It seems increasingly doubtful that I shall be buying the new Morrissey album.
I know, right?
And I appreciate that there will be those of you reading this post and thinking either:
a) Well, so what? or b) Who?
So: Stephen Patrick Morrissey, erstwhile Miserable of Manchester. Singer and front-man with 80s icons The Smiths who, despite the lack of mainstream media support, burned brightly and have become one of the most important and influential bands of their time.
And then, at the height of their fame, Morrissey (as he is usually known) and the others in the band fell out and went their separate ways. Johnny Marr, once tagged as a guitar hero, went on to work with a whole number of bands in all sorts of format: seemingly happy to be just under the surface of fame, whilst the others spent most of the 90s and 2000s sueing each other over rights and payments.
And for a while Morrissey's solo career was promising. His first couple of albums were a good blend of pop and heartfelt sentiments - but with each passing release he seemed to be trading on former glories, repeating the same complaints and then, bereft of a record contract, he vanished.
Seven years passed and then You Are The Quarry came out - a tour-de-force of a comeback, as vital and energetic as anything from his glory days....
To date it has not been matched. Frankly I didn't even make it all the way through his last album World Peace Is None Of Your Business and haven't been impressed by the new stuff either...
Why am I telling you this?
Well: I always used to be a bit of a completest: once I liked a band or an artist I would keep following them, buying their latest release and eagerly looking forward to the next. In this way I have almost every album by the Pet Shop Boys, Manic Street Preachers, New Order and a few others, as well as a good sized back catalogue of early Genesis and Peter Gabriel
But they say that your heroes either die young or live long enough to disappoint you - so I guess the question is: how long should you stay loyal? How long do you keep buying the new stuff hoping there will be a return to form?
Here's a few examples:
Bjork: she is the musical equivalent of Marmite (a yeast extract spread for toast known to divide opinion) and is, to say the least, eccentric. Much of her solo stuff is verging on weird and experimental and that's fine as far as it goes - but as of recent her albums have also been lacking anything approaching a tune. She's still getting rave reviews for her innovation and approach, but would it hurt to do something that I could hum along to?
New Order:
Haven't bought the new album despite the rave reviews. Peter "Hooky" Hook has left and, despite all the accounts of what a bad person he can be, it's not the same without him fighting his bass guitar to the death
Pet Shop Boys
Haven't bought their last 3 albums as I got bored of listening to daft throwaway tunes like "I'm With Stupid" (I mean, honestly...)
U2:
Apparently they have recorded their new album but have held back on releasing it in the wake of Donald Trump on the grounds that they are "no longer sure it says what they wanted it to" - and if the band don't have any confidence in the songs, why should I?
I guess it's the same for people who've owned every I-phone since the start and now feel a morbid need to remain loyal and buy every upgrade.
I guess it's the need to hope: hope that something that was once great can be great again - like maybe through them we can recapture that time when those things seemed to be the centre of our universe?
Maybe it's me then that is the problem: maybe I've moved on from those times when hearing Morrissey reflecting the confusion I was feeling was somehow comforting despite the air of misery and maybe hearing him still trying to pay lip-service to those things is just too much to bear....
Tuesday, 31 October 2017
Thursday, 19 October 2017
Early One Morning
4am on a Saturday and I'm in that phase just between sleep and wakefulness, my brain turning the old cogs. There's a snippet of an idea for a song bouncing around in my head and I'm wondering - if I leave it and try and write it in the morning, will it still be there?
The answer, of course, is no.
It's very rare that I sit down with my guitar and think "Right: I'm going to write a song now" and anything useable emerges. I'm fully aware that there are plenty of people who do precisely this: and probably a few of them earn money from doing so. Usually these days what will happen is that I will get a fragment - half a lyric and a bit of a tune - whilst doing something else and will make a note of it on my mobile phone. I'm a bit ruthless with these and if they haven't developed into anything within a week or two I delete them and assume they never will.
On this occasion I'd had two quite similar fragments appear in short succession. Initially I'd thought that maybe they would be part of the same song, but then the second fragment became a song of it's own and for a while it looked like the first would sit, neglected, on my phone until the next clean-up operation came along.
But somewhere my brain must have been working on the problem; because here I was - awake at 4am and trying to decide what to do.
Finally, aware that I wouldn't get any sleep with the words roaming around in my head like lost sheep looking to be herded somewhere, I got up and made the short journey to my desk: accompanied by the appropriate amount of stumbling over cats in the dark and reaching for light switches that were not where I remembered them being.
With the words now written down I retired to my bed, switching off lights and trying not to step on the cat, hoping that now I would now get some sleep.
And then the next line came.
Swearing lightly under my breath and trying not to wake Herself I clambered out of bed, danced around the cat, groped for the light-switch and wrote the next bit down. It was around this point that I realised my fragment fitted in quite nicely to the idea - so I now had a promising intro to a verse, a bit of a chorus and a bridge.
