Paul Morley, what is he good for?
Pop, What Is It Good For (BBC4, last night) was kind of the centrepiece of BBC4’s Giant Month O’ Pop and it was a rather interesting beast. Obviously an hour of Morley expounding on music is unlikely to be a bad thing, he’s one of the few journos who can really do public speaking in the same way he writes and only seem slightly ludicrous, but, certainly for anyone who read Words and Music, there was little new. I got the feeling that we weren’t the core audience though, that it was aimed at people who hadn’t read W&M, people who would be surprised at the programme starting with 15 minutes on Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and, although it covered similar ground, there were some new twists and turns, mainly added by the range of interviewees.
The six tracks he concentrated on (and then spun off from to talk about All Pop Ever) were:
CGYOOMH - Kylie
Ride a White Swan - T-Rex
Lola - The Kinks
This Charming Man - The Smiths
What Do You Want - Adam Faith
Freak Like Me - Sugababes
Although chappie from Mud wasn’t particularly articulate about CGYOOMH (also, where was C Dennis???), Suggs discussing the Kinks and, particularly, Simon Armitage wallowing in the lyrics to This Charming Man, egged on by Morley, as Mike Joyce looked on clearly thinking “what ARE these two on about???”, were both lovely bits of telly. I think it was a good idea to ask others what POP meant to them, and certainly broadened the remit somewhat. It also led to the most hilarious moment of the show when Richard X asked Morley and Anne Dudley exactly WHAT Art of Noise was meant to be about to much blustering and embarrassment by both of them. The only interview that really didn’t work though was the last one, with the Sugababes, who really didn’t get what he was asking, in fact, didn’t really get that the interview had started! The fact that he didn’t address “where has mutya gone?” either, given that she’s rly prominent on Freak Like Me, made me wonder if they’d really really tried to get a kylie interview (she was in the same studio doing Children in Need), but it had fallen through at the last minute and they’d thought, “oh well, the sugababes are here, they’ll do.”
Also, without wanting to come over all SF/J it was a VERY white programme, although this only really struck me this morning, rather than whilst i was watching it, so i’m not sure how much of an issue it was (alternatively, i am also a r4c!5t). It was at heart about PM’s personal journey through music and, I guess, reflects the whiteness of British pop.
Anyway, for those of you who missed it and are in the UK (or whose vpns can con the iplayer into believing they are in the uk, hi cis :)), it’s on iplayer til the end of the week, and repeated on Saturday at 2.25am.
Site powered by
Marcello Carlin on January 9th, 2008
I’ll sneak a look at this later, but the choice of interviewees looks a bit desperate (how hard was it to get Ray Davies to talk about Lola?).
Here are the songs and interviewees I would have picked:
Badpenny Blues by Humphrey Lyttleton - Thom Yorke
Defecting Grey by the Pretty Things - Alan Hollinghurst
New Rose by the Damned - Evan Parker
Bring Me Closer by Altered Images - Margaret Drabble
Valley Of The Shadows by Origin Unknown - Emile Ford
All I Need by Radiohead - Humphrey Lyttleton
FT's Alan on January 9th, 2008
(sadly incidental to the ‘whiteness’) a bit that made me laugh was the west indian reggae version of Lola that just skips over the final verse
FT's Pete Baran on January 9th, 2008
To be fair, I think Richard X knew what the Art Of Noise was meant to be about. He really wanted to know what Paul Morley did in it (and when he asked this outright Anne Dudley looked to her shoes, embarrassed).
The musician bloke was good on the “how it works” (though he could have been talking balls for all I know).
It might reflect PM’s whiteness, and the whiteness of the music press, but the story of British pop isn’t all THAT white. And anyway, as I daresay he would say in defence, Keisha is black.
David Belbin on January 9th, 2008
Thanks for the iplayer link but those of us using macs will have to wait until it’s repeated.
FT's Lena on January 9th, 2008
I hope someone mentioned the dance remix of This Charming Man which the band apparently hated - but I (and others) love.
As for whiteness, how about getting someone to talk about M/A/R/R/S?
FT's Pete Baran on January 9th, 2008
iPlayer works on Macs now! (in as much as I used it on a mac two days ago).
The Sugababes segment was oddly reminiscent of the sequence in the terrific I’m Not There where the BBC reporter constantly badgers Cate Blanchett’s Dylan with questions. Blanchett’s response is petulant, but a plaintive “you’re just going to get me to say what you want me to say”.
