MSN Music Blog: Dancing About Architecture

Guess who’s been reading the tabloids again? According to a report in today’s Sun, the UK’s most famous music festival could be cancelled this summer if the swine flu crisis reaches pandemic proportions.

I hope I don’t live (or die) to regret saying this but I reckon there’s about as much chance of that happening as, well, pigs flying.

Remember bird flu? Killer bees from the continent? Carcinogenic asylum seekers? (OK, I made that last one up).

I’m no conspiracy theorist but when I read stuff like this it’s difficult to ignore the politics of fear theory – ie. the idea that the media colludes (whether knowingly or not) with darker forces who’d rather keep us all scared, compliant, and suggestible.

When the story broke all of two weeks ago, it was all over the news. Fair enough. But the very fact that it’s already comfortably behind Gordon Brown’s gurning on YouTube, the Champions League, and that annoying kid who got the ‘world’s best job’ should tell you everything you need to know.

If you ask me, this Glastonbury story is just another way of spinning it out a bit longer.

I’m not so naive as to think the situation couldn’t get worse. For all I know I’ll be typing my next blog entry from an isolation unit wearing a surgical mask. But until that happens, I’m not going to start worrying whether Glastonbury will be cancelled or not.

And neither should you.

* Check out the MSN Summer Festival Guide

Today's Sun has a story about how Lily Allen rescued a substandard vocal performance by Atomic Kitten back in 2001.

Apparently the then-popular girl-band were recording a track called On Me 'Ead (written by Lily's dad Keith) for the soundtrack to Brit flick Mike Bassett: England Manager.

The original Atomic Kitten performance wasn't up to scratch (if you'll excuse the feline pun) and they didn't have time to record another given their tight deadlines and the fact one of the band was ill.

So Keith suggested his 14 year-old daughter have a go. According to 'a source' quoted in the Sun's report, "It only took her half a day to nail it. Liz and Jenny are on the finished song but Lily was the third member, with the strongest vocal, patching the whole thing up."

This story sums up the problem some people have with Lily Allen. On one hand she is a genuinely talented singer, on the other, however much she plays it down, she has clearly benefited from her Dad's position.

But you know what? Who cares about the second bit?

Thanks in no small part to Lily Allen, who opened the door for many who followed, this country now boasts an unprecedented number of female pop stars who are the envy of the world.

Not only can Lily, Amy, Adele and the rest sing better than Atomic Kitten, they write their own material and do, say, and wear what they like.

In this context, where Lily's first leg-up into the business came from is irrelevant.

If I'm starting to come up with headlines like that, I should probably stop reading the tabloids.

But you just can't beat them for trashy pop stories such as the news in today's Daily Mirror that Michael Jackson is planning to ride onstage astride an elephant at his London concerts later this year.

Not only that, there's talk of panthers led on gold chains, tropical birds flying about the place, monkeys, and no fewer than 100 Masai warriors.

The last time he attempted anything so grandiose was at the 1996 BRIT Awards when his messianic performance was interrupted by Jarvis Cocker's bum-wiggling antics.

But that was at the height of Cool Britannia when the country was feeling good about itself. Jacko's self-important preaching felt out of place and vaguely obscene.

But as we all know, things are very different now.

While I was thinking about this earlier, something occurred to me that I never thought I would say.

In these dark days of recession, global terrorism, and 24-hour rolling cancer coverage, could it be that a bit of Jacko-inspired lunacy is what we need to cheer us up?

Just a thought.

According to reports in The Sun, X-Factor 2007 winner Leon Jackson has been dropped from his record label following poor sales of his debut album.

It's hardly earth-shattering news, is it?

I interviewed him last year and he was a likeable enough young chap but sorely lacking in charisma. I met Same Difference the week after and they had more star-quality, which tells you all you need to know.

At the risk of stating the obvious, there are loads of people out there with good singing voices. Go to any half-decent karaoke night anywhere in the country and the chances are you'll find at least one punter who could hold their own against Leon.

Conversely, there are plenty of successful recording artists who couldn't touch him in the vocal department. Without putting too fine a point on it, two of them were on the judging panel last year.

It just goes to show that winning a TV talent show is no guarantee of success if you don't have that extra something. That's why it's called the X-Factor.

According to recent reports, the Stone Roses have agreed to reform for 21 dates this summer.

For people of a certain age (eg. me), this is extremely exciting but initially I was a little surprised it was considered sufficiently newsworthy to make page three of today's Daily Mirror (albeit underneath a much bigger spread about Corrie's Jack Duckworth finding love again).

Either Mirror staff were getting all their Manc news out of the way in one go or the Roses were a bigger cultural deal than I thought.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe the Stone Roses belong in the most exulted sphere of British guitar music.

You know, the place where the Beatles and the Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, and a handful of others hang out but Oasis, for all their record sales, have only ever peered longingly into.

What surprised me is that their mooted reunion should excite mainstream media attention when they only released two albums (five years apart), didn't have a number one with either, and have never been a household name.

I am not, as I have been accused recently, equating commercial success with quality. The Smiths, for example, never troubled the charts much. What they did do, however, was leave behind a decent-sized body of work. Few would argue they failed to live up to their potential. 

The Stone Roses, on the other hand, were recently referred to by their own bass player (who now plies his trade with Primal Scream) as the George Best of music for the manner in which they threw it all away after their first sniff of success.

Although few Roses fans will thank me for the comparison, I'm hoping this will turn out like Take That's reunion. How brilliant would it be if, like Take That, they are overwhelmed by public reaction to the tour and are inspired to write new material?

How brilliant if that new material turns out to be as good as if not better than anything they came up with first time around?

You see, the thing with the Stone Roses is that no band has ever left a bigger question mark over what might have been.

The fact that we might be about to find out is why the news deserves to be in ALL the papers.