A&Rmchair

We Shall Not Be Moved

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:33:00 +0000

So yesterday the band I wrote about in the previous blog just over a month ago (I know, I know, apologies) were sentenced. Two years in a penal colony. Absurd. As Nadia Tolokonnikova's husband, Pyotr Verzilov commented, "What happened now is a clear sign that Russia is moving towards becoming more like China or North Korea".

I'm not going to write up the backstory as I'm sure by now everyone reading this will know about Pussy Riot. There were lots of comments on Facebook and Twitter (but curiously not on my actual blog), about my suggestion of getting a record deal for them to raise awareness but now I'm sure that would have made little difference to the outcome - after all, if you've got the world's biggest stars like Madonna and Paul McCartney publicly showing support and TV news featuring it repeatedly as a lead story then how much more awareness is a hit record going to make? What I haven't read anywhere is how the verdict was timed nicely to occur just after Russia's Olympics result. Is it coincidence that it was left to the post Olympic back-slapping period when Russians and the world might be distracted by the country's triumphant fourth position? The good news is that nobody was distracted.

I watched the Olympics 2012 opening and closing ceremonies but failed to get swept away by the sport. Yes, I know I am perhaps the only person in London and possibly the rest of the world who behaved like this. Those of you who have read this blog over the years will no that I never write about sport and there is a reason for this. Whilst I enjoy cycling, swimming and the occasional kick about in a park, when it comes to watching sports I am missing a gene: I just can't do it.

For those of you who love watching sport - and judging from the Olympics that's pretty much everyone - it's hard to explain how I feel. One analogy might be a deaf person watching others enjoying music: I understand that it's a sheer rush of enjoyment and excitement but I am still left cold. I sat down with my children to watch the 100 metres sprint that Usain Bolt won and I'm glad I did because I could register their own excitement at history being made. But I got this at no more that an academic level. Perhaps my inability to engage with sport is comparable to those people who struggle with humour. For example, the literal mindedness of people on the autistic spectrum or with Asperger's means that they struggle with 'getting' jokes. That's me; I am sportistic. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the compensatory levels of high intelligence and sensitivity in other areas that autistic people do.

It occurs to me that there are some unfortunate people who are like this when it comes to music. They hear it and watch others getting swept away by it and yet it leaves them cold. Even music lovers can relate to this because there is always some music which simply does not do it for them. One man's Revolver is another man's No Parlez. One Tweet I read during the closing Olympic ceremony was that it appeared to be a music concert organised by someone who didn't like music. Now whilst I won't have anything said about The Who at the moment (I am currently going through a massive rediscovery of their brilliance, including finally finishing Tony Fletcher's massive and brilliant Moon biography), I do think that compared to the opening ceremony that this is true: it was a cavalcade of former BRITs winners. At times it felt like I had tuned into one of those I Love The 80s shows. All that was missing was a C-List celeb not born at the time, talking about how much they love the Eurythmics.

There were scant live performances in the opening ceremony but what there was represented a vision - and the choices of song formed part of a tapestry. Danny Boyle's vision was like Grayson Perry's Walthamstow Tapestry: charged with challenging images and juxtapositions (NHS beds, Pretty Vacant in front of the Queen, the industrial revolution vs ecology), the closing ceremony resembled nothing more than a tapestry your auntie might stitch on a Sunday afternoon. No surprise that artistic director Kim Gavin has previous with the BRITS, Take That and many Cowell-related shows. Whilst clearly someone who knows the power of celebrity and glamour, musically it was something that could have been phoned in by someone who buys two CDs a year.

If there are people who like me are tone deaf to sport, or indeed some who are simply unmoved by music itself, then there are of course those who are unmoved by others' suffering. It's just a shame that it is frequently those people, like Vladimir Putin, who take the reigns of power and refuse to let them go.

Sign Pussy Riot!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 14:11:00 +0000

On Friday, the three members of Pussy Riot who have been in prison since March were detained for another six months by the Russian Authorities. They face seven years in jail. Puts the Bill Grundy episode into perspective doesn't it?

A quick primer for those of you who know about Pussy Riot: they are a Russian punk collective who stage flash performances in Moscow wearing dayglo dresses, tights and balaclavas. Their music, they claim, is inspired by the Oi movement bands like 4-Skins, Angelic Upstarts and Cockney Rejects. Ouch, I hear you say and I don't blame you - although I get the feeling the latter are due for a reappraisal after Punk Britannia and a forthcoming documentary about them made by the team who made Oil City Confidential.

But actually, Pussy Riot's music is more interesting than an Oi rehash. Here's a song, which has more in common with early 90s Riot Grrl bands like Huggy Bear. It is genuinely exciting stuff.

However, the music is not the most important thing about Pussy Riot. The band (or collective; it's difficult to make a distinction but perhaps a useful model would be 70's Crass) have a distinct political agenda. They are all former Humanities students who came together to protest in the wake of the December elections in Russia. They like a lot of Russians massively disillusioned with a corrupt and broken system. Back in March they staged a protest in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the church near the Kremlin where Putin and various other dignitaries go for their services. They performed a song called Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Expel Putin which was filmed and quickly put on Youtube. As usual. it was shot and edited by their own team of video makers to maximise the impact of their performances. Here it is.

What happened next completely validates their protest. Three members of the band, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Ekaterina Samutsevich were arrested on charges on hooliganism the day before Putin was re-elected. Despite an outcry - particularly because two of the women are mothers of young children - the Head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, showed no forgiveness: "the devil laughed at us" he said, of the band's cathedral performance. That's the sort of review Lemmy would kill for. Since then there have been benefits performed by Beastie Boy AdRock, UK punk bands and other artists all over the world. There is also a Free Pussy Riot campaign now to get the girls released which accepts donations.
But then as I said earlier, last Friday (20 July) the three girls were detained for another 6 months by the Russian authorities despite Amnesty International campaigning for their release since April this year.
So what now? I don't blog about politics as you know, but it seems to me that Pussy Riot are exciting for all the reasons that made punk originally so appealing: they have something to protest about and they are doing it in a stylish way. What's more, they're not protesting about being bored or having no furture; they are directly and bravely addressing what is wrong with their society. So to recap: the music is exciting, the goodwill is there and the band look great. From the point of view of a manager, promoter or record company this is surely gold dust. Let's get them a record deal! OK, the downside is that three of them are behind locked doors but surely the remaining members of the band could go on tour and use the money and publicity to further the cause. There are bands out there currently trading on a name with less original members for no cause worthier than their own wallets.
Plus - and here's the big one - of the three girls currently detained, one of them looks like a total star - see if you can spot her:

There are already fanboy sites and Youtube video homages to Nadia Tolokno.

I am not in touch with many remaining A&R people out there and anyway, my recollection of political awareness in A&R departments, is that most were more familiar with Roman Abromovich than Vladimir Putin, but Pussy Riot to me seems like a no brainer. Although now of course I have combined the dreaded words No and Brainer (applied by my last MD to such dead certs as The Twang and the Wombats) and thus have tempted the fate of the unrecouped advance.

Anyway, something needs to be done. What I propose to anyone out there with the budget and the marketing department is that all the Pussy Riot master tapes so far need to be collected, appraised and the best tracks should be mixed, compiled and mastered into a short, aggressive album - with English translation of all the lyrics in the package. It needs to be made available online in all formats including vinyl and there needs to be a single, possibly with additional production and by a producer du jour - that of course, would be Paul Epworth. Just a flourish of syncopation and a light dusting of electronic squeak should work.

If Pussy Riot were to have a hit - and let's face it, the marketing is already done - their cause would quadruple in awareness overnight and the pressure on Putin and his chums would put the oligarchs in an even more awkward position.

And punk rock would finally triumph. Come on!

What am I going to do with my record collection?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 09:07:00 +0000

This week there was a conference in Oxford, led by Bill Clinton, addressing the likelihood of what we do as a planet when we start running out of stuff.

The usual conclusions were made by the Resource 2012 Forum, but one issue they didn't tackle to my knowledge is what we do with the all the stuff we already own. Shoes, shirts, books, powertools... the endless accumulation of things that as a 'consumer society' we have been convinced we really, really need. And of course as far as I am concerned, the key problem faced by gentleman of a certain age: all that vinyl; all those CDs. The record collection.

Last weekend I spent a hugely enjoyable time with two old friends in Norfolk. Both are still working in the music business so when the inevitable subject arose of what to do with a lifetime's collection of albums, singles, CDs , box sets and other spoils of quite liking music, there were different suggestions:

"Spotify, mate," said Andy,"you don't want to bother with the physical product."
Michael and I both looked at him in horror.
"What?"
"But.. but... what about the artwork? The liner notes?"

The problem with really REALLY liking music is that it is a holistic experience. It's about the memories of going to the shop to buy the album, the smell of the vinyl, the shrinkrwrap coming off a new CD, the first flick through the booklet to discover fresh pictures and information. I realise I'm sounding like a serial killer here but hey, increasingly, it does feel like I'm going to have to keep my music collection in a dark, concealed celler.

I hate the expression guilty pleasure but that's precisely what it is sometimes. I know I already have Quadrophenia but that doesn't stop me wanting to find a copy of the original on vinyl with those amazing Ethan Russell photographs (incidentally, if you didn't see the Quadrophenia documentary it is well worth looking at even for the most part time Who fan). I know it's not the greatest album in the world but I still want a copy of the Damned's Music For Pleasure on vinyl because Barney Bubbles' artwork is so fantastic. I already own the Impressions' Young Mod's Forgotten Story on CD but I still have an eBay watch out on an original vinyl version.

Of course, you know I'm a huge lover of artwork because of the book from a couple of years ago The Art of The LP. And my new novel (which is out now, reading fans!) features an updated version of Wire's Pink Flag sleeve from which it takes its name.

But it's not just about artwork. I like to have liner notes, information so I can really immerse myself in the album. Often this can be disappointing like when the record company employs someone who can't spell or in some cases, even write. I shall be doing a separate blog about this so beware.

So what do I do with all these trophies after I've hunted and gathered them? Shelves. Space. Walls. Cupboards. I'm a reasonable person and I like to think I do things in sensible proportions but this is what it's come to:

Perhaps that's a familiar sight to some of you. All I know is that as my daughters get bigger and want space for their own stuff (and the Barbie army is beginning to compete with my Rock/Pop section in volume) something has to give.

What are the solutions? Andy would suggest ripping the remaining undigitised CDs, then selling the whole lot. I have been shedding some of the dusty unloved stuff I've hung on to for years but it doesn't seem to have made much difference. Perhaps he's right. Burn everything, sign up to Spotify and enjoy the cat swinging space. My mate Steve next door did this. He loves music probably more than I do but has not bought a CD for over two years without any perceptible side effects. Crucially though, he's not one for packaging. He has a fantastic vinyl collection (some of which I used for the above book) but from the spines you'd never know - collectively they look like an old carpet as a result of cat clawing: original Stones, Beatles and classic jazz all mauled by an overenthusiastic feline. Ouch. I'd be shelling out for extensive therapy but he's fine as long as the vinyl still plays. My problem was discovering music at the same time as artwork became exciting - punk 7"s pic sleeves and coloured vinyl - all that late seventies packaging thing. I'm a sucker for Malcolm Garrett as much as Pete Shelley. Packaging and music have always gone hand in hand. Witness my constant involvement with the artwork of the acts I signed. The marketing departments hated me.

Another option would be to get a second home. Ha! Ludicrous and though it sounds in such harsh economic conditions, there are people with second homes and some of them are still my friends. Their solution is to ship their extra 'stuff' out to these places. Not a bad solution particularly when it's books and DVDs that you don't feel so attached to emotionally and which can be enjoyed by those people who visit and rent the property.

But of course, I don't have a second home so that one's out. Other solutions could be a boot sale, donate to charity or even use Music Magpie. The latter, a seductively simple online selling site, don't give you a great deal for CDs but they do take pretty much anything that has a bar code. Interestingly, the only things I haven't managed to force on them were Madonna and John Lennon whose barcodes gave me the chirpy response: "We're sorry we don't like this album. Try something else!" Christ, if it's not looking good for those two then what hope for No Parlez? Actually, the last time I sold to Music Magpie (in every sense of the word 'last') they claimed that two albums out of the batch of 20 or so had not arrived. Interestingly, those two albums had the highest value and would have netted me about £10. Eventually I found one of their staff on the phone and was given some high number of packages received excuse. They caved in the end but it was a hollow victory, frankly.

I really would like some suggestions though. I love my record collection - a sentence which I am fully aware sounds more and more old fashioned as every year passes. Where will it go? I have less and less time to listen to it and like all of us, find myself experiencing most things digitally while I sit typing this or on the iPhone while I ponder condiment choices in Sainsburys. And yet the joy of flicking through the new Dr Feelgood box set or reading about the history of Yellow Submarine in the CD booklet is still a pleasure I look forward to.

Of course, switching to Spotify would certainly meet the approval of the gathered intellects at Resource 2012. Music is, after all, merely a vibration of air molecules that requires no storage other than the instruments on which to play it. You don't need forest-consuming booklets and oil-guzzling discs to enjoy it. Being an ace guitarist, Bill Clinton would know that. But I bet he still has a shelf full of 70s classics back home in Westchester County.

What have the Stone Roses ever done for us?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:19:00 +0000

In amongst the Saturday chores last weekend, I became increasingly aware of a chorus of Tweets from gentlemen of a certain age. The Heaton Park 'massive'. Mincing about down South it really felt like I was the only man of my generation who hadn't dug out a pair of voluminous Joe Bloggs trousers and headed for Euston. Yes, The Stones Roses reformation shows. Word on the Tweet seems to be that the shows were amazing with the caveat that Ian Brown had trouble keeping in tune. So no change there then.

The great thing about the Stone Roses was always that they inspired extreme opinion. That's a rare thing in pop culture today; there seems little to genuinely provoke and perhaps fewer people who care - witness this week's demise of The Word. I'm the demographic for The Word and a subscriber - I even wrote for it for a coupe of issues. The Stone Rose graced the June cover of The Word and in that feature Andrew Collins described his involvement in their story and what great times he had. In the Guardian the weekend before last, John Harris did the same thing from the negative perspective. See what I mean about polarising opinion?

The Stone Roses came at a point in pop when a lot of key writers and broadcasters were just starting out and this was their first taste of the glamour of the entertainment business. Like punk 13 years before, Baggy, Madchester, Indie dance - basically the movement inspired by Fools Gold - was a decisive break from the past. Up until The Stone Roses - credible music had been either Indie C86 underachievement or polished, gleaming and professional like Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole, The Smiths or Heaven 17. Here was a band who had a front man akin to Johnny Rotten: his appeal was not in his vocal chords but in his attitude. And this of course opened it all up again for the like of Happy Mondays, Charlatans, and later the whole Britpop movement.

In the official programme to the Heaton Park show, Damien Hirst claims The Stone Roses are more important than Picasso. Again, with the extremities; although, of course we should expect this from Hirst. I really like the Stone Roses album but the gigs I saw at the time made little impression on me - I just remember the terrible singing and the horrible football terrace crowds. Everyone I know who remembers them, gets dewy eyed about the wonderful male bonding and camaraderie. I think I was just there for the music and I missed the point. But all that aside, here are five things I'd like to thank them for:

1) The first album.

I won't bang on about it because everyone is sick to death of hearing what an absolute classic it is. Suffice to say it still hangs together is eminently hummable and like all classics manages to be of its time as well as transcend it.

2) The singer

They brought a return of the handsome lead singer concept. Since the mid 80s, Indie had been whacked about the head by the ugly stick. By 1988 the best we could hope for was Miles from the Wonderstuff or David Gedge, but more often than not we got Black Francis or the blokes from Pop Will Eat Itself. Now, for the first time since the Smiths, the singer in a credible indie band could be a pin-up without NME readers becoming suspicious. The way was paved for Blur and Oasis.

3) John Leckie

A seasoned pro - as well as an absolutely lovely bloke - Leckie had done some engineering for Pink Floyd, Lennon and then made some classic punk albums including debuts from Magazine and XTC. But by 1989 he was no longer a go-to name. The Stone Roses changed all that and he subsequently never looked, back going on to produce Radiohead's The Bends and Muse.

4) Goodbye Rattle & Hum

Anyone who can remember 1988 must have been there. It was full of terrible post Joshua Tree raggle taggle faux Celtic rock bollocks. Bands like Deacon Blue, singers like Tanita Tikarum; it was The Waterboys wishing they were fishermen and everyone throwing in a bit of world music to show how in touch with their roots they were. The Stone Roses had no truck with being right on. Right on!

5) It's OK to Disco!

It's been said before and much better but Fools Gold - (don't be mistaken into thinking that the debut had anything to do with it) opened the door for music fans who were either shy of saying they liked a bit of a dance, rock fans with no previous inclination or hip hop fans who hated wimpy indie kids. It brought them all together in a great big melting pot and offered them fags, drugs and a good time.

So fingers crossed for the new Stone Roses material. Or maybe once again, I'm missing the point. Perhaps the best thing about them for most people just happened: in a field with your mates, all singing Waterfall better than Ian Brown can.

Crossing Aung San Suu Kyi with The Adverts

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:39:00 +0000

Finally caught up with Punk Britannia this week. People were telling how good the John Cooper Clarke documentary was but I’d not recorded it. I tried to watch it while we were in France but the iPlayer said Non. A shame, but I’m sure they’ll show it again.

Last night I watched the final part of the main documentary (prudently Sky+d before we left) and Cooper Clarke’s name was mentioned in some footage of a 1978 Radio One playlist meeting. “Boring!” said a boomy male voice, which sounded like Dave Lee Travis’. Oh, the irony. How many other vinyl hopefuls that afternoon would go on to have a BBC documentary made about their life 35 years later? Certainly not Captain and Tennille.

