Seven Ages Of Rock (again)

The second age in BBC/VH1’s new Seven Ages Of Rock, shown at the weekend, confirmed the suspicion that the disappointing first programme was no fluke.

After the looney call to focus on Jimi Hendrix in the ‘60s programme, the ‘70s chapter concentrated on Pink Floyd.

Gimme a break.

I just can’t wait to see who the remaining five programmes revolve around. U2 in the ‘80s? George Michael in the ‘90s?

According to the new canon being advanced by this missed opportunity of a series, rock’s even less interesting than I thought.


Gerry Smith

Don’t Look Back De Luxe 2DVD edition in short supply

The De Luxe 2DVD version of Don’t Look Back, film of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, is in very short supply. Having been let down by my first choice of supplier (see below), I’ve now also been let down by second choice, cd-wow. (I won’t be using either supplier again for a while, if ever).

Seeking a third choice online supplier, including one or two I wouldn’t touch with a very long bargepole, I found most out of stock – Virgin, HMV, Tesco, Play.com, SpinCD can’t supply either. Fopp has it, and so have some Amazon traders, but I don’t like their prices.

Looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and scour the High Street. Or wait a year or so for the release of a few million more “limited edition” copies and buy at the £6 discounted price I recently paid for No Direction Home 2DVD at Borders.


Gerry Smith


RELATED ARTICLE:

Don’t Look Back 2DVD – now only £12.99

Don’t Look Back (the De Luxe 2DVD version, Region 0) is on the cd-wow.com website at a bargain £12.99 delivered, easily the cheapest I’ve seen, and just over half the list price. It’s a cd-wow “warehouse sale”, so the offer might be short-lived.

I ordered a copy after cancelling my order with 101cd, as I hadn’t received the goods, or any warning/apology, 17 days after release date, or any reply to my query. Byeeeeeeeeeeee, 101cd. Hello, cd-wow.


Gerry Smith

Scott Walker: the grown-up musician’s grown-up musician

Last week’s BBC TV airing of slabs from the spellbinding new Scott Walker film, 30 Century Man, in its Imagine slot, showed just why Walker is the grown-up musician’s grown-up musician. Top art rockers – Eno, Bowie, Jarvis, Radiohead et al - queued up to praise the artistry of the lugubrious baritone.

Walker’s career has been a succession of highs and lows (sometimes simultaneous), and his discography is patchy. But he’s a vastly underrated musician with at least three albums which should be considered for any grown-up collection: Scott Walker 3, Scott Walker 4, and Tilt. Last year’s The Drift is no slouch, either.

Go on, give Scott Walker’s mature music a chance…



Gerry Smith

New Traveling Wilburys release: worth buying?

If, like many Dylan Daily readers, you already have the two Traveling Wilburys albums, should you bother with the new product, due for (UK) release on Monday 11 June?

Well, for £15.25 (delivered), the best price I’ve seen for the De Luxe version, from cd-wow.com, you get four extra audio tracks, five DVD tracks, a 40 page “collectible” book and “certificate of authenticity” (wow!), as well as the packaging. The Dylan content is still minimal, though – just a few tracks.

Worth buying? Maybe. Probably. Just.


Gerry Smith

Seven Ages Of Rock – daft, plain daft

Jimi Hendrix was the key figure in 1960s rock: “Within days of his arrival (in London), Jimi Hendrix would change the face of music… .” Tee hee.

There’s more: “He redefined the whole period in which he existed…”.

That’s if you believe Seven Ages of Rock, the disappointing new BBC/VH1 rock history series which started airing over the weekend.

Bob Dylan, the prime mover in the genesis of rock, was accorded a mere five minute sequence, bowing in the direction of Like A Rolling Stone.

Now, there’s no doubt that Hendrix was a great, and influential, musician – he raised the game in guitar playing in the same way that Coltrane set new benchmarks for the saxophone. But let’s not forget that he was responsible for a massive catalogue of, er, three moderately successful albums still played today.

Rock music tends to encourage hyperbole in the early school leavers amongst those who play it and write about it, but this poor first programme set new lows in rockist bullsh*t. You couldn’t fault a commentator like Charles Shaar Murray for his typically incisive comments on Hendrix, but they were swamped in a wrong-headed script which, at times, had me laughing uncontrollably.

The launch programme not only exceeded my worst fears, outlined in a series preview on www.musicforgrownups.co.uk (below) - it went further, by imposing on the 1960s material the big idea that Hendrix was the pivotal figure.

Daft. Plain daft.


Gerry Smith



Series preview, previously posted:

Seven Ages Of Rock – a pessimistic preview

The BBC is pushing the boat out for its major new series, the Seven Ages Of Rock, which launches on Saturday on BBC2 21.10~22.10 - hyping it on chat shows on its missable mainstream radio stations and promoting it with four different collectable covers of Radio (sic) Times, its mass circulation weekly programme guide. (Who on earth would want to collect the Radio Times?)

Without having seen even a trailer or promo clip, I can safely report that:

* as it’s by the same team that produced the brilliant Lost Highway series on country music, Seven Ages will be stylish, informative, intelligent television…

* it will include maybe 20 great musicians for grown-ups

* 95% of its airtime will deal with musicians unworthy of grown-up attention

* the series will be rendered virtually unwatchable by an endless succession of talking boneheads who should have stuck to the day job, stacking supermarket shelves or fixing dodgy old cars.

