Tops' Blog

Let’s have a listen to Robyn!

So, in case you hadn’t spotted it, Robyn’s new album leaked all over the interweb today. Rumour has it, it’s the first of three albums for 2010. This is a very good thing. We like Robyn.

So, let’s take a little listen - it’s not very long, so this shouldn’t take long…

Track one is up and running. So far, a lot of things are killing poor Robyn. More importantly, she’s listing each and every one of them. She’d also like you to know that she’d rather you didn’t tell her what to do.

The next one is the single - the one about tech stuff, just for the geeky boys and girls. If you haven’t heard it, here it is:

Oh dear, Robyn’s spotted her ex-BF snogging another girl. Poor love, at least she’s dancing but she seems a little sad, if we’re honest.

So, this next song seems to have about three choruses. No-one’s going to complain about that. It’s about crying as well though. You may think from this that it’s a miserable album but it’s actually very pop and really quite a toe-tapper….

So, now she’s gone all dancehall. Well, dancehall in a Scandinavian stylee. So a really quite blonde and white kind of dancehall. She does occasionally try out a Jamaican accent, though (clue: she’s not very good at it).

Ooh, Royksopp! This is all quite dark because Robyn is bored in whatever town she’s in. Probably Quebec City. The club she’s in sucks, the girls aren’t stylish and the drugs don’t work. You can see why she’s not very happy.

Oh, so now we’ve got the acoustic ballad! It has strings and everything. This is the breakup song. Sob. 

OK, so this last song is in, I’m guessing, Swedish. It sounds like a a folk song and I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it is. Wow, a Swedish folk song. It is neither sad nor dancey but it is kind of cute. However, it won’t feature in many playlists, at a guess.

That’s your lot. Quite short but, as I said, the first of three Robyn albums this year! Yay! I have to listen to it again now…

The Word and other stories

So tonight’s post is an ode to a lost age. It was an age when music mattered more than life itself - kinda - and when those who documented it were like gatekeepers to a secret garden.

At this point you think I must be talking about the 60s or 70s but that was before my time. No, I’m thinking about the next decade and a half. My coming of age period. I would like to claim - and often do - that I grew up listening to The Smiths, New Order and The Fall. But who am I kidding? No, my 80s in not so sunny Manchester in the early 80s had a different soundtrack - hello, Soft Cell, Human League and first ropey period Bowie! When later I developed what I thought was taste, I was disdainful of my youthful folly. The first (and last) record review I ever wrote was a scathing indictment of Let’s Dance. Oh the shame when a girl I fancied introduced me to the wonders of the thin white duke.. Writing it down now, it’s not such a bad list. There was more - Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet (GOLD!) and A-Ha. Yes, you may mock but that Take On Me video was like looking into the future. It wasn’t, but hey, I was a kid.

But back to the point. The 80s and early 90s were the last period of truly great music writing. OK, it wasn’t Julie Burchill and Nick Kent, granted. But it was still Smash Hits at it’s towering best and Sounds, the NME and the Maker were still a must buy every week. It was writing by people who were writing about stuff they loved. Stuff you may never have heard of but the enthusiasm and wit of those writers would send you out to HMV - and whatever the dodgy cheap import store was - with the sense that unless you got that record you were missing out. That you’re life was incomplete. That somehow the world was a step ahead of you unless you came home with that 7 or 12 inches of vinyl.

But that was then and this is now. And now I’m in a country that doesn’t really do music journalism. Not that the UK is better - the NME is practically unreadable. But there is still hope and that hope has a name: The Word. It’s a magazine that every ex-music journalist I know either writes for or subscribes to. Or both. It’s a collection of the best writers from that period writing about stuff they love because, well, that’s the point. Just read this opening paragraph from editor, Mark Ellen:

In the formal, fully indemnified world of the modern music business, you’d be unwise to put your manager in a drum case and roll him down the stairs. There would be repercussions. Rumours of “unprofessional conduct”. Suits and counter-suits. Names blackened forever. Yet this is precisely what happened when Robert Stigwood arrived to “help produce” the album Fresh Cream.”

How can you not read on? It’s just stunning writing. I want to pin it to the door in my office and tell everybody ‘this is how you start an article/press release/post’. And the quality and passion run through the entire magazine. It’s rare that I don’t read every word of each issue, regardless of the subject matter. It’s like a masterclass in how to write engaging copy.