Everyone was smoking furiously in the meeting. Even the scary looking woman chairing it, who looked liked a cross between Miss Trunchbull from Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Myra Hindley. You could imagine her sat in front of the guillotine, knitting. To her right sat the Hairy Cornflake himself, resplendent with a cigar in a fug of smug. Further irony: it turns out that Lee Travis had been a World Service beacon of hope for Burmese national heroine Aung San Suu Kyi during her house arrest.. And he was one of the lucky ones invited to meet her during her visit to the UK this week. It would be easy to make a flippant comment here about how bad life must be to perceive DLT in this way, but hey, maybe if you are a political prisoner with every appeal being ignored by your government despite having a Nobel Peace Prize, the last thing you need for entertainment is John Peel playing The Fall. I don’t know if he was doing Snooker on The Radio on the World Service back then but whatever broadcast ideas the bearded breakfast bore had come up with, they clearly floated Aung San’s boat.

Most of the three Punk Britannia documentaries had footage I’d seen many times before and anecdotes I was very familiar with. This is not a criticism of the show but of my own punk new wave obsessiveness. Grundy, Winter of Discontent rubbish bags in Leicester Square, Jubilee riverboat arrests, Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated? All the punk wave tick boxes were ticked. But I was still glued to the screen.

John Lydon is now the opposite of what he was in 1977, all too willing to laugh and joke and talk about his ‘art’. It was great to see Bruce Gilbert and Colin Newman talking about how radio completely ignored Wire despite the press being all over them. And what an amazing anecdote from Gang Of Four whose At Home He’s a Tourist was scheduled for Top of the Pops as long as they changed the line ‘And the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket.’ The BBC (yes, them again!) didn’t want a ‘disgusting’ word like rubbers on a family show. The band suggested changing it to ‘packets’ but the producers said it would have the same meaning. In the end the band jettisoned the show and another group whose single had stalled at the same chart position for two weeks were given a slot in their place. Sultans of Swing subsequently started climbing back up the charts and Dire Straits’ career was made.

Punk was great for career failure. The other documentary from the season I caught up with this week was We Who Wait, the TV Smith documentary. Again, you can imagine the Radio One playlist meetings after The Adverts had had their heyday. Lee Travis would have been less inclined to allow democracy than the Burmese authorities. But the documentary managed to be completely life affirming. TV - or Tim - Smith came up from Devon with his girlfriend Gaye and they reinvented themselves as punks. Gaye went on to become the female punk icon a year before Debbie Harry and the band signed to the punk label Stiff and toured with punk icons The Damned. (Best tour poster of all time incidentally) Within months they were on Top of The Pops and in the charts. Their debut album Crossing The Red Sea with The Adverts is now acknowledged as a classic. Actually, I’d argue that it’s quite flawed having gone back and listened to it again this week. Despite what luminaries like Jon Savage say, half of it is great tunes, all of it great words but somehow it doesn’t hang together as a whole.

After that it was pretty much downhill all the way for TV Smith. The band went through a Spinal Tap sized list of drummers, made a decent follow up that was given the worst sleeve of all time by RCA, split up, all the subsequent bands he formed failed and he spent the 80s on the dole. However all through this Gaye stuck by him, despite having given up music right after the Adverts split. She is interviewed throughout the documentary and comes across as the perfect partner: intelligent, supportive, full of humour and empathy. No wonder Smith managed to stick it out. Like the song and title of the documentary, he waited and when Atilla The Stockbroker (I know, I know) suggested he just go out and play on his own, sans band his career transformed. He now runs everything himself, plays all over the world to an ever growing crowd of devotees and appears completely artistically satisfied. Living proof that following your dream can eventually come good.

No doubt Aung San Suu Kyi would have something to say about that.

... and we'd like you to dance.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:24:00 +0000

We were away hiding in France during all the Jubilee 'celebrations'. I'm not particularly against the royal family; they're just there in everyone's life, like football or EastEnders: ubiquitous and - in me at least - inspiring neither devotion nor opprobrium. But I'm glad I missed the TV coverage of it, because I think I probably would have lost a few hours of my life stuck in front of the television. Just listening to The Word podcast describing Madness playing Our House on the roof of Buckingham Palace or Elton looking looking twitchy as Charles made his speech sounded like the sort of thing which I get glued to then hate myself in the morning.

It was a McCartney-tailored event of course. Since Live Aid, he's the jewel in anyone's gala line-up. But looking at the pictures - and yes, OK, I forced myself to watch some of it on Youtube, he is finally looking like the truth: the cherubic pretty boy of the Fabs is finally succumbing to the ageing process.

He is of course 70 years old today. I haven't looked through the papers but no doubt there are vast numbers of people spewing words about it. Actually, I have looked at the Guardian and they've done a nifty image galley of 70 images with corresponding features. My point - relax, my short point about this is that Paul McCartney has always appeared much younger than he was. Despite the fact that he's the author of not one but two of the most famous songs about ageing, Macca has always seemed ageless. Over the weekend I indulged in the reissued CD of his debut, which comes accompanied by a booklet of Linda's shots from their early 1970s bucolic family life. The idea of Paul being permanently that age (28) brimming with freedom and confidence at having escaped the Beatles is hard to shake. It's only when you are confronted with close-ups of the dessicated showman with the union jack guitar and braces standing next to the Queen, that the horrible truth becomes apparent. Time has caught up. He now looks, like so many ageing male performers, like an old lady. Soon perhaps, he may join this site.

And to make matters worse, as my mum - with what can only be described as a gleeful twinkle - pointed out, "Cliff Richard is still looking so young." That must have been harsh on Macca during the Jubilee bash. A million years old, Cliff looked full and fresh faced. Paul, still playing Hamburg while Cliff was in the charts, seemed very much like a spinster at the wedding.

Of course, this does not affect the music, which goes on and on. I'd never really listened properly to McCartney before and it's a lovely thing. Junk, particularly, along with its sister Singalong Junk are effortless whistle-along classics. I hold no truck with those that lament Macca's loss of the acerbic, witty realist Lennon. Paul wrote my favourite Fabs tunes and even when noodling away (as he is on much of McCartney) still can't stop himself being a safe pair of hands. I don't find myself slapping on Walls & Bridges very often and you really have to be in the mood for Plastic Ono Band. Paul generally puts you in the mood. Even, it has to be said, when he's playing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

So happy birthday, Paul. Even though you're long past 64, we still need you and life indeed must go on.

Wilko Does It Right

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Thu, 31 May 2012 23:14:00 +0000

Less than a week after Shelly & co. I'm back standing in front of a stage waiting for another legend/old fella (delete to choice) to come on. Back when I was listening to the Buzzcocks in 1977, Dr Feelgood seemed like a band who'd been around for ages and were not for me. Wilko Johnson had already left them by the time I first heard my mate Robert's sister playing She's A Wind Up.

Later at Manchester University, me and Michael - who I am out with tonight - used to go regularly and see the then-named Wilko Johnson Band at Band On The Wall in Swan Street. If I'm honest, the thing I used to love most about going was watching Wilco's bass player Norman Watt Roy, who, ike everyone, I knew from Ian Dury and The Blockheads, his bass playing and look was (and still is) so distinctive - fingers like frenzied spiders, shirt soaked with sweet from the opening number. We've all heard Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick but did you know Norman played the bass part to The Clash's Magnificent Seven when he and Blockheads/Clash keyboard player Mickey Gallagher were jamming in the studio waiting for Simenon and Jones and Strummer to arrive? These days he'd get a writing credit.

Now 25 years later, Watt Roy is introduced by Wilko at the Rough Trade East shop as "The man I nicked from Dury's band". Wilko is here to launch his book Looking Back At Me and has been charmingly plugging it by gurning his way though some vintage anecdotes. He generously reveals how we can copy his guitar style: instead of bar chords, use three fingers over the top three strings then bar off the bottom strings with your thumb; next lift the thumb and fingers to dampen the strings in percussive style while you chug away with your right hand. Simple, right? He blames this rudimentary style on the fact that he was left handed trying to play a right-handed guitar, "it was year's before Hendrix, so playing it upside down wasn't cool, man..." Of course this is ludicrously modesty because the moment he demonstrates the method the room is filled with his such magical Telecaster choppery that it immediately seems pointless bothering trying to emulate it.

The audience is comprised of men even older than those who were at the Buzzcocks show. Here's proof:

See what I mean? A audience of Big Figures. We lap it up though, and are treated subsequent to the anecdotes, to half an hour of choice Wilko: She Does It Right, Roxette, Back In The Night... I love Dr Feelgood now in a way that I don't think I could have when I was at Manchester. I think you have to have got a bit of listening under your belt to appreciate the simplicity and stupidity of it. And EMI have done the decent thing and put together a handsome box set which I've been gorging on for the last couple of weeks. It's the sort of thing that makes me wish I still worked in the industry.

As the band play on I weave my way to the side of the stage where I can see Norman better. Like Wilko, he doesn't have a great deal of hair now but his distinctive Indian look and magnificent sweating fingers are still the same. During the inevitable bass solo, a thought occurs to me that we are now so far out into the waters of middle aged man that any woman here must surely have arrived by mistake - this is the sort of bluesy old muso territory they loathe. Or is that just my wife? I share the thought with Michael and he agrees.

Later as we leave (passing a dapper Charles Shaar Murray at the door) we bump into my friends Sophie and Imogen who immediately trounce my theory. They are beautiful twins who have come - on their joint birthday - to see Wilko play. It seems then that for both men and women, Wilko does it right.

The Punk Rock Tardis

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Sun, 27 May 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Old. Old friends. Old music. Old people. Last time I was at Brixton Academy was to see Everything Everything on some NME tour. It was full of fresh smelling youngsters listening to acts like Magnetic Man whose main schtick was to announce repeatedly that his name was Magnetic Man. This is different.

For starters the smell is different. It's not fresh. It reminds me of the smell in my grandparents bedroom on some summer mornings when I used to stay there in school holidays. Already the Proustian olifactorial work is being done by the crowd. Because this is more than a gig for most of us. It's a time travelling experience taking us back to the days of being thin, having hair and the days when we smelt like those Magnetic Man fans. Not for nothing is it called Back to Front. It's a Punk Tardis.

Buzzcocks, for those of you who have occasionally read this, was my first ever gig. Actually, how presumptuous of me to say 'occasionally' reading this, when I have only been 'occasionally' writing it. A couple of weeks ago I decided to start writing it again as so many people I meet ask why I stopped. I'll talk about that another time. So back to Buzzcocks. As I said, it was my first gig - I still have the poster I tore off the wall and it's framed in my study.

I was about to turn 13 and it was 1978. At Brixton last night, Kris Needs (still looking the same after 4 million years) in the role of compere, asked the crowd "Does anyone here remember 1977?" For everyone here, aside from the handful of youngsters, (mainly the progeny of the audience) this was a rhetorical question.

The opening act was the current line-up of Buzzcocks. This seemed to me largely to be The Steve Diggle band: thrashy, hastily arranged punk pop with with modish air pointing from Diggle and occasionally flashes of shy melodic genius from Shelley. The latter were constantly undermined by Diggle's mugging to the audience while Shelley hogged his limelight. Or perhaps I was reading too much into it. A friend said later how he thought Shelley looked embarrassed at his antics. Either way, this didn't bode well for the rest of the evening.

But when the 1977 line of the band came emerged 5 minutes later, something remarkable happened. For starters, from where I was standing, John Mayer and Steve Garvey looked fantastic. Garvey was an idol for me, I remember now; by far the most handsome member of the band and with the benefit of having seen a thousand bands since I last saw him on stage (at the Rainbow in 1979 with Joy Division supporting) I realise now that he has a natural shape throwing swagger. Mayer looks old but in a stately Charlie Watts way. He plays magnificently. I remember finding out that he had opened up a Mini dealership but that may have been a rumour. I certainly don't think he's been playing professionally for years, which is a shame because he has such a distinct style - lots of toms without being showy.

The songs come fast. It would be pointless listing them. Highlights are two questions: Why Can't I Touch It? and What Do I Get? It's lovely to hear the whole of Brixton Academy do the Woah-ohs, which appear in the backing vocals to that classic run of singles which started with What Do I Get? and continued to Everybody's Happy Nowadays. You can't help but sing along.

Despite all this glory, Diggle still manages to buffoon it up. During Moving Away From The Pulsebeat he spoils Mayer's glorious drum solo by dancing ironically in front of the kit. He Bonos his way through Autonomy as if he's singing a song with an important political message. And still he windmills and points at the crowd in his pink shirt and white trousers (the rest of the band wear Buzzcocks black with Shelley making the extra Malcolm Garrett effort with a rectangular red shape emblazoned on his shirt). Even the merchandise stall is not immune from Diggle's ego which has elbowed its way into selling shirts with his name on.

They get an encore and play Every Fallen in Love and Orgasm Addict of course. How could they top that? Well, Devoto comes on and asks us whether we have our hearing aids turned up. He performs in the effortlessly stylish way he did during his Magazine shows and it becomes apparent to me that a star was what the Shelley/Diggle Buzzcocks were missing. This was their unique offering and perhaps also the reason they never lasted creatively beyond those three classic albums. Devoto's turn is brief but great. It turns the band into a classic timeless act. And Diggle, relegated to bass, get limited opportunity to twat about.

Outside in the still warm air, gentlemen of a definite age say goodbye. We meet friends we didn't know were coming and it all feels like an old school reunion: hairline and waistline taken note of, favourite songs clocked. This time, 34 years later, I don't tear a poster down off the wall while waiting for my mum to come and pick me up. Instead I go back to the car with my wife and brother and try and get home for mum who is babysitting. My daughter is starting her Year 4 topic The 70s next week and has decided to dress up as a punk.

Like The Doors meets Snow Patrol! - I sense I'm not selling it to you...

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:49:00 +0000

Really? Yes, it really is me. I couldn't let the opportunity of the festive season pass without a quick update. Who cares? Well, I'm under the impression that you do. This is largely because since stopping writing this every week I am still getting between 20 and 30 people a day looking at it. Who are these people? Are they just slow readers who've been there from the start? Or are they re-readers, people who are making sure they know everything about my past life in case they meet me and want to freak me out. Or maybe it's just Google Analytics giving a bonus number to everyone's site so they don't ever experience the horrible truth of tumbleweed and anonymity. Although some of these stats are definitely real people because a lot of them have been requesting an MP3 for Wubble U's A Bit Like U which I raved about earlier in the year in Now That's What I Call Unrecouped. I've uploaded it here so you can stream it or even do something naughty with it.

I've had a lovely autumn and am enjoying a splendid winter. I've been as far away from the music business as you can imagine and it's been rather refreshing. From this distance the business looks kind of grim to me: Robbie Williams' record sounds like Gary Barlow, Oasis are no more, I can't even bring myself to listen to Dylan's Christmas album and still I don't sense that there are any great new groups out there who we can take to our hearts. Although having said that I had one of those lovely experiences in a record shop (can you guess which one?) the other day when I heard a back-of-neck-tickler I didn't know, followed by another one by the same artist. I asked the reassuringly surly bloke behind the counter who it was and discovered that it was an act I'd never heard of. It's on Chemical Underground but don't let that put you off - I don't mean to be flippant but all those worthy Scottish bands that Chemical Underground used to specialise in like Arab Strap, Mogwai and The Delgados systematically failed to grab me. And don't even get me started on Bis. But this album is fantastic - or at least three quarters of it is - it's like a cross between - oh Christ, here we go - a cross, I say, between the groove-based LA Woman period Doors with the melodic no nonsense of Gary Lightbody. I sense I'm not selling it to you, but do yourself a favour and check out Checkmate Savage by The Phantom Band. I've just noticed that Piccadilly in Manchester have voted it their fave of the year so I'm not completely out in the cold on this one.

Anyway what does Wardle know? - he's... well he's.... What does he do now? Nope, not saying yet. But one thing I will say is the book on album sleeves is out next year but you can preorder it on Amazon for next Christmas.

I'm not going to go on too long now because there are probably many things you would rather be doing than reading some tardy missive from an ex-A&R man. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and get to do all those things over your break that you've got piling up on the kitchen table. Or is that just me?

And because it's the season of good will, I've finally got it together to upload some of my Radio 4 broadcasts for you so you can relive their splendour and wit. So without further ado here are:

Phil Collins is Good!

Cars Go Pop

Reformed

Remastered

Happy New Year!

X

I'll Be Back...

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:10:00 +0000

It's not the post holiday blues. It's not that as each week passes we seem to get further away from what pop music is supposed to be. It's actually just me. I love writing this and of course I love the fact that so many people seem to enjoy it. But everything comes to an end. Blimey, does anyone reading this subscribe to Bob Lefsetz's pompous music business "letter"? I'm sounding him, aren't I - all self aggrandising and humourless. Sorry, I'll lighten up. Maybe tell a couple of poo gags. Actually you wouldn't want to hear those, we've just got two kittens and the expression "pull up a stool" has taken on fresh meaning.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Saying goodbye. The basic point is that I don't think I'm going to be able to write this blog anymore. The reason? Well, put frankly, I'm going to try and earn some money, get a career, do something else. And to do that it would seem I have to study, work hard and focus. The new thing is nothing to do with the music business, by which I don't mean that people in the music business don't have to work hard (Christ, they have to work twice as hard as they did ten years ago), no, it's just that because I've chosen to do something totally unrelated to the music business and I've got to learn about it. So I don't think I'm going to have time to write this anymore.

You've probably got a couple of questions, haven't you? Well, firstly, I'm not sure I'm ready to tell you what I'm doing, except that it's not porn. A friend of mine - a singer songwriter actually - traveled to LA a couple of years in the hope of earning money from being in porn films. He was well into his 40s, but figured he was still quite popular with ladies, so he would fit into some sort of niche category. He was under no illusion that men earn considerably less than women in the porn business but he was fine with that. I haven't heard from him since but I suspect that he is happily panting away somewhere in front of a camera. Good luck with all that. I'm going to try for a much more respectable career option but I'm just not ready to talk about it here.

The other question is: "but, but, but.... weren't you doing really well as a freelance writer? Weren't you writing books and lecturing to music students and reviewing plays and doing columns on Radio 4? And your Guardian blogs always succeed in annoying people so well!" Well, yes, all of those things have been happening over the course of the last year or so, and many of them continue - here's a Guardian blog from this week about 10 new Kinds of Blue.

