|
keith a wrote: Kid Calamity wrote: Mine's gatefold, of course... and always jumped in the intro of 'Venus Loon'.
Gotta stick a link up to that sublime track, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTPMtj4buTY
Who were those school friends who slagged Bolan off by saying "All his songs sound the same."
Yeah, there were lots of them weren't there? Mind you, I guess it was the age when, to quote the cliche, every album had to have the obligatory reggae number. I don't blame The Beatles for much but I do blame them for everyone thinking that their albums had to be diverse in material. I guess punk addressed that!
Going off on a tangent I remember Lloyd Cole saying he blamed Bowie for trying to make each album sound different to the previous one and that he'd realised that whilst it worked for Bowie it didn't necessarily work for him and he wasn't gonna worry about that anymore. Or summat like that anyway!!
I was thinking about that when John Harris was slagging off Aerial on the BBC4 Kate Bush documentary for not having kept up with the times musically speaking.
Do popular music artists have an obligation to be current? Is not being current some kind of creative thought crime? I don't think I needed to hear a Kate 'n' Burial or Kate 'n' Goldie or Kate 'n' FSOL or Kate 'n' Thom or Kate 'n' Jason collaboration to convince myself that she was still important having taken a decade plus off to bring up her kid. Surely being true to yourself is the thing.
On the other hand Bowie used to do a lot of cherry-picking bits pieces from current trends (though thankfully not the Mod revival) just before they were about to take off. He is also no stranger to bolting on whatever current production techniques or studio musicians are ascendant. It worked for him a lot of the time because that flitting from to thing to thing is part of his make-up (literally) but for most people I think it looks kind of crass. I remember wading through a Golden Earring box set that a friend lent me and they seemed to jump styles every couple of years like some kind of cabaret act of show band.
|
