ill.
So Keith suggested his 14 year-old daughter have a go. According to ‘a source’ quoted in the Sun’s report, "It only took her half a day to nail it. Liz and Jenny are on the finished song but Lily was the third member, with the strongest vocal, patching the whole thing up."
This story sums up the problem some people have with Lily Allen. On one hand she is a genuinely talented singer, on the other, however much she plays it down, she has clearly benefited from her Dad’s position.
But you know what? Who cares about the second bit?
Thanks in no small part to Lily Allen, who opened the door for many who followed, this country now boasts an unprecedented number of female pop stars who are the envy of the world.
Not only can Lily, Amy, Adele and the rest sing better than Atomic Kitten, they write their own material and do, say, and wear what they like.
In this context, where Lily’s first leg-up into the business came from is irrelevant.
Jacko’s Jumbo Jungle Jamboree
If I’m starting to come up with headlines like that, I should probably stop reading the tabloids.
But you just can’t beat them for trashy pop stories such as the news in today’s Daily Mirror that Michael Jackson is planning to ride onstage astride an elephant at his London concerts later this year.
Not only that, there’s talk of panthers led on gold chains, tropical birds flying about the place, monkeys, and no fewer than 100 Masai warriors.
The last time he attempted anything so grandiose was at the 1996 BRIT Awards when his messianic performance was interrupted by Jarvis Cocker’s bum-wiggling antics.
But that was at the height of Cool Britannia when the country was feeling good about itself. Jacko’s self-important preaching felt out of place and vaguely obscene.
But as we all know, things are very different now.
While I was thinking about this earlier, something occurred to me that I never thought I would say.
In these dark days of recession, global terrorism, and 24-hour rolling cancer coverage, could it be that a bit of Jacko-inspired lunacy is what we need to cheer us up?
Just a thought.
Leon Dropped
According to reports in The Sun, X-Factor 2007 winner Leon Jackson has been dropped from his record label following poor sales of his debut album.
It’s hardly earth-shattering news, is it?
I interviewed him last year and he was a likeable enough young chap but sorely lacking in charisma. I met Same Difference the week after and they had more star-quality, which tells you all you need to know.
At the risk of stating the obvious, there are loads of people out there with good singing voices. Go to any half-decent karaoke night anywhere in the country and the chances are you’ll find at least one punter who could hold their own against Leon.
Conversely, there are plenty of successful recording artists who couldn’t touch him in the vocal department. Without putting too fine a point on it, two of them were on the judging panel last year.
It just goes to show that winning a TV talent show is no guarantee of success if you don’t have that extra something. That’s why it’s called the X-Factor.
What The World Is Waiting For?
According to recent reports, the Stone Roses have agreed to reform for 21 dates this summer.
For people of a certain age (eg. me), this is extremely exciting but initially I was a little surprised it was considered sufficiently newsworthy to make page three of today’s Daily Mirror (albeit underneath a much bigger spread about Corrie’s Jack Duckworth finding love again).
Either Mirror staff were getting all their Manc news out of the way in one go or the Roses were a bigger cultural deal than I thought.
Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe the Stone Roses belong in the most exulted sphere of British guitar music.
You know, the place where the Beatles and the Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, and a handful of others hang out but Oasis, for all their record sales, have only ever peered longingly into.
What surprised me is that their mooted reunion should excite mainstream media attention when they only released two albums (five years apart), didn’t have a number one with either, and have never been a household name.
I am not, as I have been accused recently, equating commercial success with quality. The Smiths, for example, never troubled the charts much. What they did do, however, was leave behind a decent-sized body of work. Few would argue they failed to live up to their potential.
The Stone Roses, on the other hand, were recently referred to by their own bass player (who now plies his trade with Primal Scream) as the George Best of music for the manner in which they threw it all away after their first sniff of success.
Although few Roses fans will thank me for the comparison, I’m hoping this will turn out like Take That’s reunion. How brilliant would it be if, like Take That, they are overwhelmed by public reaction to the tour and are inspired to write new material?
How brilliant if that new material turns out to be as good as if not better than anything they came up with first time around?
You see, the thing with the Stone Roses is that no band has ever left a bigger question mark over what might have been.
