I'd like to keep this blog going regularly with a little less structure, but I've found down the years that I need a structure and a unifying idea to get my shit together and write. So I've been pretty silent for a couple of months, and I can't see a big surge of activity in the near future unless I pull an idea out of the bag.
Still, I've been enjoying music plenty. It's been a fabulous musical year as far as I'm concerned, on every level, and I've had a lot of real-life musical projects to concern me, whether it's this blog, creating music questions for work or slaving for months over wedding playlists.
Of course, at the start of the year, I did my list of the 1001 Greatest Songs of All Time, and I recently got round to putting all of those songs on one playlist, which I've been listening to a lot. Of course, if I did that list again, it would be a bit different, but I still don't think I'm missing all that much or that there's all that many (ok, maybe a few) which are wildly out of place.
Still, of course, Pop Music bursts beyond its pantheon all the time. I've read some really interesting things about songs as social history recently, including a book by Stuart Maconie on 50 Songs which tell the story of Britain, and then an interview by Greil Marcus publicising his own book, The History of Rock'n'Roll in 10 Songs. I'll get round to reading the actual book soon, I hope, but he has interesting things to say in the interview. Sure, my idea of a "1001 Songs" is reductive, hall-of-famy silliness, but still, I like to test myself and it's a great list, so I'm cool with it.
Anyway, here's another great thing about 2014 in music, notwithstanding the large number of really very enjoyable albums I've listened to. The people I like are crossing media and with great success. Whether it's King Creosote's soundtrack to the social documentary 'From Scotland with Love', James Yorkston writing an acclaimed touring diary, Stuart Murdoch directing his own reasonably well-liked (haven't seen it yet) musical movie 'God Help the Girl', Joanna Newsom narrating and appearing in the next Paul Thomas Anderson film, Gruff Rhys' extravaganza of all things 'American Interior' or Nick Cave helping conceive and starring in his own quasi-documentary '20000 Days on Earth', these are people with shelf life and it's gratifying.
We went to see Gruff Rhys a couple of weeks ago - the banter and the American Interior slideshow, over two hours of complete entertainment.... well, you know what I think about the chasm between the level of fame and acclaim he deserves and what he has. All you really need to know is that the songs sound great, the voice sounds great, and Ashford rose to him!
Saw the Cave film on Saturday - very funny, very clever, great anecdotes about Nina Simone, interesting stuff about his writing process and particularly about the transformative nature of performance, I'd really like to see it again actually.
I love pop music so much, I love it more and more the older I get, I know more and more I'm not going to "mature" to classical musical, it's the other way round, pop music has truly "matured" to cultural equivalence, indeed supremacy, you can't beat it so you'd better to join it. The more successful collaborations there are, the more great books/TV shows/films there are by and about pop musicians, the happier I'll be.
Is that a theme for a list right there? Pop songs that have transcended their roots as ephemereal dance-floor fillers to become cultural touchstones.
ReplyDeleteI've got a lot of jazz on my ipod. Despite Jazz's origins as the pop music of its day (especially the 1920/30s stuff which is a fair chunk of what I actually like), it's amazing how much the vibe clashes with the pop/rock numbers when it's on shuffle. This comment seemed like a place to share that observation. Sorry, other reader(s).
Yes, it's probably something I'll look at doing, though it has been done well already, so it would just be an alternative list rather than a new idea ... Seven Nation Army ... there's one
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