Sunday Mercury - Paul Flower

A rolling beatle gathers most coverage

2012-10-18T17:09:11Z

There's been a flurry of excitement about a couple of bands recently. You probably saw some of the coverage, it seemed to be everywhere. It dominated news channels and papers, even radio stations got pretty animated.

Unfortunately these bands were The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Both are celebrating 50th anniversaries - one with a 'new' compilation and tour, the other just basking in the continual reflected glow of admiration that is given for their status of 'national treasures'.

Andy Warhol once suggested that in the future everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame; very few will get fifty years of it though. In fact is there anyone currently making music that will survive and be venerated fifty years from now?

Furthermore can you think of anyone - or any single piece of work - created in the last twenty years that will survive the ravages of time and still be praised five decades after its creation? There may be a few but will the bands or artists who created them still be able to fill arenas and stadia worldwide in 2032 and beyond?

It could be argued that The Beatles and The Stones were pioneers at the vanguard of teen dominance with the good fortune to be at their peak when the rock n' roll generation came of age - a generation that possibly still rules over popular culture.

There may be other issues at hand of course, such as the current difficulties in breaking and sustaining an act globally. As I've often reflected it's easier to find a route to market these days and consequently you're competing against so many others. When you look at acts having success on both sides of the Atlantic, who do you see - Adele, Rihanna, Mumford & Sons, Muse, One Direction? Which - if any - of them do you predict could still be making an impact in forty years time?

The work ethic and release schedule of The Beatles (previously mentioned here and here) is a defining factor of their success and longevity - something that they were only able to achieve with a supportive record company and less strenuous promotional responsibilities to acts of today. Indeed it is important to note that The Beatles barely toured once they were successful - an option not available to any acts in 2012 now that live revenue is more important than royalties.

You might argue that The Beatles paid their 'dues', that no-one takes such a risk in 2012 (going to Hamburg for months on end, playing 98 consecutive nights) that everyone wants it now and on their terms. This could be true but I'd imagine it frustrates many young musicians that they don't only have to compete with other new acts; they're also competing against 50 years of pop history. It's a hard life.

Enjoy yourselves.....

2012-09-14T11:18:25Z

Whenever I'm asked for advice by bands or artists these days I say one thing 'try and enjoy it'. There seems to be little point in having a creative bent and not pursuing it for the purposes of your own entertainment, even if it is for no-one else's.

The minute you start to think of your music as a career, something that you might profit from, is probably the moment that the rot sets in. As an artist you should not be bothered by such things.

I know you probably want to be famous and I know you really want your music to be liked, but when you start to think this way then you tend to compromise - you chase the trend instead of your instinct.

I'm more than sure that your nascent ego tells you that your music is better than artist x or y who are currently enjoying fame or perceived fortune. Maybe it is but you don't know their back-story or what they had to do to make it, you might kill yourself chasing the same breaks when you'd be better off concentrating on the songs you should be writing - the ones that reflect your talent.

Think first of the music and if anything else follows - fame, fortune or fornication - then welcome it but remember that the music comes first, always.

If you need to know more then remember it's always about the material, by which I mean the song. You may have loads of them but one or two need to stand-out, to be stronger than the rest. It's pointless thinking about your album 'concept' when there's no money in albums these days and unless you have a song that captures people's hearts they'll never want to hear ten more.

You can be a struggling artist if you like but you'll probably need a job to sustain you. If you really want to be a musician you'll need money, a living that enables you to follow your 'dream'. Making the music might not cost much but recording it does and travelling anywhere to play it to people adds more expenditure.

You can set yourselves up on a pledge site, you can beg for funds but without a fan-base it means nothing - you'll have to work your arse off to get some fans and you can't afford to put the work in if you don't earn.

Luckily these days I don't get asked for advice much. Just as well really, you'd be better off chatting to the local newsagent or the bloke who works in Subway. Think of it this way though, if you don't enjoy doing it then why bother?

The real pricetag?

2012-09-14T11:13:54Z

I hadn't looked at Amanda Palmer's breakdown of expenditure
when composing the original blog (below) on kickstarter/pledge and the other funding sites.

It's an interesting piece, if only because it gives you some insight into an artist's outgoings and cross-references Steve Albini's earlier blog about signing to a record label (also well worth reading).

Of course you can do things in many different ways, but you should always have a budget and remember that recording and playing live are expensive hobbies. It all depends how much you want to do it, and why. More of that in the next blog.

What's the colour of music?

2012-08-27T13:47:37Z

It's hard to make a living in the music industry, you're lucky if you can break even. As we bring forth a second or third generation who have no concept of paying for recorded music (what they don't steal they stream) it gets harder to get a break.

I wrote about this way-back in July 2009, should you care to read it you can do so here although there have inevitably been many changes in the subject since then.

