My quest to rid the world of music is occasionally a lonely one. But there are some issues on which I feel I am well-supported. Pub rock is one of these. Let us be frank: nobody except the truly feebleminded has ever, once, drawn a second’s pleasure from going into a pub and hearing live music. On the music food chain the ‘pub circuit’ might as well be the ‘plankton circuit’. The promise – to the naive music fan – is a seductive one. Live pub music offers the opportunity to discover raw talent at the very beginning of its career, in intimate venues, playing real music with real passion. And if you believe that, could I perhaps introduce you to the Nigerian Finance Minister?
The people who play the pub circuit are raw only in the sense that consuming them might well make you very ill. As for being at the dawn of their career – surely you jest. They are more often than not leathery old giffers whose years on the circuit have made them look even more wizened (one pub year = four human years). They are also to a man ugly as a dog’s arse. Let me explain a great pop myth here, that musicians are sexy. Men become musicians in order to attract women. Ergo they cannot have been that attractive to begin with. And twenty years slowly pickling in pubs don’t do much for your skin tone.
Most of these men have, shall we say, not enjoyed the financial success they hoped for. Many of them have had to sell their instruments and even their drummer – only this can explain the prominence of the cheap synthesiser and backing tape in pub music. The sight of a ‘turn’ backed up by one of these devices is one of the world’s most pitiful. And the music they play? More than likely blues, or a kind of listless, endless plodding facsimile thereof. It’s more Sleepin’ Dog than Howlin’ Wolf, except that the people who play it never, ever let it lie.
So much for ‘rock in pubs’. Now imagine a genre where such a thing was not the end result of a life’s shattered dreams but was instead the height of a man’s ambition. Such a genre was Pub Rock. Even in the shit world of shit music pub rock is known for being shit. Which is quite a feat when you think about it. House, garage – these are boring places to be, as opposed to the pub which is a great place – but even so pub rock tempts nobody, and attempts to revive it have been met with embarrassed laughter.
THe pub rock bands had given up at the very first hurdle – even their names are universally shit. What does the name Ducks Deluxe tell you? Or – ye gods – Sniff’N The Tears? It tells you “We are no good. We will make no attempts to be good. We have no imagination. The most anyone will be able to say for us is that we were a good laugh.” The whole sorry enterprise is summed up by its biggest hit – “Milk And Alcohol” by Dr.Feelgood. Milk + Alcohol? That means Bailey’s if you ask me. Which, like pub rock, is very hard to stomach.