Thursday, 06 March 2008
Don't forget The Songs That Saved Your Life
I feel sorry for them. Really I do. The world I know, one full of vibrant joy and of soul clenchingly beautiful poetry (expressed, au naturallment, in the medium of screeching guitars and articulately human vocals), is alien to them. To them, this is merely noise. Music has been reduced. Debased, even, to no more than a soundtrack to our own mini-dramas, our kitchen sink lives, our widescreen, heroic commutes to Zone 1, and this music is merely the dramatic counterpoint. As I stride like a silver screen sized David to face up against the Goliath of my modern life, this is the music that sets me free and empowers me.
Sort of. To them, the sweaty, bare chested lads, the same type of sybaritic Living For The Weekend types, fuelled on their £4 Stella in a plastic cup, this is just music. Some mere, small thing that gives them opportunity to jump around and push people and run in circles punching people and not really caring what the song is - as long as it has drums - never mind the lyrical and visual subtext of the song that equates the unsatisfactory narrative lie of True Love with a deceptive belief system as deluded as any religion. To them, “A Design For Life” is not about the self-suicide of mindless hedonism in a self-inflicted Rapture-Ready culture that seems obsessed with an impending extinction level event. To them, “A Design For Life” is a song about getting drunk and an excuse to jump up and down and hit people with shoes.
These self-inflicted intellectual dwarfs see not the beauty or poetry in this music. Or even the meaning. It’s this war against intelligence - as evidenced most obviously by Liam Gallaghers constant, near-autistic exhortations to FUCKIN’ HAVE IT! Whilst his brother bashes his head against a wall for daring to even aspire to anything other than mere mediocrity - that frustrates me. Anyone can be a dumb mouth breather : it’s easy and takes little effort. The enriching nature of knowing, for example, that “The Shining” is a recasting of the Minotaur Myth, can easily be debased.. It’s just a bloke running around. The Bible’s just a book. Citizen Kane’s just this black and white movie with too much talking and no explosions.
And so, as they bump and grind and jump up and down and spill lager to the bedroom anthems that save my life, I feel this near-murderous rage. These people… they were the jocks to whom life came easy and who walked through life as if it were something that was as simple as breathing itself. They didn’t think or feel or question : they just were. There’s no I Think Therefore I Am here, just a mere I Am.
In the meantime, the NME, now a mere comic, a shadow facsimile tribute band compared to the power it once was, hypes this not sold out show as The Gig of The Millenium. I recently uncovered a 1993 issue of the NME - the only one left of the 700 or so I bought weekly between late 1989 and 1999 - and I was stunned : by how quickly the memories came back, and also of how far the magazine has fallen from grace. In those days, I could read about a band I never heard of and utterly enjoy the mere writing. These days, even reading about the bands I like is painful and embarrassing in its intellectual vapidity.
And, to be frank, the lack of thought and effort by bands like the Klaxons reflects this. Whereas once the NME championed artists who at least attempted The Big Idea, these days the album itself has been reduced to a mere compilation of the 10 or 12 best songs, bought in supermarkets, listened to in a highly compressed MP3 file on the way to or from work. The days we would go home, reading the sleeve on the bus for a hidden message, knowing that the music lay on the grooves that could only be played at home in 22 minute long chunks, they are gone never to return,
I am doomed by my history. When I see The Klaxons, I’m, thinking it’s an Emo Jesus Jones in black with eyeliner. Their set is an efficiently executed, but oddly unmoving twenty five minutes. I recognise the songs, but that’s not to say they are any good. I mean… I know through exposure the relative collected works of MC Hammer, but that doesn’t mean there’s any quality involved. And people die of exposure. I feel as if, like Dune, like Mau’Dub, whose very name kills, that some of the shite that is modern music can numb the soul like a cobra’s anasthesing vennom as the muscle relaxant causes paralysis and death. This happy death. Akin to being murdered by relentless exposure to an unlicensed compilation comprising the best of The VengaBoys dance remixes. After the Klaxons, the venue darkens and erupts to the competent power of Bloc Party. Unlike their heroes, Bloc Party are never going to find people literally tearing off chunks of their soul in connection with the songs, nor make the communal emotional bonding of truly great art, but they at the very least, try. The band are tight and fluid, and certainly far beyond many of their lowly contemporaries.
