Tashaki Miyaki
20 Apr 2012 4 Comments
As regulars to these pages can attest, it’s not often that The Mambo turns its attention to music and honestly, my intentions here are perhaps less than pure. Conscious that my little Sabbatical may have cast me as The Mambo’s Kevin Shields (only without any of the talent. Though Shields too seems to have belatedly awaken from his slumber, with those forever-delayed MBV re-masters finally having a concrete release date. Rejoice), forever procrastinating and seemingly incapable of actually finishing anything, my eye is cast onto what is fast becoming an all-consuming obsession: Tashaki Miyaki. Why? Well, I must concede that ultimately it’s infinitely simpler than writing about football, my other great love, on account of accommodating lazy writing practices such as using first person narrative and doesn’t call for the flowery literary flourishes , that no doubt my regular readers (are there any of you out there? I’m touched) will attest I have become (pretentiously) synonymous with. Fear not, normal service shall soon be resumed. Promise. In the meantime, indulge me. However, the primary motivation behind this piece is, of course, simply to spread the gospel of Tashaki Miyaki. And Tashaki Miyaki are fucking brilliant.
Hailed some months ago as ‘the female Jesus and Mary Chain’ by The Guardian’s Paul Lester and whilst such a description is always likely to leave those of a certain disposition salivating, it is also perhaps an indication that the band are hardly operating in virgin sonic territory. Indeed, had it not been for the genius of the Mary Chain, I’d have bought little music in recent years. The Glaswegians’ influence has been happily ubiquitous but that should not subtract from the merits of those in their thrall. As Lester highlights, the fingerprints of The Velvet Underground and Phil Spector, those other eternally cool reference points, are also clearly detectable and again, such inspirations have in recent years permeated the reverb-laden sounds of Vivian Girls, Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls and Cults whilst further back bands such as The Shop Assistants and Black Tambourine operated played on a similar pitch. Nonetheless, to dismiss Tashaki Miyaki as derivative pastiche or just another band of shoegazing American hipsters is to entirely miss the point. Instead of merely adding to the clutter, those touchstones are crafted into something imbued with a stoned, enervated and addictive charm that sets them apart from their (admittedly ace) noise pop contemporaries. True, most of their songs slumber along, half-asleep before being partially awaken by a messy, scratchy guitar ‘solo’ but within that simple formula resides a kind of seductive, somnambulistic beauty.
Initially garnering recognition with a wonderful, slowed-down, drugged-up take on All I Have To Do Is Dream (though as Everly Brothers covers go, it’s not quite Dum Dum Girls’ Let It Be Me) and an equally impressive interpretation of Sam Cooke’s Nothing Can Change This Love, the LA-based duo were initially shrouded in mystery. So much so that the ‘female Jesus and Mary Chain’ turned out to be half male (ah, the perils of getting there first), with time also revealing via their eponymous debut EP of original material, that their talent for hazy melody doesn’t have to be second-hand. This was followed by the digital single Miyak You (featuring a glorious version of Bob Dylan/George Harrison’s If Not For You), all of which can be purchased (and heard) here, with the exchange rates making them cheerfully cheap for all those on these shores. Highly recommended.
Incidentally, the band’s recent, limited release of Everly Brothers covers was dismissed by the once-mighty NME as sounding like a gaggle of ‘smacked-out tossers.’ Sadly, these days such a denunciation should be worn like a badge of honour. The paper’s descent into irrelevance was crowned with last year’s Cool List ranking 2 members of dull-as-dishwater, meat-and-potatoes loutish pretenders Kasabian in the top 5 whilst full patronage is given to the truly ghastly Mumford & Sons, the Coldplay of their generation. Bed-wetters’ music. In any case, the NME’s influence is in terminal decline, with American blogs such as Pitchfork and Gorilla vs Bear becoming the pre-eminent taste-makers. Obviously, blogging is the future…
DC
Nostalgia for an age yet to come...rage, rage against the dying of the light
10 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in Music
So I look up to the sky And I wonder what it’ll be like in days gone by As I sit and bathe in the wave of nostalgia For an age yet to come.
So wrote Shelley – that is Peter Campbell McNeish, not Percy Bysshe – in his 1978 song Nostalgia.
