The musical year in review: very quickly
This was the year when I saw my youth being revived. I think it probably happens to everyone at around this age (38 if you must know) when the music of their late teens reaches its 20th anniversary, and a group of bands who were barely born at the time start recreating it.
Yes, the signs have been there for a while - but this year, somehow, it really kicked off and every time I turned on the radio I had a spooky feeling of deja vu. Except of course when I was listening to Radio 4.
So we had Franz Ferdinand and everything else that followed - ending the year with the Killers and, ‘Somebody Told Me’ which I think has to go down as one of my favourite tracks of the year. Kasabian slightly jumped the mark by reviving the whole Stone Roses thing (the baggy revival isn’t really due for a couple of years yet, but I suppose you have to start somewhere) with what was definitely one of the better albums of the year, but still not a patch on the original.
Part of this is that we forget just how long ago our youth was. When I was 16, it was only 12 years since the Beatles had split up: but
even then they seemed like ancient history. It is now 22 years since
the Jam split up - which I suppose must make them positively
paleolithic to today’s 16 year olds.
The thing that was new was the fact that this time round we’ve had dance music, and there’s a million smart kids with computers ripping, mixing and burning all this stuff. So the whole Mash-Up phenomenon has been fantastically energising to follow. Yes, it all really moves a bit too fast for an oldie like mysel to truly ‘follow’, but you know what I mean.
A lot of what I’ve covered on here has been what can only be described as quiet-core. Has there been a boom here, or was there always this much of it around, and I’ve only started to notice it because it’s all my ageing ears can bear? I find it incredibly difficult to sort out the ‘pretty good’ from the ‘very good’ in this area. I basically bow to the recommendations of Really Rather.
My other favourite of the year was M Craft, stumbled on completely by chance while pinching a bunch of CDs from our Arts Editor - and in particular that one track Dragonfly. My hope is that he delivers a cracking album in the next year. My fear is that he takes himself far, far to seriously and never quite delivers.
The rise of MP3blogs has been one of the smarter bottom up phenomenon of the year. LargeHeartedBoy still rocks in my book, but I think it’s going to be intersting to watch this phenomenon - and the music industry’s reaction to it - evolve over the next year. Personally, I’m still buying CDs more than anything else…it’s just easier to keep tabs on everything that way, and I feel the music is really mine to do what I want with, rather than restricted by whatever this week’s DRM policy is.
My dance floor moment of the year (and I have to admit there were a lot less than in previous years, so it’s an easy category to judge), happened at around 2.55 in a tent in Glastonbury on the Friday night, when the DJ switched from hours of banging beats and bleeps to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. I have never seen a gang of sweaty people go quite so wild: but I suppose you really had to be there.
All in all, a good year, methinks.