The War Against Crap Music

Last night I went to see my current favourite musical hero in concert and this was a euphoric experience in more ways than one.

The artist in question was Steven Wilson, a musical genius in every sense of the phrase.

First, the concert was a triumph. It was everything I thought it would be. The music was perfect and on more than one occasion, I was so lost in the melodies and songs that a tear of joy escaped from my eye and rolled gently down my cheek.

Second, I had persuaded a friend of mine to take a chance and see the concert. His musical taste does not walk hand in hand with mine, but there is an overlap. When I bought the tickets, a few months ago, I suggested that he listen to Steven’s solo music on the internet and also that of his former band (currently on hiatus), Porcupine Tree. 

There was no way he would ever hear the work on the radio so he would have to use the internet. It didn't take him long to find it and since then he has devoured the music. He loves Steven Wilson and, like me, thinks it’s a crime against humanity that this guy is not massively famous. He has already started to delve into his back catalogue.

Finally, the venue for the concert was Manchester Bridgewater Hall, a place usually reserved for classical music concerts. And the place was packed with a wildly varied audience, ranging from the odd rock lover to entire families of music lovers including kids. 

Steven’s music is basically progressive rock but, my God, does the man have an ear for melody. He has experimented with jazz, orchestral arrangements, progressive rock, pop music and heavy metal – sometimes all in the same song. 

What I liked best was the fact that there is a huge audience for his music, people who have turned their backs on shit like the X Factor and radio friendly nonsense that I ranted about earlier this year in A Rant About Music.

I am not the only one.

I have allies in this battle.

It’s not easy though. 

On Friday night, I was in a pub in Manchester, celebrating a friend from work’s fortieth birthday, when I opted to leave early. The reason for leaving was that I wanted a totally clear head to see Steven Wilson and it was the most important event of the weekend for me. 

“Who?” came the incredulous replies as I tried to leave the pub at around 9pm. “Never heard of him!”

I could have stayed and discussed this further with another pint of ale but I chose to leave rather than risking hangover. This was the big event of the weekend for me and nothing was going to ruin it.

As I lay in bed this morning, remembering the concert and trying to describe it to Mrs PM, I discovered that she too had no interest.

“But the music is beautiful,” I said. “I’m not asking you to like it; I’m asking you to listen to the concepts.”

I tried to explain a song called Routine from the latest (and truly brilliant) album called Hand. Cannot. Erase., which describes a woman who uses the routine of the mundane chores every day of her life to keep her going. I didn’t really grasp the full meaning of the song until I saw it performed live, with a very moving animated video being shown in the background. The woman, preparing meals for four, washing, cleaning, ironing to help her sane until towards the end of the song she shrieks finally:

Routine keeps me in line

Helps me pass the time

Concentrate my mind 

Helps me to sleep

And keep making beds and keep the cat fed

Open the Windows let the air in

And keep the house clean and keep the routine

Paintings they make still stuck to the fridge

At this point in the video we learn that her entire family, husband and two children, died in a car crash and the "routine" is how she copes with the loss.

Heart-wrenching stuff that allowed one of my tears to escape.

The song is beautiful, melodic with disturbing undertones and has a truly magnificent guest female vocal and a choir boy and is technically brilliant as well as very intelligent.

The whole album is the same, full of deep emotional songs transcending various genres with a progressive feel but also a couple of, what I would describe as pop songs. Of course, it is progressive rock at the end of the day, but there are no songs that I don’t like.

It is a triumph and to be absolutely frank, should be made available to a wider audience.

I’m not asking you to like Steven Wilson or his music, dear reader; I’m offering it to you as an alternative to the tired old fodder that is spoon-fed to you by corporate executive billionaires who want to peddle crap music that makes them richer. I want to fire a broadside across the bows of radio stations who claim to speak for the population by playing “the music that they love” when in reality they are TELLING the people what music they SHOULD love by limiting the amount they can listen too.

Even Madonna may become an ally in this war as BBC Radio One, the so-called “kids” radio station here in the UK, has removed her current single from their playlist. 