As opposed to, nostalgia not being what it used to be.
Noel Gallagher and Margaret Thatcher
06 Feb 2012 4 Comments
in Current Affairs, Music
Oh look, two celebrity stories in one day. The Mambo is turning into an upmarket version of OK Magazine.
Noel Gallagher has been holding forth on the great political issues of the day in the Mail on Sunday of all places. And a riveting read it makes too. Or really grim, depending on your point of view. The smarter of the Gallagher brothers was interviewed by a sunday paper that prides itself on being a mouthpiece for the politics of Maggie.
The Mail’s headline is:
‘It was all better under Thatcher’: Noel Gallagher on Britain’s glory days, turning his back on drugs and the end of Oasis
If you read the interview that isn’t actually what he said, and he is reportedly very unhappy with how he has been misrepresented, but even with that rather large caveat the contents of the article are deeply depressing for those of us who assumed that he wasn’t a complete dick. And he only has himself to blame if he is unhappy that an unreconstructed Thatcherite paper decides to spin his comments on……Thatcher. What did he really expect them to do? Run a headline saying ‘Noel says Thatcher was shit”?
So, leaving aside the fact that he doesn’t actually come out and say Thatcher was brilliant, let’s take a look at some of his other comments:
- ‘Now, these kids brought up under the Labour Party and whatever this Coalition thing is, it’s like, “Forget that, I’m not interested. I wanna be on TV.” It was a different mindset back then.’
The modern celebrity culture is in many ways very toxic indeed, but this seems like a very rose-tinted view of recent British history. Things were pretty grim under Thatcher, Noel. Have you forgotten, with those millions you now have in the bank for ripping off firstly the Beatles and the La’s and then…..yourselves? (Be Here Now is amazing though, to be fair……)
- ‘Now, no one’s got anything to say. Write a song? No thanks, I’ll say it on Twitter. It’s a sad state when more people retweet than buy records.’
I’m sorry? Do people really tweet instead of write music? Do they? Since when? And when was the last time Oasis had anything to say?
- Gallagher is entirely clean now, bar the odd beer or cigarette. He’s in no doubt as to what turned him around. ‘Meeting my wife,’ he says. ‘She was the catalyst for everything.’
Noel Gallagher the family man? Aw. How touching. How very Terry Christian.
- But, it turns out, he will be sending his sons to private school. ‘I don’t want them coming home speaking like Ali G,’ he explains. ‘Anyone in my position, you owe it to your children to send them to a school where they don’t have to walk through a metal detector in the morning……There were riot police outside our local school the other morning. Turns out there’d been a stabbing. Rival gangs. We shouldn’t need riot police at schools. This is Maida Vale. This isn’t Handsworth or Tottenham, do you know what I mean? I don’t want my kids going to a school like that. I’d rather they were at a school with Russian oligarchs’ children.’
Superb. Of course Noel. Every comprehensive in Britain is drug-filled crack den full of teenage prostitutes and 11 year olds fornicating on the desks whilst simultaneously shooting up and giving their teachers blowjobs in exchange for high marks. At playtime they play a 21st version of British Bulldog, the difference being there are real bulldogs and all the kids stab each other at the end. Not that you’re stereotyping or anything, Noel. Or rationalizing your decision to keep your children away from those ghastly proles.
- ‘Kids now watch America’s Hardest Prisons and want to be in a gang,’ he says. ‘They’ve no imagination. When I was 16 I’d watch The Godfather, but I didn’t think, “Right, I’m going to go down the barber’s and get some protection money off him.
Oh yes. You tell ‘em Noel. Every fucking kid in Britain spends his free time at the local barber’s extracting protection money (why the barber’s? What made him say the barber’s?) The thing I love most about Noel Gallagher is that for all the money he may have earnt, he still understands the realities of life for us ordinary plebs.
- ‘I saw kids on the telly saying in their Ali G voices, “It’s payback for the po-lice.” What does that mean? “Cause they arrest yer for stupid things.” Like what – hopping on one leg? Doing a silly walk like John Cleese? Get home, you idiot.’
