Our House.
We Will Rock You.
Mama Mia!
Shout!

What do all these musicals have in common?
Stumped? Well, I'll tell you. They all lack a spark of originality. Yes, they came up with a half-way plausible plot. However, where's the bespoke music? All they've done is use/steal/cover (delete as you feel appropriate) the relevant tunes.

Before there's an argument, yes, I do know there were two new songs for Our House written by Madness. But then again, where's the hard work from the show's musical team? Isn't getting the original inspiration to do the hard work more than just a little... well... it's a hell of a cop-out, really, isn't it?

'What brought this on?' I hear you cry, 'Please say you haven't been watching that crap with Lloyd Webber!'
No, don't worry; car-crash TV is the wife's area of interest. I've just been reminded of how bloody good the songs were from the film production - so I went out and bought it.

It got me to thinking, though. Through my hormone laced youth, I didn't really think it was seemly for me to enjoy musicals (read 'too gay'), but I'm heading into middle-age, and I've come to admire the crafting that went into the songs. Lionel Bart, Rogers & Hammerstein et al were in a class of their own. Who do we have these days to fly the flag (yes, you can have a rainbow-coloured one if you so wish)? Bloody A.L-W.

Don't get me wrong, I'm appreciative of the fact he's the only one who can be bothered to write show tunes these days. The thing is, both he and the rest of the world are suffering from a monopoly situation. Because there is no competition, A.L-W. can do just about what he likes - which is possibly why he appears to have hit the 'cruise control' button for his career over the last few years.

There's another factor though. In this day and age of blockbuster films and high-tech visual effects, musicals don't really have much of a chance to make it to the big screen unless they've been hanging around theatre-land for a long, long time. I maybe wrong, but I think Chicago has been the only one to surface in recent times. Other than that, new musicals are going to struggle in the provinces before making it in the West End or on Broadway.

I know it's never going to happen, but it would be nice if some film studio big boss turned around and told some of his underlings to find a story worth turning into a musical and then going out and finding a talented scribe to write something original.

Otherwise, it's just going to be a slick production with some classic pop songs.

Another mixed bag in my playlist this month. Bear in mind my mp3 player is only 256mb, so there's not a huge amount of room. The only thing I regret is not having a shuffle function. Still, for a fiver, I can't really complain.

Having said there's a mixture, I do notice there seems to be a bit of an 80's thing going on, and a general tendency toward indie/rock. Right up to the point you reach Army of Lovers, that is. Camper than a row of tents, but great fun...
Oh, and yes, I know that Echo & The Bunnymen is a pale copy of the original, but I grabbed the wrong one by accident.

