Entertainment For Lively Minds
Can't stand them now
There are things that I used to listen to avidly but can no longer stomach.
The brain has apparently shrunk and I can feel that the liver's got fatter since I shelled out the pocket money originally destined for football stickers on my first album, T Rex's Electric Warrior, so there is certainly a passage of time issue here.
During the recent hullabaloo that surrounded the anniversary of Marc Bolan's death I listened to some of this stuff again. Granted, Get it On and Hot Love are on heavy radio rotation still, and like the usual suspects (Whisky in the Jar, Alright Now et al) familiarity has ruined them, but I found that I couldn't get along with any of the back catalogue - I wished that I'd kept the memory of those songs that I hadn't heard for 30 years, rather than finding them unbearably fey, too damned twee and weedy and, well, Elvish, I suppose.
Similarly, listening to Hendrix nowadays. Pleasure or ordeal?
- More from Philip Bryer.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Marc Bolan
Actually sounds better to me now than he did then. Lyrics all nonsense, of course, but nodody has managed to make the noise he made since.
Hendrix
Some 75% of his material remains a true joy to listen to. Some of it is pure rubbish though. I've always thought that Bolan was a tad lame actually, until I recently watched the film Natural Born Boogie. That kid could play!
Bolan Boogie
Danny Baker played Born To Boogie about half an hour ago. As ever, it rocked like billy-o.
Bolan / Hendrix
20th Century Boy came on the radio t'other day and there isn't much else around that grabs like that whomping great guitar sound at the beginning. Was playing a T Rex Greatest Hits CD recently and I reckon it's actually improving with age, even the daft stuff like 'King Of The Rumbling Spires'; 'tis just Devandra Banhart! As for Hendrix, play the first three albums a lot and I'm still hearing new things in 'em.
In the year zero of 1977...
...I stopped listening to anything longer than three minutes, with more than three (maybe four) chords, made by anyone long of hair and wide of trouser.
But over the last 10 years or so I've found myself going back to all the stuff I dismissed/flogged/professed to despise from the 60's and early '70's and have reacquainted myself with lots and lots of wonderful stuff - Mountain, Groundhogs, Stone the Crows, to name but three off the top of my head.
In complete contrast to Philip, I'm loving the rediscovery of all the stuff that punk caused me to cast aside so many years ago.
It's The Doors For Me
I used to constantly crank The Doors, but apart from L.A.Woman and Morrison Hotel. I find the higgldy Piggldy keyboards, tinny guitar and all the bellow and bluster just plain jarring now. Singles are great - not that I ever play them though.
Doors
Their music can be fantastically atmospheric, but the idea that Morrison was any kind of poet can be dismissed by reference to the line "There's a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad".
I Agree
And certainly the last 2 albums are belters - but am considering 'lofting' some of the others. A friend picked up a copy of American Prayer and it is an absolute howler.
I'm a huge Bolan fan, and like Morrison he was never the poet he claimed to be. Deborah/Zeborah and several other classic cringer's
Sorry, but when compared to
Sorry,
but when compared to most of the absolute arse that passes for rock music these days, Bolan and Hendrix are extremely listenable to these ears.
Hendrix especially is beyond the borders of time, taste and fashion.
Here's one I prepared earlier
I was about to give my views on renewing acquaintance with formerly beloved music, but realised I already have done, two years ago, here . Funny thing is, it doesn't seem as well-written now as it did when I wrote it. (Do you see what I did there?).
T Rex
Actually my experience is the other way round - At the time of Ride a White Swan I hated them. I love to Boogie on a TV ad caused me to re-assess in a more positive light.I know what you mean though - couple of years ago I bought a Alice Cooper best of because of fond memories of Schools Out/Killer/Billion Dollar babies - have played it once I think and its complete garbage. I still love halo of flies though its not on the best of that I bought.
Bolan stands the test of time
Electric Warrior and The Slider both hold up as clssic 70's rock from a golden era of popular music. Great stuff!