The Correct Opinion
Friday, March 12, 2004
The News - Too New
Keep abreast of current events, by all means, but realise that distance gives wisdom. Better to wait about ten years until more facts are in and commentary can be properly digested. By this rationale any Blair opinion should be based only on the Clause 4 repeal.
Chris Morris - about 60% as good as he first appears
Producer of excellent parodies with a real eye for detail (the Brasseye paedophile special was as brave and necessary a piece of television as I've seen), Morris is nonetheless over reliant on schoolboy humour (conning Claire Rayner into saying she'd "beat someone off" would be rejected by any child whilst "a sphincter says what?" was still available.) and the cheap and easy descent into the surreal. His shunning of publicity and limited output give the impression of genius, so everything he does is interpreted in this light. A talented man, but one who wastes his gifts on material which is often beneath him.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Written quickly, will be subject to editing.
The Stone Roses - Part II
Two things I’m not going to talk about. The Second Coming and Ian Brown’s voice. Now we can begin.
I struggle to see what people like in the Stone Roses. If you were 17 at Spike Island then I’ll look the other way, we all bring some youthful enthusiasms with us, but looking at them objectively? Their music is ponderous, empty, pompous and tinny. There is some talent there amongst the musicians, but they don’t know how to use it. Everything goes on so long, and has such a sense of its own importance. (Oh, another cascading John Squire solo. Brilliant.) They come from a long line of cheeky Northern scamps, but did nothing that Ian McCulloch didn’t do, and he was hardly the first. As for their supposed innovation: not jangly or funky enough. (Listen to CTA 102 by the Byrds on Younger than Yesterday. More interesting than the Roses’ career.)
How then to explain the absurdly inflated reputation this band enjoys? They came along at exactly the right time. The 80s were (superficially) about unemployment, social fragmentation and Duran Duran (Brilliant). A generation coming of age during this period had lived with their parents’ stories of the ‘60s their whole lives, and they wanted something of their own. The “second summer of love”, acid house, the “dance-rock crossover” made it seem like something was happening, something inclusive and wonderful. (To that percentage of people who ever actually take part in these movements. A lot of people were still at home watching “Colin’s Sandwich.”) It couldn’t be allowed to stand on its own, it needed to be compared to something, measured against the parties of the previous generation. They needed a Beatles, and for a time the Stone Roses looked like they could take that role. (The Happy Mondays were delinquent enough to fill the Rolling Stones tag.) So they were treated like something special, because people needed them to be something different, something more – it just wouldn’t be fair otherwise. And those boys and girls grew up to write for the NME in the nineties, and kids read their words, and Brit Pop brought back an interest in guitars and lo! the Stone Roses became mythical deities of the recent past. And then they released the Second Coming and a lot of people were very disappointed indeed. (But as we have seen above, there was little reason to expect something wonderful, even if they had spent all their time writing songs and not messing about on tractors.) Of course, we don’t need “Our Beatles”. The Beatles are our Beatles too. We can enjoy their good stuff and concentrate on commercial dance, which during this period made more innovative and vital music than anything coming from boys with guitars.
Hmmm... there is another factor which could explain some of this band’s continued popularity, and you’ll have to bear with me on this one. They made proper songs-with-guitars-and-lyrics-and-everything which could (just about) be danced to. This allowed white indie boys to intellectualise the music enough to physically enjoy it – having a purely sensual response is the preserve of women, and of black and gay people. White men don’t dance. Unless they can find an excuse to.
So you can like them if you want, they had some talent, but let’s get a grip, eh? I really couldn’t care if I never heard them again. (See also: London Calling) Actually, “Begging You” is quite a tune. I could probably hear that another couple of times. But add it all together, and it’s still worth less than “Been Caught Stealing”.
Ditch the jokes, keep the funnies
Telling a joke demands that whoever you are talking to you becomes an audience. Conversation is turned into performance. Anyone can learn a joke, although few may be able to tell it with skill, but funnies come from wit, invention and intelligence. Like, "Would you like to see my etchings?", "Hey, I've got a joke for you..." turns my blood to ice. You have to sit listening with a strange anticipatory half-smile, wondering how shameless you'll be with the fake laughter when the punchline eventually comes. One-liners are about OK, and jokes of the question/answer type at least have brevity on their side. There are only about ten good ones though, and everyone's heard them. Perhaps the only occaison when you can use an actual joke is during a speech - the large number of people lessening the pressure each individual listener has to bear.
You'd better make it a good one though.
The Stone Roses
They're alright. Nothing to get too excited about. I mean, they're nowhere near as good as the Rolling Stones or Guns n' Roses, but if you only owned six cds and one of them was their first album, you'd probably find yourself listening to it every now and again.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Bom, Bom, Bom...
Anyone who attacks Paul McCartney through lazy criticism of the Frog Chorus should really try harder. It’s for children, and I loved it as a kid so it’s doing its job just fine. If you have to get at something then “Mull of Kintyre” will do, for ‘tis shite.
I can’t explain.
