Monday, June 29, 2015

Just saying

A small plea. Please read my weekend posts (the preceding four). I need the clicks to avoid a domestically-enforced Blogexit.

Anyway, it will be more rewarding than the time many spent with BBC Music at Glaston-berry. For me, Florence's Machine spent an hour trying to share a musical note with their owner without success ("a bit pitchy" -copyright Simon Cowell) before said owner took her shirt off and fled. A rapper in military fatigues under a giant sunbed oathed his way through a charmless, tuneless, stuttering show with a backing cd and autotune, with lyrics Lord Hall should be forced to read out in front of a Select Committee. Two rock dinosaurs went through their back catalogue in their seventies, with no comparison to their performances in the decade of the same name. Pete Townsend, 70, had two other guitarists on stage to fill the parts, and Roger Daltrey (71) used his stagecraft to produce a dangerous and exciting series of walks forwards and backward, and a tense circling of Pete Townsend.

And if you say Lionel Ritchie "aced it", with a set honed for his forthcoming cruise line concerts, remember the prat in the Max Wall outfit playing the sax and ogling the women, and think again. As the great man himself said, "outrageous karaoke".

I know he said this, because he was interviewed immediately after his performance by Jo Whiley, who asked him how did it feel five times, with little meaningful variation. A proper Director of BBC Music would now call for tapes of all presenters at the event and ask if any of them had done any prep, and knew any synonyms for "amazing". This would be followed by the firing of all directors who used a flying jib camera more than once in any song, and demanded framed shots through the forest of flags (Try allowing that at Lord's and see what happens, Eavis).

Finally, BBC, decide that the money spent on streaming everything and tweeting about it, would actually be better spent in different ways - applying, yes, intelligent editorial 'curation' to build an archive of great performances from current artists in a range of settings that encourage and support musicality in all its forms. Then BBC4 might keep going from 2040 on BBC archive footage, rather than hoping someone else is recording our popular culture beyond this overblown, overhyped farm show.




6 comments:

  1. About clicking on your posts - I tend to follow you using an RSS reader and only occasionally click through to your site if there is maybe a special link to follow. Does the RSS feed not have the same value as coming direct to your blog? If not I shall be sure to access the blog daily as I for one should hate to lose you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear HWH,

      I may have over-dramatised the situation, so will bash on. I think all RSS views count as hits, so that's all good, thanks

      Delete
  2. I take it you didn't like the coverage Bill.
    In terms of your coverage and clicks ...I visit about three or four times a week.I like your informed and witty take on stuff.I'd be sad to lose your blog.
    Peter

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1) Too right
      2) Just make it four times a week, would you ?
      3) I'm not stopping just yet !

      Delete
    2. Ok Bill four or five times a week it is. P

      Delete
  3. Re: curation

    When Chris Cowey was producing TOTP we used to do extra archive recordings at the end of other numbers when we had a big star on the show and said star could be persuaded

    Neil Diamond was so well received by the TOTP audience that he went on to do several unrehearsed numbers

    ReplyDelete

Other people who read this.......