But you know what, the reality is that you don't earn much money being a freelance writer. Especially these days. I bumped into a proper freelance writer at my dad's 80th birthday party last weekend - he is still reviewing books for The Daily Mail aged 75+. He could remember having interviewed Marty Wilde and Doc Pomus in the 1960s and he's still at it. "I'm living proof you don't earn much as a freelance," he said, shuffling off to get another drink. OK, you may know people who do earn a juicy living - and so do I for that matter, but they are in a minority. I tell you, for all the joy of being creative, seeing your name in print and getting paid for it, there are long days of watching tumbleweed drift around your inbox waiting for one of the "editors" to get back to you on an idea. Putting the word editors in ironic inverted commas is as close as I'm going to get to naming and shaming.

Also - and this is the big one - I haven't written one sentence of fiction since I became a freelance journalist; haven't even jotted down a single story idea. I went to a local writers' group the week before last to get myself back in the mood. The group is an absolute textbook selection of would-be writers: old man who pens detective fiction set in the present day where everyone behaves as if they're living in the 1950s; strange fella with a squeaky voice who writes poetry, middle aged woman who is a talented poet but lacks confidence; woman who writes equestrian romances, then shows you pictures of her horse; sci-fi guy; Samuel Beckett-wannabe etc etc. They're all good, to be honest; there's no one there whose work you find yourself inwardly cringing over. I took a short story with me to read and realised that it was about two years old. I read it and it still came over well I think, but, I felt like a impostor. I was so distanced from the thing, that it felt like someone else's work.

Anyway, to cross the road and get the bus back to The Point, I'm going to stop writing A&Rmchair for a while. I will be back, possibly in this form, possibly anonymously writing about what I'm going to be doing. In the meantime, I may contact you about my novel Pink Flag, which we hope to have ready before the end of the year in a lovely pocket-sized hardback edition. Also, feel free to keep your comments coming - Facebook, still seems inexplicably to be the most popular - and I promise get back to you.

To everyone who read this regularly and to those of you who dipped in and occasionally sent me comments, thanks ever so much. It's difficult to know where the record business is going now and to be honest I'm glad in a cowardly sense that I don't have to try and figure ways of earning money within it. Whilst it would be easy to interpret recent music business events as being negative (Bob Dylan leading the team of artists who are pulling out of Spotify; hardly any new UK acts hitting Gold in almost two years; Radio 1 being full of vacuous star turn DJs just like it was in the 80s, the live circuit dominated by reformed bands) there are still good things happening - new acts like La Roux and Florence - good acts who weren't championed at the outset being recognised, like Friendly Fires and Tynchy Stryder and the charts resembling less of a graveyard of re-releases and bearing some relation to the singles chart (Calvin Harris, who would've thought it?).

Also, it occurred to me as I sat in the Royal Albert Hall watching the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain playing Anarchy In The UK last week, that maybe the armchair in which I sit and observe things needs a break too. I was getting annoyed that people found the Sex Pistols/cute tiny guitar/Proms juxtaposition in any way amusing - a hall full of middle people (aged/class/management/skin tone) singing along to "Anne R Key" in an ironic way, made me feel like like the angry 13 year old having just rushed back from the shops with Bollocks. Clearly, I am taking it all too seriously. Just because I am still listening to Fast Cars, When You're Young and Hate and War doesn't mean that normal people haven't moved on with their lives.

So for all these reasons, I think it's time to bow out. I shall miss you. I hope you'll miss me a bit too. This blog is about the same age as my daughter Esther who is now 19 months old. At the risk of sounding mawkish, the two of them have developed side by side and I'd like to think that A&Rmchair occasionally managed to be as articulate, amusing and charming as she is.

They're writing a song in front of me!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:32:00 +0000

"Daddy, can we listen to those two men we saw at the festival?"

Where the hell have I been? Thanks for asking. Although I'd love to say I've been lying around on a beach for three weeks (is it three weeks?) I have actually been really busy. OK, I've been lying on a beach too. But only for a week and most of that time was spent being a chauffeur to the family.

Since I was last here - it was about Blur right? - The Mercury Prize nominations have been announced (congrats to Friendly Fires!), Tynchy Stryder has got a number one hit and Michael Jackson is selling records again. Pop is back. Funny, just as I was thinking pop was over, I go on holiday to the South Coast and find that the independent record shop is living and breathing. In Broadstairs, there's even a record shop in the building where Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers. Eat that, iTunes losers!

It's sad really, you go on holiday to get away from daily life and all you do (well, I do) is make a b-line for the charity shops. Just to see if I get that Nick Hornby-esque experience of finding some priceless gems tucked away between the Bygraves and Mantovani. It rarely happens anymore, and I suspect that with the advent of eBay and Amazon Used it doesn't happen to many people. I was looking after my youngest on Thursdays before the summer break and would take her to a Salvation Army mothers' morning every week. Obviously, I'd spend a bit of time wheeling her around the hall in a red plastic car and sitting on a mat reading but without fail, the itch would overtake me and soon I'd palm her off on a mum and go next door to sift through the 20p a pop vinyl. It's the same addiction as gambling, I imagine: chasing that high that you got when you discovered the soundtrack to the Ipcress File on original mint vinyl for $10 in Texas or Sticky Fingers complete with zipper cover for a couple of quid in Cancer Research.

This busman's holiday aspect was accentuated for me last week on in Whitstable. The previous two weeks I had been manfully struggling with a deadline for a book on album covers. That's the reason why I've been so tardy with the blog. True story. The editor and myself had to write 140 word mini essays on 350 albums as well as 10 chapter introductions with themes such as Sex, Death and Ego. I'll be honest, it was a lovely job - the sort of job that - like Woody Allen in What's New Pussycat?, where he works in a striptease - I would have paid to do. Actually, forget that - the editor is probably reading this - it was a tough job. Really hard. Especially trying to find things to say about sleeves where no actual info was available; after one sentence I was dragging my heels through a dessert of waffle and bollocks.

Still, I think I managed to find out most of the interesting things to say about some of the unsung sleeve design heroes - I mean, we've all heard a surfeit about Vaughan Oliver, Storm Thorgerson and Peter Saville but there's simply not enough stuff devoted to Barney Bubbles (although Paul Gorman's new book on him is work of erudition and beauty), or great unsung in-house people like Ed Thrasher (Are You Experienced), Nick Fasciano (that Chicago logo) or Burt Goldblatt (loads of 50s and 60s jazz and also that brilliant Robert Johnson sleeve).

Stories of my own about getting involved in band's sleeves should perhaps wait for a separate blog, suffice to say, I love artwork and tried to get involved as much as possible, frequently treading on all sorts of marketing toes. It was nice when artists knew what they wanted - Stephen Duffy for example always knew exactly what worked, but some others had no idea and why should they? I'm pleased to say that Bagsy Me by the Wannadies made it into the book, not because it was a record that I put out but on the strength of Lars Sundh's fantastic artwork. Oh bollocks that reminds me I still haven't written that one.

And talking of sleeves, I visited the home of one of the other great unsung sleeve designers a few weeks ago. We were on our way to the Latitude Festival and stopped off to say hi to an old friend of mine, Cally. He long ago gave up on conventional Christian and surname and strangely this is one of the few instances where it doesn't smack of vanity or conceit. It is merely accuracy. His artwork ranges from the in-house stuff he did for Phonogram and Island for the best part of the 90s (think of Scott Walker's Boychild or that Cranberries sofa) to the more recent jobs he did for Scissor Sisters (their second album, a homage to Band on The Run with its celeb cameos) or Kaiser Chiefs or the recent Madness triumph. He specialises in using vintage fonts, handwritten liner notes,often incorporating archaic language and always seems to have an eye for what the finished thing will feel like in the hand. His house, a word which does it no justice is his finest work of art. I won't go on about it other than to say it was like visiting Caractacus Potts' workshop and Willy Wonky's factory - a dream home for anyone interested in art, music, cycling, motoring, architecture or beautiful English gardens. There are only a handful of genuine music business original and he is near the top of the heap. My enduring memory of our brief stop off is Cally picking us fruit from his ancient cherry tree on the front lawn - appropriate as he looks after the estate of Fruit Tree singer Nick Drake.

Down the road at the Latitude Festival (we're in Suffolk, by the way if you're wondering where all this is going on) I manage to get our Hymer camper van parked up next to the loudest van in the guest enclosure. "I've got a five year old and a one year old on board can we park somewhere a bit more family orientated?" I ask the friendly man in the hi-visibility tabard. It's a no-no but it soon transpires that Loud Van is actually owned by a family with a baby who just happen to have some boisterous mates. They soon disappear and I sit staring at the van interior in front of me - about a foot away - shell shocked by having just driven a massive, left hand drive van from London without any damage to it or my family. I sit and guzzle red wine whilst listening Chrissie Hynde being back on the chain gang.

Later we go and watch a band that Maddy falls head over heels for. It must be genetic. Those two men she later asked about are Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook. As they sing It's So Dirty and Slap & Tickle, I realise that much of my youth was spent listening to Squeeze. I liked them but partly out of loyalty - I never realised just how good they were because my best mates' sister was friends with them. One time, I remember coming back from school with Robert and there they were on the sofa, those two men, Chris and Glen. I was pretty excited. I mean I'd seen them around before but usually Robert and I were being aloof 13 year olds in his room listening to cassettes and talking about girls. Now here they were in front of me. I sat at the kitchen table while Robert made tea and they nodded over at me. I nodded back as cooly as I could. They went back to what they were doing. "A9" said Glen to Chris. There was a pause while Chris looked at his notes "OK, C7..." FUCK! I thought, not only are the men behind Cool For Cats and Take Me I'm Yours in front of me but THEY ARE WRITING A SONG! Maybe I'll be in it! Or maybe they'll ask me for my opinion when they finish - it sounds like they're going quite fast after all. A bit later, I'm in Robert's room when he returns from the loo. He's just bumped into his sister on the landing. "Have they finished the song yet?" I ask. He laughs as if he knew all along (he didn't! He was as excited as me - well almost) "No, they were playing battleships."

I bumped into them much later in the 90s at a studio called The Strongroom in East London. I was helping Aimee Mann make her follow up to Whatever and she had invited them to do backing vocals and play on a song called That's Just What You Are. I tried to make conversation with Glen, who had always struck me a friendly sort but, despite the South East London connection (I mentioned Robert and his sister, possibly even told him the battleships story) he blanked me. I think to him I was just the A&R man for the day and as such of no interest other than paying for the studio time. Perhaps this is harsh, maybe he was like the rest of us, having a bad day. The fact is that the rest of us haven't written a song as good as Pulling Muscles From The Shell. I sing along to every word at Latitude and now, despite the fact that she's not yet six and has never heard of Harold Robbins and was only 1 when we went to Camber Sands, so is Maddy.

You'll be happy to hear that both Squeeze's debut and Aimee Mann's album with that Difford Tilbrook song on are both in the sleeve book. Neither is their best work but both remain great sleeves.

Promise to be back sooner next time.

Blur: "They fit better the more you wash them"

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Man who knows all the words to every Blur song: "They haven't played Charmless Man yet."

Second man who knows all the words to every Blur song: "They're not going to play Charmless Man"

Third man who knows all the words to every Blur song: "Of course they're going to play Charmless Man! I bet you a fiver they play it!"

Second man who knows all the words to every Blur song: "I bet you a tenner they don't..."

I assume by the end of the show that the slightly more laid back man behind us is £10 up on the deal because Blur don't play Charmless Man. This is not surprising considering it's the song which singularly represents their Britpop hubris from which they beat a rapid retreat. But that doesn't discourage the charmless men behind us singing along with every word of the rest of the set. The sense of warm satisfaction that comes over me when Blur play Oily Water - an underrated My Bloody Valentinish megaphone-sung thrash from Modern Life Is Rubbish is huge - here finally is something this barber's shop trio from hell are incapable of singing along to. At last we get to hear what is coming off the stage rather than out of the mouths of the Britpop students.

Hello, I am your resident Britpop Grumpy Old Man and this week I'll be taking you by the hand and telling you about how great it was back in the old days. Relax, of course I won't. Thursday's Hyde Park Blur show was great as I'm sure by now you will have read or more likely seen on Youtube. Did you see the shagging video by the way? I don't know whether the couple's frantic grass jiggery did happen along to The End but this choice of song definitely adds to the power of the clip.

Back in Britpop's heyday when I was just about young enough to still get away with such alfresco antics (although of course, will neither confirm or deny that I ever did) this is the sort of thing that was expected of audiences and bands alike - anything went. Or so it seemed. To those of us who had been going to gigs up and down the country professionally since 1989, observing terrible sub-U2 chest beaters, post-acid house baggy bands, miserable shoegazers and tuneless, right-on crusties play to near-empty venues, Britpop was a welcome hurricane. To finally go to gigs and for the venue to be packed with audiences younger and better dressed than us and, crucially, made of equal numbers of girls and boys - it was life affirming. Several times I had the hopelessly romantic notion that this was what the 60s must have been like. Quite what the 60s were like, I have of course like the rest of us, gleaned from watching Blow Up, Help! and The Italian Job because I was playing with my Lego at the time.

But for sheer exuberance and excitement, it did for one brief summer in 1995, at least, feel like the 60s again. The crux of this as far as being an A&R man was concerned was that it felt possible to a see an unknown band in a small club and within a couple of months they could quite reasonably be expected to be on Top Of The Pops. Admittedly, this probably only happened a couple of times - Menswear being the key occasion. But the fact that it could perceivably happen at all was a remarkable thing considering we were still living under the spectre of album projects spiralling into years, singles requiring many different formats, artwork and b-sides and a pre Evening Session Radio 1. Amongst many good things that Britpop did was reintroduce an element of fun and flippancy to the music business - 7"s came back, coloured vinyl, good melodies, witty lyrics, bands looking sexy, being bitchy to one another in the press, hanging out with each other in private, and very occasionally shagging. We all know what happened in Blur's case.

Damon never did say much on stage. Last Thursday his mid-song banter was truncated to the point of mid-sentence break-up. It didn't matter, no one was there to hear Bono or Chris Martin-like monologues. I suppose Damon, like Mick Jagger, is an articulate man who prefers to just be a performer on stage. Having said that, he did ramble on a bit about the 2003 Anti War march ending in Hyde Park and how we should never forget its importance. Interesting, considering it's very unlikely that he has any recollection of it as on the actual day he was by all accounts so drunk he could barely stand.

But later he mentioned Hyde Park again, this time in the context of "a song I wrote". There was a ripple of anticipation from fifty thousand people. Before launching into a Phil Daniels-led Parklife, he reminisced about how he'd lived in a flat off Kensington High St and would regularly come into the park to people watch. He didn't elaborate about this flat but it set me reminiscing - this flat - in leafy Hornton St - was owned by his girlfriend at the time and very lovely it was too. I knew it was Justine Frishchman's place because I used to leave my car in the underground car park opposite, when I worked at East West Records which was - as Atlantic are now - in the Electric Lighting Station just off Ken High St.

I mentioned in a blog last year that Justine once arrived unannounced at East West with the first Suede demo - presumably because we were local. "Got Justine in reception for you." "Who?" Unannounced strangers pitching up happened surprisingly rarely and it was usually just irritating chancers. Still, I went upstairs to relieve her of the demo and promise to listen to it. It was a good plan she'd had, she knew she looked very cool and that I would immediately check the tape out. It all would have worked splendidly if the music (which I still have somewhere) had been any good. Ironically it was only after she left the band that they got better.

Later, when I was no longer local, I visited her flat for the first time. It was to woo her RCA-wards, as she was by then in Elastica. For our meeting, she had bought some very impressive looking canapes for us. Canapes! We sat, poured tea and discussed her future in rock and pop as if we were in an Evelyn Waugh novel. It was certainly the only time I've ever had a meeting about doing a record deal accompanied by canapes - how very Britpop you could say, although this was, to be fair, 1993.

Either during that visit or another, later, slightly more desperate visit (Steve Lamacq's Deceptive imprint were clearly going to win Elastica's hand), I remember bumping into Damon. At that point he wasn't at a career high. After their initial pop success Blur had somehow got lost. A year earlier, many people, possibly including Damon himself, had given up on them. They were perceived to have jumped onto the baggy bandwagon with There's No Other Way and times had moved on. At some point during Elastica's first run of dates that myself and my mate Michael drove the band to, Damon came along. I think it was probably Guildford. Anyway, on the way back we were chatting about music and success and we got on to the subject of Top Of The Pops. Damon said of the show: "Yeah, I've pretty much done that. Don't feel the need to go back to it." At the time I thought: fair play, you've moved on, you're in a different game now, you've been Blur the pop act, now you're going to be the wayward screeching Blur of Popscene - the band who plays with My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jnr. and ignores the singles chart. How little I understood the Albarn ambition. Buried beneath this faux indifference he was obviously loathing every minute of not being in the public eye; of Brett Anderson's Suede having taken the Britain's Best Band crown; of the ignominy of being ranked alongside other underachievers like Swervedriver and Slowdive. Funny to think that despite Blur starting the Hyde Park shows with She's So High (which finally sounded like the enormous international stadium filler it always was) the band's early hits became mere footnotes after they achieved their big crossover.

Back in Hornton Street I remember standing by the window of Justine's living room chatting to Damon about how things were going. This was some time after our Top Of The Pops chat and, as I recall things were going a little better, Modern Life Is Rubbish was deservedly doing OK but it hadn't quite set their career back on track. Blur could have still gone either way. We made small talk and I asked him what he was up to. I can't remember exactly what he said but it was along the lines of:"Writing and recording B sides, the record label are always wanting more and more". I can't remember much beyond this but it struck me at the time as it strikes me now that here was a grafter; someone who has a respect for the system if it is going to get him to where he needs to be. He was also clever enough to know that as an A&R man I would appreciate the mild dig. Incidentally, I'm surprised with all those B sides that EMI haven't put a Blur box set together. I'd make an exception for that.

But back to Damon's work ethic. All those stories you hear about bands not cracking America because they can't be bothered to put the hours in, the constant smiling, handshaking with local DJs and promoters, the playing in tiny venues after playing European stadia - it makes you wonder why Blur failed to export their hugely commercial sound to the States if Damon was such a hard worker. And how frustrated he must have been to see his girlfriend rocket to the top there. After all, many of Elastica's songs sounded uncannily similar to his own, have you ever listened to Line Up and Boys And Girls back to back?

