I’ve never liked Gangster Rap, hated it in fact, until recently, when NWA crept up behind me and bit me on the arse. Now I rate some of their tracks as amongst the best I’ve ever heard. I didn’t hate Gangster Rap because I don’t like black music (it’s still ‘black’ in the UK) because I’ve liked old-school soul music for about 25 years. Indeed I know a fair bit about it, and have even dj’d it once or twice. I disliked it because, well, I didn’t like it! I was asked the other day here in Korea, “Paul, why don’t you like seafood?” It’s a stupid question. I just don’t like it. It’s not a conscious decision I can explain.
As a music fan of sorts, I’ve dabbled with new music in the past, and truth be told, I’d buy some right old crap, trying to keep up with current trends and new releases, as well as some good stuff too. It’s hit and miss, new music.
Anyway today’s longwinded gripe that will no doubt further reduce the numbers on my Facebook friends list isn’t about music as such, it’s about ‘neophiliacs’, that is, people, especially music fans, who think something can only be good if it is coming out tomorrow, and that anything made over three years ago is obscene and dull.
Some businesses need to be new. Fashion especially, reinvention and recycling aside, needs to be current. What was last year, is non-existent. Not so in music, Music is like painting, perhaps, you need to step back a bit to appreciate it. Some of it just sounds better with age, yours and the music’s. Led Zeppelin will always sound good. Billie Holliday will always be an amazing singer, a cut above the rest, as will Aretha Franklin. Jimi Hendrix could do things that other people haven’t been able to emulate, Al Jolson had the richest voice you’re ever likely to hear, and that’s just a few, off the top of my head. Whether you’re fans of these few doesn’t matter – just add your own list. If you’re not a neophiliac of course.
We only know they are great, and that their songs were great, because the distance that time has created allows us to see them completely, wholly, and we can see that time hasn’t diminished their achievements. They weren’t flashes in the pan. It’s like when they pick someone to be beatified in the church – it takes years, it takes a process.
Some people would have you believe that the Arctic Monkeys are in the same category, or The Editors, or The Foals or Lady Gaga or that any of the thousands of new tracks released every month are the latest big thing, and, of course, they could be, but you or I won’t know until 5, 12 or 189 years’ time. Go and browse the NME’s website, and they will be pushing a barrage of bands or artists as if they are something great, newly discovered, when really a lot of it is a slightly different take on what’s gone before, especially the guitar music in my opinion, though you may feel other genres are more stagnant. And I have to reiterate the point that some may well be great, any one of them could be the next boundary smasher, but only time will tell.
Why can’t musical journalists see this music for what it is? Decent enough new music, but not breaking any boundaries. Every few years we hear about the ‘next Beatles’, only for the ‘next Beatles’ to disappear after their difficult 2nd album, split up after creative differences, without breaking into any new ground, genre-wise, whatsoever.
We live in a different time from the sixties (no foolin’!!). Back then, the canvas was a little less busy than it is now. Many genres and styles we take for granted now, were burgeoning then, and not just the sixties, the seventies and eighties too. It seems like entire new genres were created right up until the nineties, and since then everything is a splinter of something that’s gone before, or a hybrid of previous genres. Sure, you could argue rock ‘n’ roll was a hybrid of this ‘n’ that, but at least when you put the ingredients in something new came out. Oasis are a good example of all that I’m saying here – hyped up to the max by NME and their brethren, not a bad band if you liked that type of thing, and absolutely added nothing new to any genre other than a rehash of previous indie bands and sixties beat bands. What genre are Oasis? Indie? Who cares? Indie used to mean ‘independent label’, i.e. not Sony. Now it’s just a ‘sound’ meaning you prefer guitars to Cheryl Cole.
Anyway, I digress. What I’m getting at is that there are (say) 1 million great albums, and (say) 10 million great tracks from all periods of recorded music out there. I guarantee you nearly all of it is better that what NME (or whoever) are pushing this week. It’s time to look back. The future is right there waiting to be discovered, in the past.
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