we love beyonce!

The other night I was listening to Gnarls Barkley's St Elsewhere. It's one of those albums which I was a bit non-plussed with when first I bought it, but have come to really like the more I've listened to it. These days its accompanying marketing blurb would probably claim it was "genre-crossing". It certainly has some soul and gospel tinges, a touch of hip-hop and maybe even a jungle rhythm here and there.

Of course, "Crazy" was a huge hit and went down in "parp music history" when it became the first single to reach number one in the U.K. due to download sales alone. This great slowed-down version of the song really shows off Cee-Lo Green's fantastic soul voice. I particularly remember it featuring several times on Top of the Pops, although as far as I was able to determine at the time, this particular arrangement seemed to be unavailable in the shops.

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy (totp 2006-04-16)
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This TOTP clip from 2006 proved to be one of the last number ones featured in the weekly chart run-down programme as it was axed a month or so later. We still get a best-of-the-year round-up at Christmas but it's clear that those whose views hold sway at the Beeb no longer see a place for the "Pops" in the TV schedules, bursting as they are with top quality programmes night after night.

The Christmas and New Year TOTPs last week were notable in two respects. Firstly, they presented a selection of almost unremittingly poor songs. Some were better than others of course, but there was certainly nothing which sent me scurrying to Spotify or iTunes. Mind, it's not that Top of the Pops ever played consistently excellent music. I'm old enough to remember the glam rock days of the seventies and even at the age of thirteen I knew that there was better music out there than Mud, the Sweet and, er, Gary Glitter. I'm sure it's true that the programme never existed with the intention of showcasing the critically acclaimed artists of the day, but rather to promote the three-minute pop single in all its disposable, sometimes tacky, glory.

The second reason the TOTP programmes last week were notable is that I'd heard almost none of the songs before. Music is almost totally fragmented these days with, for example, entire radio stations devoted exclusively to one style--black music hived off to Radio 1 Xtra, indie to xfm, and so on. As a result I exist in what I laughingly like to consider a rarefied musical world inhabited by the likes of Radcliffe and Maconie, Guy Garvey and Jazz Record Requests, and so I never come into contact with the chart pop fodder being peddled on Radio 1.

It does mean though that I might miss a great pop song now and then. And we can't have that. Come on, the Beeb. Bring the Pops back!

(Just to prove, I hope, that I'm not just a terrible muso snob, here's a gem from the archive. It was massively popular, has never--to my knowledge--been played on Radcliffe and Maconie. I think even Jazz Record Requests has so far steered clear too. It's a great song though and this is a great performance. Whassup Top of The Pops?!)

ghost in the machine

There's nowhere to hide from "You Got The Love" at the moment. Every time I put the TV on it's lying in wait for me. In the last couple of days I've heard it three times in trailers for a thrilling new dance-related reality show, as well as on the last episode of Gavin and Stacey and performed in person by Florence and her accompanying Machine on the Christmas Top Of The Pops. It's featured on a few best-of-the-year round-ups on the radio too.

I haven't made my mind up yet about Florence Welch. I find her voice a bit grating, rather too shouty in the middle range and with an occasional tendency to be frankly all over the place intonation-wise. Having said that, she did a passable, if unnecessary, "My Baby Just Cares For Me" on Jools Holland's New Year's Eve knees-up last night. I do also like "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", a single she released earlier last year. Listen to the difference though between her singing on the recorded version and her live performance of the song. Thank heavens for auto-tuner software eh?

No doubt spurred on by the excellent xx remix of the Florence version of the song, the Guardian recently ran an interesting article giving a comprehensive history of "You Got The Love". The piece serves as a timely reminder that, far from being a musical creation of the currently ubiquitous Ms Welch, in fact the song originally saw the light of day in 1991 thanks to a mysterious group of musicians calling themselves The Source and featuring the vocals of erstwhile disco diva Candi Staton:



Judging by what I've heard of Staton's voice--and there's some great southern soul material on her myspace page--I think it's fair to say that she can knock Florence into a cocked hat any day of the week.

parklife 1

Hard Rock Calling, 27th June @ Hyde Park

After an impressive and hugely enjoyable two hour performance of classic songs by Neil Young, headlining the second of this three-day festival, it's probably a bit churlish of me to rant on about such a small thing... but what is it with the end of his songs?

I have observed that there's a longstanding convention that guitarist, drummer and bassist should mark the absolute end of the absolutely last note of a guitar-fuelled rock-out number (not really on my own patch here so bear with me) with what I can only describe as a simultaneous testosterone-induced "kerchang!"

Most, if not all, of Young's electric guitar-based songs tonight end, not just with this, er, "kerchang" but also with an extended feedback-fest or frantic exchange of unnecessary noodling with the drummer, each lasting some considerable time. It's a bit tedious frankly.

Seems it was ever thus with NY. Check out this performance of "Cinnamon Girl" from 1978:



See what I mean? The song as we know it (because we've heard the record right?) ends at 3:25 and yet the final "kerchang" doesn't get to us until 3:58.

It's asking a lot of an audience to keep the clapping and cheering going all that time, particularly when the same thing happens with every other song, and sure enough at the end of one number this evening NY complains that the crowd are "awful quiet". That'll be because we clapped and cheered for that last song when it finished five minutes ago Neil mate. Can you not wind things up a bit more sharpish?

Lest I present an unduly curmudgeonly view of proceedings, these are some of the things I did enjoy during the course of the afternoon/evening...