Talking of which, the blokes behind us are off again, singing along to "Girls who like boys..." lost in a sea of nostalgia for when they were 12 and Blur had just opened up the world of pop and rock for them. Over to our right stands Mark Ronson. Like so many others, he's wearing the Blur shibboleth: a Fred Perry. On stage, Damon wears one too, as does Dave. Damon once said to me, almost as if he was in the company's employ, "They just fit better the more you wash them." And he's right, I'm wearing one now as I write this although last Thursday I deliberately avoided doing so because I didn't want to look like some sad old fella re-living his Britpop years. Which of course I am and was. An old friend I bumped into who now works in fashion said to me, "Damon's wearing one of the Comme Des Garcons ones" She was right, you could tell from the single line of piping on the collar - that's the difference now, the grown ups are recreating the old look via their new access to cash. Another exec next to me is wearing a Marc Jacobs version.

The guys behind us must be mid to late twenties. It occurs to me that the crowd I had expected - the crowd I wrote about in a Radio 4 column a few months ago, who I anticipated being now more familiar with Parklife in the sense of pushing a buggy around one - is not here. Or certainly not near us. We are the oldest people here - everyone else is their 20s. This means that they probably never saw Blur first time around and which by definition means that Blur have done it; they have achieved what every artist desires - a constantly renewing audience. Like the Stones or Bob Dylan they could now carry on forever - fitting better and better like those Fred Perrys. This crowd aren't just here for the nostalgia; sure they want the hits but they're mainly here for a new experience.

As the sun goes down over West London and the moon comes up over the stage I am having a new experience too. It involves hearing The Universal being sung tunelessly from behind my left ear. But I tell myself to chill out, this is what live entertainment is all about - the audience makes the show.

The record company thumbs a lift with hippies

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:03:00 +0000

There are two slices of Goo fudge cake left on the picnic plate. No one is claiming them and it doesn't look like that's going to change now that the rain is converting the icing to a brown soup. Soon bits of it start falling off like a sandcastle as the tide comes in. On stage the band are oblivious. The singer is having a ball underneath the hot lights and the dry ice. OK, so maybe I made up the dry ice up - but crucially everyone on stage is dry. For us, the audience, the concept of being dry is a sweet and distant memory. If my 'waterproof' jacket ever did make it to the North Face it would break down and beg forgiveness; I am clearly not dressed for this sort of weather.

Around me, my friends' children contemplate buying a T-shirt from the handy souvenir stall - do they sell souvenir umbrellas? Ah, it turns out they do. My own daughter is barefoot in her mud-spattered favourite dress, indifferently twirling an umbrella over her head. My friend, Mandy complements me on her stoicism but I know what is going through her head: when can we go home so I can watch High School Musical 3? And as another ear-splitting crackle of thunder breaks and the rain gets even more intense, the prospect of watching Troy, Gabriella and Sharpay going through their routines for the 38th time is beginning to seem attractive to me too. But two things keep me going. Well, three actually if you include the half bottle of red wine I've just downed in 3 minutes.

Firstly, we are not at Glastonbury. We are in London and can leave any time we want to. Hooray! OK, so it would be lovely to be at Worthy Farm with Springsteen, Albarn and Spinal Tap, bumping into friends I haven't seen in ages. But the big mistake to make about Glastonbury is that if you want to watch lots of your favourite bands it's probably better to stay at home with the telly. Glastonbury, as I discovered when I took Robyn and Maddy in 2005, is about serendipity; about chancing upon The Bootleg Beatles on a stage you never knew existed, about getting your face painted in the kids field, about walking around with no particular destination and no deadlines. The moment you start referring to your little Guardian timetable your weekend takes on a completely different shape, you'll find yourself saying sentences like "Christ, the White Stripes are on the Pyramid Stage in 10 minutes - we're never going to make it!!!" Far better to be wandering past a stage and catch a song by a stranger with a beard.

I used to go to Glastonbury for work but it was only when I went as a punter in 2005 that I felt like I'd sampled what the festival is all about. As an A&R man you're not actually working at a festival, just bathing in the reflected glory of your bands. And schmoozing with other industry folk in the Guest area between the Pyramid and the Other stages. And I did have a good time most years but let's be honest, small talk with the drummer from Echobelly or the scout from Rondor Music is not the cutting edge of festival pleasure. Particularly if you have to find your way back to a B&B in Shepton Mallet at midnight.

At Glastonbury in 2005, I smoked a joint for the first time in a hundred years. After the obligatory 15 minutes of complete paranoia where I thought I was going to get abandoned by everyone and end up sitting alone in a mud pool all night, I surfaced as officially the happiest person on site. I missed every performance, regularly arriving to see bands at the precise moment when there was a mass exodus from the John Peel tent. So we missed the Magic Numbers - big deal! we giggled, and made our way back for more drinks. I walked barefoot round the whole site at 5 in the morning just enjoying the morning. That's the sort of sentence you get punched for isn't it?

Contrast this with waking up in a posh B&B with the staff of BMG as I did in the 90s and finding there were no cabs to the site so we all had to hitch hike in. We eventually all got a lift in - I kid you not - a van filled with veteran hippies. There were about eight of us - from marketing to business affairs, all wearing our best festival gear. Hidden about each of our persons were mobile phones - a object which in those days was symbolic of being The Man. We all got into the back of the van and contemplated the unbelievable tableau before us - a mixture of teenager's bedroom and Moroccan bazaar, hand woven scatter cushions, empty bottles of Lambrusco and king size Rizzla.
"Welcome aboard. You guys come to Pilton every year?" says a long haired handsome guy whilst strumming a guitar (I am not making this up)
"Er, yeah, man" mumbles our head of legal, not wanting to say anything that might be used against him.
"We go over the fence" says another, slightly less benign-looking hippy.
"Can you still do that? I thought they'd clamped down on all that...stuff..." says a product manager instantly regretting he'd opened his mouth, "I mean, I used to of course... " Handsome hippy lifts his fingers from the strings and taps his nose,"You gotta know the right places, man."
Each one of us is silently hoping that our phones don't ring. Not before before we get to the festival site anyway - how much longer? Come on! If that happens then our cover of being young hitch-hiking gunslingers will be blown and our new hippy friends will probably wreak some horrible Manson-esque vengeance.

Or so I was thinking anyway. But we were lucky, we got to the perimeter of the site without ringtone incident. We waved goodbyes like the best of friends - see you in the Head shop, man! Turned down the offer of a bunk up over the fence too. Who knows, maybe everyone in the van breathed a sigh of relief as they sped away. Maybe they started back on the Pimms and lemonade and got out their own mobile phones: "Hello darling! You'll never guess what! We just picked some hitchhikers up! Ya! Totally wicked - Sebastian and Everard even pretended to be hippies! Priceless!"

Of course, we were the exceptions in the 90s - not many normal punters had mobiles at festivals . And this lack of contact was a good thing. I didn't bring my phone in 2005 as I recall and I tell you not being in constant contact with everyone and everything all the time really adds to the pleasure. Reception is never good there anyway, so why bother? But clearly many do - this year there was a mobile phone recharging area and of course a place where you could get your Wifi access. Yes, I read those Tweets, you sad people.

Before all this connectivity there would be a rumour every year that another pop Peter Pan had died - Cliff Richard. For several hours you could believe it was true - unless you had been there the year before when exactly the same rumour had gone around. And apparently this year when news started hitting the wires about Michael Jackson's death there was just as much confusion as when Cliff 'died' - lots of people running about asking "Is it true? Can it really be true?" I'm sure there were many who remembered the Cliff rumours and consequently assumed it must be a wind up. Apparently the massive BBC presence at the festival this year was utilised by punters simply to confirm the truth about the King of Pop's demise. So it was worth the licence fee funding all those presenters being there after all.

I'm not going to go on about Jackson here as you are no doubt fed up with hearing reminiscences and confessionals in the press. It is sad but at the same time, I suspect the O2 shows would not have been a pretty affair and so his death at least spares him - and his legacy - the ignominy of a 50 year old man thinking he can perform like he did in his thirties . As Paul Gambaccini said on Radio 4, the ugliness of the last few years will be forgotten just as Judy Garland's final years were and all that we will remember will be the fantastic body of work. And Bo Selecta obviously.

So if I wasn't at Glastonbury, why the hell was I standing in the rain in London? I'll tell you, I'd gone to see Ray Davies at Kenwood. How middle class and middle aged is that? But regardless of the weather - and I would submit, because of it - it is fantastic. The music is the second thing that was keeping me going (if you can remember that far back in this blog- the first thing was the fact that we were in London, remember!?)

There is nothing more English than unpredictable weather and arguably none more English pop than the Kinks. The fact that Davies had the Crouch End Festival Chorus with him too, added to the plaintive quality of the tunes and fell in with the blackening skies and ominous rumblings. So by the time he'd reached the bit where he played most of Village Green Preservation Society weather and music were locked in a groove - somehow Ray's lyrics about vaudeville, variety, china cups and draught beer seemed absolutely appropriate whilst every member of the very English audience grooved on the spot whilst clad in in makeshift rainwear, letting their wine get a heavenly top up. If there was any queuing to be done we would have been there like a shot too. And I'm sure if the sun had shone Ray would have been first to complain.

It was only then that I remembered we'd brought a cake and it was calling my name from the bag. I got it out and our group descended on it wolfing chunks down before the rain got there first. It kept us going for a few more songs. As Waterloo Sunset and Lola finished the show, we realised that no amount of High School Musical would make Maddy forgive us if we stayed any longer so we began to pack up. I left the remains of the cake out in the rain just like the Jimmy Webb song and watched the sweet brown icing flowing down...

Now That's What I Call A Compilation

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:59:00 +0000

This Father's Day I asked for nothing more than to be left alone. I just wanted to sit in the sun with a cup of tea and read one of the books from the teetering pile next to the bed. Anyone who has children will understand the excitement I felt at this prospect. Far from making me the most boring man in the world - although perhaps it does qualify me for the heats - this is surely what most dads want on their day. Certainly not a shaving mug, a 'novelty' card or God forbid, a CD compilation with the word Dad in the title.

If there is a God, I thank him or her that I wasn't the recipient of a Dad compilation on Sunday. Did you notice any of these pernicious things? I meant there's nothing necessarily wrong with We Will Rock You, Addicted To Love or Sweet Home Alabama but if anything proves Bill Drummond's notion of all recorded music having run its course, these compilations do. There is just nothing left of these tracks is there? Maybe for kids who've never heard them but surely not for the dads who were bludgeoned with them for 20 years by Simon Bates and now are insulted by them via the Tannoys of every chainstore and hold music of every helpdesk.

I speak specifically of EMI's 3 CD set Dad Rocks! and Universal's Dad's Jukebox - with tracklistings so predictable that it's almost as if a computer put them together. So who compiles these things? I'd suggest that in both cases it's a question of using what you have on the shelf (hence EMI including Coldplay's Clocks) but also it looks like these brands have been going for years and are subscribing to the Ain't Broke philosophy - rather like the annual appearance of the Best Xmas Album Ever and why you no longer find Jona Lewie in the kitchen at Christmas parties but gleefully rubbing his hands together at the bank. Perhaps you'll always find him in the kitchen at Barclays. On Father's Day you don't get Stop The Cavalry but you do invariably get Alright Now.

Every year these brands get rolled out and back in 2006 - Sony had a go with World's Best Dad - opening track? Van Halen's Jump - but relax, later on you do get a dose of Alright Now. There will be a few changes to the brand to keep the thing up to date, for example on this year's Dad Rocks! Pink Floyd's Money has been replaced by Razorlight's America - surely giving father a kick in the bollocks would have been cheaper? But do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Despite the fact that I think I make a pretty mean compilation - or mixtape, as the kids now call burned CDs - I've never really been in the compilation game professionally. The closest I came was when the Head of Marketing at RCA asked me to put together a tracklist for a compilation of Irish and Scottish pop he wanted to do - you know the sort of thing - Van Morrison, The Proclaimers, The Saw Doctors, Clannad, etc. I leaped into action and immediately produced what I thought would be a good tracklisting. Then the research came back on what the title was going to be - Celtic Heart. My own heart sank. It's a title that reeks of marketing meeting, focus group and flip chart. But, it must be said, it would appear that this title has stood the test of time as it still appears to be available on Amazon and has at least two imitators which have stolen its title.

It might of course be my cunning and timeless tracklisting which has resulted in the continued availability of Celtic Heart- I mean, who can argue with the genius of kicking it off with Deacon Blue? Christ, what was I thinking? Still, at least I sneaked in Brian Kennedy who at that point had been dropped by the very label I was working for. Turned out that the exec who was masterminding Celtic Heart was unaware of Kennedy and liked the track so much he ended up resigning him to the label. Kennedy still didn't end up selling many records but he was a worthwhile artist who was given a deserved break. Those of you who've been paying attention will remember that the exact same thing happened to a band I signed, Club St Louis who got dropped by Warners label East West (a label they re-christened Least Best) and then re-signed as Honky to the Warners label over the road WEA.

But I'm digressing from compilations. I really don't mean to be down on them. Some of the best records are the ones that mash together a load of stuff you wouldn't think of putting together yourself. There are two reasons why compilation can work, one is where in amongst a quagmire of unlistenable bollocks you find a gem you've never heard of which immediately rises to the top of all your playlists. Examples of this for me are hearing Quincy Jones' sexed up version of Loving Spoonful's Summer In the City on the first of the three quite superb Blaxploitation CDs that BMG put out in the 90s, Stan Getz's bonkers I'm Late, I'm Late on frequently hard-to-like The Verve Album and Roger Eno outdoing his brother with Winter Music on an All Saints Records compilation I bought at SXSW. More recently, I was reviewing a compilation for Word Magazine called Destroy That Boy - More Girls With Guitars and in amongst the enjoyable if predictable collection of 60s girl bands was a track called Hold On by Sharon Tandy, which makes Janis Joplin sound like Sandi Thom and is a guaranteed air-punching winner. You never know where

The other, perhaps more valid, reason for compilations is when they work as bona fide albums; where the tracklisting works in a way that artist albums are supposed to. I'm not going to list my favourites because they are probably the same as yours but I'd argue that by far and away the compilations that work best are reggae and ska ones.

Reasons for this are twofold, firstly, many of the artists contained on these compilations were singles artists who made one or two definitive tracks which are great and secondly reggae and ska are so stripped down and muscular that disparate artists can sit alongside one another without jarring. Oh, and of course, the quality level is invariably high. I've lost count of the number of great reggae, ska and dub compilations I own or my good friend and reggae 7" collector Russell has bootlegged me, but it's certainly more than any other genre. Sometimes I yearn for more artist-based ska and reggae albums but then you have to remember than a lot of the time it's the same band I'm listening to - the Skatalites, the Soul Brothers, the Soul Vendors - they're playing on most of the great ska records of the 60s, either under their own name(s) or backing everyone from the Wailers to Desmond Dekker as well as ending up being manipulated by Lee Perry et al later in the 70s when dub came in. Those guys, Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso on tenor sax, Don Drummond on trombone, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Lloyd Brevett on bass, Lloyd Knibbs on drums, Jackie Mittoo on piano, Jerry Hines on guitar and John 'Dizzy' Moore on trumpet, deserve the same respect afforded to the usual Mojo and Uncut suspects. Indeed, if anyone is looking for a good story like Nick Moran has just produced about Joe Meek, they need look no further than Don Drummond, the trombonist who was the creative force behind many of the Skatalites tunes, a schizophrenic who was locked up for murder and was then found dead in his cell amidst rumours of gangland revenge.

I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know already but if for some reason you aren't a huge fan of this sort of music or you haven't got to it yet then I have two compilation tips for you. Firstly Jazz in Jamaica, a compilation of great good time ska instrumentals including Roland Alphonso's mind blowingly wonderful Yard Broom. For some reason it seems to be deleted but you can still get it secondhand - or from me if you ask nicely. And secondly Studio One's Dub Specialist which is packed with lots of the same ska recordings but put through the dub blender and rendered otherworldly yet still warm and melodic. Again it's deleted - clearly Celtic Heart fans aren't particularly moved by it.

Judging from this week's compilation charts, it would appear that Celtic Heart fans have been persuaded to get into ska but only on the terms laid down in 1980 by Jerry Dammers. Ska Mania is currently at number 3 in the charts, sandwiched between Dad Rocks and Dad's Jukebox - it's not a bad compilation, a nice mixture of Two Tone and original Trojan artists, and it's a much better paternal experience than anything with the D word in its title.

I was going to leave it there for this week but I want to leave you with one final piece of compilation advice - if you are tempted to buy Common People - The Brit Pop Story, make sure you go in with a firmly held remote control - or rip the tracks you want - because I can only assume that whoever compiled it was deaf. Or mad. A three CD set that starts with the criminally overrated Auteurs then, after the brief respite of Elastica, sucker punches you with Gene. Relax, it gets worse. CD1 particularly is insane - Dubstar are are loggerheads with Black Grape who precede Stephen Duffy - you couldn't make it up. By CD2 you are lulled into a false sense of security by Pulp's title track (but relegated to volume 2?), Supergrass' Alright and Sleeper's Inbetweener then before can say Parklife, you're hit with Echobelly, Northern Uproar and Powder. There is of course good stuff here and you know that the Britpop years in my opinion were healthy for British music but this compilation seems to have been put together with the meticulous hatred of a serial killer - someone who wants to bury the genre for good. Come out and show yourself, whoever you are!

What kind of music are you into?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:47:00 +0000

Radiohead.

There you go.

What are you going to say now?

Not a very interesting answer is it? Possibly the most boring and predictable I could give you.

But let me tell you how I got there.

It's the hardest question in the world isn't it? I mean, we've all got great taste haven't we? Yet, to boil down our taste to a balsam that encapsulates our very being is, well, unfair, right? I can never answer that question. Partly because it opens up a whole six pack of worms that cover my career, my life choices etc etc. It's like asking me: Hey, Ben, would you mind baring your soul and brains so we can take the piss? Which of course is why I write this every week. So I can get the satisfaction of revealing the bits I want to without giving the entire game away.