How do I know this?

Because that’s the nature of rock music - 5% timeless great art (Dylan, Stones, Beck, Bright Eyes, Smiths, Joy Division, Everly Brothers, Bowie…), and 95% dubious glitzy, chemically-enhanced showbiz pap.

I’ll be taping - to race through afterwards, luxuriating in the grown-up bits. (Or to recant, if appropriate.)


Gerry Smith

Dylanesque/Bryan Ferry’s London Sessions DVD – only £6.75!

Thanks to Nigel Boddy:

“Further to your spotting the `bargain of the year' at cd-wow.com for the Dylan Don't Look Back Special Edition DVD, I've noticed the Bryan Ferry - London Sessions (Dylanesque) DVD is priced at £6.75, delivered. (I know it's not released until late June, but it's a still good saving).”

Seven Ages Of Rock – a pessimistic preview

The BBC is pushing the boat out for its major new series, the Seven Ages Of Rock, which launches on Saturday on BBC2 21.10~22.10 - hyping it on chat shows on its missable mainstream radio stations and promoting it with four different collectable covers of Radio (sic) Times, its mass circulation weekly programme guide. (Who on earth would want to collect the Radio Times?)

Without having seen even a trailer or promo clip, I can safely report that:

* as it’s by the same team that produced the brilliant Lost Highway series on country music, Seven Ages will be stylish, informative, intelligent television…

* it will include maybe 20 great musicians for grown-ups

* 95% of its airtime will deal with musicians unworthy of grown-up attention

* the series will be rendered virtually unwatchable by an endless succession of talking boneheads who should have stuck to the day job, stacking supermarket shelves or fixing dodgy old cars.

How do I know this?

Because that’s the nature of rock music - 5% timeless great art (Dylan, Stones, Beck, Bright Eyes, Smiths, Joy Division, Everly Brothers, Bowie…), and 95% dubious glitzy, chemically-enhanced showbiz pap.

I’ll be taping - to race through afterwards, luxuriating in the grown-up bits. (Or to recant, if appropriate.)


Gerry Smith

NOT Rock for Grown-Ups

* Van Morrison at London’s Roundhouse, according to Pete Paphides in The Times – “parodically grumpy old man… uninterested and uncommunicative… gang of middle-aged session musicians… hotel-lobby R & B arrangements… listless professionalism…” I know what he means: a former serial Vangig attender (c65 shows), I quit for those kind of reasons about five years ago.

* Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue: great design and illuminating Dylan interview apart, a mish-mash of superannuated celebs bullsh*tting for America, the politics of the liberal playground, and the silly underlying philosophy that music changes the world. Kiss mine.



Gerry Smith

The Waterboys put smiles on faces in Milton Keynes

Thanks to Paul Blake:

“A 4pm sit-down show on a Sunday doesn’t sound like a very promising set-up to see a rock band, but those turning up for the Waterboys show at the tiny Stables in Wavendon last weekend needn’t have worried – Mike Scott and his crew were in rambunctious form. As the man himself said halfway through the set, ‘here is a band working its balls off for you’.

“For me, it is always interesting to see a musician at work close up (we had tickets in the second row) and watching Mike Scott I was struck by how self-conscious he is with the wild rock ‘n’ roll poet persona he has created for himself. It is both his defence as a human being and his vehicle as a performer, and, if he didn’t quite look comfortable, it still made for compelling theatre. Perhaps it is just his time of life, as my wife mused afterwards.

“Certainly the Book of Lightning album, on which much of the set is based, is dominated by ‘my baby done me wrong’ songs and in a live setting they begin to sound a little like a man protesting too much (are you sure you didn’t contribute just a bit to the break-up, Mike?) - even if the band play them with muscular grace. And there is much to enjoy at a Waterboys gig, not least the violin playing of Steve Wickham, who gives his boss a good run for his money on the charisma stakes.

“The set veers on the side of rock workout – we get Medicine Bow, a compelling Red Army Blues, and a hammered out version of Old England, but little of the gentler side of the Waterboys. Still, there is something life-affirming about seeing Mike Scott up there doing his stuff all these years.

“The audience has aged with him, and it is touching to see long-term partners and parents with young children dancing to Fisherman’s Blues during the encore. It leaves us all with both a sense of community and smiles on our faces. The band leave the stage grinning as well and in Mike Scott’s smile I can finally see the man behind the persona. He looks contented after a job well done. As Gerry Smith said when he saw him last year – he gives good gig.”

Another 100 songs that changed the world: new MOJO cover feature

The new (“June”) MOJO cover feature - 100 songs that changed the world, or some such - seems very familiar.

I respect MOJO (“The Music Magazine”) – it caters for its Dadrock audience far better than they deserve. And it’s beautifully designed. Occasionally, it carries a long sequence of articles on a favoured muso and I buy a copy.

I only buy one issue in 20 or 30, though. Mostly it just ain’t music for grown-ups – delves far too deeply in a rock genre with shallow roots, covering far too many no-hopers; wallows in nostalgia; overplays the importance of music; and has a show biz tone.

The odd issue is a gem, but my musical life’s far too short to read MOJO regularly. There are 100,000+ regular buyers who disagree, but I’d hate to have to live with their CD collections.

Case in point this month: songs change NOTHING - except the bank balances of those involved.



Gerry Smith