He seems obsessed with the Ali G thing. He mentions it a couple of times. Firstly it reveals his age, but does he also really mean black but without having the bottle to say it? Is he doing a David Starkey? He just sounds like a rather ignorant, embittered old Daily Mail reader.
- ‘I don’t want to be “interesting”,’ Gallagher scoffs. ‘I don’t want critical acclaim. I don’t want my songs to be social commentary. Radiohead can have that. That’s why they’ve never done three nights at Wembley. I want the money. I want the jet, the holiday and the first-class lounge.’
Piss off Noel.
I’m surprised he is so upset with how the interview has been portrayed. The headlines could have been far worse if people had bothered to actually read the article.
‘Ali G voice’ indeed.
In defence of The Doors
29 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Music
The publishing of a new book about The Doors by noted rock critic and master of hyperbole Greil Marcus has been the cue for many music journalists and self-styled barometers of the cultural zeitgeist to stick the boot into the band and indulge in a spot of musical revisionism. In particular, Stewart Maconie in The New Statesman argues that they are probably the most overrated band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
It has become de rigeur amongst the musical commentariat to argue that their periodic sonic pomposity and the lyrical faux-profundity (lots of cock analogies) of frontman Jim Morrison has rendered them a bit of a joke to modern audiences. Taking advice from Stewart Maconie on music is like taking taking tips on fashion from Jeremy Clarkson. You only do it if you’re a dickhead.
It is amusing that someone suggesting that The Doors are ridiculous is happy to sing the praises of the staggeringly dreary Pink Floyd. Who of course have never taken themselves at all seriously. And were never ridiculous in their champagne socialist posturings.
And Maconie is a man happy to sing the praises of bands like the occasionally brilliant but invariably pedestrian James, headed by the pretentious and egomaniacal Tim Booth, a man so far up his backside he makes Morrison look like a model of self-effacing humility.
The Doors may have veered towards the ridiculous occasionally. Jim Morrison and his larger than life antics and insanely high sex drive may have overshadowed the bands artistic accomplishments but to argue that their original body of work has not stood the test of time is frankly ludicrous.
That we are having this conversation nearly 45 years after the appearance of their debut album is a testament to their longevity and significance. I’m sure if I had been alive at the time they were released I would have been blown away by Break On Through To The Other Side and Light My Fire even more than the first time I heard them 15 years ago or so. I’m sure it would have been as life-changing as it was for those who first heard Never Mind the Bollocks in 1977 or The Stone Roses in 1989. It was an exciting, innovative vibrant sound that evokes an exciting, vibrant time in popular music. When America certainly led the way musically.
The first and final albums are masterpieces, particularly the truly outstanding LA Woman, which is an album of a band at the height of their powers. Morrison’s voice was extraordinary for a man so young (he was dead at 27 just afterLA Woman came out) and his lascivious drawl gave the songs a sexual energy (If I was gay I would have been all over him……) that retains it potency and edge decades on. The track Hyacinth House in particular is a subtle stonker. Some of the other albums in between blow slightly hot and cold, in particular the more experimental Soft Parade (“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!”) but all contain gems and I defy you to find a band who took as many drugs as they did and were as prolific over a several year period (6 albums in 4 years) that did not occasionally misfire.
The Doors are and always have been a seminal band. As always one should look beyond the hype, the personalities, the hyperbole and the bullshit obsession with ‘musicianship’ (the band could certainly play some in any case) and judge the music and the ideas on show. Jim Morrison and co. produced a simply stunning, hugely original body of orignal, genre-defining work that has stood the test of time.
Dreamtime
01 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Music
Sometimes we at Representing the Mambo have a tendency to focus our writings on serious matters, namely politics and something even more important, football. Occasionally it is wise to enrich oneself culturally. And so, courtesy of the Mambo, we have a treat that will brighten up your life. Over the next few weeks we will be supplying an album by album review of the probably one of the seminal bands of all time, The Cult. If you haven’t heard of them already then frankly, I’m horrified. You’ve well and truly missed out. Just ask DC. He fucking loves them.
We begin with their first foray into musical greatness, Dreamtime. A seminal goth-rock album whose musical significance is still felt now, nearly 30 years after the event.