But, if pushed, my answer to that question is thus: I like White Man (In Hammersmith Palais) by the Clash and This Year's Model by Elvis Costello. Despite the fact that I decided that these were my favourites 30 years ago, when I'd probably heard about 20 albums at most - and most of those were by Geoff Love or ELO - I still stand by that single and that album as being my favourites. I mean, they never let me down. I can be in any sort of mood, any situation and a snatch of White Man or the title track from Model will set me right. So at the risk of completely giving the game away, I confess to liking skinny tie new wave or more specifically, records made in 1978. I'm writing something for Loops about 1978 at the moment so the subject is banging around my brain but also I've been thinking a lot about how tastes change but somehow always remain the same.

You may have noticed over the last year or so's blogs, that I have been making references to listening to English Whimsy. English Whimsy was my original name for the sort of music that covers eccentric pop oddities that have something peculiarly English about them - examples from my new wave fave category are The Soft Boys or Ian Dury's first album or the pastoral side of XTC, but the genre slips backwards into Eno, Barrett, Drake, Ayers, Wyatt, Martyn, and Harper and forward into Goldfrapp and Tuung, although it ceases to have as much fascination for me once it takes on that 21st century self awareness.

But despite branding it English Whimsy, I soon realised that what I was actually beginning to like was Prog. So added to this list soon came Genesis, King Crimson and Yes and before I knew it I was turning into the sort of person I hated at school - the guys in the Sixth Form common room who had the Breakfast In America poster on the wall, or Tyler in my class who laughed at my Buzzcocks fixation and carefully wrote out the lyrics to Stairway To Heaven on his rough book to show me how much better they were than "your punk shit".

But I couldn't help myself and soon I found myself doing a column on BBC Radio 4 about how great Phil Collins is, contemplating buying Thick As A Brick and Aqualung and exploring the solo works of Robert Fripp.

But as I listened to You Burn Me Up Like A Cigarette from Fripp's all-over-the-shop solo album Exposure, it dawned on me that I was going full circle - here was the loop I'd been looking for, the link between the Whimsy or Prog and the Skinny Tie rock that I love: it's the genre that never spoke its name or was possibly too bookish and shy to do so: Prog Punk!

This is of course what Magazine really were. So it struck me that I must listen immediately to early Ultravox! (when they still had the ! in the name) ... This week I wrote a piece for the Guardian music blog about Ultravox!'s label, Island Records, attempting to inject a tiny bit of sanity into the otherwise mouth-foamingly reverential coverage of Island's alleged 50th anniversary. Of course, I love classic Island more than anyone at the moment - much of what I have been listening to during my Whimsy obsession is from Island's undisputed golden period (although I still can't quite get behind Dr Strangely Strange). But what I don't mention in the piece is Island's singular flailing uselessness in the face of punk. I mean, Eddie And The Hot Rods is just not enough is it? Perhaps it was just not musical enough for them and, I suppose, they were proven right: not much from the punk years has endured in the same way as the reggae, ska, rock and folk that Island pioneered.

But at least they had a go at Ultravox!, whose Island debut contains songs with promising punk titles like Satday Night In The City Of The Dead, Wide Boys and My Sex. You can imagine the record company looking forward to hearing these tracks and finally having something that X-Ray Spex fans might want to buy. I can taste the fear of the A&R man at the time, who knew that promisingly titled punk wave rocker I Want To Be A Machine was actually an acoustic ballad which opens on the line "I found the bones of all your ghosts, locked in the wishing well..." And rather than being a chest-beating S&M thrash, My Sex, turned out to an ambient piano-led synth piece. Boy, did he have some prog on his face.

But listening to this album and the slightly punkier follow-up Ha!-Ha!-Ha! they sound way less dated that the Midge Ure's Oh Vienna new romantics - I cannot recommend Ultravox!'s Prog Punk classics highly enough,- give them a go on Spotify then snap them up for under £4 on Amazon.

So once I'd recognised the hidden genre of PP I realised that if my taste has evolved from the 13 year old who bought those Clash singles, it has gone in this direction. So a snapshot of PP classics from my favourite 70s period like Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets and Magazine's Correct Use Of Soap, Buzzcocks' Different Kind of Tension, the Cure's Seventeen Seconds and the first three albums from my perennial favourites Wire. But it also incorporates my favourite album of the last 20 years... Yes you guessed it, it's by Radiohead. But it's not OK Computer, it's The Bends.

It's hard to describe the indifference surrounding Radiohead when The Bends first came out. Sure, they had a fanbase, but even their PR company Hall Or Nothing used to show off about them being a 'best kept secret' - sort of like a hairdresser listing the number of bald customers he styles. I remember sitting on a train going to see some gig with a very well known indie tastemaker - he had a promo cassette (cassette!) of The Bends - "You like this lot, don't you?" he asked casually, "I can take it or leave to be honest" he added. I told him I loved My Iron Lung and had been played some mixes by John Leckie's management when they came in for a meeting. In fact they had wanted to play me John's work on Elastica but I had heard a handful of the new Radiohead tunes at a gig at the Highbury Islington Garage, the week before, and I still had a song called The Bends in my head. They obliged and played me an unmixed version of the track. It was electrifying - I'm not just saying that, even in the context of a workaday A&R meeting with some producer managers I found myself bristling with excitement.

So when the tastemaker offered me the unwanted promo cassette I grabbed it. For the next couple of months it the only thing on in the car. At first I found it heavy going - so much detail, layers of complex guitar, lyrics that seemed like a JG Ballad novel. But after two listens the song Black Star leapt out, then soon afterwards the rest of the album opened up like a flower. I became evangelical perhaps too much as no one took me seriously. In a world that was obsessed with Blur and snappy, cynical, handsome indie kids it just didn't fit. This was Sleeper's time and I of course was enjoying riding that wave. But I remember bumping into Radiohead's manager's at an EMI Music Publishing street party in Denmark St. They had a new band called Supergrass who looked like they were going to be the year's big thing. I congratulated them. Then told them that the band of theirs I thought were the best was Radiohead and how much I was loving The Bends - they looked slightly bemused ; who was this weirdo? Hadn't he heard the I Should CoCo advance cassette?

Of course Supergrass shared a label with Radiohead - they were signed by the same guy and I'm a big fan of theirs too. But I can't somehow see EMI releasing box set versions of their first three albums as they have just done with Radiohead. It was odd opening the Bends box, given that my old CD is as close to being worn out as CDs ever get. I thought I had most of the singles from the period but the accompanying CD of B sides is revelatory in that it threw up a load of tracks I never heard at the time but which, if not as good as anything from the actual album, are pretty splendid. And it's great finally to have everything together in one box. I'm sad enough to have wondered when EMI were finally going to package up the b sides, partly because I lost my favourite ones. I brought round my Fake Plastic Trees CD to Stephen Duffy's flat in Albert Street to play him the fantastic India Rubber and How Can You Be Sure? in 1995. I never got it back. I don't blame Stephen, you understand, it probably slipped fell under a sofa, and we were having such intense Britpop fun at the time that I only noticed it was missing several years later.

But as usual am I digressing into a sea of bollocks. Prog Punk then, is not the scratchy post punk that the newly-founded indie labels of the late 70s specialised in and which Simon Reynold's about writes so well about in Rip It Up. PP is actually rather well played. Radiohead's Just, for example, has several completely different sounding and incredibly well delivered guitar solos one after the other. But, like original proggers King Crimson, it doesn't resist the urge to rock. Something I find the later period Radiohead doing quite a lot. Of course, I know I'm in minority in thinking that The Bends is better than OK Computer, but as ever, as with my choice of favourite Bond film (On Her Majesty's Secret Service, of course - it's got the best music!) I am prepared to defend the underdog.

And what an underdog. Like White Man (In Hammersmith Palais) and This Year's Model, it always gets me no matter where I hear it and in what mood. It used to be my 'favourite album of the 90s' but looking back over the last 15 years since it came out, I should probably add another decade to that accolade. I certainly can't think of another album I've played more by a band who are still a going concern. And discovering this week that Thom Yorke is playing Latitude is exciting news - particularly in the knowledge that I might spy him in the audience for Magazine. Taking copious Prog Punk notes, I hope.

South East London Song Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:06:00 +0000

The band are now playing at full pelt, brass section giving it oomph, Telecasters are chopping and bass syncopating with snare. But the enthusiastic dancers have given the floor over to someone who is clearly having it larger than they are. The shape thrower in question, who looks like a combination of the foreman from Auf Widersehen Pet and Little Krankie, has now stripped off his polo shirt and is doing bare-chested press-ups on the pub floor. Ah, it's good to be back in South East London on a Saturday night.

The patrons of the Ladywell Tavern must be the only people in the entire country who aren't watching the final of Britain's Got Talent. Why am I missing this televisual feast? Don't I want to see how SuBo is going to fare? Am I, as my good friend Andy suggests, "a bit weird"? Why would I want to miss the ultimate bit of communal A&R? After all, I couldn't resist sitting down with my five year-old daughter and watching a generous slice of Eurovision this year. No one can accuse me of being some elitist twat who only accepts music that has been blessed by hipsters as you will know if you've been reading this for any length of time. I am, in fact, the polar opposite of this; far more likely to embrace a Girls Aloud album than one by Bon Iver - how many tunes does Bon have per song? Answer: two at best; how many do Xenomania give Girls Aloud? Five per song. Fah. Eye. Vah! Count 'em.

Eurovision had the usual pitiful selection of tunes but some unforgettable performances - Dita Van Tease's appearance with Germany's appalling entry was so popular with Maddy that she forced me to sit through it a second time the moment it finished. How I cursed the Sky+. At least she showed a modicum of taste when half way through Norway's inexplicably winning entry, referring to an earlier Graham Norton quip, she said, "Daddy, I agree with what that man said before, I want to give him a slap too."

But why watch talent on the telly when you can go out and see some of it in real life? We were off to see the band - The Grey Cats - that a friend of mine plays in. The clue of course is in the name - these men are not young. Some of them are even older than me. By day they are all mortgaged, parenting, reliable pillars of society but every now and then they put on some black clothes, pick up horns, guitars and sticks and practice some Clash songs. They've all got their own hair and most of them are slim enough to have tucked-in shirts without looking like cabbies. In short: for a bunch of old fellas singing London Calling they don't look too ridiculous.

The pub is packed for their performance, mostly friends and family of course - but how brilliant does this feel? It's like I suppose it was before entertainment was provided so easily on recordings - when, as the cliche goes, you had to make your own entertainment. To a certain extent I go along with Bill Drummond who believes that 'all recorded music has run its course' and that we should ditch it all and 'start again'. Clearly The Grey Cats are not out to produce anything quite so radical as Drummond's choir - you can't imagine The 17 doing a version of Stray Cat Strut with as much gusto as The Grey Cats - but the fact that we have all come to watch some blokes playing for fun, who have no worries about playing a few bum notes or wonky time signatures, says something.

Perhaps it's what all of us who never really liked sport are destined to do - instead of golf or fishing or watching the cricket we dust down our guitars, buy some new plectrums and get on the phone to some cheap rehearsal rooms. I'm playing music again for the first time in 20 years, as are many of my friends. I've yet to do any gigs (and boy, if I do, am I going to keep that one quiet) but I'm in a minority - one bunch of 40-something friends are in a band called Mass Data Storage (I love this band name) - who, despite having a jazz-obsessed bass player with the brain the size of a planet, only play three chord new wave covers.

The beauty of pop music being so old is that we are now all mature enough to recognise it as something which we shouldn't feel bad about maintaining a passion for until we die. Why should we put childish things away as we puff up, lose brain cells and develop ear hair? Most of us had some sort of aspiration to play rock when we were young but it's only recently become acceptable for normal middle aged guys, who aren't Stephen King or Simon Armitage to get up and play just as badly as they did when they were teenagers.

And talking of teenagers, last week I also got some first hand experience of another phenomenon at the other end of the age spectrum: the pop music school. I was asked to talk to a bunch of students at a North London music school about their Myspace pages .

The idea of going to school to learn about pop music still seems slightly bizarre to me. After all, School of Rock was only a handful of years ago. But these schools are a massive growth area in the UK and seemingly there is no end to the amount of kids who want to formalise their pop music knowledge so they can earn a living from it. Come to think of it, my mate from The Grey Cats has a daughter who goes to the BRITs school in Croydon.

This was the first time I'd ever spoken to students about the music business and frankly I was a little alarmed. Not just at the prospect of standing up in front of a class who might take anything I said as undisputed truth but also at what you say to kids who want to get into the music business when no one really knows what this business is any more.

Of course, the usual thing happened before any of the kids arrived - no one could work out how to make the overhead projector connect to the laptop. It's always the same, whether you are organising a surprise birthday party for your wife or an international A&R conference: whenever more than 6 people gather together in a conference room, all AV gear will stop working for as long as it takes for everyone from Post Room staff to Prada-sporting CEOs to be on their hands and knees under furniture shouting "Is it working now? Can you press AUX? No? Well, press PHONO, see if that works!"

Eventually we got it working (one of the students saved the day, of course) and in the blink of an eye the two hours I was booked to talk to them disappeared. In that time I found myself spouting all sorts of music industry lore I never even knew existed. I've heard this is what happens to lecturers and teachers - you are seduced by the sound of your voice - hey, I'm making these guys laugh... I AM A GOLDEN GOD.

This was a very smart bunch of kids and most of what I was saying was simple common sense - about logos, images and blogs - but they still seemed to something from it. We didn't speak much about songwriting and the music each Myspace was promoting but in preparing for the lecture I'd come across some notes I'd made back in the 90s when I was at Indolent and listening to far too many demos. I decided to close on this just to give them a little hint at the depths of my cynicism - it's a list of the most common lyrical cliches I found on demo tapes. Believe me, these blunders are so common if you have ever written a song you will have used one. So here as a little bonus are the Top Ten Lyrics To Be Avoided

10 Deep inside (combined either with "I've got a feeling..." or "Make you feel good...")
9 How much you mean to me
8 I hope and I pray
7 Don't matter what I do (plus optional) just can't get over you
6 Change... rearrange
5 You can't run, you can't hide
4 Just can't go on (and yet somehow, they manage to...)
3 Should have seen those lies in your eyes (plus optional) made me realise
2 Never thought it could be this way
1 Till the break of dawn.

The Grey Cats have a couple of their own songs which avoid any of the above - something I think we must thank the punk rock idiom for is the absence of navel gazing love lyrics. And talking of navel gazing, I find myself staring at the naked torso of Mr Krankie who is now being escorted from the pub by the landlord. He is clearly no stranger to White Ace and has a face which tells a thousand stories - most of them ending in being escorted from the building. "He comes to all our shows" announces Grey Cats singer Jac, and there is a ripple of mirth before the floor fills again to the strains of a Message to You Rudie and I start worrying about the babysitter.

Could you furnish me with some of your dubstep wares?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:58:00 +0000

Me: Oh hello, it's Ben from V2, can I speak to Oliver please?
Bloke: Who?
Me: Er, Oliver Jones... Skream?
Bloke: No, who are you?
Me: Ben Wardle - from V2. I think I spoke to you a couple of days ago...
Bloke: Oh yeah. What was it about again?
Me: It's about a remix...

To paraphrase Norm from Cheers: Remixers - can't live with them... Would you pass the beer nuts? Why I didn't want to like the La Roux album is precisely because of the fella above - Skream. But first let me give you some background.

I was writing a piece on 'The Red Lady' for a Portuguese magazine and I thought that rather than just write a load of old biased conjecture based on hearing two songs and knowing she had a funny haircut, I really should do the decent thing and listen to her record and interview her. Well, the latter never happened because she was 'on holiday' but Universal did hook me up with their amazing digital pass system and before I knew it I had the album in my inbox - surely this is the best way of getting music to fans, it was just as fast as iTunes and frankly a better service.

Anyway, the album is genuinely great. OK, In For The Kill has been in the charts for 10 weeks, has only just left the top five but is far from the best track on the record. But, I'll be honest here, I didn't really get the single - the voice sounded too strained, out of its comfort zone and after a while the tune just seemed to go round and round without getting anywhere. Hey, Mr W, that's pop music, buddy, get used to it, I hear you say. And, as ever, you are right. I am listening to it now and it's one of those records - and songs - that feels like it's always been with us. But once you've heard the album - and judging from my travels last week you probably have, as it seems to be the most widely disseminated pre-release in recent history- yes, once you've heard the album (out on June 29, listeners) you'll get a much fuller idea of Elly Jackson's voice. Bulletproof, the next single, is a stonker. Yes, I did actually write that word down.

But I was cynical about La Roux for the reason many people initially were - because when In For The Kill was getting its early plays three, four months ago, the buzz was all around the Skream remix. It had nothing to do with the original track. This remix is great, markedly different from the actual track and wholly in keeping with the dubstep hipster's previous releases. But this only made me extra reluctant to like La Roux - and here's the rub: a couple of years ago I had tried repeatedly and failed to get Skream to do a remix for one of my acts. Actually, worse, I couldn't even get the dubstepper to return my calls.

I was A&Ring Lethal Bizzle at the time for V2. This is a whole other story in itself and I'll save it for another time, suffice to say here that the Walthamstow grime hero is a genuinely lovely chap whose only fault is perhaps the length of time he takes to get around to recording things. Bizarre, because once in the studio he would zip through stuff with lightning speed.

Anyway, at his insistence I'd been trying to open his ears up to things he wouldn't normally listen to and getting him to work outside his grime comfort zone. He loved Gallows at SXSW so I got them to remix a single, after that I got The Enemy to do the same and both remixes turned out great. Lethal (for that is what we call him) also worked with the massively underrated Akira The Don on tracks which featured samples from The Clash and The Ruts (there is even a superb track Akira did which samples The Breeders' Cannonball, which will never see the light of day for Kim Deal reasons, sadly.)

But we needed something hip for the second single and what better - and indeed cooler than that summer's underground dance craze dubstep and its coolest representative Skream If you haven't heard his debut Skream! it's worth going and purchasing a copy - it's full of Hitchcockian menace and cheap beats - like a council estate Portishead.