What goes around, comes around, eh Madge? Now you know how the rest of the struggling music makers feel.

I equate this struggle to thinking that McDonald’s is the only place to get food when there is a gourmet restaurant  hidden in the back streets of the city that is not advertised and you have to search around for. Not all these restaurants are good - but most of them are far better than the bland burgers offered by Ronald McDonald.

To complete my role in this analogy, I want to be the man who meets you off the train and says:

"Before you go to McDonalds, take a look at this book, which is full of decent restaurants to try.”

In fact, that's an even better analogy:

Simon Cowell is the Ronald McDonald of the music industry.

Later in the month I will dedicate a meme to Steven Wilson’s solo work and maybe next month, I will do the same for his band Porcupine Tree.

In the meantime, here is a song called Perfect Life from Hand.Cannot.Erase. featuring the spoken words of Katherine Jenkins, the opera singer.

Remember, I’m not asking you to like it; I’m just trying to broaden your horizons and erode the influence of Simon Cowell and his cohorts.

Equally, I am willing to listen to anything you have to offer me, dear reader, and it doesn't matter what genre the music is.

I will champion anything I feel should be out there - even if it's jazz!!

Please join me.

We can do this!

Who’s with me?

I Just Don't Get It

Regular readers will know that I have a soapbox that I get out occasionally to air my views and rant about things that I find disturbing, objectionable or just simply wrong. However, for this post, I don’t want to get my soapbox out. I want to understand. And I am hoping that there are readers out there who will help me.

I will try not to rant, I promise.

There are certain things in life that I just don’t get. I am fifty years old and I reckon I have a reasonably sensible and well-balanced view on the world. Nevertheless, I find myself looking at certain aspects of life on this planet and shake my head in disbelief at why they are so popular or why they even exist at all.

Am I stupid? Don’t answer that question.

I am going to offer you, dear reader, ten things that make me wonder whether the human race is devolving rather than evolving. And if you are one of those people who champion the things I am about to discuss, please, please, PLEASE tell me why I shouldn’t get on my soapbox and start bellowing about them in future posts.

I will try to be brief.

Sex Addiction

I am a man and I know that over the years I have thought about sex an awful lot – almost constantly in fact. Men do that – they can’t help it. Yet I have to chuckle when certain celebrities have had to undergo therapy for a condition called sex addiction simply because they are so famous that they cannot control the voice of their little fella when his brain alerts him to a woman who has breasts, legs and a pretty face.

Most men look at women and their little fella offers an opinion about whether she is worthy as a mate. To the majority of men, such thoughts are lost in an ocean of other external stimulae and warrant only a verbal exclamation, particularly those men who have a woman already.

“She’s nice,” you hear guys say. The more outspoken ones will suggest a more lurid scenario and single guys may even act on their urges, driven by the need to procreate, by actually trying to chat them up. Yet we find celebrities who simply cannot control their urges and whose little fella is the boss, complaining after having been caught out, that they suffer from sex addiction and, in order to save face, go into therapy to explain why they can’t keep their little fella in his place.

Do me a favour! I think it is an excuse to make people feel sorry for them after been unfaithful. Obviously a celebrity will attract members of the opposite sex.

Just keep your pecker in his cage!

Train Spotting

Why on earth would anybody have an urge to stand on a rainy railway platform with a little book and a pen and mark off the numbers of locomotives as they trundle past? Why would they do it for hours on end? I wouldn’t mind if each locomotive was unique – they aren’t. Most of them are the bloody same!

“Wow – I saw a train!”

How bloody interesting!

Cult of Celebrity

Why are people interested in celebrity gossip, particularly when the so-called celebrity in question is famous for nothing more than being outrageous on television. If you ask me, this obsession with celebrities who deserve no more than a passing thought is damaging people.

You see it whenever a reality show appears on television.  An absolute nobody is instantly turned into an overnight celebrity because they did something disgraceful and acquired an army of fans who are so shallow that they live vicariously through these sad attention seekers.

I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why I should be bothered about a young idiot who gets drunk and makes an arse of himself on a programme like Geordie Shore.