One of the more recent additions to the artist's arsenal is the concept of pledging. Initially seen in the charity market, particularly in tv telethons, its application to music is of great interest as it allows an act to establish their worth before taking a risk.

The two major sites are crowdfunder and pledgemusic and local music expert Robin Valk gives a good enough overview of their merits/history here that I feel reluctant to add to it. I'm also lazy.

In some ways these sites take part of the role that a record company would traditionally have played. You could think of the old labels as being a kind of bank in that they'd pay for you to produce records/albums or whatever you prefer to call them but the cost of this would be recouped from your royalties (eventually or hopefully).

By using the pledging method an act is enlisting their friends and fan-base as a promise to pay mechanism, giving them the reassurance that they can record/release the project as described on the web-page. For illustration purposes we can use the only one I've ever pledged on, Brummie folk-superstars Red Shoes who, as you'll see here are currently at 78% of their target to release their second major album.

Of course this works best if you already have a fan-base, the bigger the better, and record companies have started to offer this service to acts they've previously helped to establish (Kate Bush & EMI being a particular example) but on the flip-side you could say that you shouldn't be trying to release anything without establishing that people like you anyway.

Additionally if we're suggesting (as many do) that the route to revenue from music is through a combination of recorded/live/merchandise and other benefits then a fan-base is something you're going to have to develop and nurture.

Whilst the crowd-funded music scene has yet to create its own EL James, Amanda Palmer is one of the more famous examples of the technique, having raised way-over her intended goal using the US-based Kickstarter site. She has been roundly praised for doing so but in this case the methods often seemed questionable (semi-erotic pictures once she got past a certain revenue figure - a route only available to the few I suppose) and the story is now all about the funding rather than the music. The Guardian piece on Palmer even includes a link to their review, which doesn't actually exist.

Whether it's a long-term solution is a debatable point, people are only likely to (promise to) invest in something they feel a very personal link to. My investment in Red Shoes is likely to be one of few that I'd make and comes from a combination of both a desire to hear the new music and my regard for them as people, musicians and song-writers. I may like a lot of music but there's not much of it that I feel so deeply involved with.

I'd suggest that you pledge here and reap the reward yourselves, and then I might even shut up about it.

England expects

2012-05-03T17:17:44Z

Everyone knows that the England manager's job is a poisoned chalice. It's an irresistible prospect for some but the chances of failure and ridicule far outweigh the limited likelihood of success. To put it bluntly England expects, too much.

Taking a brief scan of the previous occupants of the role will tell you all you need to know. Were they considered successful, have they gone onto greater things, did their reputation survive intact or were they lampooned viciously by the media and vilified by the public?

You'd have to go back a long way to find one who wasn't hounded out of office and has since managed successfully in England: Fabio Capello, Steve McLaren, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Kevin Keegan, Glen Hoddle, Terry Venables, Graham Taylor......taking the job is a 'kiss of death' for future career prospects.

Consequently it has acquired the reputation of being the 'impossible job'. Ignoring the individual merits of the playing staff (arguably at a lower standard than they've ever been) there has been an ongoing inability to forge a team spirit and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Club is now greater than country and the tables may never turn again. Personal wealth outweighs pride and patriotism and we should all know better than to expect so much. Unfortunately the mentality of the supporters and the newspapers they read continues to create fervour around the major competitions and an expectation that is unlikely to be realised any time soon.

As a West Brom supporter it is with heavy heart that we surrender Roy Hodgson to the fiery depths of this hellish role. The reasons he's taken it are fairly clear, it's the top job in the UK (beyond the big three clubs) and at the age of 64 who wouldn't relish the opportunity to lead his country into a major tournament and build a team for the next World Cup Finals?

If he fails then with a four year contract he'll probably not have to bother working again, just as well given the history of those who've gone before. Perhaps the best thing he can do is set the terms of success - what does it look like for an England manager? The best achieved by any in recent history is a World Cup semi-final (more than two decades ago) with quarter finals and a win-rate of around 60% (see here) being the general bench-mark. Perhaps a good PR effort could remind people of this?

Don't expect the FA to help out; they've hardly done him any early favours. By failing to interview anyone else they've opened themselves up to questions of competence. By not picking the media & public's darling they've given Roy a handicap he needn't have started with. It could be said that the FA gave indications - by their silence and the notion that they would be waiting until the season's end - that Harry Redknapp was the chosen one. They could've spared Roy this grief by interviewing a few more candidates including Harry but it seems even this was beyond them. Are these the kind of people you'd want to have your back?

Of course the back-stabbing public-opinion fawning 'writers' are the same people that would've gladly welcomed the opportunity to rummage in Harry's dustbins and open every cupboard to see if any more skeletons (perhaps canine ones) were rattling around. What bigger prize than de-throning the manager of the national team?