Skream turned out not to have a proper manger at the time - he appeared to be based out of a record shop in Croydon. At least I think it was a record shop. Maybe it was a proper office with fax machines and lavish itineraries pinned to the wall. Or maybe not. I phoned it several times and the conversation would start as per the exchange above and continue thus:

Me: It's about a remix. For Lethal Bizzle...
Bloke. Oh yeah, that's right, yeah.
Me: Is he about? You said he would be around today...
Bloke: Nah. He's not about today.
Me: Right. Did you pass the message on though?
Bloke. The message? (Sound of other conversation and laughter in the background)
Me: About Lethal?
Bloke. No, he's not bin in.
Me: But did you pass the message on?
Bloke: (laughing uproariously at something going on in Skream HQ, then returning to phone) Yo...
Me: Hi, I just wondered if did you pass the message on?
Bloke: Nah, like I say, he's not bin in
Me: And you can't pass his mobile number on?
Bloke: Nah sorry.... (to some colleagues in the Skream HQ in the background) Oh wicked, man! That's mega!
Me: Hello?
Bloke: Yeah - I'll tell him you called. (Line goes dead)

So Skream wasn't exactly biting our hands off on this one. To be fair, he wasn't getting a whole lot of remix work at that time which either means he was avoiding calls like mine or he was sitting at home wondering whether he should sack his assistant. I'd like to think it was the latter as he's since done a fair few remixes.

Dealing with producers, remixers and their representatives is - or certainly was - one of the main parts of the A&R job. There's a scene in John Niven's book where an A&R man is asked for his producer suggestions in a meeting and he lists a very impressive line-up of people he says he's considering. It later becomes apparent that all he's done is quickly look at that week's album chart (which always lists the producer alongside the artist presumably for this very purpose). And in theory it's that easy. Ever wondered why suddenly a producer or remixer seems to be everywhere? It's because, as William Goldman says in Adventures in The Screen Trade, "nobody knows anything" so if someone has had a sniff of a hit it's likely that they'll be enlisted to produce whatever the big signings are which the record company needs to be successful- and because these acts are the safe bets it's likely they will be successful and so the producer's Midas-like reputation will grow even more. Then eventually, a couple of surprise stiffs later, the producer's mortality is revealed and the A&R men move on to fresh pastures. But there are a handful of perennials who are safe pairs of hands - certainly I'd cite Stephen Street as one. Graham Coxon, who Street produced in Blur and who Coxon continues to use for his solo stuff, recently described 'Streety' as someone who is 'consistent', not perhaps at first glance the biggest accolade but if you're an artist it's a huge plus. Artists reserve the right to be erratic, blow hot and cold and you definitely don't want someone behind the console who is like that. Even when Street makes a dull record it's always redeemed by lovely little bits of detail - and you can hear everything, nothing is buried.

I always tried to use interesting producers and remixers - not go for the obvious list of that week's chart winners. I'd try and find people who were new or had perhaps not had the breaks but I thought - or their manager suggested - might be good. Sometimes this worked (Akira The Don had never produced a record before Bizzle for example) and sometimes it didn't. I once was given the task of looking after Aimee Mann for one summer in nascent Britpop years. She was making the follow up to Whatever (a nascent Britpop album if ever there was one) and had recorded a song, a duet with Glen Tilbrook, called That's Just What You Are which needed mixing. I got a producer called Marcus Dravs involved who was a personable young German guy who had done some engineering with Brian Eno and had some good ideas. He mixed the track really well, I thought, bringing out a modernity that it needed . But guess what? Aimee loathed it and bless her, told me in no uncertain terms. Ah well. Still a decade later Marcus is having some sort of last laugh as he's now producing Arcade Fire and Coldplay.

It was the artistic process which always interested me - the listening to the tracks, the tweaking of certain things which subsequently threw a new perspective on everything else. Sometimes too much bloody perspective. What I was less good at was the haggling - the fee, the percentages, the deal. I was out earlier this week meeting someone at The Strongroom, a studio in Hoxton and in the bar opposite was a meeting of the Music Producers' Guild. Outside was the manager of two sizeable acts and we speculated on what these producers might be talking about. "How they are going to get paid" he said bluntly. He then went on to point out how unfair it has always been that producers have always commanded a percentage (points) of an artist's royalties in perpetuity: "Sure, share some of the action for the first couple of years but after that goodbye and thank you very much!"

As record companies lose their power and artists with a fanbase gain more leverage, this could become a reality but back when I used to negotiate with producer managers you were really made to feel who was boss when you wanted one of their top producers. I remember trying to get a very well known dance remixer for a Pop Will Eat Itself single who was managed by an portly industry legend who shall remain nameless. After the inevitable industry small talk he cut to the chase and said what the deal was. I told him what I was thinking (IE MUCH LESS), and explained why given what sort of group PWEI were etc etc. He listened, then quietly told me I could fuck off if I thought his producer would take any less and put the phone down. Most producer managers, I must stress are charming and open to negotiate but I was always surprised by the disregard for manners that would occasionally come out of the blue - one big name manager with whom I was trying to negotiate, cut me off mid sentence and said "Just fax me the bloody deal and make sure it's not Mickey Mouse!" I ask you, is that what a Cambridge University education achieves?

So maybe the boy with the goldfish attention span in Skream's office was giving me the dubstep equivalent of a fob off; he may not have been to charm school or even Cambridge but in his own syncopated way, he was saying: "We're not interested in your Grime, Mr Record Company - never call us again".Or perhaps the day that La Roux called, Skream like Godot had finally shown up and taken the call.

20 Years with Lamacq

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:00:00 +0000

For approximately the 1000th time, I'm standing at the back of the Camden Barfly. I'm leaning on the bar watching I Heart Hiroshima doing their odd mix of angsty feelgood thrash. Perhaps they manage this dichotomy because whilst being out and out indie rock, they nonetheless come from Brisbane and can't help giving off a relaxed surfer aura. Or it might be that in between songs, the female drummer is relentlessly chummy.

I look around me at the young crowd and once again have to acknowledge that apart from Steve Lamacq who is standing just in front of me and Simon Williams who is to my right, I am undeniably the oldest person in the room. No, wait, hang on - I'm not! Who is that whispering in Steve's ear - it's Fruitbat from Carter From The Unstoppable Sex Machine! Blimey, maybe going to see the time-travel friendly new Star Trek film on Wednesday has warped me back to 1989.

Earlier the same evening, Steve and I had been drinking in his favourite pub The Ship on New Cavendish Street. He was chatting to NME Radar editor Jamie Hodgson and without either of us saying it both of us were thinking - this guy does the same job Steve was doing 20 years ago. That would be the equivalent of the two of us in 1989 meeting the guy who had given Led Zeppelin, Free or James Taylor their first NME column inches.

Also outside The Ship was up-and-coming singer Florence aka Florence And The Machine. I saw her perform in some Soho basement about two years ago with a lone guitarist (The Machine, I presumed). Even back then it was full of hipster A&Rs like Geoff Travis but I have to admit I didn't get it at all: her voice, which everyone was extolling the virtues of, seemed to work off a small portion of Amy Winehouse's range and the songs were circuitous bluesy dirges. But from what I hear of her forthcoming album, she's gone into a rich La Roux/Bat For Lashes direction and the voice now has really depth. And I'm not just saying that because she was very personable outside the pub. Although she was. I mean, she didn't need to be friendly to me, did she? - I am neither a legendary music DJ or an influential new band correspondent. I am merely the bloke who once spent a windy October evening at the Harlow Square on Steve Lamacq's birthday in 1990.

Looking back on the last 20 years that I've known the bloke they used to call 'the boy Lamacq' I now realise that without ever becoming what you'd call 'bezzie mates' we did share an awful lot of pop experiences. OK, so I missed that night at The Norwich Arts Centre when Richie Manic claimed to be 4 Real but we were together for much of Britpop, especially Elastica (although he bagged them for his label Deceptive over my label Scared Hitless) he followed and supported my first signing Five Thirty, and it was Ride that brought us together. It was for Ride that were waiting in the Harlow Square that night in 1990.

Steve was grumpy; possibly about being a year older, although there may have been some kind of romantic issue going on too. But once the band came on nothing mattered. Ride were a great live act obviously, but my point is that Steve's heart and soul have always been so wrapped up in music that it takes priority over everything else. Yes, he loves Colchester United and I've frequently found him reading Jeffrey Bernard books when he's waiting to meet me in the pub but most of his waking hours are filled with noise. A few years ago he wrote a piece in The Guardian about only ever having seen 14 films in his entire life. Now whilst he was probably exaggerating (for instance, the two of us definitely went to see Robocop 2 together when we were in New York for a music seminar, so that makes 15 already) I don't find it hard to believe that he couldn't find time to catch, say, a Bond movie on TV on Christmas Day - he would be too busy going through the demo bag to see if there was anything worth including on his Boxing Day show.

This obsessive behaviour makes him an easy target for ridicule of course and sometimes when I feel myself slipping into cynicism about the music business I ask myself why he bothers. But bother he does and regardless of him being a friend I think in the shallow modern world of celebrity presenters, he is a lone and necessary figure. Zane Lowe, Hugh Stevens, Colin Murray and their like are good on the radio - some of them better than Steve perhaps, but you know that much of what they play has been suggested by the producer or is dragged from the pages of the NME or Internet blog trawls. With Steve, you know he's hunted the stuff down and quite probably has had a pint of cider with the singer.

Of course Steve is a celebrity of sorts, but only by default of being good at what he does. I'm sure he enjoys being recognised in venues - and he always is and invariably comes out laden with CDs - but that's not what motivates him. Anyone who is out with him gets caught in the crossfire too. I came home with a Tapetheradio CD last night (very good by the way - a much more manageable and melodic Bloc Party). Out with him couple of years ago, whilst I stood patiently listening to an awestruck bass player tell him how he should really listen to Track Two of the demo, the guitarist from the same band took pity on me, "You done been doing this long?" he asked. "Sorry," I looked up, "Doing what?" The guitarist gestured at Lamacq , "Being his bouncer."

I won't go on because it will look like he's paying me for this. Actually that's an idea, perhaps I should ask him... No, I will simply finish on this: A few years ago an old A&R friend of Steve's was staying on his couch after his marriage had broken up. One afternoon after Steve had gone through his demo bag, he gave the guy a CD to listen to saying he thought it was pretty good and might cheer him up. Fast forward several years and Steve's mate is now managing the band, who have become rather successful and are supporting AC/DC on their current world tour. Normal friends would have tried to help him meet a new woman or get a job; Steve did what he does best, he found him a band.

What happened in the cubicle

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:06:00 +0000

One day a few years ago a friend of mine who used to work at Warners went into the Gents. He walks up to the urinal and starts weeing. From the stalls behind him he hears a slight moan. Fair enough, he thinks, it's a toilet stall, people make sounds in them . As he finishes and zips up his fly, he hears a louder sound from the same stall. This throws a new and disturbing light on the previous sound. Christ, he thinks, that's the clatter and bang of some serious diarrhoea - and just as he's finishing this thought, he's greeted with a third and almost deafening retort which seemingly ricochets off the tiled walls. Inside that stall, there is someone in serious trouble...

Why am I telling you this? OK, I admit it. For the last week and a bit I have been less than attentive of the music scene. All I've done is written one thing about the comical Coldplay plagiarism story and lorded it up a couple of times at the theatre (Opera? Got it: l'elisier d'amore; 19th century Danish business? Sorted: Peer Gynt) And what have I been doing the rest of the time? Looking after my 1 year old daughter. And I'm doing it for the rest of May, my pop-picking friends.

Relax I'm not going to start regaling you with 'amusing' accounts of what a wake-up call house-husbandry is compared to normal life and how comically inept I am at it. Ho ho ho - wouldn't that be ironic and hilarious? But listen, that's the point of mentioning it here - because just as there always seem to be a bunch of new books about how crazy fun-loving guys have managed to learn to knuckle under and become great dads, there now also seem to be a swelling mass of books written by former music industry employees - the most high profile of recent months is of course Luke Haines' Bad Vibes.

Now clearly I am always going to be biased in matters of books about the music business. It would be lovely to tell you that my book on the music business is about to come out but I think perhaps that that is a way off. Besides, I'd like to get some of my stories published - it does look as though the Pink Flag collection is going to emerge at some point which is exciting. I'll keep you posted.

But anyway, back to Haines. Firstly, unlike my Kill Your Friends blog last year (which I anticipated not liking, but then found myself surprised and impressed with) I imagine I am really going to enjoy Haines' book. I know a few folks whose opinion I trust and they've all had fun with it and it covers a time in the business that I know well and having read one or two extracts it is clear that he writes engagingly. But one thing bothers me about the Haines book - how am I going to enjoy it when I never liked his band?

Let's be honest, The Auteurs weren't all that great were they? Their demo emerged around the same time as Suede's and they were vaguely in the same musical glam camp (at least at first) but it was a thin voiced, jangly textbook indie. They got a deal with Virgin imprint Hut, after everyone who failed to get Suede checked them out. And after that, well, nothing really happened. Over a long period of time. And the book appears to be about how annoyed LH was with the way things went and how terrible all the other artists were and undeserving of their success. I know I'm doing it again and writing about a book I haven't read but as far as I can tell, Haines sticks to his schtick despite the evidence being plain to anyone who has heard The Auteurs. I'm listening to the first album New Wave now and it's OK but... oh, you know, it's just not that great.

This argument didn't stop me loving The Dirt about Motley Crue without really being able to name a single Crue song but somehow because the Haines book is one man's very personal vision it seems to me that you have to buy into his music to immerse yourself in the prose. Or not? You've probably read it haven't you and you're stroking your chin and shaking your head at my idiocy. Anyway, David Peace liked it so it must be good, right kids?

Another book on the music business (which you'll be happy to hear I have read) is Dan Kennedy's Rock On: How I Tried to Stop Caring About Music and Learn to Love Corporate Rock and, should you wondering what your next read is, this is the business. It's by a fella who contributes to Dave Eggers' McSweeney magazine and who in a former life was a senior marketing exec at Warners. The book tells the tale of how he got the job and managed to keep it until he was, along with many others, made redundant.

There are many reasons why Rock On is good (the title isn't one of them by the way) the main one being it's hilarious. Kennedy writes from the perspective of someone who can't believe he has managed to bag a job inside a record company - surely how everyone feels - or felt. And because he wasn't long in the job, he retains a crtical distance - or at least his writing has the authentic ring of someone who never got absorbed into the system. Plus he's writing about relatively recent history so all the horrors of the industry meltdown which the US felt before the UK are covered.

But mostly I love it because it's about office life. I'm obsessed with books about office life, the nonsense of corporate structures and the idiotic way people behave within it. So music and this combined - it's a winner, frankly. Not wanting to spoil it for you, there is one bit which I sincerely hope is true:

Kennedy has just learned from HR along with a senior executive who doesn't even know his name or what he did ("thanks for all the, uh, marketing...") that he's been made redundant. He emerges from the office outside of which two male assistants sit typing and avoiding eye contact with him. They know that everyone going in and out of the office that day is being laid off. Instead of sheepishly walking off, Kennedy proclaims (I'm paraphrasing here so forgive me if I'm not doing it justice) "Well that was a surprise!" The guys look up. "Yes," he goes on, "Apparently, you two now work for me!" The blokes look at each other dumbstruck and horrified. "Just kidding!" he beams and strolls off.

Oh yes, I never finished my Warners story. So my friend is washing his hands and waiting for the next painful rear end explosion to come from the stall. But instead, there is an eery silence, broken only by the reassuring noise of a squeaking toilet roll dispenser. As he drys his hands the stall door opens slowly and a completely relaxed and fresh faced person emerges - as if end-of-the-world cacophony was standard lavatorial procedure. And who was this person? Well, let's just say I hope his aim was true.

A&R Man Claims £1000s In Slap-Up Meal Expenses Frenzy

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:12:00 +0000

I'm glad I reproduced that Ricky Gervais story last week, largely because I got an email from a reader called Kate, who also remembers Ricky in pre-Office days. I asked her for permission to quote a bit of it here and she said yes, bless her. So here is her brilliant story:

"We all went to the same gym - me, him and Jane, his lovely missus. I used to listen to his shitty bands, year after painful year. I let him have an enormous time of day because he was brilliant at impersonating David Bowie, it broke up the demo tape boredom and also because, like you, I was diligent. Also he let me use the ULU swimming pool! I made Chris Parry take us to dinner (this is probably after listening to his cruddy bands for ten years) because I thought he was so funny and should be on the radio. Quite randomly, Chris said 'yes, you can have a job at XFM we will call it Head of Speech'. No word of a lie, Ricky wept, I did nudge him and say 'pull yourself together' - we were all a bit the worse for wear. Behind every great man is an underpaid somebody or other... "

Well, like I said a couple of weeks ago in the Susan Boyle blog, all some people need is just a little break and then they blossom. And Ricky G must surely be an inspiration to all late developers - just like Boyle is now. Although, now the main story on Susan Boyle seems to be that no one as yet, has made any money out of her - least of all ITV whose clip has now been watched over 100 million times on Youtube.

One business which has probably done well 0ut of Boyle is the restaurant trade - and they probably need it in the economic climate change. Did you notice the pivotal part of Kate's story above? Food. It was the head of Fiction and XFM taking them all out to dinner. I bet there have been a number of substantial 'working' lunches and dinners held between various employees of ITV, Sony and Syco in the name of Susan Boyle. With all manner of starters, desserts and liquid refreshment. And what happens afterwards? Yes, you got it: the expenses claim. Anyone who has ever had a job with expenses - and possibly there are some of you out there who are still blessed with such jobs - will know the combined pleasure and pain. The pleasure of the 'cashback' moment; the pain of the mounting receipts burning a hole in an old envelope in your desk drawer that you know will take half a day to sort out. Fortunately none of you will have experienced the public scrutiny being enjoyed by the government today but then again, the sort of things that A&R men claim rarely involve furniture or decoration costs.