Anyhow, here goes.
--People Are Strange - Echo & The Bunnymen
--I Know What I'm Here For - James
--Me, Myself, I - Joan Armatrading (coincidence that she's been bruited about on here a lot lately)
--Pounding - Doves
--Rude Boy Rock - Lionrock (much overlooked bit of ska-based dubbery from the 90s)
--The Diary Of Horace Wimp - ELO (hey, I like it...)
--Goody Two Shoes - Adam Ant
--Hurry Up Harry - Sham 69 (altogether now... "Weeee're going dahn the pub!")
--Let's Hang On - The Four Seasons (clash those gears!)
--When Do I Get To Sing 'My Way' - Sparks
--Captain Dread - Dreadzone (more dubbery -with a shanty tone, no less...)
--The Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
--Night Boat To Cairo - Madness
--Israelism - Army Of Lovers
--Heart Of Lilith - Inkubus Sukkubus (no typos, just goth metal)
--Visions In Blue - Ultravox
--You're Alright - Buster Shuffle (Chas 'n' Dave Meets Madness and the Arctic Monkeys.)
--Come On Down - Chris Difford (yes, from the Word CD)
--Liquidator - Harry J All-stars
--Long Gone Lost John - Lonnie Donegan
--Love, Love Me Do - The Beatles
--Million Miles Away - The Offspring (I know, more clashing of gears there)
--Part Of The Union - The Strawbs
--Rock Bottom - Strangeworld (folk instrumentalists)
--Surprise - Bizarre Inc (60's pop pastiche from 90's dance outfit)
--Take Me Home - Basement Jaxx
--Wednesday Week - The Undertones
--Where Are They Now? - Ragga And The Jack Magic Orchestra (Clanky Icelandic bunch fronted by oddly-named woman)
--Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - AC/DC
--Girl Don't Come - Sandy Shaw
--Let The Good Times Roll - Louis Jordan (classic soul - remember the dosshouse scene in Blues Brothers?)
--New Year's Day - U2
--Alice, What's The Matter? - Terrorvision
--Cut My Wings - Seasick Steve (3-string blues, anyone?)
--Happiness - Goldfrapp
--Hold On, I'm Coming - Sam & Dave
--Lost In Music - Sister Sledge (my theme tune)
--Trippin' On Sunshine - Pizzaman (AKA Fatboy Slim)
--Bashi Bazouk - Peter Gabriel (good luck finding this one - it was b-side to Digging In The Dirt)
--Black Horse And The Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall
--Mary - Tori Amos
--The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel
--Barber's Adagio For Strings - William Orbit
--Greenman - XTC
--Ain't That A Shame - Fats Domino
--Too Much Too Young - Little Angels (again, wrong one - I meant to grab the Specials classic)
--Don't Stop Movin' - The Beautiful South (downbeat cover of the S Club 7 tune)
--National Express - The Divine Comedy

What a way to end the list - an all-time classic tune to make you smile about your incipient insanity...

Looking through the thread to do with English music, I was struck by a couple of points.

Firstly, there were a couple of names that kept popping up; XTC, The Kinks, Ian Dury and Billy Bragg. Very good, but I did wonder where Madness were in all of that.

Beyond that, I realised that pretty much all of the nominated acts had something in common (and one or two had a surfeit of). Eccentricity. When this hit me, I felt - oddly enough - pleased.
It took me a while to work out why, but I finally dug deep enough to find that eccentricity is the most notable, and possibly most redeeming national feature of the English.

Not extreme enough to be bonkers (although The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band come pretty close), but leftfield enough to be amusingly different. If you can also be sharp enough to be slyly witty and satiric, then so much the better.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't think of any act from anywhere else around the world that can honestly claim to be eccentric.

Any ideas?

I've been to a few gigs; more than some, but a lot less than most.

For the most part, they've been fairly standard events - one or more support acts before the main event. There have only been one or two times that this has been different; Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney. Neither bothered with support acts, because they planned to go on for long enough themselves. That and they probably didn;t want to share the stage.

The thing about support acts, in my thinking, is that they are generally not as good (or well-known) as the main act. Often, this is the case, but there are sometime when the status quo is unsettled enough to leave me preferring the support.

My first experience of this was when I was at college and went to see New Model Army (hey - I was an angry young boy). The support was a fledgeling Levellers, and they kicked NMA all over the stage.
Fair enough.
A few years later, though, I dropped into a Tori Amos gig and, much as I like the flame haired one, I had to admit that The Divine Comedy had put on a better show.
The last time this happened, and I realise the situation isn't quite the same, was when I saw Oasis at Knebworth back in... whenever... That was more of a festival, with several acts before them. The thing was, though, most of the acts, including Oasis, were of the shoe-gazing indie scene. And dropped like a (sweet-smelling) turd right in the middle of this was Dreadzone - a dub act that managed to do a shanty in the middle of the English countryside. I loved it, but then there were thousands of baggies around me wondering just what the hell it was the had been smoking...

Has anyone else preferred a support act to the main event?

I'd have this one played at every party. I mean, they're all going to be popular, we all like to sing along to them and the party just isn't the same without a rambling singalong.

So what if we don't know the words? Who cares? In the state most people reach at - say - New Year's parties, it makes not one jot of difference, does it?

I'd love the packaging too - you simply have to have a lyric sheet. You wouldn't need much apart from the occasional chorus, because everyone's singing 'Nur-nur lalalala' in any case.