Mark M on January 9th, 2008
My assumption was that the Sugababes bit was intended to be crap (otherwise they wouldn’t have left it in, not when they could have had more Wyatt & Blake, for instance): the dreamer Morley adrift in the fierce world of light entertainment. It was just part of the old-fashioned po-mo playfulness, surely?
ian jessel on January 9th, 2008
Thought the Elvis clips very interesting….who did them does anyone know?
FT's CarsmileSteve on January 9th, 2008
well if the EFFING BBC didn’t cut off the titles to every show it has just to tell us what’s coming next i might have seen last night.
fortunately by fast forwarding to the end on iplayer i can tell you it was Suspiciously Elvis
Marcello Carlin on January 10th, 2008
I don’t approve of Sugababes sneering if that’s what Morley was trying and if he was then he’s missing every point, including his own, i.e. Morley as King Lear and everything else from Nurse With Wound to Kelly Clarkson equal-sized pieces in the magical jigsaw puzzle of somebody’s complete picture.
Pete on January 10th, 2008
I thought How Pop Works last night was in many ways a better programme, as it illustrated a fair number of its experts own prejudices but spread it widely enough to point out they were all wrong.
Basically some pop works cos its got a good tune, some pop works cos of good lyrics, some pop works cos of good production, some pop works due to a good artist, some pop works because of the time it somes out and some pop works despite all of this!
My kind of conclusion!
FT's CarsmileSteve on January 10th, 2008
was a shame that they chose to illustrate the last point with [yawn] bo rap rather than eg O SUPERMAN…
…also it was HELLISHLY rockist in places, i was flicking rather than watching intently, but there seemed to be a lot (yes, phil jupitus i am looking at you) of “ppl who write and sing own songs < everyone else” which a lot of the footage completely disproved…
FT's Alan on January 10th, 2008
i thought it started well, but was on the whole poor because of so much filler “here are some good bits of recent pop songs”. but thought it was quite light on rockism. basically as you say when Phil Jupitus used the dread ‘authentic’ (wrt singer songwriters).
i did like the ‘elements of pop’ chapters, and the finale ‘rip up the rules’ for Bo Rhap.
John Harris was enormously useless. These talking heads are there to state the obvious some times, but he he faffed up any times he tried to go beyond them.
(my own indie shame is that i really would have liked Mr and Mrs Boo Radleys to have put in an appearance)
a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot on January 10th, 2008
i didn’t see any of this ftb
a. souvlaki tetris which i remain RUB at
b. fear of people i am fond of in principle being rubbish after all (warning: contains no john harris)
FT's Pete Baran on January 10th, 2008
I though JH was brave to use Romeo & Juliet but then realised he knew it and therefore wasn’t brave at all though Romeo & Juliet is a terrific song its not as good as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_M3Gl1FYfo
FT's Alan on January 10th, 2008
(ha ha, anytime you like with the BATT)
JH really fluffed up on R&J (which IS great). he was reaching for something about how though the words are pared down they let you imagine a much broader scene, but his description of that broader scene were just words from the lyrics!
a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot on January 10th, 2008
i have argued for this before here and elsewhere but i would like someone to sit down with a MASTER MELODY-SMITH viz p.mcartney and get him to talk through — with examples — when a melody is good, when not, and where eg HE would have gone in a song he half-likes
melody: utterly weirdest of all the basic “banalities”
FT's Pete Baran on January 10th, 2008
Yes, one of the problems with both of these shows is they never really get into “bad music”…
Marcello Carlin on January 10th, 2008
One shudders at BBC4’s notion of “bad music”: cue 40 minutes of Petridish/Sawyer etc. sniggering at Kid A, Metal Machine Music et usual cetera.
Macca’s impassable I Dunno Like shield of determined amicability will of course automatically cancel out Mark’s pipedream, more’s the pity.
a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot on January 10th, 2008
yes no “bad music” unless it’s actually justified in craftly fashion: viz a melodist saying “this melody doesn’t work bcz” — or a rhythmatist ditto
or a committed fan of Genre X saying what’s bad WITHIN this genre (not thins bad for being nearly in but not; or “jazz for ppl who don’t like jazz” etc)
“bad” all too generally seems to mean “iconic example of genre you don’t get the point of, or use to mock social grouping you don’t get the point of”)
(when eth4n and m!nna were my sekrit guests i tried to get them to outlay to me what BAD rap is, with examples, they were really leery of this question, despite the former’s fairly decided opnions in ref music: they did oblige eventually but very reluctantly, and with huge caveats — viz “actually this isn’t that bad” etc)
FT's Pete Baran on January 10th, 2008
BUT THIS IS CENTRAL TO THE ISSUE OF POP. They were quite happy to define what made good, but loathe to get near the issue of something that didn’t do it being necessarily bad. In the end bad pop sometimes just is because it doesn’t sell, or exists in an oversaturated market etc etc.
