I am a massive music fan and I will be blogging about this relentlessly for a while. I have been looking to find a starting point for my blogging on music (I will explain more about this as my blogs get more boring and more trivia based) but I had an epiphany on Saturday night and thus the lecture begins!
Billy Joel should be the new Shakespeare
Billy Joel, yesterday
So, when I was growing up with parents that were significantly older than the other children's in my school I was much like the teenagers in Footloose. Music was the demon. Unless you were Frank Ifield or George Shearing then you were not permitted on the rotating needley thingy at the top of our stereo system. I was brought up on the kind of mush that would make the meek want to become a beserker and cause havoc on the placid streets outside a nunnery.
My mother, God rest her soul, would go down on a Friday and purchase a single for my delectation. This would usually be something like "There's no-one quite like Grandma" by the St Winifred's Choir or "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine. When I came home from school, fresh from the toil of a week of learning I would throw off my satchel (seriously, and this was 1982 guys) and just want to chill. I would be confronted by this new rotating plastic demon that I would have to listen to and sit with a gooky smile on my face saying things like "aw, this is lovely" to. But it was always coincidental that we would have visitors when I got home from school. It felt like an early example of RADA for me. I would have to 'perform' in front of a crowd. **sigh**
So in 1985 I begged Santa to give me a ghetto blaster as my main present. It was a beauty, it had two tape decks and could pick up FM and not just LW and MW! My most cherished possession! I started listening to Radio York because on a Sunday lunchtime Chrissy Glazebrook (also sadly no longer with us) would play music that you wouldn't normally hear on her request show. I was gathering an arsenal of music that would blow my mind. However, I would have to wait for Santa to appear the following year to bring me a Walkman (or the Samsung equivalent) so I could go mobile with this new found love of my life.
In the front room my parents spent a ridiculous amount of money on a stacking stereo system. Atop was a shiny record player. This was just the most glorious thing I had ever seen. I went into the town library and saw they had a collection of records that you could borrow for a week for a small charge and this meant that I could expand my collection through illegally downloading music from vinyl to tape to listen to on my ghetto blaster in my bedroom.
I went from Frank Ifield to Paul McCartney through The Police through Floyd through P.I.L. through the greatest find .... Billy Joel. This man was a genius. He used to be a boxer and now he had discovered the piano and lyrics.
Through this magical system with vinyl to tape and from that tape to tape I was able to spread the gospel according to Billy to all my friends in school. The guy spoke to us all. He made us laugh, cry and occasionally balk at his lyrics.
His words and songs were never aggressive. He was a bit controversial with his songs about Vietnam and about the steel towns shutting down (but we didn't really understand those and usually fast-forwarded through them ones to be honest). He shone a light on a generation.
**At this point I will dip back to the beginning of this blog. On Saturday night we got the dreaded karaoke machine out and the Billy Joel disk came out. I was so impressed that my son got up and knew all the lyrics to all the songs that came on ... bear with me - the punchline to this blog will be revealed soon, but this is one of the important parts of it**
I moved on through my musical life lapping up everything that was on offer. Admittedly, I'm a bit lax nowadays with the modern music (which I promised my younger self that I never would) but I think you have to admit that certain genres do pass you by. I have a collection of music on my iTunes library that goes from Opera to Thrash metal. I think I'm pretty open minded - but some of this new stuff leaves me behind.
When I look back on the halcyon days of delivering the papers with Billy Joel "saying goodbye to Hollywood" and "telling her about it" I do it with a warm glow inside. It was an innocent time. I know that there were those crazy punk types wishing the monarchy were departed or that nuclear holocaust were upon us, but that wasn't for us youngsters - I wished that more of my school chums embraced the more innocent music before they left school.
This is my point! However trite listening to someone whistling and yodeling on a song is classed as it's pure innocence. That in my thoughts is what music should be about. Yes, there are songs that put a point across and I applaud these guys for doing it. Take your Billy Braggs, Chumbawambas (before they sold out) and Levellers (likewise). They are all trying to get a statement across. This should be applauded (Morrissey is an exception - he is a cock-end). But come on guys. Let's embrace The Brotherhood of Man and Goombay Dance Band. They are all making music, albeit cheesy, to make us smile and bring us together.
Nowadays, the young are brought up with music that glorify violence. The people who are writing, singing and promoting this stuff are bringing the world in to chaos and disorder. It seems that singing a song that is telling you to 'pop a cap in yo bitches ass' is acceptable. IT IS NOT! Let's just take a step back and as Shakespeare said "If music be the food of love, play on". Nowadays (disregarding the marketed mass manufactured crap that comes out of Cowell's ass) it seems that unless you are singing or creating music to shock and infuriate then it isn't mainstream. Well I for one am glad that I listen to independent radio to hear the songs that those on the front line don't hear. I would rather be in a "Place Called You" than have "99 problems" (cliche I know, but it's late and I'm not down with the 'kids').
Thus ends tonight's lecture. I will be pawing over the music world again and again in a vain attempt to get me off the world of marketing and advertising (grr) as it is something I'm rather passionate about (but don't tell the missus ... please)