The fact that we might be about to find out is why the news deserves to be in ALL the papers.
Taking The PRS
As you have probably heard by now, YouTube is in the process of blocking music videos to its UK users because of a financial dispute with the PRS (the organisation which collects royalties on behalf of artists and songwriters).
A blog entry posted yesterday by Patrick Walker, YouTube’s Director of Video Partnerships, cited ‘prohibitive licensing fees’ as the sticking point.
According to Walker, if YouTube were to pay royalties at the rate which the PRS are now demanding, they would ‘lose significant amounts of money with every playback’.
Assuming this is the truth (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), then it’s yet another case of music industry short-sightedness.
I should point out that I’m not pointing the finger at the record labels. God knows it took them long enough to embrace the internet rather than try to fight it (eg. Napster), but their willingness to work with free streaming site Spotify suggests those days are finally over.
The PRS, on the other hand, appear stuck in the dark ages. They seem unable to grasp that greater exposure to music increases people’s desire to consume it.
Watching a reduced quality video for free on YouTube is never going to replace the full high-definition musical experience.
What it may well do, however, is prompt you to buy an album or a gig ticket or a T-shirt.
Why do you think music videos are known as ‘promos’ within the industry? They are literally promotional tools -adverts, in other words. Not only that, they are adverts whose makers get paid when they are shown!
In the digital age, the PRS shouldn’t be agitating for more cash. They should be silently rubbing their hands with glee at the fact they’re still getting paid at all.
* You can still watch thousands of music videos for free on MSN Video Jukebox
Jacko Announcement
I’ve just watched Michael Jackson announce, well, not very much at the O2 centre in London.
Aside from declaring "this is it" several times (without ever clarifying what "it" might be) and claiming the dates in July would be the last time he’d ever play live, he didn’t really say much at all.
But he did say it in an uncharacteristically deep voice.
If he’s as good as his word and the UK dates this summer do turn out to be his final pay day, it seems an odd place to do it.
This is the country, remember, responsible for the Martin Bashir documentary which led to his most recent court case. It’s also home to arguably the world’s least forgiving tabloid press.
Then again, judging by the hysterical reaction of the people who’d turned out to see him speak for all of two minutes, we might also have more Jacko-worshipping lunatics per capita than anywhere else.
Suddenly it makes perfect sense.
Jacko’s Backo
It’s been the stuff of rumour for months but now it seems almost certain that Michael Jackson will play a 30-gig residency at the 02 centre this summer.
A press conference has been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at which the man himself might make an appearance. He’s known to be in the country anyway.
Up until relatively recently, the idea that Jacko might do anything purely because he needs the money would have been ridiculous but the accumulative effect of legal costs, poor record sales, and his unreconstructed attitude to spending have left him short of cash.
I don’t think it’s just about boosting the Jacko coffers though. He’s got an ego the size of a small country and desperately craves the oxygen of approval that only an adoring crowd can provide.
Also, I’m sure the fact that he’ll be trumping arch-rival Prince’s much-heralded 21-night stand at the same venue won’t have escaped his attention.
When Jacko turned 50 last year, Tom Townshend wrote a piece asking what it would take to restore him to his erstwhile position as the King of Pop. In that article, Tom doubted whether MJ was physically capable of pulling off a Prince-style residency.
Was Tom wrong? As with so much in the Michael Jackson story, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Taylor Made For Success
I hate to say ‘I told you so’ (ok, I don’t mind really) but Taylor Swift going straight in at number two in the charts yesterday with Love Story, her debut UK single, proves I was right to include her in my Ones To Watch article before Christmas.
She didn’t feature in any of the cooler-than-thou lists put out by the likes of the BBC, NME, The Observer etc… at the back end of last year.
No doubt the people who put those other lists together would say they’re only in the business of predicting ‘credible’ talent. Well, in the immortal words of a Big Brother contestant from some years ago whose name I forget, "Two words – whatever".
The music’s not really to my taste either (think Avril Lavigne crossed with Shania Twain) but surely the point of these things is to predict who is going to sell records and be all over the radio in the 12 months ahead?
Music snobbery is a terrible thing. Mind you, so is being smug so I’ll shut up now.