At least the backlash - including the unforgivable headline of one vile rag - will have awakened Roy to the media punishment that accompanies the role. It is cruel and relentless, it will be worse than anything he's already faced and even his time at Liverpool cannot have prepared him for it. He's a broadsheet man in a tabloid world who will have to develop even thicker skin to survive.

So, doomed to perceived failure though he is, we can only wish him luck. We could hope that expectations may one day be correctly aligned, that people might wake up and understand that although we invented the game it no longer gives us the automatic privilege of beating all comers. Sadly things don't work that way, England expects and has no grip on reality.

The voice of reason?

2012-05-01T12:57:53Z

John Farnham once sang: 'You're the voice try and understand it'. Taking Farnham as my gospel I have tried to make sense of the TV programme of the same name. It is the latest BBC attempt to raise the bar in talent show chic following on from their previously ultra-successful efforts like Fame Academy.

The gimmick with The Voice was established early on - it's all about the voice (geddit?) and to prove it the judges, or coaches in this instance, heard the initial auditions 'blind'. Naturally you can't pay will.i.am (hereafter known as Will or Willy depending on how I feel) multi-millions and stick a blindfold on him, so they had ultra-swanky revolving chairs. When the coaches heard a singer they liked they hit a button and turned to face them.

Ignoring the fact that watching the coaches grooving in their seats, mouthing along to the lyrics (like we all do when we're trying to prove how well we know a song) whilst they decided whether to turn around was quite excruciating, this was where the first flaw in The Voice appeared. Each coach was allowed 10 team-members or victims, but their choices had to be made instantly - as a result you possibly stood a better chance by singing in episode 1 when the coaches were jockeying for position than in episode 4 when they all had less places to fill.

The coaches themselves also had the problem of making a call on contestant 1 without having heard contestants 35, 47 or 102. This might seem slightly unfair to the latter participants unless of course the judges had been told to hold back for certain individuals or to pace themselves in some way. It is possibly for this reason that some of the choices did seem slightly odd, all the competitors were of a decent standard so certain 'picks' seemed quite random.

Naturally I have to pick on an individual to highlight this point and I can only apologise for using Tyler James as my scapegoat. He works perfectly to illustrate many contradictions within the premise that the BBC had set up for this series. Firstly, he'd originally had a record deal, The Voice being open to all. Secondly, it's not about the sob stories it's just about the voice - so his best friend being the recently deceased Amy Winehouse was not of relevance. Thirdly, he's not a bad looking chap but The Voice is not a traditional beauty contest it's about the voice, has that not sunk in yet?

If it's actually about the voice then, does this audition seem good enough to you? Willy took his time to turn around, heightening the suspense being a nice TV trick, he was eventually persuaded by the falsetto at the end. Later on he admitted that he was familiar with Tyler's work, though I'm confident he wouldn't have recognised him from that audition.

All this stuff is about the vagaries of course, Tyler's links to Amy are great fodder for the TV show's publicity and as such it was vital that he got through but no-one can say with any justification that this is playing a part in keeping him there - it's all about the voice, remember?

The second major flaw in the series is now apparent. Having chosen their contestants to play off for future public votes the coaches are presumably aware that they shouldn't be swayed by looks or age. The fact that the remaining contestants are mainly young and pretty is clearly a coincidence. Of course there are a few quirky ones left; it'd be ridiculously cynical to think that this has anything to do with creating good TV.

Accepting that everyone's a cynic and that no system is flawless the great irony now is that The Voice is actually proving that it's not about the voice at all. Some of these people (like Tyler) had failed to break through into the mainstream previously and whilst they could make an argument about luck, marketing or timing the likelihood is that the reason they haven't made it already is that their material was too weak. Either that or the charts were too full of TV talent show contestants.

I have seen Tyler James before, he was the support act on Amy Winehouse's Frank tour which I saw almost exactly 8 years ago - May 2nd 2004 - at Warwick Arts Centre. It was clear he had talent, and looks, I would've predicted big things for him. Perhaps his material wasn't strong enough - you decide:

So the BBC can hire who they want to hire to coach their singers into success and no doubt the eventual winner will produce some cover version or other and gain a high chart position before swiftly disappearing, starved of the oxygen that prime-time TV provides (insert names of countless x-factor/pop idol failures here). What they may fail to point out is that the biggest stars - take Adele or Amy as an example or look at Motown for a history lesson - have the best songs.

It's actually not about the voice, it's about the song. I suspect it's harder to craft a human-interest TV programme about a song but when they make that programme I will watch it.

Stupid is as stupid watches

2012-02-21T15:32:13Z

My life is continually filled with wonder at the stupidity of my fellow man. The unthinking and casual nature of persistently dumb behaviour is quite simply astounding. This is not to portray myself as some kind of genius, the opposite would clearly be true, but the absence of what I would consider to be 'common' sense is often staggering.

