The Religion that is Justin Bieber - update

You know, when I wrote that I wanted to punch Justin Bieber in this post HERE, I didn't realise what a spectacular fall he would have.

You know who was right?

Me

I was right.

Terrible music, terrible person. Treats fans badly, no respect for anyone and is so used to being told he is right by all of his hangers on, to whom he is their meal ticket, that he has lost all perspective on the world

Form a queue and maybe we can all punch him now . . .

Musical Magpie

 I am lucky enough to Live in London. London is one of the world's great cities and one of the thing that makes it great is the museums and exhibitions that you get to see. last week I got too see the David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert (V&A). The exhibition is called 'David Bowie is', and it is a huge collection of memorabilia and multi media going through his career.

That amount of stuff they have to listen to, watch and look at is amazing. We were there for about 90 minutes and scratched the surface. As a bowie fan, it was great. lots of good songs with the original costumes, things like original handwritten lyric sheets. Talks with collaborators on Album covers, set design , guitarists and all of the other people in between.

The most interesting part for me was a series of three essay like pieces that you could listen to going through the different periods of the music. The Ziggy years. the Berlin era and then what could be described as after that. In the first part of it, and indeed in a lot of the exhibition it talked about Bowie soaking up influences from his surroundings. The writer of the piece and presenter, Howard Goodall, pointed out that the guitar in Rebel Rebel is quite similar to that of a Rolling Stones riff and that it could be pointed out by some that as the Rolling Stones were the biggest band in the world at the time , arguably given Led Zeppelin obviously, that this was not coincidental. He then went to pains to point out that there was no way that Bowie would have copied or borrowed a style.

But then he had to say that didn't he.

Here it it

A great deal of the exhibition went on and on about how much a trail blazer that Bowie was (actually it also tried to say is, but I will get to that later). Do we agree with this? Well it is a little complicated isn't it.

There is no doubt that he had a different style from the main stream at the time. Although let's not forget that when Space Oddity came out it was 1969, and an androgynous man was not that unusual. Indeed like so much of the image of Bowie, it is taken very much from the theater and the many actors that are listed as inspiration by Bowie himself.

Still a good song though - seen through modern eyes here

Let's also not forget that when Ziggy was actually 'born' in 1972 we had subsequently had 2 years of T-Rexsity and 'glam' was fully underway.

You see where I am going here. It isn't that original really. It isn't a new idea. It is a similar idea with a couple of quirks taken from other sources thrown in and packed up for the masses. That, you see is my point here. Like so many other very successful artists that are considered trial blazers, what they actually do is scoop up the underground, mix it with some other influences and re-package it. because they are famous , people see it as the new trend. They are branded as heroes for it

A poor link , but I enjoyed it.

You can make very similar arguments for the Berlin era and the post Berlin, pre Tin Machine albums. The electronic and more industrial sounds were already coming out of Germany. Let's be honest here, Bowie didn't throw a dart at Europe, hit Berlin and say, 'I know a great place for this music that is completely unique'. It is true that he did have a previous, well documented love of the Cabaret scene in Berlin from the 30s and various artists from that and slightly previous to that who were based in Berlin.

No, he moved there because that is what he wanted to Absorb.

That song, has Nile Rodgers from Chic playing on it. Indeed much of the music you know and love has Nile Rodgers playing on it. I am going to write about that at some point, remind me. Again here we have Bowie taking something, a sound out of one area and putting it to the mainstream.

You could quite correctly argue that in using the leading Disco Guitarist of the age is hardly going into the underground. Perhaps that shows that he was slipping and after being the bringer of musical greatness to the masses for a decade, his finger slipped from the pulse.

Which leads me to the decline of Bowie. I have thought about this topic quite a lot. it has always struck me as a bit odd that he was able to produce such good music for so long and then it just went off. Well, you will be completely shocked to learn that i have a theory on the topic.

As per the above Bowie spent a lot of time absorbing and regenerating, in other ways obviously, the sights and sounds. He was if not ever the biggest performer in the world, certainly the one with the most credibility left, despite being so huge. There must have been a point where he decided, you know wht? i m going to put this out and if people don't like it then it doesn't matter so much.

Something I learnt recently was that there are two albums between Let's Dance and the Tin Machine 'experiment'. Before I get there, imagine being in Tin Machine , which, according to Bowie was a proper band to which he was the lead singer. I have never heard anyone ever say that they think Tin Machine is Bowie's best work, in fact i have heard such esteemed people as Robert Smith from The Cure describe it as ' the most horrible disappointment of my life. I love Bowie but I simply couldn't listen to Tin Machine'. It is the same for everyone. So you are asked by David Bowie to be in his band,. imagine how cool that would be. Then it is Tin Machine. That must suck, a lot.

Any way, back to the theory, ah yes, he basically decided to make the truly avant guard music he always wanted to. It is just that no one else really wanted to hear it. it wasn't part of a underground swelling in music that he helped shape and bring to the mainstream. it was what was in his head originally.

So, enough, one of the great things about writing this pievce has been the chance to narrow down to my favourite Bowie song. because let's face it. Everyone has a favourite don't they.

Well i have two, because , well I am special and a snowflake and all that sort of stuff.

Sorrow

and the man who sold the world

Disappointed by expectations

So, today I found out that Ray Davies, from this band

and Chrissy Hynde , from this band

Had a daughter.

She made the news today because as part of a Fracking protest in Middle England. She and her boyfriend glued their hands together around a post . . . .

