Hired by Lord Doberman, the richest man in the world, Anode Enzyme moves into Mollusc Hall as resident genius. Here he discovers the formula for worldly success – mediocrity.
If it was meant to be an entertaining contention when cartoonist John Glashan penned it in his Genius cartoon strip in the late 1970s, it has become a truism for the majority of today’s music charts.
Torn from the page of the Observer newspaper sometime in the late 1970s, this was pinned to my wall alongside another cartoon for a long time. (I think these were better received by my parents than the beer mat collection that climbed a wall and set off across the ceiling.) The accompanying strip – taken from somewhere in the music press of the time – was a potted history of the record biz, charting events and musical trends, but closing each entry was the ominous line ‘Disco booms’.
Tune army
These cartoon observations accompanied the faltering progress of my own musical ambitions. Rock became heavy, prog and then metal. Reggae spawned dub, dancehall and ska. Punk peaked and gave way to power pop then synth pop. And dance music in its various forms remained poised to take control, ready to boom. I searched to find a lasting place in any of them.
Perhaps I should have kept the counsel of my cartoon collection rahter than beer mat collection. Perhaps I even missed its rather obvious invitation to investigate performance art…
Among Glashan’s storylines, Lord Doberman explores performance art, nailing a Stradivari violin to the top of a Steinway grand. For an encore, he proposes destroying the ensemble with a chainsaw. In another, Mollusc Hall is disassembled brick-by-brick, and rebuilt ‘three feet to the left’.
Alongside the Observer, Glashan’s work appeared in Private Eye, Punch and the New Yorker, ‘creating an absurd, self-regarding, deluded, monomaniac world that so closely shadows our own’. Indeed.
Interesting, now, to read Alex Petridis writing in the Observer’s daily sister paper – the Guardian – on the state of the pop charts recently: ‘The Top 40 is in a stage of conformity,’ he said, taking his thread from a piece entitled Pop’s Worst Year. ‘Traditionally, you look to R&B and hip-hop for edge and sonic innovation in the charts; they’re the genres that come up with the ideas pop producers subsequently steal. But pop seems to have caught up with urban music (the influence of French DJ David Guetta’s brand of commercial electro-house is all-pervading) which means that everything currently sounds like everything else.’
Petridis is not singling out the current chart, however. Having revisited 1976’s chart (through a recent reshowing of Top of the Pops), he concluded ‘After two minutes, I was pretty much ready to form Sham 69 myself’.
With the charts choking on reality talent and remixes, is it now down to new methods of music exposure and media delivery to keep a lifeline open to ‘real’ popular music? The new underground, a lot of the music spread online carries the same cred – if not the substance – as Led Zeppelin albums carried in carrier bags.
Maybe there’s hope for the mainstream, though. Quietly echoing the recent resurgence in high-end recording facilities, there are signs that recorded music is beginning to resist the deluge of dance.
Disco stumbles
desk and JBL LSR6300 studio monitors
For recording fans, it was fascinating to see established artists rediscovering old working methods. For the younger audience – and the bands themselves – it was an education. As well as the emphasis on musical performance, many seemed amazed to discover how much they liked ‘old school’ working.
Then there is Chris Estes and his Enless Analog Clasp system – an entirely new take on integrating the use of analogue tape in a DAW recoring environment. And some influential people – like Lenny Kravitz, Mixdream Studios and Blade Studios – are buying into it...
There’s more…
At 77, Asha Bhosle is the most recorded artist in the world. Called the Nightingale of India (and the subject of ‘Brimful of Asha’), she is the most successful Bollywood playback singer of all – and she recently released an album called Naina Lagaike, with sitar virtuoso and vocalist Shujaat Khan. It was all recorded live in the studio.
‘It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,’ says Shujaat Khan of the studio sessions, taking pains to point out the error of believing that ‘all anybody wants to do is dance’. ‘There was so much melody…’
‘The marvellous part was that we recorded the music and vocals live – something that hasn't been done here for years,’ he says of the recording, which was conducted without song arrangements, and with the players sharing the same space as the two singers. ‘We’d throw little vocal challenges at each other and this game of one-upmanship has resulted in some beautiful vocal renditions. We are really proud of the results. I wish people could see how much fun we had.’
‘I had the backing of a wonderful record company who understand musicians,’ he says. ‘Most companies understand music and how to sell it. Some understand musicians – they understand who we are and do not treat us as a robot, accepting our idiosyncrasies and our feelings.’
If the new wave of old school recording continues, we could easily find ourselves reviving a lot of old skills and abandoned expertise. These wouldn’t replace what has come along since, but may provide a very welcome accompaniment.
Now, if Shujaat Khan’s comments on his record company could become mainstream… Wouldn’t that be something?