The Cult are and were a hugely important band for yours truly. It is an enduring mystery to me why they aren’t more critically acclaimed. Indeed, amongst the musical cognoscenti they are positively reviled, as they have been for most of their career. I can only assume it is down to lead singer Ian Astbury’s earnest but sometimes depressing devotion to new age thinking, the fact that they are musical chameleons, and their tastes only occasionally coincide with the musical zeitgeist. They aren’t cool and never have been.
They emerged from the late 70s-early 80s punk/post-punk firmament initially with a brand of gothic rock that was only ever likely to be a minority taste. The band has only ever really been about two people; singer Ian Astbury and lead guitarist Billy Duffy. They have been the only two constant elements, throughout all of the name, lineup and stylistic changes. Astbury had formed the band Southern Death Cult in 1981 (probably their most famous song, Moya, can be heard here) and Duffy had been in Theatre of Hate with fellow nearly man Kirk Brandon before bailing in 1982 0r 1983 to form Death Cult with Astbury. Death Cult (soon pared down to just The Cult when they started to get press attention) released a series of critically acclaimed singles and EPs before their first album proper.
Elements of the early goth sound can be found in the debut. Things had clearly moved on though. Goth has its merits but musically it can be something of a musical cul-de-sac.The Cult have never been a band to be pigeonholed and the album represents the sound of a band in a state of artistic flux. Disparate elements and styles mix to create a throroughly satisfying 37ish minute listen. There are plenty of effects and fluff, almost Adam and the Ants/Spear of Destiny style Tom-Tom drums and super catchy riffs. The band clearly had mainstream aspirations (not always a bad thing) and this was reflected in the largely ungothic production values and song selection.
Track highlights include the epic opener Horse Nation, one of many paeans Astbury wrote to the Native Americans. His interest in and concern for that community is a running theme in the lyrics of Cult songs. An epic indie rocker, and certainly one of my favourite tracks. The track opening, building up from near silence to an amazing, defiantly Cult-style riff is sensational. Spiritwalker is probably one of the best known songs on the album, a hugely catchy tune that was an independent number 1 when there was such a thing as an independent chart (good times……) and ironically one of the more goth-style tracks. Again the lyrics are fairly meaningless, but apparently refer to shamanism (yes, I know…..) and contain the usual quota of new age mystical guff that is entertaining stuff as long as one doesn’t take it too seriously. Go West was another single, another great song with an incredibly catchy tune and equally meaningless lyrics (the meaningless lyrics thing will be a regular motif. God bless you Mr Astbury). My personal favourite track on the album is Gimmick (“if it flies, it dies!”) that took a few listens for me to get into, which is surprising as I love songs with wailing and exotic chanting in them. Astbury is in particularly fine voice here. Closing track Bad Medicine Waltz sounds like Nirvana if Kurt Kobain had married Pocahontas instead of Courtney Love.
Dreamtime is an album that has split the milieu around the Representing the Mambo collective down the middle. Dreamtime (the track) sounds like a throwback to early 80s Southern Death Cult and caused particular consternation with its Mark E Smith style repetitive lyrics. One of our pals was always incensed when we put the album on (but he likes Iron Maiden……) and when this song was on he went positively green at the gills. Whereas another of our immediate retinue loved it devotedly. An opinion splitter, certainly. Your faithful correspondent does like it, but the lyrics do start to grate after a while. It isn’t an album highlight, put it that way.
Dreamtime is the sound of a band beginning to free itself from its Goth shackles and move in a more straight rock direction at a time when it was extremely unfashionable to be playing guitars and saying that you didn’t hate Led Zeppelin. That said, trace elements of their earlier style are obviously present. Far from being schizophrenic however, the album is satisfyingly diverse. Things changed radically for their next album, Love, when the band did have its brush with the big-time. In all honesty the two albums could have been by two different bands. One of the Cult’s more endearing qualities is their perpetual desire to change things around.
This weekend, Morrissey, you are the quarry
12 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Current Affairs, Music, Opinions, Politics, popular culture
Morrissey the patriot. How very edgy and controversial.
I read with horror this morning that Morrissey has authorised a cover of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want in a John Lewis christmas commercial. I’m shocked, scandalised and thoroughly outraged. Right now my emotions are similar to the moment when I found out Father Christmas wasn’t real. I had always suspected, but the final confirmation still crushed me.
