Monday, October 16, 2006

Help the Aged

I hate to say it but the Observer Music Monthly for October is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm hating myself 'cos the good man himself, Jarvis Cocker, is the guest editor and apart from those pieces he pens himself - I especially liked his recollection of Pulp's first Peel session - in the main, the bulk of the issue is made up of stodgy articles that he appears to have commissioned from his old musical mates.

It's all well saying in his editor's letter that music journalists will never be able to capture the real essence of what makes a musician and their music, but it looks like most musicians shouldn't be let near a laptop unless its to send out random friend requests for their band's page on MySpace.

However, I did like this wee snippet from a Round Table discussion which is featured in the issue, and involved Jarvis having a chin wag with some of his mates:

Paul Morley: "I do think it's fascinating that 25-30 years after these pieces of music had a meaning to people who felt so passionate about what they stood for, they're being used to sell something. I think that's what you mean when you say music is everywhere now. Twenty-five years ago, when we were beginning our little lives in this world, music was oddly marginal and, oddly, it meant something, and now it has become a commodity. People of a certain age find it very bewildering. All those things we thought were important ... they've been co-opted by the capitalist world to give what it has to sell the illusion of hipness and cool, so that the whole world feels as if they're in on the revolution and that they're hip and they're cool. But the meaning of it has been sucked dry."

Fuck, you know what I'm going to say: Paul Morley is a smug twat Why was I so rash in using "Turning Rebellion Into Money" as the title for post on the blog on those previous 23 occasions? Missed opportunity.

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