But to sympathise with our beleaguered public servants for a few brief moments, the key thing I remember about expenses is that no matter how hard you try to claim back everything you have spent in the name of your job, you still end up out of pocket. No matter how many receipts you would save, there would never be enough to cover what you had spent. No wonder Gordon Brown had a go at claiming twice for the same thing, eh?

With A&R the primary form of expense is always Entertainment - that's mainly buying people drinks and occasionally food. Now, unless you want to look like a complete tightarse and defeat the purpose of buying booze in the first place, you never ask the bar staff for a receipt. In fact the expression, "Can I have a receipt please?" is so laden with the pain and suffering of boring office life that you may as well say to whoever it is you are getting a drink, "Please don't sign to me/produce this record/ever return my calls again - I am a boring company drone and really not worthy to be in the company of a creative free spirit like yourself."

That's the thing about A&R - half the time you are a dude with a cool record collection and an ear for a hit, and the other half you are a flunky. Unfortunately you are - in my experience at least - usually the latter when you hang out with bands, who tap you for free drinks and only the former when you are in the office surrounded by others who don't get out as much as you. And boy do the folks in Accounts know you go out - they know where, when and exactly what you had.

Expenses, as the man who signed Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine once said, are the most creative part of the A&R job. Incidentally, he went on to make a fortune doing cover-mount music CDs for newspapers, then sold the company, made a pile and is now a happy and successful school teacher. But I digress, the creative part of expenses is the fact that rather like drama in books, film and TV, the truth is often stranger than fiction and of course when you submit your sheets of A4 to Accounts you sure as hell don't want anyone thinking your claim is strange. So if you've been buying large amounts of booze, food and plastic novelty items in order to convince a band that you are without doubt the coolest and most exciting record company you might find yourself fabricating little stories around the receipts you have collected in order to creative believable scenarios.

So many times I would find that for legitimate nights out with bands I would spend £100 or £150 on booze/pinball/entrance to gigs but only come away with a couple of cab receipts. So in order to make up what I'd spent I started using receipts from the occasional time I would go out for a meal with a mate. And then before I knew it EVERY time I went out with friend to eat I would ask for a receipt just in case. But imagine that on the front page of the Daily Telegraph - it wouldn't wash would it? "A&R Man Claims £1000s In Slap-Up Meal Frenzy!" And no, before you ask, apart from that one time when I went to buy 'stimulants to help us work through the night' with a band's money - I never bought a band drugs. Take their drugs, sure! Who didn't?

I've noticed that recently when I see friends from record companies that I end up having tea and biscuits more often than a slap-up meal. This is frankly a welcome development. The thing about expense accounts - and this may just be a bloke thing - is that often they are flaunted like expensive jewellery or cars. Quite often I remember going to meet music publishers and lovely thought they invariably were, we would end up in ludicrously expensive restaurants in West London talking about what we had seen at the Barfly and if we would be able to get on the guest list at The Bull & Gate - it just seemed wrong. And then of course next time we met, I felt duty bound to entertain them in a similar fashion. One record company pal told me recently that they now have to clear all their FUTURE expenses before going out and spending the cash. Surely he was exaggerating, this is madness! - kind of like being asked to predict how many CDs a freshly signed act is going to sell. Oh hang on, we actually did have to do that when I was at BMG and V2.

But really, telling an expenses Tsar how much you think you are going to blow on lunch with a business associate takes all the glamour out of having an expense account doesn't it. Looking back on my expenses days I now realise the real joy of the expense account was the reward every month. After spending an afternoon of going through your pockets for receipts and trying to remember what the hell you had done it was pure pleasure to get that extra bit of cash back in your account. It was my money, I'd spent it, but I could never get used to the fact that I got money back after I had spent it - however legitimately. It was free money. And astute managers recognised this psychology - one manager (who is now extremely powerful) was pretty skint when he managed a band for me in the 90s and made no bones about tapping me for free food every time he saw me, "Where are we going for lunch today, dear boy?" he would enquire on the phone, often before I knew I even had a meeting with him. Fortunately, like Ricky Gervais, he was marvellous company and I never turned him down. Last time I saw him he offered to buy me lunch - it was a lovely moment and even though I'd already eaten I hope he somehow managed to claim for it.

The Lassitude Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Last week's Susan Boyle blog proved the simple Internet logic that if you write about a topic that is hot you get more readers. I'm not sure how many of you reading this only discovered A&Rmchair last week but I can promise you I won't be covering her this week. In fact it will be a very short this week. Why? Because I am devoting my time into staring into space like a person in an Edward Hopper painting. My doctor assures me that this lassitude has been brought on not by the swine flu but by a simple virus. Let's hope that's true. My friend Russell, who's a bigger hypochondriac then I am told me that he wants to contract the swine flu now so he can get maximum medical care and attention. He reckons there won't be the beds and drugs in two or three weeks. Apocalypse dot com.

Anyway there you go, I got another topical reference in this week - my stats are going to go THROUGH THE ROOF.

Frankly, I think I'd be better if I'd spent more time at home with the family last week. Instead I went out to see a play through glass, interview a fashion model and check out Bob Dylan's arse. The latter - which let's face it, is probably not in as pulchritudinous a condition as his re-blossoming career - was most of what we saw of him at the Roundhouse last Sunday. We actually had great seats, really near the stage, but Mr D, now no longer playing the guitar, had positioned his Vox Continental organ sideways on and was facing his two Costello-alikey guitarists. With his back to us. There were moments of greatness: Tangled Up In Blue three songs in, was lovely - a different arrangement which made the song darker and suited Bob's new 'old' voice.

But I was just not very well; coughing and sweating and wondering if I could reasonably lie down on the venue floor. It's not really not fair of me to pass judgement on a 67 year-old who is on a Never Ending Tour while I am struggling to just watch him for one evening but it would have been nice to get a bit of a clue as to who was on stage! The clue is in the name of course, it's the Roundhouse - he was circled by people. But turn around, he did not. In his Guardian review of 2001's Love And Theft album, Alexis Petrides refers to Dylan's grizzled voice as sounding like Papa Lazarou from The League Of Gentlemen. I made the mistake of mentioning this to my friends sitting next to me, which they found amusing, so subsequently the entire show was punctuated by crowings in my ear, "It ain't me, Dave!"

Anyway, I'm still in the land of the unwell so I'm going to stop here but in order that you have something to read - and sticking to last week's A&R decision theme, I will reproduce part of a blog which removed last year for reasons I won't repeat. Older readers may remember it and for that I apologise, others may find it as fresh and amusing as if I had written it yesterday.

See you next week.

I'm aware that you have to sell sell sell in order to get any 21st century attention but I still stand by the psychology of any talent search - a scout wants to hunt and gather; if something lands on his desk in a nice Jiffy with a glossy photograph, a DVD, a 10 track demo and a three page biography complete with accolades from the bass player of a well-known Danish metal act, he will pour the lot into the bin. Believe me, I'm not making it up. If you go into the Atlantic Records offices in The Electric Lighting Station and head for the basement, go to the office in the far corner and look above your head. If you push the central ceiling tiles up, underneath you will find a handful of particularly annoying biographies, unlistened-to demo tapes and other detritus from the early 90s - there is one, as far as I remember, from a would-be Motely Crue from the home counties called Tygertailz. Ah, happy days.

Actually, to be honest, I was a fairly responsible talent scout. I tried to give everyone and everything a fair hearing. Not for me the casual flinging of demo tapes out of the car window at 80mph on the M1. One example of my diligence is that I once received a letter from a certain Richey Edwards asking how he could become an A&R man. The Manics' manager once told me this several years later, I had completely forgotten about it. Apparently, I had written him a very encouraging letter which he'd never forgotten, outlining the best way of becoming a talent scout. He clearly didn't listen to a bloody word I said.

Talking of legends, I also remember getting regular calls from a promoter at the University of London Students' Union, who continually took on the management of terrible no-hoper bands. The reason I took his calls was that he was hilarious - a pleasure to talk to, genuinely nice, with a distinctive, infectious laugh. I still have a covering letter that came with one of his demos; written on headed ULU notepaper, it reads:

Dear Cunts in charge of the record industry,

Your label, or whatever the fuck it is you call it, doesn't half give me the horn.

Yours faithfully,

Ricky Gervais

You didn't expect that, did you. Did you? No!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Earlier today on Twitter - and who'd have thought you'd ever read a sentence like that here? - music writer Rob Fitzpatrick tweeted this: 'Why do the sort of bands who get "Record Deals" have to sound so depressingly like the sort of bands who get "Record Deals"?'

He's got a point. But - and you'll be happy to hear I tweeted (twat?) this back - more pertinent is how the sort of bands who get record deals always look like the sort of bands who get record deals. In fact, I'd go so far to say that it's more likely that they'll look the part rather than sound it. After all it's easy to make a bunch of cool looking guys sound great than sell a bunch of ugly-stick-prodded losers who write a good tune. Right, kids?

Well, that's the received wisdom, isn't it? And I have to say I'm as guilty as anyone for subscribing to the looks fascism that has always existed in the music business. Or entire entertainment business for that matter. Half of the reason I was excited about Ride was that Mark Gardner was just so good looking. And the reason I, like a lot of people, passed on On A Friday wasn't that the demo didn't have enough strong songs on it - it was that the singer had a paralysed eye and we just couldn't imagine audiences getting past that.

You can see where this is going can't you? Two words: Susan Boyle. The three of you out there in the world who have not yet heard about this singer or seen the clip from Britain's Got Talent - well, here's your final chance. It's astonishing that her clip (almost 13 million views on Youtube as I write) has become such a global phenomenon so fast. People are clearly angry about the way looks are prioritised in pop - just take a look at some of the comments: "IN YOUR FACE. Cowell!" or this one: "look at that ugly girl in the audience who pulls the horrible face when she says she wants to be a professional singer, take the look of ure face you ugly little bitch"

Whilst it's nice to think that someone who doesn't conform to the stereotypical talent show winner levels of attractiveness can create such an impression it's also worth thinking about why people buy music - what gets them excited about music? I could be wrong but my experience is pop music that works, invariably has a dynamic between the music and the way the performer looks. It's a dynamic that doesn't necessarily depend on the performer being good looking but there has to be a relationship between the two things: the looks and the voice. I always asked myself: does the act look like it sounds? So many demos would come in with a very groomed and styled Walkerprint (look it up, people under 30) and a demo which sounded like a different act - like someone dressing up for a job interview to work in a coal mine.

The acts that made it past this first hurdle were invariably ones who had identified something about themselves and were milking that rather than doing what they thought was the best way to get the attention of an A&R man. The majority of acts were getting it wrong on a basic level - like a writer who hasn't found his voice and slips from funny to angsty with no warning or an artist who draws a painfully accurate sketch of a face except there is something slightly wrong about the chin rendering the whole picture comical. Bad artists make art look hard.

Once past the first hurdle the acts who had something unique about them would then be judged on all the arbitrary and unfair things which people who create new art are judged on: lyrics, trousers, colour of cassette inlay... And very often they would get a rejection letter because despite having a spark they weren't ticking as many tickboxes as the A&R person wanted ticking. Sometimes the A&R person would venture forth and see the artist perform live or in as showcase and maybe the Walkerprint would have made them look better than they looked in real life and despite really liking the song, the A&R man couldn't get over the fact that the singer had a receding hairline, or oversized hands or maybe a mannerism involving his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth while he sang. I'm talking generally here - don't for a moment think I was ever this shallow...

But sometimes there was a a magic from the demo that was undeniable. It normally came from the voice. The Verve came through unsolicited - I phoned them up because I really liked the voice. In the end I just didn't like the songs enough but crucially I didn't see a picture of the band - if I had I think I would have taken the unconventionally attractive Richard a bit more seriously. Sometimes it took a visit from a band to convince - I met Crispin from the Longpigs before he'd even formed the group and not only were the three songs on his tape amazing (On And On, Far and one other) he was also cripplingly cool - even when he was flicking the ash from his cigarette into his top pocket during the meeting "Why are you doing that?" I asked "What?" he drawled. "Flicking the ash into your pocket?" "Oh that - it's just an affectation..." I was sold. It didn't harm him that he was ludicrously good looking too but crucially he knew exactly what he was about.

Susan Boyle clearly knows this too. The Rev. Angela Tilby on Thought For Today this morning isolated the fact that Boyle sang with authority - she knew she had a great voice and no amount of criticism was going to take that conviction away. As she said in front of the judges, she'd just never been given the opportunity. And isn't that the way so many of us feel? Did I write that last sentence? Blimey, stop me before I start openly weeping.

Anyway, you can tell that this woman knows she's good from her eyes - the usual talent show crazy desperation is absent, she's just happy to be on stage singing. And the dynamic, how does my theory fit with her - does she look like she sounds? Well, actually yes. If she was trying to be Beth Ditto or Michael Jackson then her age announement would have warranted the cruel titters she got. In fact after she says she's 47 she does a mock sexy gyration "And that's just one side of me!" and we are briefly back in familiar talent show freak territory. But she's not a freak, she knows who she is, she doesn't want to be La Roux, she wants to be Elaine Page and even though the world of musical theatre that Paige emerged from is just as body fascistic as the record business, you can imagine Lloyd Webber getting her into one of his shows like that. She'd be perfect.

But the people who love the whole IN YOUR FACE, Cowell aspect of the Boyle saga have been fooled. Of course Cowell knew about her before the show was filmed - he was raving to Max Clifford about her a week before it was aired and I'd imagine that most of those involved with the show knew what they wanted out of the performance. I mean listen to Dec crowing to the camera "You didn't expect that did you?" when Boyle starts singing - it's clearly scripted. And Cowell's raised eyebrows of surprise as Boyle's goes into full throttle are about as believable as Roger Moore. He is probably already working on song choices for her album - he's publicly said she could have a number one in the US. The clip is a massively manipulative bit of telly - it lulls you into expecting to see another freak, showing cutaway shots of all those audience members who are not in on the secret rollling their eyes to their neighbours "Who does this old fatty think she is?" then turns on a sixpence using gently lifting ooohs and ahhhs and spontaneous clapping as Boyle starts. Yes, the voice is good but the reaction is too fast. And who started that standing ovation? Some prudently distributed runners? Cynical? Moi?

The IN YOUR FACE, COWELL brigade who want the 'ugly little bitch' in the audience to "take the look off her face" would have done the same had they been in the audience that night. It's human nature, or at least modern human nature; we are a deeply shallow and cynical generation prone to judging people on their appearance. The violent emotions of the Boyle reaction was manipulated by the direction of the show but also by the guilt felt by everyone who would have dismissed Boyle from the moment she bounded onto the stage.

There was a euphemism used in A&R departments about artists who had slipped past the ugly police and made it onto the roster - unconventionally attractive. And actually some of the biggest stars are genuinely unconventionally attractive - Shane McGowan, Jarvis Cocker, Michael Stipe... But more often that not, singers lean towards good looks. Have a look at your record collection - how many unconventionals or just plain old boots can you find? For a brief moment in the Bob Harris part of the 70s there was a value placed on musicianship over looks but mostly pop music is about style, fashion and looks, it's about being young and sticking it to the man and all the other cliches. So even literate, 'serious' pop stars like Dylan, Cohen and Mitchell (J) were supremely attractive - all the icons from Marley to Strummer to Morrison (J) to Gaye were gorgeous but, just for the record, here is a Top 10 of Pop Boyles - but before you read it, remember that whilst none of the below are or were heartbreakers, they all have it - they look like they sound, no one else is like them and all the better for it.

10 Joe Cocker
9 Mama Cass
8 Van Morrison
7 Elton John
6 Shaun Ryder
5 Lemmy
4 Meatloaf
3 Ian Dury
2 Beth Ditto
1 Thom Yorke

PS: Next week, I annexe the Sudetenland.
PPS Check out Mike Skinner's Susan Boyle remix with a Donk on it

Rock 'n' Roll Replacement Bus Service

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:25:00 +0000

The one-armed scouser in the AC/DC T-shirt is waving a crumpled can of Stella at us all: "Hoosh going to get me a ticket for asheedeeshee? Come on you cunts!"

Everyone on the tube - many of whom are doing their best to hide their own AC/DC clothing -busy themselves with copies of London Lite. The man starts singing along to whatever is playing on the headphones under his enormous furry hat: "We'll bring the house down!" He leans conspiratorially into the man sitting next to him, "Will you get me a ticket for asheedeeshee? Come on, you've got some influenshe.. I can tell.... (singing) We'll bring the house down. What stop is acdc? Where am I am getting off?"

The man, rictus grin forming, tells him

"You'll get me a ticket, right? OK?"
"Sorry, no, I'm not getting off there.."
"No! You rotter... (to the rest of the carriage) Whose gonna get me a ticket? Come on you cunts! You rotters! Goodbye to jane!"
He turns to the man with the guitar case standing next to him, "You're a musician... you'll get me in. Come on, I need to rock!"
He leans into the man next to him again
"Goodbye to jane! Slade... Noddy Holder... he nailed them. Proper singer... Donington 1981... nailed them. Not like Asheedc. Acdc are shite! Veins on his neck wherever he shings.... Noddy nailed them. (To the rest of the carriage) Whose going to give me 50p? I've got five pounds, If someone gives me 50p I can get in ... They know me at Wembley! They know me at Hammersmith! (to his now visibly sweating neighbour again) Where are asheedeeshee playing again?"

I get off at North Greenwich and start making my way along with thousands of others to the O2. I'm meeting some friends here - we've been invited to see AC/DC by a mate at Sony and there appears to be some sort of luxury meat dinner thrown in too. I eventually find the restaurant, Gaucho, inside the vast dome and am guided - and glided - by super efficient, super polite staff to a private room where Sony guests are being given champagne and scallops. I'm still thinking of the one armed AC/DC fan who needed to rock. He wouldn't have fitted in amongst the surf and turfers here but he definitely deserved to see the band more than a lot of the porcine businessmen who seem to using tonight as an excuse for entertaining their clients.

It makes sense, I suppose. Back in 1981 when our drunk friend saw the band at Castle Donington Monsters Of Rock he was probably surrounded by a lot of beery 16 year olds who went on to do very well in business. Now those same boys - if they still have jobs - are being reminded of their youth in corporate boxes by cunning companies treating them to a jolly in order to solicit more orders.

