MSN Music Blog: Dancing About Architecture

You only have to read the news to know there's an excess of anger in the world. What could possibly move someone to sufficient levels of rage to stab a complete stranger to death in broad daylight on Oxford Street?

Then again, maybe we're barking up the wrong tree by talking about anger. Maybe anger has nothing to do with it. Maybe the root of this modern phenomenon is something more akin to despair.

If you have no sense of self-worth, no respect for yourself, your environment, or any other human being, nothing to aspire to or work for, what does it leave? Nothing but the cheapest of thrills including, sadly, abusing other people for no reason other than you can get away with it.

Anyway, what prompted that little foray into moral philosophy? Oh yes, of course: I've been reading the comments on my blog again.

The worst band names battle, the introduction to which contained a comment about The Beatles not actually being that brilliant a moniker, prompted one user to write:

"that guy who did that voting for those band things, well that guy is a c**t, he says the beatles was a sh*t name I don't really think it was a sh*t I would like you to come up with a band and be bigger than Jesus. No your not going to do that so shut the f**k up you wanker. C**t!"

Thanks, as ever, for your feedback.

The blog entry about music snobbery got quite a debate going. In answer to the person who took the trouble to write, "What kind of anal f**kwit writes this stuff??????????????". Well, me, clearly. Come on, you only need to look at the top of the page.

Somebody with fewer emotional problems asked:

"What do you mean when you said that Alphabeat will outgrow their snobbery? I don't get what you mean!"

Apologies if that wasn't clear. I meant my two colleagues might one day outgrow their snobbery, not the band.

An interesting contribution to the debate came in the form of the following:

"I agree.  Each to his own.  However there are variations of quality not governed by genre.  Led Zeppelin was a better rock band then the Jackson five was a pop band.  It's all a question of aligning genre quality scales.  Led Zeppelin gets a 10 in terms of rock, and the jackson five probably gets about an eight in terms of pop.  Thats how you compare music, and im a snob when it comes to anything below and eight or a nine.  I can tolerate good quality from other genres even if i don't like the genre.  For example i generally dislike rap, but i like eminem because he gets a 9 or 10 rating."

On first reading this is an attractive way of looking at the problem. It enables you to divorce personal preference from the objective question of quality but... well, you're pretty much back to square one because how do you measure music objectively? It's like dancing about architecture, as someone once said.

In the end, there was no contest as to the best suggestion for how to look at the issue. I thought this was great:

"Music is like food - of course everyone has their favourites but, whether you're a health food freak or a junk addict, it's good to get a balanced diet! Sometimes I feel like snarfing a whole bag of sweets (a la Alphabeat's Fascination - mmm, sugary!) and sometimes I feel like really tucking into a good, filling, square meal (for me, the Mars Volta's Francis the Mute, Perhaps? Mmm satisfying!) and other times I feel like I need to detox and little and get some of the healthy stuff that I know my body will always appreciate (maybe a little Vivaldi - mmm wholesome!)"

I'm loving the culinary analogy but the real nail on head moment came with this:

"It's all good stuff, it just depends on what kinds of needs / cravings you have at the time.  I almost feel like the question of what constitutes 'good' music is a bit redundant.  Surely the question should be not so much "is the music good" but "WHAT is the music good FOR"?"

Sir or Madam, I kneel before your wisdom.

In fact, she's just the beginning. What am I talking about? Live sessions on MSN Music, that's what.

OK, let me back up and I'll explain. I've been trying for ages to persuade my superiors to let us record live sessions with up-and-coming artists.

This is a lot easier said than done for a number of reasons, not least the money involved. Anyway, I'll spare you the boring business politics stuff and cut to the chase: two days ago we recorded what I hope will be the first of many with my favourite new female singer, Beth Rowley.

I first saw Beth live towards the end of last year at an industry showcase for new artists. The fact that she had to follow Duffy and was still, to my mind at least, the highlight of the evening, says it all.

Soon after I got an advance copy of her debut album, Little Dreamer (it's finally out on May 19th), and fell in love with it. I've waxed lyrical about it in a previous blog post so, keeping it very brief this time, I'll just say that it's the best blues/gospel/soul/old-school R&B album ever recorded by a Bristolian girl who was born in Peru.

Anyway, all being well, we'll have the session live on the site very shortly, so you'll be able to see for yourself that my gushing isn't entirely down to thinking she's just about the cutest darn thing in the whole world. 

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I mentioned in a previous post that I was quite the music fascist in my younger days. Basically, I liked one type of music made during one specific era and everything else was, without question or exception, rubbish.

There was no 'live and let live' about it, no allowance for subjectivity; if your taste fell outside my strict boundaries, you were just plain wrong.

The most heinous of all crimes to someone of this opinion is 'manufactured' pop. Anything too catchy, too commercial (a favourite insult word, that), too accessible is worthless. In fact, it's worse than that, it's positively insulting to 'real' music made by 'real' musicians.

This sort of thinking isn't unusual and it's not restricted to younger music fans. Walk up to the fiftysomething AC/DC fan of your choice and tell them you think the first three Spice Girls singles are absolute corkers (they are!) and, to quote Alan Partridge, you'll be picking up your teeth with a broken arm.

