A few musical musings

Hello folks,

Well, it’s been a few weeks since my last posting (on the subject of Euro 2008, though more on that in a second), and much has happened in the musical world in the intervening period (well, that has been of interest to me, anyway) so I thought I’d share with you some of my highlights and lowlights from the past month…

First up, it’s one of my personal favourite artists of all time, part of the best songwriting partnership of all time (along with Johnny Marr) in the best band of all time (The Smiths), and a man who’s penned a fair few decent songs on his own; yup, it’s Moz. Alas, he’s been doing what he does worst this past week: dabbling in issues race and migration, declaring that “the gates of Britain have been flooded” and prompting the all-too-predictable “Bigmouth strikes again” headlines on the front cover of the NME (for anyone unfamiliar with this publication, the NME is the music press equivalent of the Sun.) Now, it has been alleged by Morrissey’s manager that the contents of the interview had been heavily doctored by NME editor (and the man to blame for the inexorable rise of the moronic nu-rave fad) Conor McNicholas in order to cast himself as a “hero” in the fight against racism (at a time when the NME is doing much to highlight the Love Music Hate Racism cause), while simultaneously casting Morrissey as a bigoted, right-wing thug. Knowing the NME, such a scenario would perhaps not surprise me, and it’s also true that the interviewer Tim Jonze was so incensed by the re-working of the piece that he wanted his name removed from all but the Q&A section. The trouble is, though, that (and as a fan of his work, particularly with the Smiths, it pains me to say it) Morrissey has plenty of previous in this respect; not only does the content of the interview sound alarmingly similar to Enoch Powell’s rightly-decried “Rivers of Blood” speech, but Morrissey has also in the past described reggae music as “vile”, walked out on stage at Finsbury Park draped in a Union Jack (at a gig people knew National Front members were likely to gatecrash) and also penned the song “Bengali In Platforms” (a thinly-veiled reference to British Muslims, containing the lyric “Life’s so very hard when you belong here.”) It’s also been correctly pointed out that it’s a bit rich of Morrissey to be bemoaning supposed “mass migration” as a Mancunian of Irish immigrant extraction. The sad fact is that, while Moz is easy to love because of his impressive back-catalogue, he is just as easy to despise because of his repugnant views, not least his pining for a Britain that ceased to exist at least 50 years ago.

Next, it’s some news of a much more pleasant nature: My Bloody Valentine are the latest group to announce they’re making a comeback (and, given that the past 18 months or so has seen the return of Take That, The Spice Girls and Duran Duran, arguably the most welcome, too.) Not only are they touring again (alas, only three gigs have been announced so far, all of which were at inconvenient dates, and which sold far too quickly for me to get hold of a ticket anyway) but they have also announced that they will be releasing a follow-up to their masterpiece Loveless some time in 2008 (which would otherwise not be particularly unusual or newsworthy, except that Loveless was released in 1991.) I must admit to being a little bit apprehensive about the new MBV album, as I know I’ll end up comparing it with Loveless (my fear is that it just won’t be quite as good as its predecessor.) One also wonders what the motivation is behind the decision to release a new album (after all, they’ve already assured themselves a place in the pantheon of greats, having released one of the essential albums.) Nonetheless, I’m still looking forward to its release.

And finally, some, ahem, “eye candy”; recently, I was reminded of the subject of bizarre music videos by the footage accompanying two recent single releases. Firstly, the video to Simian Mobile Disco’s most recent release “Hustler”, hyped by the NME (them again) as the “sickest music video ever”, which is bizarre considering that, much like their musical output, it isn’t even the most original, given that it blatantly rips off the video to Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker (both a better song and a better video.) Mind you, this is the band that featured a number of girls each other kissing for four minutes straight in the original video for this song, so perhaps it would have been foolish to expect better. Via the Guardian’s music pages, I was also directed to the video for !!!’s most recent single “Yadnus” which features, among other things, singing roadkill (nice.) My personal vote for the most bizarre music video of all time would have to be Windowlicker, but if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to mention them here.

Later,
Liam

P.S. Barring any technical problems, I’ll be attempting to take on the likes of Barry Glendenning et. al. at their own game, by offering minute-by-minute coverage of the Euro 2008 draw as it happens. If you can stomach that, join me tomorrow from 11:30am GMT (think of it as me watching UEFA suits trot out tired platitudes and present reams of meaningless video footage, so that you don’t have to.)