The Who are worth less than the sum of their parts. Once this is realised you can stop worrying about trying to like them.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Not knowing anything is not the same as being stupid
I don’t think I’ll be able to write this without putting in the Socrates quote, "the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." Right, now that's out of the way I can get on with it.
You don’t need to have an opinion on everything. It’s OK to hold your hands up and admit that you’re confused. I take no particular stance on tuition fees or the Iraq war (other than a vague "I hope it all works out for the Iraqi people as soon as possible") because I think it’s impossible for me to come to a reasoned conclusion. It makes no difference what I think about it anyway, these things will or will not happen without me, and besides, I would be making a decision on incomplete evidence. The world is an extraordinarily complex place, we can only ever have limited information, and so I can resolve very few issues to my own satisfaction. New factors appear, personalities change, the Earth revolves. Leaving room for doubt at least allows you to modify your thoughts over time.
To paraphrase Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten - if you label yourself, you negate yourself. Belonging to a political party, subscribing to a particular ideology or even thinking of yourself as "left" or "right" takes away a lot of difficult decisions as there is usually a line to follow. I see little reason why desiring public ownership of the means of production should make one anti-fox hunting, or pro-relaxation of current drug legislation. I’m only writing about the Left as I’m closer to it, but there is a checklist. Anything the Sun says? Wrong. Anything Chomsky says? Right. Anything that comes out of the behaviour of the current US administration? Bad. You get the picture. The problem comes with choosing the label and then working back to find out how you feel about various issues. Cop out.
This is certainly not a case for a "common sense" approach - that is just another way of describing opinions formed in ignorance. It is more that one should be aware of the various arguments and intellectual approaches and engage with all of them. One need not come from a "positive" position, "this is what I believe", but instead you should look carefully at what people say, especially those from whichever camp you feel you belong to, to see if it survives scrutiny. Consistency is overrated, the world cannot be easily reduced to simple, all-encompassing models (coming soon: the absurdly ambitious post, "Why Economics is Wrong"). Don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters, I guess.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
This one sounded better in my head but I'm going out tonight and wanted to get something up. I may well edit and add to it tomorrow.
I'd like to see Ben Affleck do *that*!
or
You make me feel like dancing.
Singin’ in the Rain is not as good as some people would have you believe. The final third drags, the ballet bit is tedious and the Broadway Melody sequence is too long and nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. There are marvellous parts to it though - “Fit as a Fiddle” makes us smile with wonder, “Good Morning” is great fun, the “Moses Supposes” routine is fantastic and “Make ‘em Laugh” is a brilliant piece of sustained clowning. The virtuosity and application behind these is astounding, but they are as nothing compared to The Greatest Moment In The History Of Cinema, the most famous bit, the bit where Gene Kelly does, indeed, sing in the rain.
For those not familiar with the film, Gene has met this chick, he digs her, he’s a bit cocky, she’s a bit stand-offish, he discovers some humility, she admits that she digs him, they kiss. That about brings us up to speed. From the effortless bound onto the lamppost to the giving away of his umbrella, what happens next is astounding. It is not so much his dancer’s tricks which are important here, he pulls more difficult moves elsewhere, but the way in which his euphoria is perfectly expressed. He abandons the reserve we all carry and acts utterly without self-consciousness, so happy is he with his new love. We would all like to do this sometimes but we cannot. However, now we don’t need to – he has danced for all of us. (If I actually did come across someone singing in the rain I would be liable to punch them in their try-hard face.) People bursting into song in films is usually corny, but here it is completely appropriate. The pat phrases with which love is usually expressed are bypassed in favour of a pure representation of his feelings through melody and movement - words are too jagged, too digital, too small to express the amorphous glory of this rapture. (Unfortunately, what little eloquence I have is limited to writing, otherwise this post would be a video clip of me dancing.)
It is uniquely cinematic too. The marriage of dance (and what dancing… elegant and graceful yet completely masculine) and melody along with the direction produce an experience which cannot be replicated in other media. It is somehow utterly artificial yet completely convincing. You can keep your “Rosebud...”, your “I am Spartacus”, your Keyser Soze relvelations. I would swap them all for the two seconds when the camera pulls away as Gene Kelly twirls down the street. It goes past the intellect and connects directly with our emotions, sending our spirits soaring. It is the greatest five minutes in celluloid history, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.
The better your “Hi Fi”, the more likely you are to be a prick.
These are the things you should care about in music: passion; joy; wit; sorrow; emotion and life. They are not improved by having copper wiring and gold connectors. Spending a lot of money on a stereo will make you more interested in the production, and you may well find yourself putting “Slave to the Rhythm” (tune) on repeat, and listening intently to Sting and George Michael. If I was pure, I would have a stack of ‘45s and a Fisher Price record player. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a prick so I have separates. In my defence, it’s mainly so I can dance around my room with “My Sharona” or “Welcome to the Jungle” playing really loudly without them distorting. If I ever start talking about “crisp snare sounds” then stop listening to everything I say for I will have gone to the dark side.
NB: Yes, I know a lot of music sounds better, textures, soundscapes etc. It's just a rule of thumb.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
There was going to be the Correct Opinion on Westerns here. I'm tired though, and I was starting to take it a little bit too seriously. It'll be up when it's finished.