Meanwhile in the private room everyone is talking about the record business. I'm talking to my old friend Emma about the lifetime we've known each other. Like me, she used to work at Warners, now, like me, she's got kids and worries about the financial crisis and the environment. Unlike me she still works in the music industry. She thinks the record business will survive but after having seen The Age Of Stupid, she's not so sure about the environment. Apparently at a screening of the movie hosted by Ken Livingston, the ex mayor told the audience in his introduction that the US government have just completed work on a bunker for 2 million people in New York as they are preparing for the Gulf Stream to do its worst to Manhattan in a Katrina style.

Whilst this is uniquely ominous and as Emma said, more disturbing to learn than anything in the film itself, it is somehow hard to balance a desire to do less to upset the environment with an interest or career in rock. Emma's family decided not to have a holiday in California the very next day which is admirable but she is behind the scenes in the music business - what about Angus Young and co and all their pyrotechnics? Would AC/DC mean as much if they went green? I say this because I was invited to do another Radio 4 column last week about Neil Young's Fork In The Road - a concept album about his Lincvolt project where he is converting his old Lincoln Continental to make it environmentally friendly. This is a worthy concept and coming from a fella who is famous for having burned rubber from Canada to California in a hearse called Mort, almost poetic. But is it rock? The album is kind of dull - the tunes aren't up to much and lyrically, well it's just too didactic. My piece is actually about the cars in pop music and how ultimately, how every car themed song is about shagging. Although the BBC wouldn't let me use that word, it's too rude apparently - the piece is going out this week so tune in weeknights at 7.15 BBC Radio 4, pop pickers!

And talking of cars, shagging, and burning through the environment like it's a king size Rizla, here we are watching the explosions and screeches of Angus and co hitting the stage. Alongside various lucky invitees in our corporate box - including the head of Domino Records which is both confusing and refreshing - we watch the band who look no different from how they must have looked to our one-armed friend in 1981: Brian Johnson in cloth cap stalking the stage, punching the air, Angus Young in the schoolboy outfit, natch. But the massive screens either side of the stage act like enormous Dorian Grey style paintings freed from the loft: Johnson looks every bit in his sixties, the veins are popping on his neck with every vocal effort, Angus Young is small and sprightly but underneath that cap - which after four songs is discarded along with all of his clothes bar the shorts and shoes - he is a wispy haired secondary school teacher; I imagine him covered in chalk dust, talking about Brazilian coffee production - oh no! Double geography with Mr Young!

But he knows how old he is. There is no Mick Jagger 'laughter lines' self delusion with Angus. And that is ultimately why despite seemingly only having one idea (a riff and some lyrics about naughty women) AC/DC manage to be such fun - they don't talk themselves too seriously. As an giant inflatable Rosie looms over the reproduction of a crashed train and Brian Johnson sings Whole Lotta Rosie, I lean over and say to my mate from Sony, "Is this where pop music all ends?" "No!" he replies completely in earnest, "This is where it begins!" And he's right, this is no different from people going to see old bluesmen in the sixties and seventies - these guys have seen it all and are still playing 12 bar blues - admittedly while dressed a schoolboy. And that's why they can get away with calling their 175th single (who's counting?) Rock 'n' Roll Train. Anyone else would get laughed out of the playlist meeting, AC/DC get played by Zane Lowe alongside Ladyhawke and The Killers.

Apparently before Sony started the campaign for the album Black Ice last year, they organised a special show for all the territories. Key execs were flown to New York then given a ticket to travel on the 'Rock 'n' Roll Train' to a venue in Philadelphia. Except when the train arrived at Philly, it transpired that the venue was still 25 minutes away from the station. So minibuses had to be organised to cover the last leg - a rock 'n' roll replacement bus service if you will. One senses that despite it being off message, Angus would have found this absolutely in keeping with the band's bubble bursting humour. After all this is a man 7 years shy of being 60 who does a mock striptease and shows the audience his boxer shorts at the end of it - AC on one cheek, DC on the other. I hope our drunk friend was there to see that.

Now That's What I Call Unrecouped

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:14:00 +0000

I'm going in. This time I'm looking for tracks by the Honey Smugglers, for My Jealous God, for anything by Syndicate* (don't look for a footnote, that's how they wrote their name in 1989) for Swimming With Sharks 0r maybe for Airhead. Perhaps I'm even looking for Ultrasound or Gay Dad. Actually, I've found Gay Dad! Result! But the others... no, they're not there and most likely never will be.

I was trying to make a Spotify A&Rmchair playlist which would have given you a go on loads of bands who were good but never made it. Some of them (Ultrasound for example) you may have heard of, most of them (Airhead?) you probably won't have unless you've been paying too much attention. And while everyone goes on about how you can't get Pink Floyd or the Beatles on Spotify - as if anyone needed these artists on any more formats - I think it's much more of a shame that you can't get all the flawed greats that have been lost over the years.

Relax, I'm not going to bang on about Spotify again here. Actually, no, I was going to say one thing; make one frankly and possibly foolish admission: I quite fancy Roberta from Spotify. Have you heard her yet? She voices their adverts, sounds in her late 20s maybe early 30s, is quite well spoken and sounds intelligent and genuine. I want to believe her when she says she hopes I'm enjoying Spotify. But wait, The Word magazine have gone and ruined it for me - they too (well, Andrew Harrison) are taken with Roberta and they've gone and interviewed her and got her photo. Yes, she is very attractive but no, she is not, as I thought, a voiceover artist who was picked by Spotify's ad agency to represent the brand values of the company - she actually does work for Spotify. I feel ashamed of being so cynical.

The last couple of times I've listened to iTunes at home I have genuinely missed her voice popping up every four or so songs. But that is probably more a sign of the fact that I haven't listened to iTunes hardly at all since Spotify.

But onwards to the playlist. I was looking for all these long forgotten bands because last week I went to a see a group fronted by a guy who used to be in an act I once signed to Indolent. Westpier were not one of the bands who made it big in the wake of Britpop. I seem to recall they once played a show at the Falcon where they were supported by Embrace. Anyway, there was an intial buzz possibly caused by the fact that the debut single was pretty good - I can still hear Jo Whiley's voice on daytime Radio 1 straight after having given it an exclusive, saying, "That moves me!" I still haven't worked out what she could have meant but I took it as a positive. Unfortunately, it didn't move many punters into record shops and after doing a short tour and recording some more tracks my memory of their career gets hazy. I know that the ridiculously handsome guitarist Carl went on to play in Kylie's band on a world tour but I only kept in touch with the manager.

So there was Carl, still handsome, up on stage last week with, somewhat bizarrely, the former manager on keyboards. It was a fine show and one I am ashamed to say I left early because I had another show to attend which seemed important at the time. But it got me thinking, not only are there all the groups who never got a deal - and I'll be doing a blog on those very soon - there are all the bands who make up the 90% of record company signings who never make money.

Common wisdom has it that the artists who get record deals then go straight to the bargain bins are by definition not very good. But this is myopic. Quite often they aren't very good, it's true, but some of them are there due to bad timing, bad luck, wrong single choice or simply that Jo Whiley's producer decided they didn't like the record. Or in Westpier's case did.

So who would be on the A&Rmchair playlist of bands who never made it but deserved to? Well, I could put a whole load of stuff I signed, which I think might be cheating. Having said that there are a couple who must be included. I'll include one I think should have made it and partly because I don't feel fully responsible for signing them - I picked them up after they'd been dropped by Go Beat - Wubble U. Their single A Bit Like U - was actually championed by Steve Lamacq on his show who played it on advance release. As it turned out, it was in advance of them being dropped and the single never got released. In my more positive moments I imagine it being used as the soundtrack to some cutting edge witty TV advert and netting everyone involved unlimited shedfulls of cash. Then I come back down to earth and remember that last year when Isosceles' track Get Your Hands Off was used in an Oxy spot cream TV advert the money paid would just about have covered a weekend family break.

I'll start this playlist now - where there are no existent links I'll try and upload the song if I have it. And of course, anyone reading this list thinking "Hey I know the guy who used to play vibes in My Jealous God!" is advised to be in touch immediately. Incidentally, I've had so many mails and Facebook messages from people saying they can't work out how to leave Comments here that I suspect there might be something wrong with the software. Again, anyone more intelligent than me (clearly not difficult) please leave a message explaining how to do it.

So here's a short playlist we shall, of course,call: Now That's What I Call Unrecouped

1990 Honey Smugglers - Listen
Fronted by a genuine talent called Chris Spence, the HS were touted by the folks who ran The Sausage Machine and who went on to form PJ Havery label Too Pure. It's a shame that the HS signed to Fiction and never really cracked it. This track is worth the cost of admission alone, though. You can read all about the making of this demo and lots more about the band on drummer Steve Dinsdale's blog. Clearly he's either got a better memory than me or he was keeping a diary during those late 80s early 90s days. The demo that Steve writes about was paid for by me with East West's money.

1989 Syndicate* Baby's Gone
This Scottish band were on EMI in the days when EMI boasted Talk Talk and River City People and were enjoying success with Food signing Jesus Jones. And talking of Food, one half of that label, Andy Ross, was still occasionally writing about music for Sounds as Andy Pert. He wrote an absolutely raving five out of five for the Syndicate* album which I immediately went out and blagged off a friend at EMI. He was right - and it still sounds great. I know nothing about them and I'm afraid to find out more in case it puts me off them.

1987 Swimming With Sharks - Careless Love
This was sisters Inge an Anete Humpe who sang mellifluous German ballads without sounding mawkish. And there are two words I don't often use. Inge was onto her solo career by the time I joined WEA which had released SWS. She didn't have any solo success either. By the way, did you know that the current overused term du jour Ear-wormy is originally from the German Ohrwormig

1989 Boys Wonder - Goodbye Jimmy Dean
Another Warners family act, this time twins Ben and Scott Addison. What were WEA doing wrong in the 80s? Did they not listen to me when I said "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Tikaram"? Boys Wonder were originally signed to Warner's imprint Sire, which as anyone vaguely interested in pop knows, was run by legendary artist collector Seymour Stein. He is still around - I last saw him in a Kensington pub, deep in conversation with the man who signed the Enemy. My good friend Michael and I saw them in Manchester when we were students and I can still remember two of their songs (Lady Hangover and Elvis 75) from having heard them only once. They were dropped and then picked up by Rough Trade who put this out in 1990. It predates the rock pastiche of the mid nineties by five years but manages to rise above it like to exist in a world of perfect pop. Ben and Scott went on to have success with Corduroy but for my money - and I'm not just saying this - they never bettered their Boys Wonder songs. Oh and they were in the year above me at school. How cool is that? Well, OK, but I think it is...

1999 Gay Dad - To Earth With Love
A lot of you will remember this lot as they're existence wasn't that long ago (only 10 years ago. Arghhhhhh!) And indeed a lot of you may have dismissed them as hugely hyped and massively disappointing. Wrong, wrong, diddly wrong. This is the opener from their debut non-selling album Leisure Noise (they signed for two albums FIRM so London Records had to pay for album number two - ouch!) and remains their finest hour - not a million miles away from Boys Wonder in its flagrant referencing of classic rock, it has a nobility to it which, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, still gets those back of neck hairs going.

1991 Airhead - Funny How
This lot were originally called The Apples then Jefferson Airhead but had to change their name when they signed to Warners in the early 90s. They didn't do as well as another major label 'Head' band who changed their name, though. Also unlike Thom Yorke and co, Airhead decided that a sense of humour was the best way of ingratiating themselves with Radio 1. But their big hope Funny How, didn't make the charts and they were dropped shortly after releasing their debut album. But despite its humour, Funny How's hookline contains just as much self deprecating poetry as Creep: "Funny how the girls you like never fancy you, funny how the ones you don't do."

1986 Salvation Sunday Cold Grey Eyes
Weird another family outfit, namely Joanne and Steve Winterbottom. They were signed to Polydor in 1986 years before I started in A&R and I saw them live by accident at the Tunnel Club in Deptford - normally the venue for Malcolm Hardee's comedy club where hecklers from all over South East London would roll up for their cruel sport. Salvation Sunday were not great live but this odd riff-based single is a genuine classic, and I defy you not to get a shiver down your spine as the singer hits that final note on Eyes.

1993 Honky - The Whistler
Ok, a confession, I did actually sign this lot. Although, when I signed them they were called Club St Louis and we dropped them after one single. I discovered them in the unsolicited tape box and immediately drove up to Doncaster to meet them. They turned out to be two lovely chaps just out of their teens one white, Matt and one black, Kye who were making very melodic hip hop. Let's Go Lazee flopped and so I was never allowed a chance to release the follow up which was mixed by none other than Mark Stent (the man who mixes everyone from KLF to Madonna to Oasis) and sampled Breakout by Swing Out Sister. After ribbing me for how bad my label was ("East West? More like Least Best!") they went on to sign to .... WEA - effectively the same company. And while this time they did get on The Word (click that link) and release an album, they still never had the success they deserved.

1996 Wubble U - Petal
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's another one of mine, OK?! But listen, I haven't uploaded that song I mentioned above so you'll have to do with Petal, which they were touting on former label Go Discs before I signed them. We remixed it and made this amazing video, which got constant play on MTV in the days when people actually watched the channel. Unfortunately MTV viewers probably thought: What a bunch of complete FREAKS and avoided making a purchase that week. Petal is lyric-free but does feature specially recorded guest vocals from Stanley Unwin who you might recognise from the Small Faces Ogdens Nutgone Flake album. But the band could write amazing Dury-like words when they put their mind to it and A Bit Like You proves that: "I like a girl who talks with her mouth full, who's clever and nubile and won't cane me mobile... " Produced by the Ben and Andy Boilerhouse, it's frankly miles better than their zillion-selling Texas album.

I'm going to stop for now because you're probably already full of unsuccessful music but rest assured, I will return with more of this so be warned!

Here's an A&Rmchair Playlist of some more successful things, which I'm enjoying right now.

My face is finished, my body's gone...

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Wardle) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:44:00 +0000

INT: Small kitchen. Tasteful but not extravagant. Morning.

William Shatner, Lee Majors and David Soul are sitting round a table having breakfast. Shatner's eating Marmite on toast, Majors is sulkily staring into his coffee and Soul is looking at the small ads in Variety.

Soul: Hey guys, here's one: Producer seeks experienced talent. No timewasters. Sounds perfect for us!
Majors (scowling): Yeah right! We all know what that means...
Soul (hands in air): Tell us...
Majors: He's looking for chicks!
Shatner: It could be guys... and if it's experience this producer wants, then hey ...
Majors: Yeah, whatever. Even if he is looking for dudes, we're 'overqualified'.

That's an excerpt from the forthcoming series Six Million Dollar Men. No, of course it isn't, I made it up, but hey, if someone could get those fellas together to do comedy I'd watch it. Majors would have to agree to try and shag anything to reflect his model-marrying in real life. Incidentally, I didn't know Majors markets his own hearing aid, called inevitably The Lee Majors Bionic Hearing Aid - tagline: it won't cost you $6 million but you'll think it's worth it. Something us tinnitus sufferers could use, I'm sure.

Anyway, the reason I mention Steve Austin, Hutch and Kirk is because I've been musing on the concept of over qualification. Last year, whilst I was managing the band, I would occasionally put myself up for job interviews and a couple of times when I never heard back from a submitted CV I would enquire why and be told: you are overqualified. Ouch.

I went to the musical of Priscilla Queen of the Dessert last week (I thoroughly recommend it, by the way - and I hate camp, as you know.). Anyway, in the pivotal role was Jason Donovan. His body is still lean and taut, as he's keen to stress by stripping down to pants in the first five minutes. But he's aged in the face like anyone in their forties has a habit of doing. And so what? He's not the greatest actor, neither is he much competition in the singing department for his co-stars but he does a good job; he's convincing and you're rooting for him. Although not in the Australian sense of the word, I stress. The point is, in the age area he is 'overqualified'. If he was still flogging the cute blonde boy next door it would not work. He would not work. But he's bent his image to fit the market and he's flourishing. Blimey, never thought I'd hear myself defending the Donovan.

And isn't that what everyone is doing? Particularly in the current economic climate. You can tell the people that aren't doing it - the people who have one thing they do and stick to that - people like Oasis, for example, but I suppose you could argue that they don't need to thank you very much - but what happens when Liam does start to lose his insufferable good looks? Well, perhaps he'll retire and do something else. Or carry on Jagger-style with all his self-pronounced 'laughter lines' ("Nothing's that funny" said George Melly)

Or what about Kylie? There is nothing else that people want Kylie to be other than a diminutive, multisexual cypher, once she begins to look her age (which, I admit, may never happen) whither the wispy songs with vaguely suggestive lyrics? Nick Cave - now there's a man who has made a career by sticking to his schtick. In fact, even dueting with Kylie he never went off-message.

That thing I wrote for the Guardian last week about rock stars going off-message has got me thinking. It seems to me that maybe that's what many stars are going to have to do in order to survive. In a world where anything digitizable can be free, you can no longer rely on residual back catalogue sales from CDs or DVDs to keep you going. So you are going to have to carry on working like the rest of us and to do that you're going to have to keep relevant to the market. Sure, if you're Leonard Cohen or Van Morrison you can charge your affluent audiences £200 a ticket for the privilege of seeing you, but you can only do that if you have their stature and crucially, you can't continue to do that every year. So what you surely must do is start thinking laterally and do other stuff. If you're Cohen you can sell your art which sticks to the message and keeps your image safe. But what if you're Michael Jackson, you're 50 years old and you've just sold out 50 O2s? Now there's someone who's overqualified. Surely it's time to leave the Moonwalk behind and just perform some fantastic tracks - use the great voice and occasionally do that thing with the foot, sure. But don't try to pretend you're 25 and book an elephant and 100 Masai warriors...

So many friends of mine are doing their bit for reinvention and going off-message - like my pal I described last week who picked up the Twitter baton (the Twaton?) and ran with it. Or another friend who is lecturing to music students after having been MD of a large music publisher. Re-invention may be deemed undignified by some, but often it's far less dignified to try to remain the same in the face of change - you can end up looking a bit of a Cnut.