Tag Archive: REM


Let us imagine the end of the world as we know it

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Gender, Music — Leave a comment
August 22, 2019

EARTH ABIDES by George R.Stewart (1949)

earthIsherwood Williams (Ish) is not much of mixer which is just as well because most of humanity has just been wiped out by a deadly virus.

You might imagine this means the horror of piles of corpses lying everywhere but the dead bodies have either all been buried or we assume that all the victims gathered together in medical centers to tidily expire en-masse.

When we meet Ish, he is laid up in his remote mountain cabin after a snake bite. This poison seems to be the reason he is immune to the pandemic.

When he recovers he finds that civilization as he knows is has disappeared.  Being a pragmatic and practically-minded kind of guy he resolves to cope with the great disaster methodically and logically. He gets a truck, food supplies, weapons and a dog. His trusty hammer becomes both a life saver and a symbol of his enduring strength. Continue reading →

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WHEN SHOULD ROCK BANDS QUIT?

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July 11, 2012

Remember them this way – Roxy Music on the gatefold sleeve to For Your Pleasure.

Rock bands are like TV sit-coms, they usually go on for too long and become tired or formularic.

Roxy Music are a prime example.

In a review of the 10 cd box set of the band’s complete studio recordings in this month’s Wire magazine, Mark Fisher sagely notes that  “if they had stopped after the first two albums, their career would have been immaculate”.

Their self titled debut and For Your Pleasure were and are amazing records which they never bettered in their post-Eno years.

I got to thinking which other long running bands would have benefited from quitting while they were ahead.

For instance, REM should have called it a day after Automatic For The People and wouldn’t it have been better if the Stones had parted company after Exile On Main Street or if The Who had ended on a genuine high with Quadrophenia.

Did punk bands like The Ramones, The Damned and Gang Of Four really need to make any more records after their trailblazing debuts?

I’m sure you can think of your own examples.

There is of course another category of bands such as The Cranberries and Coldplay that ought to have been strangled at birth, but that’s another story!

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THESE ARE ALL PROTEST SONGS

Filed under: Books, Music, Politics — Leave a comment
September 9, 2011

33 Revolutions Per Minute – A History of Protest Songs by Dorian Lynskey (Faber and Faber, 2010)

This is an ambitious, well researched and highly informative historical study of a strand of popular music that seems to be largely on the wane.

Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer artists willing to align themselves to political causes or identify themselves as protest singers.

There are notable exceptions like Billy Bragg or Steve Earle but there aren’t too many under 30 who take rebellion beyond the predictable statements of teenage angst or broad criticisms towards some vaguely defined authority.

Even on her magnificent anti-war album Let England Shake, PJ Harvey is careful to present her sentiments in emotional rather than political terms.  Intelligent artists like Polly J are all too aware of the risk of being seen to be lecturing listeners; as Lynskey correctly observes  “the biggest problem with protest songs is that they engender smugness”. Continue reading →

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