I don’t imagine he needs the money. So why is he defiling his reputation in the eyes of the people who matter over something so trivial? He has a fantastic musical legacy and the Smiths are a seminal, essential band. Meat is Murder is one of my favourite albums of all time.
It has become conveniently de rigeur, and financially lucrative for supposedly leftist or right-on members of the cognoscenti to become the paid hirelings of the big companies. All those principles and personal integrity are so passe. Sometimes they even try and justify it with some postmodernist bullshit about the world being beyond ideology and Left and Right not meaning anything anymore. So we are faced with the spectacle of fucking wankers like Ben Elton doing anything for money and brown-nosing with George W Bush, Dawn French doing tesco adverts, Lenny Henry advertising grotty motels or former man-hating hellraiser Jo Brand prostituting herself to get on the latest middle-of-the-road panel show or celebrity boat race around the Isle of Wight. It seems that being a troublemaker in your youth is no barrier to becoming part of the cultural establishment later in life.
Johnny Rotten is now selling butter (and his soul) and Iggy Pop is doing adverts for car insurance with a puppet. If they were doing adverts for crystal meth or something I would actually be less horrified. But butter and car insurance?
Morrissey’s status as a radical pin-up has always been questionable in any case. Leaving aside the periodic race rows concocted by the NME (and incidentally he is right about most hip-hop being shit. It isn’t a race thing. Professor Green is a talentless wanker) he seems to have a rather warped sense of priorities. For instance, not longer after the massacre of 97 mostly kids in Norway earlier this year by the far-right Anders Behring Breivik he had this to say at a concert in Poland:
“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried’s—- every day”
Can’t say I’m with you on that Steven. And he when he was booked to appear on the Andrew Marr show one sunday with David Cameron also amongst the guests he wrote:
“However much I worship the words of Andrew Marr, I could not go through with the invitation. This was because I knew then that David wanted to repeal the Hunting Act, which would mean the brutal killing of foxes, hares, deer, badgers, otters – just about anything that moves.
“I beg you to notice the unbearable dimension of sorrow that David Cameron is attempting to inflict upon British wildlife.”
David Cameron is leading a government selling off the NHS, privatizing secondary education, making higher education so expensive that in a few years it will be the preserve of the well-off and pursuing a vindictive cuts policy that is the hammering the most marginalised. Cameron’s lack of concern for animal rights isn’t particularly edifying, but it is it really the biggest issue that Morrissey has with the government?
Leaving aside his eccentric political views, the fact that he has chosen to license his iconic music to John Lewis, probably the most sanitized, safe, middle class and would-be bourgeois of stores is hugely distressing. People shop there for the status points as much as the food. Hardly the alienated working-class youth of Smithsdom. If you are going to sell out at least sell out to Home Bargains or Lidl!
I’m sure my belief in personal integrity and principles over cash is somewhat quaint and anachronistic. It is still a huge disappointment that Morrissey has sold out though. You can’t take any money with you to the grave but you can take your dignity. I really expected better.
jc
Summer Camp ‘Welcome to Condale’
09 Nov 2011 4 Comments
in Music
And so 2010′s most hotly-anticipated record is finally upon us, as Summer Camp’s ‘Welcome to Condale’ was released last week, on the onset of 2011′s fourth season. Happily, unlike other much-touted debuts of recent years (The Long Blondes’ mildly disappointing ‘Someone To Drive You Home’ and the ultimately unlistenable eponymous offering from Glasvegas, which deserted everything that made their early singles so exciting are prominent examples), London duo Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Walmsey have spent the intervening time between their inaugural single ’Ghost Train’ in 2009 and their album’s 2011 completion carefully honing their sound so as to avoid their predecessors’ pitfalls.