And of course getting a melodicist / lyricist / pop svengali to do a closed room Juke Box Jury job on a selection of pre-release singles would show what a crap shoot the whole thing is. But would sure as hell be interesting.
For example why didn’t the Noise Next Door sell any records? Kula Shaker die on the arse with their second album. Why is Mutya not selling records?
Marcello Carlin on January 10th, 2008
Reminds me of that Simon Dee documentary a few years ago, where Jimmy Tarbuck was quizzed on why he thought SD vanished from our TV screens so abruptly at the end of the sixties. His considered response: “Well he was crap wasn’t he?”
The trouble with Mutya is that, as bad as her album is, it’s not selling for exactly the same reason that Sally Shapiro isn’t selling and the same reason that Adele and Duffy will shift millions - well, thousands - of their albums.
a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot on January 10th, 2008
haha in the course of a meeting this morning i embarked on a bad over-extended metpahor which i have since decided is ptotentiall an excellent metaphor: viz that [such-and-such an artzone -- my pals will know which nonwe but it isn't germane to the point] is a pond so small and secluded that no one with gumption or drive is even willing to be the big fish in it for a season; when actuall they should be thinking
i. be big fish in small pond
ii. change ways of pond so that it grows into a big pond (and you with it)
anyway, the effect of success — pop success OR critical success — is an embiggening of the pond, bcz you bring ppl into it with all their hopes and projects and projections, and some of these become attached to the original small-pond thing
ie the good thing isn’t YOU WIN, so much as YOU ENABLE LOTS OF (possibly otherwise unpossible) STUFF UNDER YOUR UMBRELLA (ella ella ella)
(yes you are a big fish in a small pond floating on an upturned umbrella as projections turn into an ocean) (best metaphor EVAH) (evah evah evah)
Marcello Carlin on January 10th, 2008
Except, historically, they end up wanting to be the only fish in the pond.
a logged-out pˆnk s lord whatnot on January 10th, 2008
well the figures in my head for this idea are a. the beatles and b. harold ross at the new yorker, both of whom dug a wholly new pond, and yes arguably dominated it but recognised the value to them of the rest of the pond (ross especially, in that he was never a writer with a byline)
trying to control it as it grows is a horribly bad idea; but also — almost invariably — a backfiring idea: it just won’t grow
Erithian on January 11th, 2008
Back to the Pop season on BBC4, I wasn’t expecting too much from “Pop on Trial” given a snidey preview in the Guardian, but after an iffy start it really warmed up nicely. CP Lee, ex of Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias (”I honestly think Lonnie Donegan was a more influential figure in 20th-century music than Elvis”), Pete Wylie (”in my opinion Elvis was under-rated”) and Joe Brown (”we were lucky to perform as Joe Brown and the Bruvvers - Larry Parnes wanted to call us Elmer Twitch and the Fidgets”). Not the first names you’d think of for a panel, but very entertaining and knowledgeable. Some good Fats/Chuck/Eddie clips too.
Marcello Carlin on January 11th, 2008
I’d tend to agree with both CP Lee and Wylie there; I’ll have to try and watch this on iPlayer too (nice to see Wylie still around btw; when are we getting some new songs Pete?).
Did anyone see the Pop Britannia fifties episode, and if so is that worth catching too?
Erithian on January 11th, 2008
Must say Pete Wylie was a revelation – very entertaining to listen to, passionate about his music. Hope he gets more gigs like this in fact. I saw CP Lee and the Albertos a couple of times back in the 70s, and their doo-wop version of “Anarchy in the UK” was a highlight. I thought the “Pop Britannia” fifties episode was a bit disjointed – anyone unfamiliar with the story would wonder why Lennon and McCartney’s 1957 meeting was featured so early in the programme then dropped while the narrative went back to the early part of the decade – but again worth a look for the footage alone.
FT's Pete Baran on January 11th, 2008
Hooray for iPlayer (and a wet lunch-hour).
Yes, Pop On Trial 50’s is worth watching for Joe Brown’s insiderism alone (and is better than the Pop Britannia at covering the same ground). I quite liked the disjointed nature of the show, as it put paid to the great big lie of the great pop narrative (and indeed CP Lee’s demand for novelty records at the end was a worthwhile reminder that much of this HAPPENED AT THE SAME TIME). Did remind me that all you need for good TV is a few passionate people, a few knowledgable people and a good researcher. Maconie’s presentation avoided the worst of his know-it-all tendancies and was quite natural. Perhaps a bit more argument between the panelists could have livened things up but on the whole a nicely current and poptimist reading of this dark decade.
