Popthoughts

(after the track on Metal Box by PiL, Poptunes. Obviously)

I've not previously been able to share my songwriting credit here but now find the record safely archived on You Tube for posterity. It was an enormous pleasure to get my name on a record at the age of 58 and, while accepting that it's too late to become the new Neil Sedaka, there's plenty on my CV I'd relinquish before that.

While remaining on track with the programme of reading Proust, one does not live by Fin de Siecle French decadance alone and so I've had easy-going downtime with David Hepworth, hep by name and hep by nature, who can roll out books of pop music memoirs as easily as Marcel Marceau can mime that he's trapped in a glass box. Anybody can scribble out their precious memories of the pop music they heard at an impressionable age in the 1960's or 70's and it becomes fascinating for all those for who Roxy Music, All the Young Dudes, Wig Wam Bam and Diana Ross (Thank you, Ma'am) are much more part of their DNA than any test that suggest one is, to a large extent, Middle Eastern.

David Hepworth's books are among the more readable, less because he is encyclopedic on the subject and still deeply in love with it but because he can divine what was really happening, which was the absurdity of an industry commodifying the 'cool' that its customers were so rapt with and so wrapped up in. So, while one empathisizes so completely with the obsession with the LP, which lasted from Sgt. Pepper to Thriller, he says, one also admires the way he can now appreciate that,
It was a number of years before I was to realize the truth about men and music - that they like the things they think they ought to like rather than the things they do like.
I was ahead of him there, moving to Al Green and Motown as soon as I could from the absurd posturings of the machismo provided for teenage boys in the 70's by 'rock' bands and I'm always glad to see David dismiss Frank Zappa with short shrift because he was the worst of the lot, imagining himself so far into the distance except that The Stylistics could completely beat him up without even wanting to.
It's perfectly possible to enjoy Hepworth as entertainment without subscribing to his opinions or point of view. He implies that he might not be capable of subscribing to them himself sometimes but his re-listen to Hunky Dory is hard to take, that even by then Bowie was somehow gauche and name-dropping. He saves the day by saying it is the best thing he ever did.
My own time of considering some of these bands - the likes of Faust, Tangerine Dream and Focus - was from roughly 1972-74 and I agree with him how hard it was to find out about and buy the right records on the proceeds of a paper round. David once got it so wrong that he bought UmmaGumma, immediately realized he'd done his money and was grateful to the record shop that they let him swap it for Liege & Lief. It seems I found the out-ball before he did. He knows that The Belle Album 'has no right to be as good as it is' with Al Green working without the Willie Mitchell Band but I don't think he ever realizes that white pop music was only an adjunct of 'black' pop music. He still seems to think it's 'rock', it's white but Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone had certain credentials.
That is not what happened.

For me, I could write such a book forever and make Marcel Proust's effort look like a haiku. Why would anybody in their 60's still be listening to the passing music fads that they were beguiled by as teenagers unless they stumbled on to the right answer straightaway, the answer to that being More Hits by Cliff. Were Barclay James Harvest any good. No, they were as dull as it could get.
It didn't have to be like that. There was reggae. Motown was so commercially successful because it was fantastic. You could let Deep Purple make their loud noise in some other kid's bedroom and their complaining parents probably had a point.
My Top 30 Game involves listing the songs of any artist or songwriter(s) and comparing their no.30's.
The Beatles, The Motown Hit Factory (Holland-Dozier-Holland), Goffin-King, David Bowie, anybody you like. I add in Stephin Merritt even if I have recently suggested he's a busted flush and I'm not sure where you arrive when you stretch T. Rex to 30 but Marc isn't going to be too sadly lacking. See how you get on. I might do a few and see what happens but Holland-Dozier-Holland are favourites because they are almost the Motown back catalogue without Smokey Robinson.

Pop music. One really ought to be over it by now. You don't come here for the latest news because I have none. The latest news is on Radio 2. I can listen to Ken Bruce for maybe 20 minutes but then have to switch over because the computer that wrote all that identical racket makes one feel like an idiot that deserves no better.