Despite a moniker speaking of hazy, shimmering sunshine, WTC saw its delivery in the immediately aftermath of British Summer Time. As everyone knows, the best pop is underpinned by a sense of aching wistfulness, very much the emotional territory inhabited by the band and subsequently the release date is perhaps fitting (and anyway, optimistic, ‘summery’ music is almost exclusively cloying, crass and very crap, lending itself as it does to thorougly repulsive shit like Reel Big Fish, the worst band of all time, ever). Indeed, coming as it does so close to the year’s end it is possible to view the romanticised 1980s nostalgia of Summer Camp’s chillwave-infected indiepop as a belated contender for the end of year polls, pitting them alongside The Horrors and Vivian Girls on The Mambo’s personal podium. True, this year also saw the brilliant expanded edition of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s seminal ‘Psychocandy,’ a collection of such preternatural genius as to render any best-of-the-year conversations a formality but being as its initial issue was in 1985, we’ll view it as ineligible in this instance.
Anyway, the record is excellent and we at Representing the Mambo strongly suggest it holds a reservation on everyone’s Christmas List. One caveat though is the brazen Americanism on show here and many reviewers have pointed to the belief that many of the tracks would sit perfectly on the soundtrack for a John Hughes film. Maybe this is true, maybe not. We don’t know; we’re not familiar with his work. It’s not our bag. Nevertheless, a quick Googling reveals that he’s responsible for several teen dramas that we’re too young to remember and certainly, Summer Camp conjure a musical aesthetic heavily in sway to teenage romance, narrated from a perceptively cross-Atlantic viewpoint. Now, The Mambo was raised on a strict diet of Pulp, Blur, Suede and Mansun (remember them?), all members of a proud and quintessentially British lineage that holds Ray Davies, Elvis Costello and possibly Paul Weller as its founding fathers, yet it is conspicuous how few heirs to this tradition the native scene is producing. Instead, bands like Summer Camp and other recent Mambo favourites such as Male Bonding and Yuck are looking to The States for inspiration and whilst WTC is a fine record and should certainly be viewed as the year’s strongest debut, it would be reassuring to bestow that title to something slightly more homespun in twelve months’ time.
DC
More Stone Roses
22 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Music
The Roses at the conference officially announcing the reunion
Bizarrely, my brief ramblings about the refomation of the Roses was the most popular article on this venerable site last week. Slightly annoying, as it took me about five minutes to write and it pales into insignificance compared to DC’s brilliant article about the upcoming Euro 2012 qualifiers. The blogosphere is a fickle mistress, is it not.
Anyway, as there is inexplicably but clearly a demand for my thoughts on the subject I will say a bit more. My previous article outlined my distinct scepticism for the project. It all just seemed a little cynical and pointless. I have to be honest though, I’m not so sure now. Maybe I have been overcome by sentimentality or maybe I am just thoroughly distressed with what I’ve been hearing on the radio this week in my new office. Watching the press conference part 1 here and part 2 here) just made me think that maybe, just maybe it was a viable project. Maybe it’s Mani’s boundless enthusiasm, even though he looked like death warmed up when I watched the press conference on youtube.
I was convinced that their motives were purely financial, which surprised and upset me in equal measure. I thought they had more integrity than that. Again I’m not so sure now. Maybe they know that it’s now or never. Maybe the projects they have been involved in have all gone stale. Maybe they have genuinely patched up their differences. Who really knows apart from them and their circle of intimate acquaintances. I hope the motives are more than funding Ian Brown’s divorce though. Interestingly, when confronted with the Shaun Ryder quote, Brown didn’t get touchy, just evasive.
They didn’t seem to be affecting friendship at the conference. Squire was never that effusive in front of the media in any case and he didn’t seem that uncomfortable. Reni was very talkative, although some of his comments were a trifle bizarre and his taste in music clearly remains appalling. He is the one who seems like he had changed the most in the intervening years. Ian Brown was his usual self, with the vaguely leftist sentiments, baiting of Daily Mail journalists and “Rock and Roll can change the world” shtick making a couple of appearances. It gave me a warm feeling in my tummy but I’m guessing that most kids will be a bit non-plussed about it, and I suppose you could call that kind of admixture of arrogance and innocence slightly dated. Thinking they can ride to the rescue of a nation suffering under austerity and possible economic meltdown is typical of the hubris they showed in their heyday, but now it just rings a little hollow. There was a distinct element of the rest of them being careworn, older and less idealistic, but also still believing they can piss all over anyone currently active. We’ll see, there aren’t many truly great bands at the moment for them to compete with. And if they can bury U2 then that can only be a good thing.