Izzy on January 11th, 2008
What I liked was the choice of Wyclef as a great contemporary singer. I’d always assumed that Mary J Blige owned that track, but now I’m dying to dig it out for reappraisal. (Likewise Romeo & Juliet, I guess)
Oh, and Mutya’s not selling because she is boring. Being miserable/moany is only an interesting characteristic if it’s combined with something else, like wit or (best of all) cracking tunes. ‘Song 4 Mutya’ isn’t enough.
xyzzzz__ on January 12th, 2008
- Odd how the ‘How pop works’ thing worked out: setting out as musicological explanation to everything then by gradually factored in stuff that’s around the music not the notes it inevitably lost shape - I kind of wanted this to stick to applying musical theory with some kind of acknowledgment of the limitations to that approach (’it may describe developments in classical music well BUT, etc.’)
- I really liked the fifties ep, how many times did Pete Wylie say ‘wow’ at Joe Brown again? :-) Wish they got round to talking about how genuinely wacky some of that stuff ws, and maybe mentioned Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.
What did everyone think about Morley’s theory on songs being great cuz you can imagine them being sung by Elvis? The only Elvis impersonator seemed to be the Las Vegas years, so…
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on January 14th, 2008
“the fluid disconnected future pop always saw coming…”
is that why the bbc i-player gave me 60 mins of sound and 40 mins of image limping 2/3s the speed along behind it!!? (and the image stopped the moment the sound did so i never saw adam faith or the sugababes AT ALL)
but even so oh oh i *LOVED* this! so i am 1 x ho for p.morley again, i guess i shd read his book after all!
“Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
Takes me right back (when you were young)
Throw your precious gifts into the air
Watch them fall down (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The hills were higher (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The trees were taller (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The grass was greener (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)”
Steve on January 16th, 2008
“What did everyone think about Morley’s theory on songs being great cuz you can imagine them being sung by Elvis? The only Elvis impersonator seemed to be the Las Vegas years, so…”
I thought this was quite poor unless the Elvis-impersonator renditions were intentionally bad so as to test the song’s durability to the limits. Perhaps I misunderstood but none of the songs he picked sound better re-imagined as Elvis singles and the idea that ‘yes you can imagine Elvis singing this song’ isn’t enough on it’s own as it’s easy enough to imagine Elvis singing countless hits - plus where does it leave all those classic instrumentals or indeed ‘Close To The Edit’?
Marcello Carlin on January 16th, 2008
He could do the “hey”s.
Tom on January 16th, 2008
“oh, to be in Graceland, in the summer time…”
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on January 16th, 2008
he could do close to the edit darts stylee!
(wasn’t this a sub-radar way of saying “oi! carmody! wanna take it outside!?”)
Marcello Carlin on January 17th, 2008
Really, if Presley had lived the Colonel would probably have made him do “Agadoo” in the style of “Viva Las Vegas.”
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on January 17th, 2008
at a rockwrite base-belief level, i would propose that morley’s argument here is that presley was a touchstone because he was (for a short but key time) a kind of living in-one-brain-and-body jukebox, through whom every extant stream of pop was processed and vivified and mongreled and hipslung and frankensteined, not just country and R&B and blues but old-time stephen fosterish americana (”love me tender” = aura lee) and even the ghost of jazz (he was known as the “king of bop”)
prob bein that elvis imitators can’t/won’t ever do WHERE ELVIS MIGHT HAVE GONE if living yet (and yes, undogged by the colonel) — so the imagined idea is undermined by its execution
that darts moment — teds in surplices — was totally a wtf “free lunch” moment tho, in the programme and (it reminded you) at the time
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on January 17th, 2008
does he expand on this in “words and music” btw — i really DO have to read it at some point don’t i?
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on January 17th, 2008
this = presley-as-jukebox not the darts in surplices
Marcello Carlin on January 17th, 2008
We do get a page in Words And Music where PM lists all the songs a living (or 1995-resuscitated) Elvis should have sung. In the book he also gets smartly compared with Eminem. The Jacko/Lisa Marie wedding he describes as “the strangest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world.”
Klaus on January 21st, 2008
The Smiths and Kinks clips are on YouYube but the rest?
Viewers outside of the UK would love to see more of this…