History may remember Live Aid as the day rock showed its conscience and did a good thing.
But promoter Harvey Goldsmith, one of the masterminds of that 1985 famine-alleviating mega-gig, says this week that Live Aid was also the moment the rot set in for music.
The mass media latched on to pop in a way it had not done before, a celebrity culture was hatched and music fans were turned into voyeurs, more concerned with the shoes the singer is wearing than the music.
That got me thinking. It was just a few months after Live Aid that I began writing about music for this newspaper. For 25 years now, I have penned a weekly album review column – a brain-wilting 4,000 albums or so, and still counting. Have I been chronicling an art form in decline?
Goldsmith is right that this past quarter-century has seen pop became more visual, more part of the cultural mainstream. Live Aid may have played some small part in that, but MTV surely did more to foster the idea that only pretty people should be allowed to make music.
But another reason pop and rock moved to the centre of the media's gaze must be that people weaned on pop in the 1960s began reaching positions of power in the media in the 1980s. Pop was the soundtrack of their lives and they rightly assumed the rest of us were fascinated with it too.
Has pop been spoiled by our obsession with the visual? In some ways, yes. I still maintain that Madonna is an ordinary talent bolstered by steely self-belief and a lot of dressing up...or “reinvention” as we are obliged to refer to it.
Lady Gaga is, let's face it, more of the Madonna-ish same, but with a meat dress upping the ante on Madge's conical bra and other blah-blah reinventions.
Would Beyonce really be the force she is had she not been so enticingly sold to us through the video for Crazy In Love? And as for Kylie's gold hot pants....
But image and pop are almost a sideshow. There is a larger question about whether rock and pop has run out of ideas. DJ and world music devotee Andy Kershaw recently told me his theory that a good 25 years ago, the “possibilities of what could be done with four or five white blokes with guitar, bass, drums and possibly keyboards had been exhausted by and large”.
There are exceptions to that rule, Bury's Elbow for one. But other lately-departed local heroes of rock Oasis proved Kershaw's case perfectly. At the same time they were the biggest commercial force in British music, the Gallaghers gloried in their lack of originality, wearing their influences - Beatles, Slade, T-Rex – so obviously it became a joke. Delve back another generation in Manchester music, to the Stone Roses, and when Ian Brown declared himself the “resurrection”, what the band was resurrecting was something not unlike what the Byrds had been doing 20 years previously.
I am now left cold by the vast majority of guitar pop. I hear young men (and it is still generally men) 'discovering' the same chord patterns already played to death by a dozen previous generations of Next Big Thing. Or I hear self-important old windbags like U2 delivering albums of so-what rock as if they are the Sermon on the Mount.
Yes the mainstream of rock and pop – the stuff whose creators makes it into the gossip columns – is pretty dull.
But there has always been interesting stuff happening at the edges of that mainstream. Listen, for instance, to the song Trellick Tower by Emmy The Great, or to PJ Harvey's Mercury prize-winning album and you know that truly great contemporary music is still being made. It's just not being made by those pouting for the paparazzi, sharing their diet regime with OK! magazine or selling you an exercise DVD or fashion range alongside their latest CD.
Wednesday whinge
Yet again, we are told we must be nice to the rich lest they take their wealth-creating talents elsewhere.
A group of leading economists has warned that the 50 per cent tax rate on earnings over £150,000 is doing lasting damage to the economy. It does not even swell the nation's coffers, as the rich simply employ accountants to find ways of avoiding it.
Hats off, then, to former Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose, who happily pays the 50p rate and says the rich should be willing to help UK PLC.
If only we could hear similar loyalty from others. Instead we hear constantly how they will emigrate to nations with lower tax. What kind of person leaves their home country for the sake of 10p in the pound on earnings above £150,000? A very greedy, disloyal, dare I say unpatriotic person, that's who.
Benefit changes, the hike in VAT and inflation have taken a huge bite out of the standard of living of middle and low-earners. And yet economists try to make us feel there is something unfair about expecting the rich to pay a little more.
I'll tell you what is unfair. Since 2002, the executive pay bill for FTSE350 companies has risen seven fold, while pay for the average worker has increased by only 27 per cent. Execs have routinely incentivised themselves to produce success, while the shop floor have been punished for the company's failures.
The government should be wary of heeding the calls to abandon that top rate of tax. It would be like the crew of the Titanic fussing to provide the first class passengers with comfy seats in the lifeboats, while leaving the rest of us to swim for it.
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For me music has only lost it's importance since the turn of the century, which coincided with the MP3/iPod generation taking off.
The joy of listening to full albums on Records/CD's/Tapes was replaced by click, click, click, shuffle, shuffle - giving songs a 2 second hearing and then click again when you dont like the first couple of notes.
The first half was boring. Time you moved over and let a kid review the albums old timer.
The second bit was the usual MEN socialist diatribe - written like a true 40% tax payer.
I remember buying albums, say between 1979 and 1982 (the years I discovered music). Back then I would listen to every track, and almost every track on that album was worthy of the money I paid for the LP. Today, I can honestly say I rarely buy CD albums. One or two excellent or good tracks, the rest in my humble opinion is just thrown together to 'bulk out' the rest of the CD. And I hate to say it, but thank god for the likes of iTunes, so I can sample whole albums before buying individual songs. Its all about the music, not the packaging.