The frightening speed at which the tickets have sold out for the shows next year demonstrates there is a huge appetite for a comeback. But I still think that the test has to be the appearance of new material. There were some vague intimations that they would write again, and who knows. I’m guessing that Squire and Brown have even more widely divergent music tastes than they did in 1994, and which contributed so much to the eventual demise of the band and the disappointment of Second Coming. Whether they can forge something brilliant from that is something that I guess we’ll only find out in due course, though personally I’m sceptical. I just can’t see them reinventing the wheel like they did with the debut album and Fool’s Gold . And everyone knows that Squire’s penchant for endless guitar solos is a musical blind alley that only twats will enjoy. Brown and Mani would need to rein that tendency in for anything good to come of the endeavour.
In a broader sense have the Stone Roses got anything new to say in 2011? Or will it just be sentimental baggy revivalism?
I honestly don’t know, but now I actually want to see them try. Best of luck chaps.
And get Inspiral Carpets to be the support!
JC
Stone Roses Reunion?
16 Oct 2011 2 Comments
in Music, Philosophical Meanderings
The nights are drawing in and we are all in need of a few good news stories, although I have found the Occupy Wall Street protests very heartening personally.
There have been stories floating around of a Stone Roses reunion for a week or so now, and something may well be announced in the next few days. It seems the Squire-Brown feud may have been resolved, paving the way for the original line-up to reunite. Initially I was thinking this might be a lot of fun. The Roses were an important band for me, although my interest was sometime after the event as I was 4 when the eponymous debut album came out. It was an important moment in the history of music as well, without wishing to sound too grandiose, and it’s era-defining importance can still be felt today. Even now, when I put on the CD and listen to the opening of I wanna be adored it moves me, I revel in the loveliness of Waterfall and the version I have sacreligiously has Fool’s Gold tagged on the end. A mammoth, genre-defining track and a song that pisses all over any of the dance/indie hybrids that followed it.
Not so Second Coming though. An album that many bands would kill to make, it contains the the sublime Love Spreads and my personal favourite, Tightrope. But it just wasn’t as good, contained far too many John Squire-led Led Zeppelin knob-measuring moments and was a major artistic regression from the first album. When bands start talking about showing how good they are with their instruments you know they are short of ideas.
And that is the point where the doubts set in. Where do they go from where they split? If the purpose of the reunion is to play a few shows where they just play the old songs to kids who wish they were there at the time and 40 year olds who now work in IT then what is the fucking point?
Financial obviously. Shaun Ryder hit it the nail on the head a few months ago:
”I think it’ll happen, I really do. There is more of a chance now than ever of them getting back together. Ian’s just split with his missus and I bet she’s hit him for a few quid.”
That isn’t a reason to get a band back together. If there is the possibillity of new material then fine. But is that really likely? Ian Brown’s solo career has been interesting but not earth-shattering. John Squire did one rather good album with the Seahorses (yes, I did say that, check out Do It Yourself, it’s actually pretty nifty, especially Standing on Your Head) but the rest of his career has been pretty non-descript, self-indulgent “muso wank” the description one of his former Seahorses bandmates had to offer. Mani is now in Primal Scream, a band that I just cannot make up my mind on, Screamadelica aside. Reni has sunk without trace.
Could they really recreate the magic they had twenty years ago and produce something to echo through the ages? I used to think they could, and part of me would love to see them try. There is a sense of unfinished business.
But maybe the moment has passed, the magic gone forever. It is an intangible thing, musical greatness. Some people just have it forever. Some have it for a while, burn brightly and then fade away. Some people, however technically proficient they are and however long they spend rehearsing in the studio, will always be boring and shit. Dire Straits spring to mind…… The members of the Roses aren’t kids anymore. One gets the feeling that their success was a moment in time. A series of factors all coming together in the late 80s to create something special, and when it was over that was it. No going back. And going back could sully a great legacy, however tragically curtailed. With bands like the Roses it could probably only ever be the way it was. They set the bar ridiculously high and anything less than brilliance is unacceptable.
I’d love to know what others think, as soon enough we will find out one way or another.
JC
Recent Comments