Scientology

I have been tempted to write a post about the cult of Scientology and I may still do this in future. I was once
almost enrolled in this cult as a young impressionable student (read about it here). When you look into Scientology you can forgive yourself for thinking “WHAT THE PHARRRRKKK?” 

Famous celebrities like Tom Cruise have paid a fortune to rise up the hierarchy and it is all based on the imagination of science fiction writer L.Ron Hubbard a controversial character at best. 

Why would anyone with wealth even consider joining this cult? You may as well just set fire to your cash.

Modern Jazz

Modern Jazz musicians are extremely good at playing their chosen musical instruments. The problem for me is that when they get together to play a song, while they all play their own self-indulgent parts brilliantly, it appears as if they are all playing totally different tunes. 

The result is a total dirge.

Readers of my last post will recall that I love progressive rock. However, one of my favourite champions of the genre, Steven Wilson, has introduced a touch of jazz into his latest solo albums (mainly because his band, like me, can’t stand jazz). 

I don’t play those songs – they are not my cup of tea at all.

Contemporary Art

Regular readers will know about my hatred for modern art. I simply do not get it. I do not understand how random slops of paint on a canvas with the title “My Alien Colostomy Bag” can drive anybody to say anything other than “Let’s burn this piece of excrement!”

The best justification I heard for the bizarre way in which art has migrated straight down the toilet made me rant mercilessly for days.

I said: “Why doesn’t anybody paint pictures any longer instead of gluing bits of metal together and calling it something like “Living Vomit”?"

The lady in question said: “It’s been done – that’s so last century!”

Rant? You would not believe how that poor woman suffered for her art.

Tattoos

When I recently saw a photo of David Beckham my first thought was “What the pharrk has he done to his body?”.

Why would anybody deface their own body with tattoos? They are so permanent and, certainly in the UK on a canvas of pale white skin like mine, they look awful. It’s like a form of modern art (see above). Are you going to tell me that anybody who has covered body in shocking blue colours isn’t going to examine their sagging skin when they are older and say “I wish I hadn’t had a picture of a dragon eating a huge banana scrawled on my belly!”

Why? 

Poetry

I love it when people use their imagination to put words on paper in a way that is beautiful and thought provoking.; yet poetry can be utterly ridiculous. I’m not talking about song lyrics, rhymes and funny limerick style pieces – I’m talking about the artistic pretentious rubbish where people put together  random words and the reader has to make sense out of it. In many ways it’s like modern art – appealing to pseudo intellectuals and nobody else. 

Here’s a poem, written by me, that is shit! Some people may read this and say "genius” – please don’t tell them I ate a dictionary, spat out words in random order and put them together to produce this utter mess:

I contemplated the torso of a despondent galactic masterpiece

And my heart thanked my voracious sight.

I hastened my swiftness, disoriented by my awareness

Yet somehow did not submit to fright.

I call it The Loquacious Figment.

And I say to you now, dear reader – if you think it is brilliant then I have to break it to you that you are indeed a pseudo intellectual and I look forward to your explanation of why it is so good as well as the philosophical quotes that support your argument.

Rest assured that this is a one off and I won't be filling this blog with crap poetry.

Outrageous Fashion

Why? Who on earth wears clothes that, at best, can be described as utterly ridiculous? And why are these people willing to pay a bloody fortune for it?

Justin Bieber

Where do I begin with this … this … (careful Dave!) pop star? It seems to me that a fair percentage of the female population have taken leave of their senses and been mesmerised by this young lad. I wouldn’t mind if he were modest about his success. 

He’s not.

He’s one of the most arrogant egotistical celebrities out there. What does he call his fans? Beliebers? I am not a violent person but the more I hear about his escapades, the more I want to give him a hearty slap.

And his music is shit too!

And finally…

Please understand, dear reader, that when it comes to certain topics, I am totally thick. If anybody can explain why any of the ten things above are worthy of my attention in anyway, I will be most grateful.

And I apologise – my soapbox did make an appearance (or ten)!