New Year - Same Old Shit
Now Playing: Amarilo, probably - read on, you'll see why...
Topic: Pop
It’s Friday morning, and I’m in a field watching four rather overweight, middle-aged men, attempting to recapture the former glory of the early nineties, when they set the lives of many a rebellious teenager alight, with such hits as ‘Saturn 5’, and ‘I Want You’, and had a certain Mr Noel Gallagher for a roadie. These are Inspiral Carpets (as opposed to The Inspiral Carpets, but notice how much easier it is to say ‘The Inspiral Carpets’ as opposed to their preferred ‘Inspiral Carpets’?), and any minute now, they’re going to play that song that was used at the start of Saturday morning kids show from the 1990s ‘The 8:15 From Manchester’ (hosted by Ross ‘I so loved myself so much when I was on the telly’ King, Charlotte ‘Last heard of lecturing at Salford University – fact fans!’ Hindle, and occasionally Sonia ‘the one-time ‘80s - not selling as well as Kylie and Jason – Stock Aitken and Waterman whipping-girl’ erm, Sonia), except they’re singing the original lyrics and not singing ‘The 8.15 From Manchester’ in the chorus, and it’s all very disappointing, and my word, they have been eating the pies, haven’t they (incidentally, for those of you out there unaware of who ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets are, they’re a little like The Pussy Cat Dolls, but without the Tits). Up next, it’s Echo and the Bunnymen, whereby the heavens will open, and I’ll end up trudging back to the tent in search of my raincoat, as everyone else has got these waterproof poncho things, and I haven’t, and I’ll end up getting lost along the way. Still, worse was endured earlier in the day, when the Darkness played their debut set, but that’s a different story.
Yes, this is The Glastonbury Festival in 2003, and not 1992, as you might expect (or even the early 1980s, as The Darkness would have no doubt loved). As 1992 was the year when the two former bands described were at the height of their fame, and not dishing out half remembered tunes played in bedrooms years earlier on crackly 45s, or if you were lucky enough, cassettes!*
*I didn’t have a CD Player until 1995, that’s how working class I am
But, why this flashback to a music festival that took place over two years ago, I hear you cry? Why else but to bang on about bloody pop revivals
Yes, 2005 is now as much history as 2003, or even 1992. But, more so than ever before, 2005 was the year of the come-back, whereby pop acts once consigned to the charity shop of time, are mercilessly resurrected by lazy record companies in search of a quick buck. Be it the Backstreet Boys, Tony Christie, or (dare I say it), Take That.
These, and more all made a somewhat unwelcome reappearance in 2005.
Hanson were suddenly no longer merely boys, and yet strangely enough, still weren’t shaving, how fortunate we were that their revival lasted little longer than 5 minute tongue in cheek segment on Popworld. The Backstreet Boys turned to the ‘Redneck’ market when they realised that they were getting too old for their previously pre-teen audience. Shaken Stevens won an ITV talent show for dead pop stars, and then promptly released a cover of a Pink record. Busted reformed as Son of Dork. Then, thank our lucky stars, Peter Kay resurrected the career of Tony Christie. Okay, so it was for charity, Comic Relief no less, but just remember that this was the same charity that had unleashed the Cher/Chrissie Hind/Neneh Cherry coloured Hell that was ‘Love Will Build A Bridge’. Thanks Pete, what did the rest of us ever do to you?
And to round it all off, Take That got back together, albeit without their fat dancer (Copyright – Noel Gallagher 1995), a mere ten years after Gary Barlow was sent plummeting into the abyss below at the close of their Bee Gees cover ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ (the one with the video where that crazed woman kidnapped the four remaining members of Take That, having probably already bludgeoned Williams to death with a kitchen knife, and then ‘accidentally’ on purpose pushed Barlow off a cliff, something many a man would have happily done after seeing him act in an episode of Heart Beat). All thanks to an hour long prime-time ITV show, they’ve re-entered the hearts of many a woman who should really know better, prompting them to rush out and buy yet another greatest hits album containing the same version of every song they already own (unless you count a poorly ‘danced-up’ version of Relight My Fire), and buying up all the tickets for their reunion tour in five-seconds flat (although, in this day and age it’s more likely to have been the touts buying up all the tickets, and then flooding them onto e-bay and slapping a 500% mark-up on the cover charge).
On the other hand, I’d be nothing more than a compulsive liar, if I were to say that it was only the above suspects that made my blood run cold. Be it any two bit pop and rock combo who think they can come back and swindle more money out of the unlucky punter, just because they lost it all on some dodgy timeshare scheme, or business deal, or flitted it all away on women, or flushed it all down the loo, or shoved it all up their nose.