Then again, as we know, Number 2 is often better than Number 1. Who remembers what was Number 1, when “Design For Life” and “Trash” and “Rocks” were at Number 2? Who knows that, for example, most Smiths singles peaked around Number 26? Who remembers the songs that were higher in that chart now? Probably only the people who made, and Stock-Aitken-Waterman’s Accountants.
The Kaiser Chiefs meanwhile, interrupt Album #3 to present their one-off (and overrunning) set that comprises of nothing more than their Greatest Hits and New Songs You Ain’t Never Heard Before. It’s fairly obvious that they are deeply in thrall to their heroes, that they grew up in the golden age of British Indie Heroes, and try - as we all do - to replicate their pasts and make it their own. Aside from a lyrically stunted singer (what exactly does “Rudy”, mean? Even Morrissey’s worst b-side is miles beyond the Kaisers best lyrical effort), the band whip up a musical storm of committed meaning. Then again, as Ian Curtis said, if words were enough, we wouldn’t need music. But - as the Kaisers shortcomings prove - good music does not cancel out meaningless lyrics, and betray instead the intellectual dearth at the heart of the group. But that’s not really the point. To some, the Kaisers are Indie Party Soundtrack yeah! Take your ironic A-Team T-Shirt (The A-Team was shit, we all knew that Ghostbusters was the gang we wanted to be in growing up) and stuff it up the hole in your culture. Whilst the Kaisers put on a competent, compelling show and their front man is - though not quite Howlin' Pelle Almqvist- certainly an endlessly watchable focal point, this music, with its lack of lyrical and intellectual aspiration, is a mere shadow of what could have been : nothing more than the music at the background of your Indie Jumping Around Session, or perhaps what a 1976 show by Lynrd Skynryd might have been like.
The Manics though are so much more. Even now, 16 years into their life, having had their peaks and their troughs, having fallen in and out and in back into popular favour, the band are still one of the most compelling, cleansing live bands the world has ever seen. To me, a Manics show is like an exorcism : an opportunity to clean the soul, to let the demons out, to touch and connect with the often just-out-of-reach beauty of the world beneath our feet. From the opening appearance by a full marching band, to the final, hollow drums and feedback ring of “A Design For Life”, the Manics present a glorious hour long summary of exactly why they are one of the best bands in the world. There’s minor quibbles : they play the turgid arena-filling “You Stole The Sun” instead of say, “La Tristesse Durera”, but that’s about it. The set is made of hit singles (including a one-off performance of Rhianna’s daft “Umbrella”), aided by guest guitarists and Cerys Matthews on co-vocals. Though this is, to be blunt, a mere interruption. They play such modern hymns as the spine-chilling “Motorcycle Emptiness” and the crushing recognition of “Faster” : it is truly a glorious sight to see a 200 foot banner of lyrics like “ I’ve been too honest with myself //I should have lied like everyone else // if you stand up, like a nail, you will be knocked down” projected to 20,000 people. This kind of exposure was what their long lost Richey Edwards wanted : not to dwell in obscurity, but to bring art and poetry and meaning back to the masses. These words are the thoughts that existed only in our minds, hardly daring to even think them, writ large across the souls and consciousness of 20,000 taxpaying worker drones. This the music that saves lives, the songs that stay ingrained into the consciousness like a tattoo or a muscle memory, an instinct, the comfort that comes from the songs that make clear that even though each of us is alone, that We, We Are Not Alone in this. We are not the lone voice in the wilderness : these songs are our companions, the familiar voices that talks back and gives comfort in our hours of need.
Goddamn. The Manics are, as they always have been, a band that ascribed a meaning to this essentially random existence - as is human nature to recognise familiar shapes and patterns and meaning in the essential nothingness : a musical Rosarch Ink Blot, if you like. These songs and these words kept me alive and made me feel like life was something worth living. And that’s all the best art can even hope and aspire to achieving.
In the meantime, sweaty, half naked drunk males bounce up and down and jump and scream and throw lager at people. And they see nothing of the beauty of which I speak.
 Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2! |