But what tracks would make the cut?
For my money, the ultimate pisshead tune is Jeff Beck's 'Hi-ho Silver Lining'. You know the first line or two, and then it's indeterminable mumbling until you get to the point when a roomful of beered-up rugby fans suddenly burst into a bellowed chorus. Odds are that that's also the only time in the whole song that more than two of them have managed to keep to the same tempo.

Other such tunes would be:

'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy' - Rod Stewart
'My Way' - Frank Sinatra
'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' - Monty Python
'American Pie' - Don McLean
'Ebeneezer Goode' - The Shamen
'Going Underground' - The Jam

I know you could also call this 'The Worst Karaoke Album In The World..... Ever!'

Anyhow - over to you. Any more suggestions? I know there must be hundreds.

This one developed out of a discussion I had with my best mate a few months back.

Essentially, everyone has their favourites when it comes to music. Equally, we also have our bugbears, the ones we don't like; never did and never will. However, during the course of this tannin-fuelled chat, the two of us came to the realisation that we may dislike particular acts to quite alarming degrees. Nevertheless, we both had to admit that there would invariably be at least one track by a 'despised one' that we actually quite liked, really...

Time was this phenomenon would go under the heading of 'guilty pleasures', but I've never really got that one. Personally, if it does need to be used, then apply it to genres only, not particular artists.

Some examples? Sure:
The Osmonds - Crazy Horses (still no excuse for Jimmy Osmond, though)
Bucks Fizz - New Beginning (horribly 80's, but I just love the African/Adam and the Ants - style drums.)
Celine Dion - I'm Alive (the horse-faced one proves she can sing about matters other than love and its loss. Plus, she even sounds like she's enjoying herself.)
James Blunt - Wisemen (finally comes up with another emotion other than 'miserable obsessive')
Whitney Houston - It's Not Right, But It's OK (stops over-singing and learns that breathing in more than twice a minute is a good thing.)

And you know what? It works both ways. No, don't give me that; you know that there's plenty of horse apples dropped by even the best of them.
How about:
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music (severe case of WTF if ever there was.)
Madness - Money, Money, Money (ill-judged ABBAmania band wagon jumping.)
Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Love You (mawkish mess. 'Nuff said.)
Peter Gabriel - Steam (sorry - didn't you already do 'Sledgehammer'?)
Aretha Franklin - Who's Zooming Who (the 80's weren't kind to many evergreens, were they?)

There are evens exceptions to this rule. I have yet to enjoy anything by Leona Lewis, or dislike owt by XTC - and I'm not expecting that to change.

I'm not expecting anyone to agree with me on these choices. Taste is always a personal thing. The thing is, though - I defy anyone out there to tell me there isn't a single example they can provide from their own musical tastes or collections that would prove this point.

Go on - I dare you.

I only have a tiddly little player bought from Tesco for a fiver, but it serves its purpose just fine for me. Ok, so it doesn't hold many tunes, or have a shuffle feature (essential, I feel), but it'll do until I can finally afford something a little better.

In any case, I wanted to share my current playlist with you. I'm not hugely sure what criterion it uses to order the tunes, although there does seem to be something alphabetical going on...