Admittedly, I did get slightly excited, for maybe all of two seconds, when The Wonder Stuff announced they were going to reform and stage a comeback tour. The Wonder Stuff were probably one of the first bands I could say that I ‘got into’, around 1992, when I blagged a copy of their debut album, ‘The Eight Legged Groove Machine’, from my sister. Having come to them late, I was only able to catch their last hoorah in the form of their final album ‘Construction For The Modern Idiot’ (again copied off my sister), but was lucky enough to catch them on their final tour when they set down in Bristol at the Colston Hall. Being a theatre house, this was an all seater affair, and so not how proper bands should be seen at all, but this didn’t detract from the spectacle created by Miles Hunt and Co.
I was hooked.
Just a shame that a few months later they announced they were splitting up. To put it mildly, I was slightly gutted, not least because I was in the middle of my mock-GCSEs at the time. Thanks a lot guys.
However, the nostalgia trip lasted about as long as it took me to turn to the back of the weeks NME, and go ‘Oh’ when I saw the tour dates for their comeback tour.
Similarly, I was mildly interested in revisiting, the aforementioned, Inspiral Carpets (sounding slightly easier to say without the ‘The’ in this case – strange), until I discovered they were demanding a #15 ticket price for the privilege. Why I ask you you, is nostalgia so damn expensive?
Strictly speaking, this whole rock ‘n’ roll revival trend was started (slightly ironically) by the momentary reunion of The Sex Pistols in 1997, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of ‘God Saved The Queen’, a record deemed so controversial at the time, that, as folklore would have it, the Pistols were mysteriously bumped into second place in the weeks record charts. And so it seemed, Anarchy was not allowed to rule the airwaves in the week of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Anyway, in 1997, freely admitting that they were only in it for the money, Johnny Rotten et al, trotted onto Top of the Pops, played the doomed Phoenix Festival, and then promptly buggered off again.
At the time I remember having a discussion in the pub (I think it might have been with Cath), that it was all a bit sad really, these old punks acting as if they were twenty years younger.
And maybe that’s the crux of the matter. Maybe it’s an ageist thing (bringing us back to the four slightly overweight, middle aged members of – oh sod it – ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets again). Maybe I can’t bear to see people in a band once they hit the wrong side of forty, or dare I say it, thirty? When I last saw Blur play The Reading Festival, one of the first things I thought was, “my God, they’re looking old.”
Take The Rolling Stones as an example. Mick Jagger has been nothing but an embarrassment since the dawn of the 1980s, peaking with his collaborative effort with Mr David Bowie on ‘Dancing In The Streets’. Then again, Bowie himself still seems to have an air of grace about him, as do the resurrected New Order, possibly in this case because they’re still intent on producing records of worth and not merely trumping out their back catalogue (What? New Order have released another Greatest Hits record? Really?).
Then again, if there’s anything worse than an old rocker, it’s a dead rocker. Yet another Nirvana ‘rarities’ album? Kurt Cobain to do the commentary in a new documentary on his life? Yet, another new record from the very dead Tupac and Notorious BIG? Can we not let these people rest in peace?
On the age theme, it’s suddenly become a scary reality that all then new bands out there are probably all younger than my good self. Where did my youth go to? Take the Subways, as an example. Barely out of hot pants.
Where did all my contemporaries go to? When I first started listening to indie music, the likes of Blur, Oasis, Elastica and Sleeper, were all in their mid-twenties, and I was only 15. I remember feeling quite proud that the members of Ash would have only been in the year above me at school (there young enterprise project was to form a band and release an album, mine was to make candles). And then my life seemed complete when I learnt that Kenickie front-woman Lauren Laverne was just a few months younger than myself. Sheer bliss!
Nowadays everyone in a new band’s so flippin’ young. A band called Transition headlined the Carling Academy a few weeks ago. A band made up of people who’d gone to my school a full ten years after me! That could have been me, if I’d ever bothered to learn to play the guitar, or play the drums, or been able to sing (never stopped Ian Brown), or actually taken an interest in forming a band!
Have I passed my peak? Only the other week, I met Annie’s sister ‘Deedus’ and she thought I was 35. Now what’s going on there? I could’ve passed for someone in their early twenties a couple of years ago!
Am I getting to that age where I’ll start hankering over the bands of ‘my generation’, praying for that elusive comeback tour? The thrill of a Sleeper revival? The trepidation of seeing Lush clamber out onto the stage again, even though one of them’s dead? Would I fall in love with Kenickie all over again if they adorned Top of the Pops once more?
Maybe I’m not at that stage quite yet, but God I wish Lauren Laverne would record some more solo material.
Anyway, we can but hope that the revival bandwagon will eventually skid to a halt in 2006. Still, I fear that Lolly revival is looming ever closer….
Posted by levers
at 8:16 AM GMT
Posted by levers
at 7:36 AM GMT