Let's ignore the behaviour of Haye and Chisora as we should, simply because they're meat-heads whose daily life consists of muscling up and punching things. Even they should've known better than to get dragged down to the level of the bar-room/playground brawl but the majority of right-thinking people have never regarded modern boxing as the sport of 'gentlemen'. I'd be grateful though if you didn't point out that I'd called them meat-heads since I've met David Haye and I wouldn't like to fight him even if he is 'out of shape'.

I saw a TV show last night called 'My Social Network Stalker' which related the story of Ruth Jeffrey, a girl then in her late teens who'd endured three and a half years of online stalking and other harassment. So far, so harrowing you might say, except that the identity of the stalker should've been painfully obvious from very early on.

Let's simplify a seventy minute documentary in one question: If someone's posting naked photographs and pornographic videos of you, isn't it most likely to be the person who took the aforementioned photos and videos and in whose possession they've always been? We all know about hacking but the quantity of footage, clear knowledge of passwords, phone numbers, addresses not to mention the duration of the harassment (years) was such that it could only have been one person.

It was the type of TV show that provokes you into shouting at the screen, a level of dumbing down that leads you to become the dumb one as you feel your brain cells dying whilst watching. Even ITV crime shows don't have perpetrators that are this obvious or victims that you feel sympathy towards but for entirely the wrong reasons.

It took her dad to find the evidence and the snail's trail back to the worm concerned which only led me to believe that the police previously couldn't have been too bothered to spend time on it. Stalking, harassment and bullying are all real crimes (cyber or otherwise) it was just sad that this appeared to be a trivialisation. The whole pitch was that we should all be afraid of this happening to us; unfortunately it just seemed that the majority of us would've worked it out and possibly stopped it a bit earlier.

It's a common theme of course, reality tv in particular seems to be made for the dumb and featuring the dumb. Indeed we're all so apparently dumb that our documentaries need a full précis of the previous action after every advertising break, they don't expect us to keep up or to have remembered the bulk of the 30 minutes we've just watched. Maybe they think the ads are so absorbing that they'll have wiped our memories, it certainly fails to take account of the fact that fewer are watching in real time - we'll generally all have skipped the ads anyway.

They probably think we're all on Twitter or Facebook commenting on the action so we won't have been paying full attention. Many TV shows pander to this, using their own on-screen hashtags in case we're too stupid to think of them ourselves or in a vain attempt to 'trend'. UK TV clearly believes in the myth of the shortened attention span and many 'yoof' programmes try to embrace it.

I note that BBC 3's Being Human frequently finishes with the continuity guy reading out tweets that have been circulating during the broadcast. Only the complimentary ones of course - thereby creating an audience of ingrates who are just posting flattering comments in order to get their name read out on TV. Perhaps they want a crowd that chat cheerily about a programme they're clearly not even concentrating on.

It's almost certainly true that if you don't want your intelligence insulted you should avoid the main channels during the peak hours, we may all need time away from 'thinking' and concentration but there are clearly levels of escapism - how far from cognitive thought do we want to stray? It comes to something when the escape route from reality involves TV's version of the same, excepting that it's nothing like any reality most of us are familiar with - reality but stupider.

The meek may inherit the earth but the stupid are getting the TV.

The fat of the land...

2012-01-06T17:41:02Z

Blubber and blubbering - The Biggest Loser, ITV1 Tuesday 9pm

You'd think it'd be easy to escape the morbidly obese, after all they'd hardly likely to catch you even at a slow jogging pace. Should you be watching any prime-time TV however you'll find they're omnipresent; if it's not morbidly obese crime (the 74 stone babysitter, C4) then it's the morbidly obese trying to be less obese or perhaps less morbid.

This week saw the return of The Biggest Loser (ITV1), doubtlessly scheduled to coincide with most of us reaching our guiltiest and flabbiest ebb, reminding us of our resolutions and a nationwide desire to pull back from the seasonal excess. In some respects it was hard to know if they're telling us to stop before we get as bloated as these people or reassuring us that maybe we're not so bad after all.

There's no doubt that the participants in TBL should've moved from the sweet trolley to the salad bar a very long time ago. All ten have bodies that would shame the Michelin man and personalities that greatly belie the theory about fat people being jolly; so many tears were shed in the first programme that the contestants could've swam their way to fitness.

It's all about blubber and blubbering but in a glut of TV health programming and 'car-crash' obesity documentaries TBL differs in that it is also a reality competition; the contestants compete against each other for a cash prize. They also compete in pairs, probably more for moral support than to make us think about Tweedledum and Tweedledee (though this was inevitable).

In general the pairs are related - mother/daughter, father/daughter, sisters, etc. but there was also an odd smattering of friends including a boyfriend/girlfriend combo and one completely odd couple of young blokes who'd just been paired as they clearly had no friends or relatives brave enough to come on the telly with them.

