In recent years, it’s been noted by my long-suffering but gratifyingly tolerant wife that I’ve become something of a bad-tempered, exasperating malcontent, forever raging at the inanity and insanity of the modern world. She knew she was spot-on when I spent the entire first episode of TV’s Grumpy Old Men punching the air with a triumphant “YESSS!!” I had discovered a likeminded body of eminently sane, sensible and reasonable men – the likes of Rick Wakeman, Arthur Smith, Rory McGrath and Bob Geldof – who had come to discover that the world was going to pot. Just look around you: call centres, skin piercings, speed cameras, surly shop assistants, Reality TV, plastic ring tones, pavement cyclists, people who don’t know the difference between it’s and its, and health and safety officials who insist on pupils wearing helmets to play conkers.
Now it’s time to put the world to rights on the subject of rock music. Here is my blast of bile at all that’s wrong, muddle-headed, excruciating and barmy about the world of rock…
CDs vs DOWNLOADS. Ok, call me old-fashioned. Actually, don’t: my business is computer-generated. I’m very I.T. BUT, when it comes to music, technology is killing the pursuit of proper record collecting. A CD is a tangible possession. What does that make a download? Something soulless and abstract.
My 20 year-old daughter has an I-POD but all the tracks on it have been recorded off albums she has bought, simply because she likes to have a proper CD package with a printed label, cover art, and possibly a lyric sheet and/or sleevenotes. That’s my girl.
God help us if albums only become available as downloads. Some already have… and it’s backfired on a few, hasn’t it, Thom Yorke?
VINYL IS BETTER THAN CD. Yea, right…the crackles give vinyl ‘presence’, do they? Do us a favour.
BONUS/PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS. Admit it: these are only added to albums (largely re-issues) as a sales ploy. Instead of the phrase ‘bonus tracks’, why don’t record companies be honest and refer to them as ‘tracks that weren’t available on the original album because they weren’t much cop in the first place and they’re no better now’. The worst bonuses are usually alternate versions or desperate re-mixes of tracks that were already available on the album.
Ok, there are exceptions, but not many. Mind you, it’s the exceptions that enrage me even more. Here’s an instance: I have every album by Enya. Early last year, I forked out good money for her latest album Amaranthine. Just before Christmas, her company Warners re-issued the album - with 4 new tracks. This poor bugger was thus forced to fork out another 12 quid because I’m a genuine fan and want to own everything she’s recorded. It doesn’t take an idiot to spot that, as a consequence, the real fans are hit the hardest; which is why Warners are either idiots or care only about screwing the record buying public. It is, of course, the latter.
It was disappointing to see Porcupine Tree reissue Stupid Dream recently with a previously unreleased 14-minute version of Even Less. Band leader Steven Wilson is a reasonable guy, so here’s an idea, Steven, the next time you do something like this: a part-exchange deal. You take my original copy off me and furnish me with the re-issue at a small percentage of the original cost.
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