So social media has been set aflame by the Rolling Stones’ triumphant debut at Glastonbury.
For some it’s a cause of celebration, others a sad indictment of how the ‘British Woodstock’ has become ever more commercialised and the lack of investment in popular music.
How many of today’s, or even yesterday’s, crop of artists will make such an impressive impact in four decades’ time?
Now, I admit I’m a bit of a fuddy-duddy who, with the demise of Top Of The Pops, doesn’t really keep in touch with the modern music scene. Basically, I don’t really ‘dig’ what I hear when I tune into the Top 40 radio show on a Sunday.
There’s no doubting there’s some good music being written and performed, but the fact is that a band of pensioners that is always touring somewhere – so it seems – and coining it in with tickets costing triple figures is headline news.
But then the Stones were headline news in their teens. What is it that sets them apart from other bands? They’re playing the music from their first great years of onslaught on the world’s ears, much of it before I was born. It’s music that endures.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m quite happy to see ‘classic bands’ doing the rounds although there is a point where it shouldn’t happen. Had John Lennon lived, I dread to think that we’d have seen a Beatles MTV reunion concert, then world tour, then new albums as the profiteers raced in.
Sometimes the magic is best left alone.
There have been bands come along that I thought would last the course based on their music, rather than the image-conscious karaoke-type bands churned out by the pop moguls.
I liked Franz Ferdinand immensely when they first came out, and thought The Hooziers might just find themselves an Electric Light Orchestra-style niche. Katie Melua offered something nicely different, a hark back to Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Linda Ronstadt, but what of the other British hopes?
I’ve not really bought into the Adele hype. I’m not doubting her talent and voice, but her intonation makes me cringe.
It might just be me, getting old and hanging onto the great – and not so great – music Britain churned out in the past. It’s possibly interesting that the last few CDs I bought were by Madness, Joan Armatrading, The Selecter and Anthony Phillips, once the founding spirit of Genesis and a fine musician who has never troubled the chart-compilers.
Has karaoke killed the music star? The death of pubs with live entertainment? The Simon Cowell generation? Or the computerisation of music, that has made performances too perfect, with their click tracks and auto tune? Or downloading?
Or is that the real classy musicians are overlooked by a media industry eager for cheap wins? When telly serves up ‘celebrities’ singing karaoke, or no-hopers singing karaoke, and people tune in in their millions?
Is the recession and the price of beer really stopping people going out to enjoy live music, in all its formats, from the 02 stage, to Glasto, to the young originals band at the local pub?
I wonder if there is a band that could rival the Rolling Stones out there today, struggling to get gigs and make that impression that seemed so easy in the 1960s and 1970s, when a glut of great musicians emerged from these shores.
Opportunity knocks? Or opportunities knocked? While bands like the Stones won’t fade away, and The Beatles continue to be top album sellers, what hope do the bands of today and tomorrow really have?
mark a forster 