Segue? No way.
It’s all about the tunes.
The London Readers Wives seem to have it right:
“what we're doing on a Saturday night in the Vauxhall is what we used to have to do every Saturday night in our living rooms. That is, to get drunker and drunker with your mates and just play loads of really fantastic records in any order you fancy.”
I don’t want to hear the same beat all night. Sometimes a good mix is nice, two seemingly different records being fused into one, but for me, nothing beats the ker-chunk! gear change of “Let me clear my throat” being abruptly turned off and “Up on Crickle Creek” by the Band kicking in. (Alas, I have never been in a club when this has happened. “So why don’t you start one then?” “Maybe I will.” “So do it.” “I might.” “Well go on then.” “OK.”) I want clubs to be like getting pissed with my friends, tearing off one record and putting on another because you simply must play it to them. I want to have no idea of what’s coming next, as long as it’s a tune I don’t care. It’s the same for compilation tapes. Rob in High Fidelity has rules for making “megamixes” - no black and white artists beside each other for instance, but this is nonsense. Throw it all in. Some things won’t go together, but a lot will. You just have to see how it sounds. I often put “Dust My Broom” by Elmore James alongside “Only Shallow” by My Bloody Valentine. It works. Having such disparate songs cheek by jowl helps you to concentrate on each one. The power of Johnny Cash’s “Beast in me” is there on American Recordings, but stick it between “Ticket to Ride” and The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and it’s all the more effective. Apart from keeping things interesting and the listener on their toes, each piece provides a frame for the others, and songs are less likely to get lost in the quagmire.
Also, you can never go far wrong with some Slade on there somewhere.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Taste is largely dictated by how you would like to see yourself, not about what appeals to you. Self-knowledge comes not from questioning the opinions of others, but by looking at those things you yourself hold most dear. Do they stand up to scrutiny? Does Frank Sinatra’s singing move me, or did I decide to be the sort of person, a hep urban sophisti-cat, who would like Sinatra? Did I make the choice at some point to be a young crooner fan or was the quality of the work immediately obvious? Similarly, did considerations of not wanting to be racist lead me to give rap chance after chance? Do I actually like Public Enemy or am I just unwilling to reject it? More precisely, did I want to be the sort of person who would have a taste in music which ranged from Cole Porter to the Wu-Tang Clan? If I had stuck to British ‘60s influenced guitar bands would my taste be more pure? More genuine? My dilettantism has certainly led me down roads less travelled, and there have undoubtedly been marvellous discoveries along the way, but how many CDs have I bought, how many books have I read, how many films have I (pretended to) like just because I didn’t want to be seen (and more importantly, I didn’t want to see myself) as the kind of person who wouldn’t like them? Do I really need four Roxy Music albums? The first two would have been enough. I must have ten Dylan albums, and keep buying more, although I rarely listen to more than two or three of them. Do I actually like football or was I trying to fit into some model of what men like? Or did I just want to be able to relate to the cool kids? It may even be more affected, did my academic background lead me into this non-intellectual pursuit? Did I just want to be the kind of person who would read nineteenth century French Literature and then watch Tottenham Hotspur versus Middlesborough, a match I have absolutely no vested interest in, on a Sunday afternoon?
I have no answer to many of these questions, but it is important to ask them. Always be suspicious of everyone’s taste, especially your own. There is no particular reason why someone who likes the Pixies should necessarily be drawn to Gram Parsons, but these things come together in the great opinions fire sale. Of course it may be that certain things are just objectively “good”, and by recognising the quality in one artist you are more likely to be able to appreciate another. So many tastes seem to come together though - Franz Ferdinand, Tate Modern, asymmetrical haircuts, N*E*R*D, unusual “ethnic” food, modern dance, Charles Bukowski, No Logo (of course many of these things *are* logos) Donnie Darko (I hold my hands up, I like at least some of these, I'm just picking some things that tend to go together. I could just as easily have said The Sandman, Sisters of Mercy, Baudelaire and photophobia) - and it is this bunching that makes me suspect many buy a job lot rather than work things out individually. How many Tate Modernists would say that they supported Michael Howard? Some young people do though, it seems strange that there is less of an overlap. (NB idea for T-shirt to wear in Shoreditch, “I hate Sushi”.) Similarly, I see no reason why there should be a statistical correlation between liking the Rapture and taking a pro-Euro stance. I have an economics degree, but I still don’t know if it’s a good thing or not, it’s an extremely complicated issue. However, it’s obvious that a lot of people have put themselves in the “yes” camp because they think it stands for open-mindedness and against xenophobia. It’s OK though, you can be undecided. You may never decide - who can have an informed opinion on everything? (More of this to come in future postings.)
To return to my original point, perhaps it’s not simply a matter of affectation. Maybe it is just best to search outside what would normally be seen to appeal to your demographic to see what truly resonates. Fight The Man and his obsession with putting us all in boxes. If you love Jane Austen then say it loud and proud. And stop pretending you like the Naked Lunch. It’s rubbish.
