A Final Insult

Was it England being knocked out that upset me most watching this year’s World Cup? Of course not, we’re all grown-ups and it’s sport after all. Was it Argentinian players wading into Spaniards at the end of the final throwing kicks and punches that should frankly have seen them locked up? No, it wasn’t that either, I am after all from Burnley. Was it the obscene amounts of money that FIFA squeezed out of the ever gullible football fans of the globe? I didn’t like it but I fully expected it. No, what obviously ground Madden’s gears was that half time monstrosity. What a shower of shit! Or, as Rooney wisely and only slightly more mildly put it, crap.

I expected Madonna to look like a plonker and do something dreadful so I can’t really complain there, she delivered. I never liked that song Music with its “not quite as clever as it thinks” lyric about the bourgeoisie, but she really stretched herself by turning it into an unbearable mashup with Disco Inferno. Obviously Chris Martin had to turn up singing vaguely epic and generally uplifting drivel about love with a carefully selected group of photogenic and appropriately global looking school children. He’s done twenty five years of ambiguously euphoric sonic wallpaper so this was just another day at the office for him. It was all shit, Shakira was shit, Madonna was shit, Chris Martin being 2026’s Michael Jackson was shit and Ronaldo and Ronaldinho being confusedly carted around by Madonna was total shit. Yet somehow we had a little breather, a gap where things were allowed to be even shitter for a moment when Justin Bieber completely got the wrong idea with the weakest ballad I’ve ever sat though in my living room.

It wasn’t the fact that it was shit that annoyed me most though, it was the fact that none of them were singing live. It’s a kick in the balls to all of us who make live music for a living. Somewhere in the last two decades it’s become a given fact that when the occasion is huge, when the chips are really down, you can’t afford to fuck things up by having live musicians or live singers bring their dangerously unpredictable human failings into play. Everybody was tuned and EQd, you never heard a single stray breathing noise. Nothing even looked real but that’s not my department. The longer this crap goes on the more of a corner live music gets backed into. People see the big clinch moments and hear studio recording quality vocals from performers who can’t afford the spare breath whilst they’re concentrating on their dance moves. This falsehood increasingly becomes what people expect at live events, labels and managers start pressuring their artists to ditch the live performance for the cleansed and sanitised pre-made product. “Don’t risk it, it’s what people expect.”

Fifa didn’t start this trend but they just lobbed an egregious of example of it into the world’s living room, dropped their trousers and curled one out whilst saying “Now THAT’S what I call music!” It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever sat and looked at.

So why, dear God why, did they have to co-opt the Muppets into it?

Someone Doesn’t Understand

Probably the Muppets were the best thing in that awful half time show but still they had to be there with that gurning clown of a conductor. I think it’s just another example of how Disney doesn’t really get the Electric Mayhem and it’s been going on for a few years now. Did you check out the new Disney show The Muppets Mayhem? Of course you didn’t, you’re a grown up. I however did, it isn’t too bad either as it goes. I feel the representations of the characters are true to their origins, the band behaves like they always should. Musically though, the whole thing has been fucked over. Take a minute to reacquaint yourself with the original version of Can You Picture That from the original Muppet Movie.

Now listen to this reworked version from Disney’s TV version. I don’t want to colour your opinions before you listen so I’ll keep my opinion that it’s dogshit to myself till afterwards.

You might not be able to quite put your finger on it but it just doesn’t swing. I know the Electric Mayhem are puppets but I believe in them as musicians and I know their career arc. They’re guys who grew up playing jazz and blues, people who don’t understand them think they’re just a hard rock band but the story really is that they’re jaded old pros who’ll do anything for a gig. They make rock that swings because they’ve got so much else in their musical DNA. It’s why rock music from the 70s sounds so great, everybody who was drumming had been taught by old jazzers and they’d infected everything for the better. Animal’s drumming on the Muppet Show was all performed by London session ace Ronnie Verrell, which is why he was capable of a head to head with Buddy Rich. They’ve since had Animal doing a head to head with Dave Grohl. If you ask me that’s an insult to Ronnie Verrell, Buddy Rich and all of us. Okay, that was harsh. Dave Grohl is good but not as good as Buddy Rich. Or Animal, the real 1970s Animal. Here’s Ronnie playing with the Syd Lawrence Orchestra at an advanced age.

It’s like I said when I was talking about pop writing the other week, how it’s better when people bring some outside dimension to it as Patrick Leonard did with his prog influences and Madonna’s classic records. Similarly rock built on nothing but rock becomes ever more flat footed and uninspiring. It came as no surprise to find out that the executive producer of the new Electric Mayhem music was Linda Perry, who after writing one of the most annoying songs ever for Four Non Blondes went on to write even more annoying songs for Pink. She just doesn’t get it.

Dear Disney, let the Mayhem swing again.

Prog At The Proms

The clip above is the only Youtube footage available of last week’s Prog Rock at the Proms at the time of my writing this, although I think the whole show will have been on the telly last night. I wouldn’t have picked a Tubular Bells clip out given the full choice you see, although I enjoyed the inclusion of Matt Berry introducing the instruments. The whole thing was pretty good though, I listened on BBC Sounds (still available here) and had a grand old time. Obviously you could pick a few holes in it, the set list perhaps catered to the more casual fan and those of us who go deep wouldn’t be fighting for the inclusion of Nights In White Satin or Tubular Bells. That’s just the way it is though, casual fans are what everything gets made for so it’s great if you can slip a few moments in there and educate them by stealth. Stuart Maconie is a great curator for such an event, he knows his prog as well as anyone, as any Freak Zone listener will tell you. The musical guests all did a great job, Carl Palmer is still on fine form and appears to be refusing to age whilst Peter Hammill seems to have a similarly timeless voice. I thought Guy Garvey did a fantastic job and was a credible Peter Gabriel replacement. He sounded srrong on the King Crimson medley too even though I was obviously disappointed when the orchestra baled before the mega-difficult middle section of 21st Century Schizoid Man. One of my favourite sections was the medley of non-UK prog featuring Sylvia by Focus, Komfo by Osibisa and Peaches En Regalia by Frank Zappa. I’ve long thought the latter to be the best instrumental pop record ever made but it was a testament to the melodic writing in all three pieces that they stood up beautifully as orchestral pieces.

The finest moment, and one that was doubtless thanks to Maconie himself, was the inclusion of Gentle Giant’s On Reflection. It’s a remarkable piece of fugue writing which when Gentle Giant perform is a vocal feature. The proms version was probably a great deal more accessible than the original but here’s hoping it’ll lead some new listeners to prog’s most uniquely brilliant band. Here they are in some of the worst outfits I’ve ever seen performing it on the BBC in 1978. Don’t skip this.

Time Is Tight

Ben sent me this video the other week of Booker T and the MGs playing Time Is Tight in 1976. This as good a version as I’ve ever seen of them playing it after their classic phase. Steve Cropper is in what Little Barrie calls his Chewbacca phase stylistically, it lasted for quite a while too. There isn’t much of a close up of the drummer but the eagle-eyed will notice that it isn’t Al Jackson, he was killed a year before in what is bizarrely still an unsolved murder case. The drummer here is Willie “Too Big” Hall who was a student of Jackson’s and went on to be the drummer in the Blues Brothers Band. In my opinion there was never anybody who came as close as Willie to filling Al Jackson’s spot in the MGs, it’s great to have the evidence at hand. They were never really the same again but this is as close to it working as I’ve seen.