There's a mix of regional accents including the obligatory Irish, Welsh and Geordie contestants, this is either pandering to the TV regions or poking fun at the least healthy parts of the UK. As with the format it leaves a sense of producers trying a bit too hard to tick too many boxes.

The format itself hasn't changed much - three super-fit 'trainer/mentors' crack the whip and make the competitors exercise more than they ever have while Davina McCall stands around looking supportive/sympathetic/concerned (delete when applicable). At the end of each week (condensed into the one-hour show) they're all weighed and the two couples with the lowest percentage weight loss are put up for eviction. The extra notch of cruelty is added with the non-losing participants voting on which of the two pairs to keep in the show.

As with last year one contestant failed to make it to the starting line, much less the finish. Consequently only one of the odd male couple (stubborn Sam who refused to be bullied) was evicted, the other reprieved to take the place of the missing victim.

In that respect only the mentor/trainers have changed with two new sadists drafted in. The first, Charlotte Ord, is a seemingly physical manifestation of idealized beauty and health. A woman who initially looks so perfect - from her flowing blonde locks to her perfectly straight and luminous teeth - that you imagine she may have been created in a laboratory. If TBL is trying to give the contestants something to aim at you suspect they've set the bar a little too high in this instance.

In her first appearance Char can't decide if she's the mother-hen or Cruella DeVille, one minute she'll have her arm around the contestant (not trying to squeeze the weight out of him) and the next she'll be screeching that he should try a bit harder, do more reps and do them a damn sight faster.

Ex-SAS man Rob Edmond has the most objectionable personality, cast in the predictable role of 'sergeant major-type' you can already be sure that he won't be doing any cajoling at least not while he still has a voice to yell and bark with. It'll be stick and stick with him, even if carrots are healthy. Naturally he seems to conform well to the cliché; screaming into the ear of deadweight contestant, beardy-Sam, he merely succeeds in annoying him rather than making him run any faster. Indeed the only running Sam appears to participate in is when he's two metres from the finish line and firmly in last place. It's hard to decide if the applause he gets from the other contestants is genuine or ironic.

It is left for Richard Callendar, the only returning 'trainer', to show elements of humanity. Like the others you think he may never have seen a cream cake in his life but at least he occasionally provides a shoulder to cry on, albeit a heavily-muscled one.

It's all too easy to mock although they clearly want us to empathise. It's very hard to learn much when the producers and editors are giving us a bear-baiting freak show. Yes, we'll inevitably choose and support our favourites but we'll never really know these people or understand how they became society's outcasts.

There's plenty of 'talking-head' footage of them discussing why they want to be thin (largely - no pun intended - it's for their family or to get a partner, or not to die too early) but precious little given to any psychological reasons why they got so fat in the first place. As a result it fails on the emotional level they seem so keen on to help us understand the real issues. It's very easy to say more exercise and less food equals losing weight but without tackling the psychological reasons it may be a lot of wasted effort; a sort of let's forget about the root causes and instead watch some fatties flailing around in a field.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions; the paving-slabs may not survive if this lot take to jogging on them. For all their protestations and over-expressed convictions you're already led to believe that it was laziness and over-eating that got them into this state and it may take more than Davina and her three bullies to get them out of it. Should they stage a rebellion mid-series you'd have to worry for the mentors, the only thing that'd save them being eaten alive is that we're all aware there'd be too much gristle.

New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T17:36:36Z

The foolish queue
to be unfulfilled
at a price
they can ill afford

Pyromaniac show-offs
send sparks skywards
regardless of the time
or cost

While Jools celebrates
like it's live
rather than over-rehearsed
and recorded earlier

The old man shuffles
out the back door
coal in hand
to come back in the front

We who think we know better
sit in silent remembrance
with misplaced hope
that this year might be different

If you can't make it, fake it

2011-11-24T16:47:17Z

Frankie Cocozza, remember him? Me neither. I understand that he was the 'rock 'n' roll' one on this year's X Factor, the one that was supposed to inject some rock energy into the increasingly dull proceedings. Apparently he got sacked for doing something a bit too rock n' roll, perhaps a case of prematurely believing his own hype or just life imitating television.

Likelihood is that he'd have survived if he'd been any good in the first place but they needed the revelations and front-page stories more than they needed his dubious talent. He was one of this year's 'colour-characters', the contestants they keep in the mix to make it a little bit interesting, to stimulate the 'water-cooler' moments, to keep us chatting about the unfairness of it all - as if anyone believed it is a fair and just contest.

All competition-based TV shows do this to a degree (Russell Grant appeared in the same role on the BBC's Strictly this year, albeit more successfully) but the X Factor has had more than its fair share this time around. This may largely be to do with the fact that the show is clearly starting to drain the shallow-end of its 'talent pool' and become more like the freak show we know it to be.