The Magnetic Fields - Quickies

The Magnetic Fields, Quickies (Nonsuch)

A few years ago here I said that The Magnetic Fields were the best band in the world, they quoted me on their website and both parties were highly gratified. Once you have 69 Love Songs and a back catalogue of such quality, breadth and depth you've set yourself a high standard - is the problem. The way to calculate the index of this is to make a list of an artist's Top 30 and see what number 30's like. Stephin Merritt's is in the same class as Motown, The Beatles and Burt Bacharach.
Similarly, for how long is one expected to keep it up (which sounds like a Merritt lyric these days). David Bowie never recovered from the long sequence of masterpieces from The Man Who Sold the World to, say, Heroes. R.E.M. mercifully packed up after a bad last album, or two. Not everybody is prepared to admit what is obvious, that the Beatles weren't as good after 1966. Everybody finds the bottom of their talent in due course (and having just played 28 Merritt songs, it's difficult not to pour out these cheap double entendres). Quickies, you see. Meaning both short songs and brief sexual encounters.
There are 28 tracks because the longest is 2.35 and some are less than a minute. These are doodles scribbled in bars and little sign of having been worked on, crafted and given the grandeur of Papa Was a Rodeo, All My Little Words or The Book of Love. Perhaps it only reflects a decline into the celebration of cheap sleaze in Stephin but he's lost the glorious glamour of romantic love, however much he used to balance it off with an equal amount of irony. These songs are either a hollow pastiche of what he once did or he's chosen the wrong half of his recipe to keep. It's probably just lazy.
It becomes increasingly difficult to find a song to like once one has become accustomed to the parade of half-hearted cynicism and there are lines to like and songs that might have been worthy as minor tracks on the albums from the glory years. I noted When She Plays the Toy Piano which was then surpassed by Let's Get Drunk Again (And Get Divorced) which will be revisited and I'm not going to give up easily but it's unlikely I'll listen to it all again in one sitting.
It is possible that She Says Hello is a bit like the magnificent Maria, Maria, Maria or One April Day. Those were the days.
It is roughly what I expected. Once one is so brand loyal, one is only able to be disappointed by how new work doesn't live up to previous achievements and I find it hard to compare with others brands, mainly because I hardly know anything still happening in pop music to compare it to. If I didn't have everything else they'd ever done I might think it was droll, offbeat and brilliant but it's not as droll and brilliant as much of what they've done before. I can't see me being quoted on their website this time.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

Writing poems specifically about the plague doesn't seem like something I'd do, assuming I'd write any poems at all. On the other hand, writing anything not touched by it at such a time doesn't seem right either. As it stands, I think Situation, below is at least subliminally about it and that's all there's been. I haven't decided if it's any good or not yet.
It's been quiet here because I did an 11-week residency on The David Green Show, demonstrating (I thought) how much R2, 3 or 5 would benefit from paying me exorbitantly to take up a programme on their schedule. I've not heard from them yet.
As expected, Lockdown hasn't made too much difference to me. While liking a concert, an occasional race meeting or being able to visit family, the settee with books, records and crossword is my ideal
default position so the upgrade of the cushions and a new cover to lie on have been timely investments. Proust has been good company and in a few weeks' time I will be able to take up the Monty Python 'Summarize Proust' challenge but not within their stringent time limit. But, for the first time in 12 weeks, I've been out and met somebody else and talked not via computer or telephone to someone who is not a neighbour or shop worker. I'm lucky in living not far from places that others might be grateful of being able to walk.
Portsmouth Poetry Society have done good work in continuing with their planned programme by e-mail. Once Proust is finished, I will go back to the Thom Gunn book and hope to persevere with what I think is missing from the catalogue, the 'full-length' study even if it's a shame that nobody better qualified than me is doing it.
I understand that online chess has experienced a boom in recent months, being a 'sport' that can be played without fear of infection. I've been very much a part of it but didn't contribute to the boom because I was there already. Sunday afternoon tournaments on Lichess to the soundtrack of Johnnie Walker's Sounds of the 70's R2 Show have become a regular date and last Sunday's top 10% finish somehow fluked my best result yet without playing particularly well. My rating needs to be above 1800 on there and that's where I like to keep it but I sank like a stone to below 1700 in recent weeks, seeming to forget that one needs to play with one's eyes open. It's been a hard road back but I'm 1799 for 5 minute games on Lichess now with all other ratings saved at something respectable.
The new album by The Magnetic Fields is due shortly so maybe that's the next job to do here.