Devils
Island Discs.
Everyone
loves lists. Well, here another one of mine – but this time it’s
personal. Below are the pieces of music I would least like to be
marooned with on that desert island owned by Radio 4. These are works I
find offensive, boring and utterly risible in every respect. They are an
insult to melody, harmony and rhythm.
Burt
Bacharach / James Last / Mantovani / Klaus Wunderlich etc.
This
is really the same piece of music spread over dozens of cheap and nasty
vinyl records which made my life miserable during the late 1960s when I
was a wee, impressionable wean whose parents were to culture what the ku
klux klan are to the equal opportunities policy.
Guns
& Roses (or any other plastic cock rock outfit
Take
a heavy metal band. Right, that’s sufficiently wretched already but
we’re going to make it even worse. Now remove any intelligent or
interesting lyrics (no, really, there are occasions when, perhaps by
accident, a heavy metal group writes a lyric with intelligence in it –
they always apologise afterwards, of course). Then fashion each track to
make sure it sounds just like the previous one. Now increase the egos of
each band member (to compensate for their lack of ability, originality
and intellectual acuity). Right, by now it’s looking pretty abysmal,
isn’t it? Well, let’s add a 1980s slick production and plaster the
record covers with images designed to induce intense vomiting. There –
done. What remains? Just the medical research laboratory – remove all
the cats, rats and mice and replace them with the members of Guns &
Roses so that, at last, they are finally able to make a useful
contribution to society.
Anything
played on the show Artrocker on Resonance.
Rumours
that the groups featured are actually different bands are unfounded.
This is actually the same bunch of snotty little white middle class
teenage creeps who, devoid of a single original idea, simply turn the
volume up and shout about nothing. It is the moronic, tedious noise of
punk rock but with all the personality, character and interesting bits
(such as they are) stringently removed.
Almost
everything played on the Johnny Trunk OST show on Resonance.
Miserable,
middle of the road, Radio 2 pop pap circa 1966 – 1970, preferably
European, preferably from some dreadful films that everyone loathed even
when they were first released – that is what we have to endure for the
2 bloody hours the show lasts and it is also the reason why this is one
of only 2 programmes broadcast by Resonance (the other is Artrocker)
that I have to turn off when it comes on. There has been some truly
magnificent film music composed over the past 100 years. Mr Trunk,
however, is amazingly skilful in managing to avoid virtually all of it.
In this manner he is able to subject us to 120 minutes of dreary, third
rate 1960s pop dross that pollutes the air and should be expelled, in
the interests of the ecology, from existence along with CFC’s, car
fumes and fast food multinational corporations.
Bad
Company / Status Quo / Whitesnake (i.e. 1970s cock rock).
I
was tempted to include Led Zeppelin here since arguably they started all
this nonsense but, unlike the bands mentioned above, they at least
managed to write 1 ½ tracks that are (almost) worth remembering and are
(nearly) listenable, namely Immigrant Song and part of Four Sticks.
Perhaps their fans would point to Whole Lotta Love as a memorable anthem
– well, no, it was actually written by Muddy Waters in 1958 but the
band simply credited their own names as the writers so they could take
the credit for it and, naturally, accrue a profit for the band by denial
of the royalties owed to Muddy Waters himself. These same fans will
scratch their heads (being allergic to soap) and point to Black Mountain
Side for originality – well, no, that was actually written by John
Fahey in 1966 but the band decided to credit themselves with its
composition and (see above). Well, at least the 3 bands named in the
title wrote their own music. Yes…pity, that.
Death
In June / Current 93 / Sol Invictus and all the neo-folk nazi uniform
brigade
World
Serpent was a wretched little record label – now thankfully defunct
but then it always was – which specialised in releasing records by
white middle class brats who, armed with some books by Crowley, Anton Le
Vey and a catalogue of world war two German uniforms (the Göbbels
summer offensive collection), had barely a single interesting idea in
their pointed little heads and even less musical ability. Since many of
the generally boring, tired old men involved with the whole World
Serpent industrial noise acoustic guitar valium dreary dirge neo-folk
failed nazi pantomime have now been interviewed regularly in a show on
Resonance each Friday night, it has become evident that even though this
whole squalid scene is a tiny clique of people scared to live in the
real world, most of them have formed miserable little cliques within
this and you can guarantee whoever is interviewed this week will slag
off whoever was on last week or due to appear next week. Only 2 people
who have appeared on this rather sad little show have revealed at least
a hint of a personality and haven’t sounded as if they are at
death’s door – Rose McDowall and Karl Blake. Also, most weeks, no
matter who is being interviewed, the obsequious presenter (whose ability
to drool like a total sycophant before his hero is trouser foulingly
nauseous) reaches a part of the programme where he feels obliged to
inform the listeners that the chap being interviewed isn’t really a
nazi and his band weren’t really fascists, they were simply
misunderstood…like Death In June and their Brown Book album, I
suppose? But surely, if there isn’t a fascist element in much of this
‘music’, it would not be necessary to deny the accusations so often?
I mean to say, I have the complete studio recordings of Skrewdriver so
I’ve no problem with people expressing their political beliefs
truthfully, be they communists, anarchists or fascists – but for
Pan’s sake, be open and honest about it, have the damned decency to
stand up like a real man and say what you believe. That’s why I
respect Skrewdriver and that’s why I despise the Death In June /
Current 93 / World Serpent mob for being the cowardly pussies they all
are.
