Today saw the arrival, on site, of a pure rock legend from a time when
rock was bold and dangerous (see video below) and not just produced by some
drag and drop two bit computer program that’s just seems to endlessly loop the
same four bars of dross so that the end result is akin to a box load of
crockery being thrown into a cement mixer.
And that is the problem isn’t it?
Not to sound like the begrudging old coot that I am
becoming, but music today is just awful.
A quick review of the top ten single records for the UK this
week tells me that either I am out of touch with popular music or music is
tired and boring and has run its course.
Coldplay have done a song with Rihanna (that girl with the
umbrella-ella-ella) and Maroon 5 are still knocking about.
Out of the top ten singles half of them are collaborations.
Which means that these so called talented artists can’t even be bothered to
sing for three and a half minutes with someone else jumping in.
There’s just no effort.
I would make a joke about somebody releasing a song that is
just 4 minutes of silence, but that’s already been done. TWICE!
Maybe it is me. Maybe I have reached that age where I need
to realise that I no longer part of the young generation.
I’m old enough to remember mix tapes.
I still have an old VHS tape knocking around with MUMS TAPE
written on it.
Ask any under the age of 20 if that know what that is and be
prepared to feel very VERY old when they just shrug at you and probably shoot
up some drugs in their eyeballs at you.
The art of filling one side of a tape with exactly 45
minutes of music was an exercise in timing hand eye co-ordination and taste.
In order to not have the tape run out half way through REAL
REAL REAL by Jesus Jones, you would have to carefully work out in which order
you put Aerosmith, or Run DMC.
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| "Can I get a rewind!!!" - Used to involve a pencil and lots of patience in my day. |
This is now a talent lost.
These days all you need is one of those M25 players and you
can casually drag and drop as many songs in whatever order you want without
even thinking about it.
Don’t like a song?
No worries, just skip it and carry on with your day.
In the 1980’s this just was not possible and only even
considered in science fiction movies.
If you wanted to skip a song on tape it required knowing
exactly how long the song was and having to utilise a technique not to
dissimilar to clutch control in order to quickly fast forward, stop and play
repeatedly until you got to the right spot.
If you miscalculated and missed the start of the song then
the tape would have to be ejected, turned around and played back for a bit,
then ejected again, replaced the original way round and played again.
All the while the battery level is being sucked dry.
Of course, if you were posh you would have one of those
Walkman’s that had a rewind button to show off.
So the following are five words that anyone under the age of
20 will not understand.
Tape.
Rewind.
Eject.
Talent.
Original.
Does anyone know of any other words that bloody kids don’t
have any understand of?
If so, please add yours in the comments below.
Its the drummer, by the way.... I guess that stint on TV is starting to pay off!