A real breath of fresh air in both these comments. A mainstream pop industry stunted by marketing gurus has led to the dumbing down of music to the extent that anything innovative is instantly crushed. Greedy execs unable to listen to anything but the chiming of their own till bells are killing industry. Well done Paul.
Good grown-up writing Paul. Bang on the money.
I wonder if pop will reach it zenith soon. Each decade since the thirties would define an era in music bands and singers. Now with the advent of downloads and computer generated music, is this a big brother style of controlling everybody was avoiding.
As for the bash the bankers. There is no point trying retrieve the money because there is none. Hence the credit bubble that no government like Blair/Brown regime never put in any measures to control. Any third grade idiot would have sussed where is the money coming from during the bubble.
There is only one thing wrong with pop. People take it too serious,and a lot of very good music has been squeezed out.
I grew up during the war. I listened to the radio,and a stack of records my father who was in the army had left on an old wind up gramaphone. For a working man there was Finlandia by Sibelius, Moorside suite a brass band test piece. Trois and his Mandoliers,marches and loads more. As I grew up I went to hear the Halle, Stan Kenton at Belle Vue. Big bands like Joe Loss, Cyril Stapleton,Johnny DankworthThe Squadronnaires, Ted Heath,On the Isle of Man. Jazz. We especially liked modern jazz at the Hippodrome on a Sunday night,although Manchester was a trad stronghold. I remember watching Rock Around the Clock at the Gaetey Listening to Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino.... Then it went wrong. But that is my opinion.Everyone remembers the music of the era they grew up in. I remember Dance band days on Radio 2 playing ghastly dance music from the 30s,but it was not ghastly to those who grew up then,it was there life- And death
Our eras had fabulous choice,today's is restricted. and too much like brainwashing. My nephew played in a group that came second to Shawaddy wady. They went on my nephews folded . He has had terrible trouble with his ears.He was off work for 12 months unable to stand up, and part of one ear has disappeared and he is deaf in it. Modern music is just a noise.
'I am now left cold by the vast majority of guitar pop. I hear young men (and it is still generally men) 'discovering' the same chord patterns already played to death by a dozen previous generations'
I think you miss the whole point of pop music. It is created anew all the time by current teenagers who have aren't bothered that it might have been done before by people who are old enough to be their big brother.
What does it matter to a current 18yr old if their favourite band is rehashing the sounds of 1990? That was 3 years before they were born and might as well be as long ago as Queen Victoria as far as they are concerned.
I've no real interest in the music today. I gave up in the 1990's. I go no further than Radio 2 in the car, and the way things are going I may end up on Radio 3.
As the late great George Harrison said some time back "If I watch Top of the Pops these days, I feel like going out and killing someone".
Define the term music first, In my own opinion, I don't even consider rapp as music, I find it an insult to musicians to be placed in the same category as that gangster style chanting. Then there is so called R & B, in my day, that stood for Rhythm and Blues, i.e. Stones and small faces etc, this modern stuff is anything but ... Not everyone is going to like the same music of course
What was it Plato said, music reflects society and its' changes.
No surprise then that it has become plastic and soul less.
Maybe it was a foregone conclusion, sci fi for example predicted a vacuous loveless future for decades, and like you say, those chords have been done to death anyway. Often people will deride you if you say music's no good anymore, as if they would sound like a pensioner, I personally think they're in denial, and who said it couldn't get better in the future? But I think we all know it's peaked.
Pop Music does define its generation. It has become a soul destroying wasteland of bling and fashion (spit) and talentless x factor kareoke stars. But it is a generational thing and i may be missing the point.
I have to say that the stone roses were an origional 4 piece rock/ pop band though. Reni was the inspiration behind their sound which fused 60's psychadelic melody to the acid house scene that was pushing boundries at the time. And also, Rap music/ hip hop music, at its best, is as important a form of music/ expression/ art as any style that has been before. Its has just been weighted down by the absolute dross that has filled up the charts for the past decade.
Why pick on Live Aid? Why not, as the song says, when Buddy Holly died? Why not when Jedward were allowed into a studio? Pop, and rock, are alive and well. There's plenty of bands out there making great music for all tastes. It's also easier for musicians to get their music out to people via the internet, rather than waiting to be noticed by a record company talent scout.
I wish MP3 players had been invented years ago, I still remember using a Sony Walkman & having to fill my pockets with cassette tapes (younger readers - ask your dad what a cassette tape is!)
I tend to just listen to music I like, works for me
the rot set in when acts were forced to mime on TV in the late 60s, and in particular the 70s/80s.
I'm getting really bored of commentators who seem to think that the 50p tax rate is simply an irritation for a bunch of eton educated toffs who feel the plebs should be paying the taxes (and not them). The point is foreign businesses (and individuals) are being put off from operating here because of the tax. Bringing patriotism into it is laughable. If it can be demonstrated that removing the 50p band will generate more investment and improve the overall tax yield then whats your problem?
Must admit that it is strange that Bob Geldof is worth about 40 million pounds on the back of one half decent record--I Don't Like Mondays. Where did he get his money from?