The marginally decreasing ratings can be blamed on any number of things, not least of which being that the judges are now as bland as the contestants. Also people are wise to the format, they can spot the 'colour-characters', anticipate the sob-stories, the pre-engineered rivalry and arguments between judges. They are also probably starting to realise that there's a reason these individuals can't 'make it' without this massive level of TV exposure and manipulation; they just aren't good enough.

Yeah, they may have great voices but it's not enough - ironically they really don't have the 'X Factor'. The ones that can sing have usually already been around the block and seen by countless talent-reps and managers. Generally they are rejected because they aren't sufficiently different from what's already out there, their own material isn't good enough and they're not good looking enough for it to be worth someone else writing it for them. It sounds harsh and possibly chauvinistic (though I'm including the boys as well) but that's the way it is.

The people that are in the X Factor are of the type that couldn't have made it without the assistance of the hype provided by a massive TV audience and accompanying press, even then their careers post-TV can be frighteningly short. It is the end-of-the-road opportunity and sufficient to make them sell their souls to the Devil, or Syco as it is in this case. There's a better breakdown of the individual X Factor types in this article.

A few days after the Cocozza non-event I went to see Glenn Hughes at the Glee Club. It's not a name that too many are familiar with, but it should be - he's been in the music industry for over 40 years, and you don't survive that long without real talent. As he recalled (this being an acoustic show with reading from his autobiography) he barely survived at all, seeing the 80s through a blizzard of cocaine.

Not many rock legends come from Cannock but the Midlands was a real breeding ground back then - think Robert Plant/John Bonham, Sabbath, ELO/The Move, Slade, Steve Winwood, it's actually a bloody long list. At that time you had to go out and earn your living - playing in crap clubs around the country, travelling wedged in a transit with your gear. It enabled the talent of the time to become proficient, there were no short cuts.

Hughes has an unbelievably soulful voice which has led him into collaboration (Deep Purple, Hughes/Thrall, The KLF and his current Black Country Communion project) with equally talented musicians. At this gig he played acoustic guitar like a demon (considering he's better known as a bassist) and sang like a god, the only failing being that his 'life-story' was all too much 'therapy-speak', not that you can knock it as it clearly saved him.

These are the real stars, not some TV creation. It is clear we need more of them but they seem in short supply. To a degree you can blame the media but the groundswell needs to start somewhere and it won't be on a talent show.

The verdict is

2011-11-04T18:52:44Z

The verdict is due today: the one that determines the guilt, or otherwise, of Michael Jackson's doctor. I can already supply the overall verdict; it is that celebrities and the very rich can find people to do anything that they want.

The ethos of this is ingrained in our history whether it's Roman emperors forcing slaves and prisoners to fight to the death in the coliseum, or the retail environs of the nouveau riche promising that they can sell you anything from an aniseed ball to a zebra. If you've got the money or the power (or inevitably both) then you can get anything you want.

We know this and it has always been celebrated. We crave to attend the parties of the rich and famous and be associated with the lifestyle. Today everyone wants to be a rock star, a tv personality, a footballer, a celebrity, a millionaire or better still a multi.

If you can't be those things sometimes it's good enough to be close to them instead. You can play at them via the medium of the talentless shows or star in them as a reality star a victim of the all-seeing fly-on-the-wall.

Eventually you need only know this: in the orbit of the criminally wealthy the insects are drawn to the bright light they exude, sucked in by the glamour and power they will frazzle if they get too close.

Just as fame and power are intoxicating, proximity to it is valued highly. If stars aren't already bursting at the ego with their own self-importance then their surrounding posse of yes-men will help to inflate it until they are. Is that quite enough obsequiousness sir, would you like some more of my agreement with your largesse, can I possibly flatter you further? Why would any of these people risk their moment in the shadow of fame by upsetting the person who provides the glamour, the giver of their very existence?

Whatever the verdict in the Jacko trial you can know one thing for certain - as Dr Murray himself would've known it - if he hadn't supplied the drug and possibly administered it then Michael Jackson was rich, famous and powerful enough to have found someone else who would. In the world of the celebrity there is always someone willing to do your bidding.

Fame is fatally attractive, power is more so - add a little celebrity to this and it must be more powerful than any medicine. The drugs do work.

A good year for the Roses?

2011-10-21T09:48:24Z

Frankly it was a terrible place for a gig. The room was wide instead of long and the stage, if you could call it such, was bang in the middle facing a bar which was no more than 10 foot (or 3 metres if you prefer) away.

The reason I hesitate to call it a stage is that essentially it was no more than a raised seating platform which barely accommodated a full band and at weekends masqueraded as a micro dance-floor. It was also enclosed by chrome bars (see below) which might've doubled for a crash-barrier if anyone had been inclined to rush the stage - they never were.

Then there was the décor to contend with. Someone had clearly taken the theme of 'disco bar' a little too far, every wall was a glittering or reflective surface and the not-high ceiling sported a number of mirrored balls or half-mirrored where there was not enough space for a full version.