Now, I do not know this woman, never will and I realise I am putting two and two together and getting five.  However . . . how about writing a protest song???

I mean seriously

both your parents performed this song!!!Stop it and do something

Discover

Just thought I would put it out there that the 'Discover' function on the latest edition of Spotify is fantastic.

It allows you to see whom the people you are following are listening to and it also sugests, you might like this because you listened to that type of thing.

I read an article in one of the financial papers a week or so again talking about the issues of data collection. I am sure you have noticed that sidebar ads are now much more tailored to your needs! The article described the way that the logic the programs are using are starting to be able to make very educated guesses as to what we will or will not like. This is a good or a bad thing depending on what you think about the various costs and benefits of the way it works.

It is quite funny when you listen to a playlist for a party, and spotify then says, 'you listened to Will Smith, you might also like Colour me Badd' . . . err no, actually, I wouldn't like that at all. But hey, thanks for asking.

A Sunday of discovering new music awaits me . . . how cool is that

Just for a laugh

Ray Manzarek

So Ray died this week.

Sad news.

I must admit that I am not a massive fan of his, but I fully recognize that it was largely his influence that gave the doors their unique sound.

So here is a Doors top 11. In playing order, not rated.

LA Woman
Love Her madly
People are strange
Roadhouse blues
Maggie M'gill
Been down so long
Take it as it comes
The Crystal ship
Winter time love
Riders on the storm
The End

Because every Doors playlist has to end with The End

If you want to hear the songs they are on my Spotify playlists

Top ten Doors songs +1

Top ten Doors songs +1

You forget sometimes how good The Doors were.

Boys don't cry

I was told about an article by a mate which says that in a poll these were the top ten songs that make men cry.

1. Everybody Hurts (REM)
2. Tears in Heaven (Eric Clapton)
3. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
4. Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinead O'Connor)
5. With or Without You (U2)
6. The Drugs Don't Work (The Verve)
7. Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
8. Streets of Philadelphia (Bruce Springsteen)
9. Unchained Melody (Todd Duncan)
10. Angels (Robbie Williams)

To be honest I have to say that apart from 3,6 and maybe 4 I think that this is a poll done by people who had a list of ten songs and asked people to rate them. Here is the article:

http://m.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/tears-in-denim-top-10-songs-that-make-men-cry-20101001-160lk.html



Time for a song

(love the old pictures)

So, boys cry. We know that. I had a look on Spotify to see what lists other people have come up with and to be reminded of songs that might make me well up. I don't know if this is something that can be done. What I mean by this is that I can name some songs, and I will , and you may have the same reaction I did to the above list, which is a shrug and not really a response.

I mean the #2 song by Eric Clapton. That song is a song he wrote when his son died at the age of 4 after falling out a window. The song is a tribute to the boy and asks if he would recognise Clapton in heaven. Sad stuff. But it doesn't make me well up because I do not have an emotional attachment to it.
Having an emotional attachment to the music is really what gets the tears going.

With that in mind here are some of the songs I think bring the tears to me.

Cat's In The Cradle.

I have no idea if you have a son, but you have/had a dad. That song makes it extremely difficult not to think about that relationship. Good or bad, it is an extremely sentimental song and as such it speaks to some emotion. I am not going to bore you with the details of my relationships, but I have a father and a son and to me there is emotion connected to both that makes that song poignant in many ways.

This song always elicits a response from me as well:

That is because it takes me to a place where I remember those people I have known who intentionally or otherwise committed suicide. I miss them and so in a moment of self pity I start to well up a bit. It is a bit of a mood thing though. If it is grey and dark and I am hungover then I am more likely to go off than on other occasions.

I have to admit that I am a bit of a crier. I think that I am a relatively calm person, but particularly sentimental films make me well up. I am not a sobber I hasten to add. Nor does pain elicit tears, well not yet anyway. Put me in front of a sentimental film, particularly on a plane, and the eyes start burning. . . .I guess though that my love of music underpins this. Music brings out an emotional response and it is not really much of a leap to then think that sentimentality and becoming emotionally involved in the song or film will have many effects. One might be crying.

I tell you because the next song is completely left field, to say the least

I dont really know why. I guess it gets me thinking about how great some things are and how much it would hurt to lose them. It is more than that. I think of the loss of joy. By this I mean that I think the song is a celebration of how great and wonderful it is to have the things the song talks about and the feelings that they emote. To lose that joy really hits me in a wierd way. Am I the only one?

It does seem though that although I have a strong love for darker emotional music, not a lot of songs actually bring the tears. Whilst writing this I have been listening to Joy division, The Cure, Counting Crows, Massive Attack, Alice in Chains. Husker Du, you know, happy songs about sunshine and butterflies  . . . .I have come to the realization that the songs that make a man cry, or anyone cry for that matter, are songs that drag you into them and then relate the topic to something in your life. Whether it is the loss of that or more likely  applying the situation in the song to that facet in your own life, means that you become sad and cry.

So? Give me some songs and I will put a list together from music people and send it to the same people who put the other list together.

Thanks to Greg for the suggestion and the link.

Array FM

In this post here I lamented the loss of a good radio station.

I asked you for help, I did, you gave me nothing, nothing at all. Bit disappointed in you.

Anyway, despite the pain of your silence I found a good alternative rock station on my own.

Under Alternative Rock there is a station called Array FM. It is a US station. Plays some great new and newish music. . .Give it go. . .

or don't, but I would appreciate a response on what I should listen to.

thanks