--Dude Looks Like A Lady - Aerosmith
--Fluorescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys
--Gangster’s Paradise - Coolio
--Mellow Yellow - Donovan
--Modern Crusaders - Enigma
--Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn - The White Stripes
--Walk This Way - Run DMC ft. Aerosmith
--Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode
--Tarzan’s Nuts - Madness
--The Man Don’t Give A F*** - Super Furry Animals
--Workin’ in The Coalmine - Lee Dorsey
--1643 - Seth Lakeman
--Cumberland Gap - Lonnie Donegan
--The Gift - INXS
--Cuba - The Gibson Brothers
--Jerk It Out - The Caesars
--Rockstar - Nickelback
--Ooh Baby (radio mix) - Gilbert O’Sullivan
--Searchlights - The Levellers
--Disco Dancer - Parka
--Egyptian Reggae - Jonathan Richman
--Mercy - Duffy
--History Repeating - Propellorheads ft. Miss Shirley Bassey
--Wrong Way - Sublime
--Dirty Secret - The She-Beats
--Cash Machine - Hard-Fi
--Children - Robert Miles
--Don’t Give Up - Chicane ft. Bryan Adams
--Living In The past - Jethro Tull
--Music To Watch Girls Go By - Andy Williams
--Novocaine For The Soul - eels
--Nu Flow - Big Brovaz
--Objection (Tango) - Shakira
--Oh Yeah, Alright - One-Two
--Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting - Elton John
--She Cries Your Name - Beth Orton
--Stupid Commercials - Damn Skippy
--Sun Goes Down - David Jordan
--1962 - Grass~Show
--Down Boy - Holly Valance
--Misfit - Amy Studt
--Stop The Rock - Apollo 440
--There’s A Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis - Kirsty MacColl
--This Is The Life - Amy McDonald
--Uninvited - Freemasons ft. Bailey Tzuke
--Don’t Stop The Music - Rhianna
--Love On A Farmboy’s Wages - XTC
--Romeo - Basement Jaxx
--Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
--Just A Gigolo - David Lee Roth
--Feels Like Some Kinda Rush - Booty Luv

Interesting mix wot?

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who liked to listen to music. He wasn't fussy, pretty much anything was good.
Then there came a time when he could tell the difference between good and bad. However, the time he had previously spent in appreciation of all types of music stayed with him, and he grew up with a very eclectic taste, indeed.

How eclectic? Well, look at my firsts...

FIRST RECORDS GIVEN:
Father Abraham and The Smurfs
Adam and The Ants - Stand And Deliver
The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again?
(it does have to be pointed out, however, that the last was bought in error. My parents completely mistook the reason for my interest in Sheila Ferguson. I was a smutty little beggar even then...)

FIRST SINGLE BOUGHT:
The Specials - Ghost Town

FIRST ALBUM BOUGHT:
Madness - Complete Madness

REQUESTED (as a child) AND REFUSED:
Incantation - Cacharpaya
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Kate Bush - The Kick Inside (damn my hormones!)
Anything by Steel Pulse

FIRST CD BOUGHT:
Peter Gabriel - Passion (Last Temptation of Christ OST) - bought even though I didn't have a CD player at the time...

Hmm - not that eclectic after all. I suppose I've made up for lost time sice, though...

I'll get right down to it; will somebody please gag all singers until they realise that scales are an exercise for practise? Can nobody hold a note these days?
Just in case someone doesn't quite get just what I'm talking about, listen to the likes of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and, most recently and annoyingly, Leona Lewis. Just because you can reach a wide range of notes doesn't mean to say that you have to fit as many of them into a single song.

I find that too many acts these days have a tendency to 'over-sing' the part (although that's not hugely likely in the case of The Arctic Monkeys, I have to admit).

The culprits are generally women, but there can be male acts too - Boys II Men comes to mind. I'm not arguing that they can't sing, just that there isn't the need to show off their skill in such a way.

Oh, by the way Whitney; when I say 'try holding a note for a change', I don't mean 'try and outdo Bill Withers' - Now THAT is a damn good example of how to sing.

Just read the new issue. Nice to know that I'm not alone in the wilderness.
The article on production procedures devaluing music was compelling stuff. I've known for a while that music is becoming far too over-dependent on producers. Also, as a result of this, tunes are sounding increasingly cluttered and messy.

Is it a coincidence, then, that we seem to be having a grand surge in what I like to think of as 'real music'? For the last few years, folk-influenced musicians have come to the fore. Even better, this attitude seems to have spread into other genres, gifting us with the likes of Adele and Duffy and Vincent Vincent and the Villains.
Admittedly, their music still is heavily produced, but the simple styles are so much better for having less going on.

On the downside, you do end up with irksome folk like James Blunt. Can't he be re-posted to the Middle East, please?