This was The Piranha Bar in Central Square, Birmingham and on almost every Sunday for two years from September 1987 it was the home of The COD Club, a venue for live music from local (and not so) bands whose Birmingham/west mids fan-base was not likely to exceed 300 - this being the nominal capacity.

Most weeks we never got near that number and on the two occasions we did - The Wonder Stuff/Fuzzbox and Inspiral Carpets/Elizabeth Jane - it was a very tight squeeze. Generally the audience was below 150 but as with everything it is sometimes about the quality rather than the quantity and we had a regular crowd of around 15-20 people who became The COD Club family.

A lot of the detail has escaped me in the intervening years, the result of keeping an incomplete diary or not keeping a complete one. Consequently I have no idea why we chose that venue and how it came about - you can imagine the central Birmingham location had a large part to play but it was probably more important that the licensee gave it to us free of charge as long as we could pull an audience. Sometimes this was harder than it should've been.

I was initially dragged back into 'promoting' by a chap called Richard 'Dick' Scrase, he'd been working at Brum Beat (for whom I also wrote) and then moved to run another local publication. He was very keen. I'd previously promoted local acts - as a labour of love - at a pub called The Punchbowl which (unlike The Piranha) still exists at the bottom of the Wolverhampton Road in Quinton. There were some great bands in the area at that time - Kit Form Colossus, The Wardrobe, Pavlov's Dog - but it was always hard work.

The work eventually did for Dick, that and the fact that he chose to independently put on another gig one Sunday in Birmingham with Martin Stephenson and didn't see that it was a problem. Eventually I ended up running it by myself with the help of dedicated and unpaid friends like Kev and Lloyd (below in his guise of singer-songwriter) alongside the ever-smiling Rob and crusty-lothario Ian on the PA.

It was the assistance of another promoter, Dave Travis, who co-ran The Click Club at Burberries which led to the COD's most celebrated and remembered event. The story of Dave's legacy may be for another time but as we did Sundays he did Tuesdays, with Steve Coxon. further up the road on Broad Street. They had a larger capacity up there and he would occasionally put bands my way if they weren't 'big' enough for The Click. They had a similar back-story, being photographer and writer respectively prior to a very successful run as promoters and I'd frequent their nights as regularly (if not more so) than they would mine.

So it came to pass that on November 20th 1988 The COD Club hosted the debut Birmingham performance of soon-to-be Manchester legends, The Stone Roses. At the time they were on the cusp of greatness, Elephant Stone had either just been released or was about to be, they'd just performed a major show at the International in Manchester and they were rocking up to a disco bar on a cold Sunday in Birmingham.

In retrospect it's surprising that any 'out of town' bands didn't turn and run on sight of their surroundings, in the shadow of the alpha tower and the wind blowing tornado force as you loaded gear across the plaza with the bewildered old folks often queuing outside to get into a filming of Bullseye at Central TV next door. Perhaps they were just relieved to get indoors in spite of the horrifying décor.

I guess we were a friendly bunch, a sense of humour was compulsory and we were all putting in the effort - not in the understanding that we were part of something bigger (heaven forbid, a 'scene') but because we all believed in the music and that Birmingham needed a place to host great bands - the city had been haemorrhaging venues at that point and if we hadn't done it, who would?

I wish I was able to remember more of the gig, the songs played and the performance itself. This set list from the same tour will probably give an indication. I recall that they were good but with not a major sign of the status and brilliance they would achieve. Perhaps I was distracted, there was always something else to do - whether it was taking money on the door or putting on tracks between the acts.

Of the under-100 people present (83 paid at £2 a ticket) there were a fair number of people from the midlands music scene, people who were clearly more aware of the Roses' potential. The band themselves were paid £50 for the privilege, I suspect that when next year's 75,000 capacity Heaton Park gigs take place that fee will be suitably inflated. It may have been the last time they were paid so little money - maybe it explains why they didn't come back to Birmingham much.......

My major recollection of that night was of going to see them in the 'dressing room' to check if they were OK or needed anything. The term 'dressing room' is about as adequate as the concept of the 'stage' at Piranhas, it was anything but. In fact it was a cupboard that more often than not contained cleaning materials, a mop and bucket and various solvents. I add no joke here, it is not needed and I'm not exaggerating for comedic effect either.

I suspect I remember it as most bands rarely used it, being entirely unfit for purpose. The Stone Roses were all sitting in there though, cramped together, smoking. They seemed oblivious to it all and probably unaware of the year(s) they were about to have and how much they were on the cusp of greatness. They were in a cleaning cupboard though so it's hardly a surprise.

A year later the club was closed, a discovery I made at The Reading Festival when I literally bumped into the guy who ran the club upstairs from The Piranha. He told me the owner had gone into receivership and I should go in and get my gear back. Seven years later on the same site The Stone Roses would also call it quits, naturally unaware of the parallel and with a pronounced absence of mirror balls.

