One thing that always cheers me in my constant fight against aural dissonance is musics constant quest to reinvent itself. You may think this may make my quest like Heracles battle against the many headed hydra, cut one off and hundreds spring back in its place. Nevertheless Heracles worked out that if he cauterised the wound the head will not grow back. And I feel that time has finally come for glam MOR music. Because if there is a band who needs cauterising, preferably alive, it is the Scissor Sisters. And I feel with their gung ho desperation to try and throw anything in the mix from Elton John to the Bee Gees and Pink Floyd they are doing more than I can ever do to destroy an entire genre of music.
Who now can listen to Staying Alive without thinking of Comfortably Numb. Who can now listen to Pink Floyd without thinking of the Bee Gees. Since the Venn diagram of fans of either type of music DO NOT INTERSECT we have happily juxtaposed horror with a sensation that used to give (dubious pleasure). I cannot begin to understand what pleasure anyone could derive from any aspect of Pink Floyd’s The Wall except perhaps watching Bob Geldof’s acting career go up in smoke, but now mit is physically impossible. Can one hear Hall and Oates without thinking Laura. Indeed the intersection of all these lousy seventies bands with a new one destroys all the retro music lovers. Because one thjing is for sure, it would be impossible to like the Scissor Sisters themselves, at least not without at least two layers of irony.
I have never liked bands who have pseudonyms and dress up. Fundamentally what all hitmen want is a name, and address and a decent photo. I tried setting up a mafia contract on Ana Matronic, and all I got was a positive ID on Mantronix (who I would have gone for but frankly he ain’t troubling the charts anynore). They aren’t even all girls, some sisters they are. Still, one album has done more to destroy a whole decade of crap music than I have been able to do for a while. As long as the cut it out afterwards, I might let them live. If they decided to become binmen under their god given names that is. They are already acqauinted with so much rubbish it would not be a huge culture shock.