Back to bed. Close my eyes, aware that it is now 5am and I need to be up at 7 as I have a one day course in Blues Guitar ahead of me: a course that I'd quite like to be awake and sentient for if it's not too much to ask.
Fragment four arrives. Part of verse one. This time Herself stirs and asks if everything is ok and in a slightly tense voice I reply that yes it is, it's just inspiration calling at an inopportune moment. She goes back to sleep and this time, over the next 30 mins or so, I pretty much get the rest of the song written, aside from the chords which will have to be worked out at a more sociable hour.
As a result of all the to-ing and fro-ing I'm now awake before the alarm at 6:30am and so I pour myself a bowl of breakfast and switch on my computer. Once we're through the interminable time it takes for everything to warm up I log into Word and, with a few adjustments, type up the scribble on my piece of paper into something legible without having to go and find a modern equivalent of the Rosetta Stone.
Don't get me wrong - I like being creative and am pleased with the resulting effort, so much so that I resolve to play it at my next appearance at a Folk Club (where it goes down like a lead balloon much to my disappointment) - but I do sometimes wonder how it works.
Terry Pratchett wrote that ideas are like bolts of lightning and that some people are more susceptible to being hit than others and added that the right ideas might not always hit the right heads: which is one of the many reasons you see so many surprised looking cows. Agatha Christie would answer, when asked, where she got her ideas from, "why Harrods of course; where else?"
I think that a large part of it is believing in the first place that you can be creative and then actively trying to be creative - once you do those two things the ideas will come: some easier than others perhaps, but still come.
As for me well, my ideas may not change the world or, apparently, be suitable for folk club attendees, but sometimes they amuse me and my friends and maybe that's enough
The answer, of course, is no.
It's very rare that I sit down with my guitar and think "Right: I'm going to write a song now" and anything useable emerges. I'm fully aware that there are plenty of people who do precisely this: and probably a few of them earn money from doing so. Usually these days what will happen is that I will get a fragment - half a lyric and a bit of a tune - whilst doing something else and will make a note of it on my mobile phone. I'm a bit ruthless with these and if they haven't developed into anything within a week or two I delete them and assume they never will.
On this occasion I'd had two quite similar fragments appear in short succession. Initially I'd thought that maybe they would be part of the same song, but then the second fragment became a song of it's own and for a while it looked like the first would sit, neglected, on my phone until the next clean-up operation came along.
But somewhere my brain must have been working on the problem; because here I was - awake at 4am and trying to decide what to do.
Finally, aware that I wouldn't get any sleep with the words roaming around in my head like lost sheep looking to be herded somewhere, I got up and made the short journey to my desk: accompanied by the appropriate amount of stumbling over cats in the dark and reaching for light switches that were not where I remembered them being.
With the words now written down I retired to my bed, switching off lights and trying not to step on the cat, hoping that now I would now get some sleep.
And then the next line came.
Swearing lightly under my breath and trying not to wake Herself I clambered out of bed, danced around the cat, groped for the light-switch and wrote the next bit down. It was around this point that I realised my fragment fitted in quite nicely to the idea - so I now had a promising intro to a verse, a bit of a chorus and a bridge.
Back to bed. Close my eyes, aware that it is now 5am and I need to be up at 7 as I have a one day course in Blues Guitar ahead of me: a course that I'd quite like to be awake and sentient for if it's not too much to ask.
Fragment four arrives. Part of verse one. This time Herself stirs and asks if everything is ok and in a slightly tense voice I reply that yes it is, it's just inspiration calling at an inopportune moment. She goes back to sleep and this time, over the next 30 mins or so, I pretty much get the rest of the song written, aside from the chords which will have to be worked out at a more sociable hour.
As a result of all the to-ing and fro-ing I'm now awake before the alarm at 6:30am and so I pour myself a bowl of breakfast and switch on my computer. Once we're through the interminable time it takes for everything to warm up I log into Word and, with a few adjustments, type up the scribble on my piece of paper into something legible without having to go and find a modern equivalent of the Rosetta Stone.
Don't get me wrong - I like being creative and am pleased with the resulting effort, so much so that I resolve to play it at my next appearance at a Folk Club (where it goes down like a lead balloon much to my disappointment) - but I do sometimes wonder how it works.
Terry Pratchett wrote that ideas are like bolts of lightning and that some people are more susceptible to being hit than others and added that the right ideas might not always hit the right heads: which is one of the many reasons you see so many surprised looking cows. Agatha Christie would answer, when asked, where she got her ideas from, "why Harrods of course; where else?"
I think that a large part of it is believing in the first place that you can be creative and then actively trying to be creative - once you do those two things the ideas will come: some easier than others perhaps, but still come.
As for me well, my ideas may not change the world or, apparently, be suitable for folk club attendees, but sometimes they amuse me and my friends and maybe that's enough
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)