What the World is waiting for?

2011-10-20T09:37:21Z

The arguments are redundant, The Roses are reforming.

You can't have missed the news and you probably have a view. If you were at all interested in the beginning then you probably fall into two camps - the can't waits or the can't be bothereds.

I'm not sure we need to debate their reasons for doing so, why does it matter? Maybe it is for money and if so would it really make them any different from any major touring act at the moment? Do you really think the others are only doing it for love, that they don't have their pension plan in mind?

The bigger question is whether they can recapture the glory. As a live act they never really amounted to much but they also never really over-played. After 1990 they were barely seen live in the UK at all so the demand has always been there - there are countless thousands who grew up with their music but never had the chance to witness the 'spectacle'.

For me, and many of my (and later) generations for a while The Roses were omnipotent and their debut album was a crystallisation of various scenes moulded into one work of brilliance. Can we really be cynical about the majesty of I Am The Resurrection or the genius of Fools Gold?

In times of recession we need hope and there's enough goodwill and genuine hope out there that this time they can make it work. Enough time has elapsed that we can forget the comedy delays of their second album take it all back to the beginning and start again. We need a band like The Stone Roses, time will tell whether it's actually The Stone Roses that we need.

In the next blog I will over-elaborate on my personal role in the Roses and their first of very few Birmingham performances.

More legs (& co.)

2011-10-20T06:47:17Z

It's perhaps easier to see what the producers of TOTP had in mind, keeping the older male audience perhaps, with this performance from Legs & Co:

Not of the pops

2011-10-17T14:06:46Z

A natural part of the aging process is the discovery that things you considered fundamental or essential in your childhood have no relevance at all to your children. There's a photo currently circulating in social-media-land which depicts a cassette tape and a pencil with the legend that 'our children will never know the correlation between the two'.

They're right of course but it goes further than that: my kids would barely have knowledge of a cassette tape anyway and their kids probably won't have much need for a pencil. I occasionally wander into this cul de sac of thought surmising on what the future holds and the past has left behind - the term cul de sac is appropriate, fitting both the dead-end nature of this thinking using a phrase that no-one uses or needs anymore. Not that I needed to explain that of course.

At any rate this process began with an episode of Top Of The Pops from September 30th 1976 broadcast on BBC4 last week as part of a repeat series they're undertaking week by week with old episodes of the programme. I sat and watched it with some horror in the company of my 15 year old daughter. Sadly it wasn't a classic.

As those who recall it will know Top Of The Pops was a key part of growing up and growing apart from the tastes of your parents. As there were only three tv channels at this point, far fewer radio stations and no internet, TOTP was the medium by which you monitored popular music and got to see the acts of that time.

In later years it would become much maligned and irrelevant but there can be little doubt that it served a purpose and allowed many acts to develop into big stars. Most of these were absent on 30/09/76 however, unless the girth of Demis Roussos can be factored in.

These repeats are relevant in capturing the cultural timeframe and the many anomalies of the musical landscape. It's easy to forget why Demis was a star, I can only assume he had a relevance to people coming back from their first ever package holidays, the kind of music the new 'travellers' were buying as a mark of their increased cross-cultural knowledge. Or maybe people had far less taste back then.

Aside from Demis's purple smock the fashions of the western world were equally eye-watering, if it's not the high-waisted bell-bottomed trousers of the bewildered audience shuffling out-of-time to the ballads of Randy Edelman then it's the bands themselves - witness Aussies Sherbert in their 3 piece suits having mysteriously forgotten their shirts.

It's a fact that time can be distorted within the memory, I recall their song 'howzat' with reasonable clarity - certainly the chorus - but would've placed it much earlier in the pop time-frame, never thinking it was as late as '76. Of course the true horror and embarrassment of TOTP was always captured by the dancing, not always that of the audience but the regular on-stage appearance of the TOTP dance act gyrating to one of the popular tunes of the day.

It's hard to know why they were such a regular feature of the show, but it possibly has a lot to do with the genesis of the programme being in the late 60's though it could also be a nod to 'light entertainment' and the variety shows and acts that people were more used to seeing as music-based programming.

Pan's People were inevitably the standard by which the acts were known and I was surprised to find that they'd largely disappeared by 1976 to be replaced by the above-featured Ruby Flipper a mixed sex group (only partly mixed as they featured two male dancers) who lasted about six months before themselves being replaced by the all-girl Legs & Co.

Although Pan's People stick heavily in my mind it is obvious that they were the generic name by which the dance acts became remembered as I was more likely to have seen a greater number of performances by Legs & Co. The latter's infamy abounds largely due to their use during the punk era, interpreting songs like Pretty Vacant and Bankrobber when The Pistols or The Clash deigned not to appear on the programme.

Sadly those performances are not captured by YouTube, so you'll have to make do with this gem to play us out.