• Everything else about NY. He's always been rather on the peripheries of my musical taste but I somehow know about two-thirds of the songs.
• Fleet Foxes. Love those arrangements and they're pretty spot on with their vocal harmonies. Just a shame that a lot of festival goers talk, quite loudly, over their songs...
• Magic Numbers, as ever. They'll soon have a new album out--hoorah!--and here are some of the songs from it, which sound good.
• "A Day in the Life", NY's encore, along with showbiz mate one Sir Paul McCartney. Yes, I know he's got his thumbs up again like a grinning loon but he's a Beatle and I've never seen one of them before...

summat for nowt

Fopp Records have two of my favourite albums (Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain by Teenage Fanclub) in a box set. They are selling it for £3. This is scandalous. Consumers should not be allowed to have great music at grotesquely reduced prices like this.

classical gas

Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble @ Theatr Clwyd, 24th May

Mozart: Divertimento in D K.136
Weber: Clarinet Quintet in B flat Op.34
Beethoven: Septet in E flat Op.20

Five good reasons why it's a good idea to take a break from the usual diet of pop, rock and jazz and dip into the rarified world of classical music:

1. It allows you to go out for civilised night out with your dad and lets him go part way to redressing the balance, since you forced him to have Radio 1 on in the background throughout your teenage years.
2. Classical music is "soothing" (fact!), particularly if it's gentile chamber music (like we get tonight). Something to do with beats per minute, I reckon. No doubt pieces like Beethoven's near-histrionic "Ode To Joy" would be exceptions which prove this rule.
3. You marvel at the virtuosity of the players. Just how much practice must they have put in over how many years to reach this level? A level, actually, which is pretty much the norm for the hundreds of UK musicians in major orchestras and chamber ensembles. There's such minute precision in the playing in a small group like this. Every player is so exposed that even the tiniest slip in intonation or rhythm would stick out like a really sore thumb. Are revered instrumentalists in popular music--I don't know, Eric Clapton, say--as good as this? Do they really justify the adulation and lucre which comes their way? Or is that like comparing fish and custard?
4. It reminds you that the iPod, Spotify and the other modern-day gubbins I've been rattling on about lately, should not be taken for granted. The only way you would get to hear these pieces in the 18th and 19th centuries, when they were composed, was to be somewhere where there was a player of each of these instruments technically proficient enough to perform them. Then maybe you'd value your musical experiences much more than we tend to do these days...
5. It allows you to attempt to prove to yourself that that your A-Level in music wasn't entirely in vain, 'cos you can just about still pick out the different sections in minuet form, ("structurally the simplest movement of a symphony or string quartet", it says here, so probably not too much to write home about...)

Next week: How listening to AC/DC for ten hours a day can lead to a life of fulfilment and prosperity...

the 80s: were they as crap as this?

I know it's difficult to slim down the history of UK pop to three bite-size hour-long episodes but after watching the final episode of BBC4's recent Pop Britannia I was picking up the phone to jam the switchboard. (Can you still do that or do you have to try and bring the internet to its knees with a bombardment of aggressively worded e-mails?) Anyway, a tall order as I say to fit everything from the last thirty years into this last episode, but was there really nothing more significant in the pre-Britpop years than the New Romantics, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the blimmin' Stock Aitken & Waterman "Hit Factory" (apparently worth ten minutes of an hour-long programme? come on!)? Am I wrong to have expected at least a passing mention for Factory Records and the Smiths? I mean, how much insight are you going to get from interviews with Rick Astley and Bananarama? Am I a hideous indie snob?

noise abatement society

Magic Numbers @ Royal Festival Hall, 5th Dec.

The Magic Numbers are great musicians. They're not afraid to let their songs breathe, to leave an occasional silence to let the listener pause and reflect, before they move on to another idea, sometimes at a slightly different tempo. Not one note all night is off-key or not absolutely, spot-on together with the other instruments or vocal parts. Some of their performances are sublime: "Take Me Or Leave Me" and "Boy" both sung by bass player Michele Stodart illustrate that she's every bit as musically talented as brother Romeo, himself extremely adept on guitar, occasional electric piano and lead vocals which in the lower registers remind me of Martin Stephenson.

But one thing nags away all night. This is the first time they've played in an all-seated arena. Romeo mentions this four or five times. Have the Festival Hall management sent them a memo asking them to keep the noise down? A couple of their most up-tempo numbers are tastfully rearranged for string section accompaniment but they never really get going. They wheel out collaborators--the Smoke Fairies, Bernard Butler (for a largely ineffectual guitar contribution to "Love's A Game"), they slot in musical quotes (Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready") which pretty much work, but it soon becomes apparent that they're trying (maybe too hard) to stop us getting bored because these are all "quiet songs" and this is a seated venue.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the gig. I still put on the CD of their first album as soon as I got home. Romeo explains that choosing a set list is like putting together a list of guests to invite to a party. I'm afraid too many well-behaved grandparents have turned up tonight though and not enough unruly teenagers.

- Some YouTube highlights:
- Hear their cover of Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" (No really)
- See them do an acoustic version of "Undecided" supping beer in a field at Glastonbury (How great is this?)
- Hear them nick stuff from Kate Bush at tonight's gig ("Slow Down")

Also featured: Support act Duffy: "Is she the new Dusty Springfield?" I don't think so, but time will tell...

live stuff: mogwai at the royal albert hall, 22/9/06

Mogwai are men who play guitars. They play them standing up. Sometimes they play them sitting down. They play them VERY LOUD, they play them very quietly, then they play them... VERY LOUD AGAIN. Sometimes, when you're not expecting it, it can take you by surprise. One of Mogwai sometimes plays the keyboards, sometimes sings, and was there a violin at one stage or did I imagine that? The music's OK but for me the repeated instrumental lines are a bit ponderous and predictable, have none of the rich harmonies and unexpected turns you get, say, with the Cocteau Twins or Teenage Fanclub. You could argue that the light show tonight is much more spectacular than the music. I'm probably missing the point. I'll listen to the CDs and let you know...