The Ghosts Of Music Past

I think it was the great philosopher Bill Cosby (it wasn’t) who once observed that the past is one thing from which we will never be free. At no point has this seemed more apparent to me than when watching MTV News one evening this week – a program that is to news what colouring books are to great literature – to find that none other than Bon Jovi had performed at the European Music Awards. My initial reaction to this was complete jubilation that my time machine had worked, followed by crushing disappointment upon realising that my car still sat on the drive, no one in my near vicinity had a mullet and that, according to my computer, it was still 2010.

I have nothing in particular against Bon Jovi, the man or the band. It’s not their fault they once signed a record deal that will keep them in the public eye until long after humanity has been beaten to death by a polar ice cap, or whatever it is that makes global warming so bad. In fact, if anything, I envy their job security. But what did occur to me when watching a snippet of their performance, voiced over by some media graduate with ‘cool’ hair and too-white-to-be-right teeth, was how they are the perfect example of how some bands just refuse to fuck off.
 
Take as an example the Herpes of the boy-band world, Take That. Possibly an odd choice to write about in an indie magazine, but one that I think, unfortunately, defines my generation. I remember vividly the day they first split up, causing girls in my GCSE art class to gently sob over their badly rendered wine bottle and fruit sketches, whilst I sat comforted by the thought that I’d never again have to listen to a conversation about which member was the best, or how wearing dungarees doesn’t necessarily make Mark Owen a lesbian. I was convinced I’d seen the last of them. In my tiny child’s mind I felt like I’d been through a war and survived with just one psychological injury, incurred that time I danced to ‘It Only Takes A Minute’ at a primary school party. I knew there’d be flashbacks, but I also thought the worst was over. Fast forward a decade or two and who’s selling out venues within minutes of tickets going on sale? Take bloody That.

The strangest aspect of this by far is that it’s the same audience who are buying the tickets. No longer pre-teens with posters on their walls and braces on their teeth, but now fully grown adults with kids and mortgages, all frantically logging on to Ticket Master and hammering away at F5 so they can scream themselves hoarse at Gary Barlow’s big, round face. I can only conclude that there must be some kind of witchcraft afoot.
 
It doesn’t stop with boybands either. The world of meh indie has been represented of late as Travis’ Fran Healy is making/has made a comeback and David Gray has once again channelled his musical ewe, last year recording something I will hopefully never get around to listening to. All that’s left now is for Jim Corr to start his solo project whilst B*Witched don the denim again and finally the world’s experiment attempting to recreate the mediocrity of the nineties charts will have been a success.
 
Whatever happened to musicians who had the good grace to live fast and die young, or at the very least retire young? I may come across as being cynical, but surely aren’t all of these acts just cashing in on our love of nostalgia, or are there people out there who genuinely still have an overwhelming desire to hear ‘Relight My Fire’? Surely that song was rubbish 15 years ago, wasn’t it? Have we convinced ourselves that it will be better now? 

At least Bon Jovi just about pulled off the tight jeans, big hair and ridiculous guitar solos in the 80s. But there’s still something a bit odd about men, now well into their fifties, playing the same songs they did almost two decades ago. It’s like seeing the cool kid who used to smoke cigarettes behind the bike sheds now begging for change so he can buy a pouch of tobacco. It’s like your parents buying tickets to see The Stones because they saw them in the 70s and they’re trying to convince themselves that nothing has changed. Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that these bands are still hovering around the airwaves seems to be an indication that we, as a society, are refusing to grow up. It’s like adopting the musical foetal position. And why the hell not? Life is scary, let’s pretend we’re ten.

My main worry is what the future may hold if bands continue to be so resilient. Twenty years from now when I am pushing fifty (albeit a strikingly handsome fifty) will my kids be buying tickets to see a Jedward Rock Opera? Will Justin Bieber be performing his comeback album, chronicling the decade he spent in a heroin pit with Pete Doherty? Maybe Radiohead will be doing a Rod Stewart (who thanks to a recent TV ad I am aware is now releasing the fifth instalment of something that sounds like a coma patient’s cry for help) and I’ll be frantically trying to explain to my offspring that, “honestly, they were cool once”, and proclaiming that ‘I have no idea why they’re covering ‘Bad Romance’, it’s a song from probably the worst of The Symbol Formerly Known as Lady Gaga’s fifty albums. You know, the awful pop one she did before she cemented herself as an indie-electronica artist’. Or maybe, just maybe, those ice caps will come after us and I’ll no longer care.

Granted all of this is unlikely. For a start my kids will have good taste in music. Or they will be adopted. The choice is entirely theirs. Also, judging by the intellect of Jedward they’re not likely to see thirty before a fork-meets-toaster incident takes them both out, and Justin Bieber is the most likely person to have a late-teens Corey Feldman-esque drug addiction I’ve ever seen. But all this leaves me wondering which of today’s new acts will still be around in another twenty years. And will the lucky ones that survive still be producing good music or releasing albums of what can only described as guitar farts in a bid to stay relevant (I believe this is known as Weezer Syndrome). Maybe the noughties will have its very own Bon Jovi and we’ll be hearing the same songs we know today played over and over again at award ceremonies that no-one’s really bothered to put any thought into. It’ll probably be Oasis. I can see them reuniting on stage, age having taken its toll, more Barry and Paul Chuckle than Noel and Liam Gallagher, playing ‘Roll With It’ at the 2030 MTV Europe awards before presenting a lifetime achievement gong to a part robot/part human Keith Richards.

It’s food for thought. The most important thing you should take from this fairly ill structured rant however, is that I really wish Take That would sod off. I’ve been through this once and I really don’t think I deserve to go through it again. It’s like the second bloody Bush administration.