Wednesday, 22 February 2006
...there is no age where an artist becomes redundant, no magical yearly figure where the muse automatically evaporates. Some people never had the spark- others burn all their lives.
You could argue “What’s The Point?”
You could ask why old bands bother with new songs. Why even try. After all, there’s always a new band coming up. A new band of 17 year olds forms every day. Is Pop – like Porn – a teenagers game?
Like bollocks it is. With age comes experience. People with experience know what the hell they’re doing. Why leave it to those who are still wet behind the ears?
On their 20th anniversary, The Wonder Stuff are still at it. They’ll never be cool – but cool isn’t a game you should want to be win. Why be ‘cool’, when you be great instead? If I had to choose between the artistically slight fumble of youth and the talent of experience, I know what I’d choose.
This isn’t to say that the young don’t know shit, or that a teenager can’t write a great song : it’s to say that there is no age where an artist becomes redundant, no magical yearly figure where the muse automatically evaporates. Some people never had the spark- others burn all their lives.
So, as the opening salvo of their annoiversary tour, they set up stall in a record shop in Birmingham, and peddle their wares. To say that this isn’t The Wonder Stuff because a money-grabbing drummer and a financially-motivated fiddle player jumped ship when the rest of the band resented being peddled around the country every Christmas like The Gary Glitter Gang Show is like saying that The Cult split up when their bassists and drummers left. (And who remembers The Cult’s drummers?).
It’s like saying Oasis split up when Bonehead and the bassist left. It’s erroneous and false. To say that you’d rather one of your favourite bands split up, didn’t even try to make new music, just rotted in the memory of Has-Beens…
No, no, no. That’s the crime of ageism. Of thinking that just because a band hits a certain age they’re obselete. If age were an indicator of obselence, Johnny Cash would’ve stopped in 1968, and Pink Floyd in 1983. New Order would’ve been kicked into the corner of irrelevance a decade ago.
… and if these songs were sung by Pete Doherty maybe that cloth-eared dirty-fingered junkie would deserve his press inches instead of being the Lidl Sid Vicious.
But they’re not. So Miles Hunt, Malcolm Treece, and new recruit Erica Nockalls throw themselves into a short six song set for several hundred fans in the shop foyer. New and old sit comfortably with each other, and for every old hit like the wonderfully bratty “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” and the putting-on-a-brave-face “Circlesquare”, there’s the new, petulant “Blah Blah Lah Di Dah”, and the anthem-of-the-minority “The Sun Goes Down On Manor Road”. Upcoming single “Last Second of The Minute” tugs at the heartstrings of ambition, whilst the closer, a spirited strop through the old school “Mission Drive” bristles.
Now, instead of this, would you rather be sat behind your PC, bemoaning the fact that nobody makes good music anymore? Or would you rather be here? Only registered users can write comments.
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