It’s not the only example. Mojo Magazine is more worthy but still hires the likes of Charles Shaar Murray and Paul Morley. My great friend Paul Gorman writes an astonishing blog on fashion and music at The Look. Neil Mason, one of my oldest friends and former Maker/NME scribe, blogs passionately about new music at My New Favourite Band. And, of course, the spirit of Smash Hits is kept very much alive at Pop Justice.

It’s just a great, great shame that the baton never got passed. That the decline of the music industry went hand in hand with the decline of proper music writing. Should I really have to pay $14 to get what used to cost 60p? And as for Toronto - Now is headed for the Dumpster.

I did an interview the other day

I think it turned out pretty well as a War Child 101. Thanks to J.P. Douglas at 56 Rebels. And thanks to a creative collaboration between @photojunkie and @brundle_fly for the image…

How a girl called Sarah turned me on…..to amazing old music.

So, on Friday I met a new friend who we shall call Sarah, for that is her name. Somehow the conversation around the table got round to the subject of favorite music. You know, how it used to be back in the day - favorite band, best album ever, perfect song.

And that’s the point of this post. Much as this new, instant update, totally connected, ‘me and my community’ world has made sharing the new black, do we share like we did ‘back in the day’. Yes, we are constantly fed the thrill of the new, the latest gadget, the best new social possibility (hello, Google Buzz!), the best new everything. But - and I accept this is an arcane point - has anything come close to the sharing possibility of ‘the mix tape’?

Ah, heady days. The joy of a clean C90, a record/CD collection and the possibility of introducing friends, family and partners to (a) genius tunes and (b) your impeccable good taste. The hours people of a few generations spent making perfect mix tapes could have kept major economies running for years. But they fuelled a love of music in a way almost nothing does today.

Apparently, the whole thing was illegal - ‘home taping is killing music’ was the catch phrase. But in reality it was the social glue that kept me - and the people I knew - hooked to the power of the perfect pop song. I cannot even begin to list the music I was turned onto by mix tapes. But let’s just give an honorable mention to Billy Mackenzie, while we’re here.

And what’s the equivalent now? blip.fm? Hardly. There’s nothing. Nothing that requires that much time and effort from both the creator and listener. For a while there, you couldn’t even FFW through tracks - you had to listen to the whole 90 mins to find that one, true gem that would push your taste in a whole new direction.

Anyway, back to Sarah. She raved about an album I would never have found - Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music by Ray Charles. Insisted I had to buy it. Wrote it down on paper and insisted I emailed her my favorite song. So I did buy it and it’s amazing. I don’t know what my song is but I’ll get there - I’m only on listen three. But that was the nearest experience I’ve had in years to the joy of being turned on to genius by someone’s passion for music.

Turns out we are also among the few people who consider 1963 by New Order to be a total, 100% solid classic. But that’s another story.

So, new hashtag anyone? I’m thinking #faveoldrecord. Mine? Hmm…next post, I think, need to spend some time on this…

Thank you Sarah.

What the egghead of pop taught me

When I was a young man, I had the luxury of working for Brian Eno. Watching a documentary on Roxy Music the other night, I was struck by just how much my approach to pretty much everything bore Brian’s influence.

I went to university in York (England), studying music. Not the greatest career move at a time when the UK was at the bottom of Thatcher’s second major recession. But I didn’t care. It was what I needed to do.

The music dept at York was the perfect set-up for a job with Eno. It was like a weird throwback to the 60s - all early music and 60s experimentalism. Steve Reich, LaMonte Young, Ligeti were the soundtrack to my time there. And Brian Eno and his associates, Harold Budd, John Cale, Gavin Bryers and Jon Hassell. So when, stuck in a dead-end job at the PRS, the chance to run Brian’s publishing company came up, I leapt at it. Within a year I was in managing his management company as well. Sweet.

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Changing The Game. Which Game?

All the talk around the iPad (other than name jokes) has been whether it’s a game changer. Well, is it? That depends on what game you’re talking about. It may be, if you’re just talking about how it will affect the consumer habits of the ‘connected’ and affluent tech-heads in the west. Maybe it will change the way you surf, read magazines, play games. Hell, you might even be able to take pictures with it one day.

But is that the only game here? Because the implication of all these new tech developments is that it is ‘making the world a better, more connected place’ and that the social web means we’re all just a click away from speaking truth to power, albeit in 140 characters.

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