I gradually shed this snobbery over the years and can now say without a flicker of embarrassment that ABC by the Jackson Five is, in its own way, the equal of anything recorded by, say, The Beatles or Led Zeppelin.

Anyway, this is all to set the scene of an interesting and unexpected little bit of unpleasantness I found myself involved in at the end of last week.

We were recording the latest MSN Entertainment podcast and I had brought along a tune called Fascination by my new favourite thing, a Danish pop group called Alphabeat, to discuss on mic with my colleagues.

Now I didn't expect movies editor Ed (who is a devoted metal guitarist in his spare time) to think it was the best thing he'd ever heard but I was a little shocked by the unbridled contempt it managed to inspire in him and the two other guys in the room.

Much of what was said was edited out but suffice to say that I only made matters worse by suggesting they might outgrow their snobbery one day (they're all in the early twenties).

On reflection it was a patronising thing to say and was only ever going to further inflame the situation but I was trying to make a serious point. I think I'd have felt the same as them 10 years ago, you see.

Anyway, what do you reckon? Have your tastes broadened over the years? Has your attitude to what constitutes good music mellowed? It would be interesting to get another view.

Not a huge amount of feedback to report on last month but the Greatest Guitarist Ever battle provoked a fair bit of debate. It was always going to really, wasn't it?

I got a number of outraged 'where is so-and-so?' emails, sometimes about guitarists who are actually in there.

This one was interesting though:

So where is Django Reinhardt?.....can anyone hold a candle to his technique? Manouche (gipsy) jazz music is becoming rediscovered, by the masses, Put the Django up, you may find an unplugged following,  who judge the 'musician and not  the 'pop package'

Well, yes, being a bedroom guitarist myself (not a euphemism), I do know about Django but I wasn't sure how many of our users would. I didn't want to be too obscure and muso about it.

Speaking of which, what does Dimebag Darrell mean to you? Ed, our movies editor, is a bit of an axe god on the quiet. He's actually studying for a Diploma In Popular Music Performance (Rock School, basically) and was naturally keen to contribute lots of his favourite players for the battle.

I frequently had to reject his suggestions on grounds of obscurity but he would not budge on Dimebag Darrell. He was so insistent that I included him just so we wouldn't fall out. I have lost all sense of perspective on this now and have no idea how well known Dimebag is to the general public, so I'd be grateful if you'd care to drop me a mail and let me know.

What else? Oh yes, Bonnie Tyler was incorrectly listed as Bonnie Taylor in a piece about British women who have topped the American charts. More worryingly, the photo originally accompanying it was of a lookalike from the Romanian version of Stars In Their Eyes. The illegal immigrant responsible has been forcibly repatriated.

The night before last I finally got around to seeing a band I've loved for 18 years - The Black Crowes. Back when I first heard them, I had very definite ideas about music, far more so than I do now. In fact, if the truth be told, I only had the one idea and that was that no music of any merit was recorded after 1975. I liked the Stones, The Faces, Hendrix, The Doors, Zeppelin, and that was about it. Everything else, particularly anything contemporary, was beneath my adolescent contempt.

The Black Crowes were the first band to make me reconsider my cultural absolutism and they did so by clearly thinking the same way I did.

When I first heard  their cover of Otis Redding's Hard To Handle and, shortly afterwards, their debut album Shake Your Moneymaker, I knew these guys were kindred spirits.

It was slap bang in the middle of grunge but this lot were completely oblivious. To borrow one of Keith Richards' favourite sayings, they were as much about the roll as the rock. They had the funk, the boogie, the snake-hipped, loose-limbed, androgynous white boy soul of my favourite bands, and in Chris Robinson they had the best front man since Rod Stewart went crap (which was 1975, incidentally).

Like me, they were essentially in denial that it wasn't still 1972 but I didn't care about that. They made me feel like I wasn't alone and that sort of thing is inordinately important when you are 15.

My blinkered attitude to music receded in tandem with my hairline and it's been a very long time since I thought like that but it was still great fun to enter Black Crowes World the other night, a place where long hair and beards are virtually compulsory for men (well, those lucky enough to be able to grow them) and 20 minute guitar jams are met with awestruck appreciation.

I hadn't been able to get a plus one, so I was there on my own. To be honest, I was perfectly happy about that. It was quite a personal thing, you know? Anyway, I arrived fairly late so finding a seat was a bit of a challenge. I eventually found a spare next to a particularly authentically dressed couple who I immediately recognised as Heavy Load Rob and his lady Karen.

Heavy Load is to nightclubs what the Black Crowes are to bands. Their playlist is like an expanded version of my teenage record collection. It's a loving homage to the rock and soul of the late 1960s / early 1970s held on the last Saturday of every month in the basement of a central London pub. If you're a fan of music from that era*, you will love Heavy Load.

Rob and his missus are the loving curators/hosts/DJs and two of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. Chancing upon them in the dark upstairs of Brixton Academy felt like rock and roll serendipity.

(* Rob steadfastly refuses to play music recorded after 1975 at Heavy Load. With the exception of one band. Yep, The Black Crowes)