QUALITY OF ARMOUR:

So far whatever reason I was down for a bit back there.

No update here since last weekend you’ll note, cos the only musical thing I’ve felt the urge to talk about is how much Big Star TOTALLY RULE. And I’m guessing if you’re reading this you either know that already or don’t care. My obsession with them currently rides at titanic proportions - the thought of listening to ‘Radio City’ on the way to work gets me out of bed in the morning, selected extracts from the Third album get me home at night, and in the meantime I stare out of the window waiting for the weird woman with a kinda cape made of binbags who clambers across the verge in the middle of the road and runs across the traffic at about 3pm every afternoon, and replay Big Star songs in my head amid other fanciful thoughts.

Aside from Big Star though, pop music, what’s it all about, eh? I get home Friday night and don’t really feel like listening to any music, except for the unspeakable feedback atrocities I’m making to keep myself busy and to test the limitations of my new digital 4-track. So I do that for a while, I watch a movie without much music in it, and some menacing buzz vortexes and downer metal courtesy of Double Leopards and Burning Witch get me to sleep in a perversely comfortable fashion.

Saturday morning, still don’t feel too much like diving into that ol’ CD mountain – let’s try silence for a while. I wonder if my acoustic guitar is still in tune and play my own weird, homemade blues on it to try and find out. It sounds belligerent and bad, but I kinda like it – I shall keep the feeling in mind and play it again sometime. Then more silence. (Watch yer back, Jandek!)

I go to the Spar to pick up a paper and some milk, and fuck me, ‘Keep on Running’ by the Spencer Davis Group is playing on the radio and, god, holy jesus, is that a great record or WHAT? Man, everything about it, that bass-line, the jagged ‘dur-dur-dur’ drums n’ rhythm guitar, that killer fuzz-tone lead creepin’ in round edges, and the vocal is just SWEET – gotta be about the best soul singing ever laid down by a white British guy. It’s not as breathless or insistent as a lot of ‘60s r’n’b / garage, but it’s got that kinda cool cat stomp and you couldn’t help but shake. I love how it was a hit... I guess it was just too good NOT to be a hit. Not that I wanna come across as completely backward-looking, but imagine if one of those lame NME type groups around today came out with a tune with even a fraction of the grace or guts or musical suss as this, the bottom would fall right outta the whole world. (Why is it that all chart-aimed guitar music these days sounds so UGLY? Punk rock as a musical style, as opposed to a spirit or philosophy, has a lot to answer for. But I won’t get dragged into that one just now.)

I know mostly when you read interviews with these kinda mid-60s bands they’re often quite cynical, and talk about how they were just in it for the money they’d get for gigs, or to impress those Beatle-worshipping little girls, and how the producer came up with all the good ideas, and they really just wanted to go home and listen to the blues or whatever, but you can’t hide a love of music, and MAN, these guys must have felt like gods when they first heard the playback of this one, whether it sold 3 copies or 3 million, the vibe is just there – SUCCESS mixed down on tape. It’s nearly as good as Big Star. I feel better.

Pop music – it’ll be with me always, the more I deny it the better it will sound ; behind every geeky fact-obsessed music journo with 2495857 records, there’s the love of that perfect, simple sound that goes above and below words, and a need to believe in it after everyone else has given in and surrendered and turned the TV on. That’s what separates us from people who build model railways or whatever – that kinda emotional need. Maybe it’s strange and unhealthy, but maybe it’s something to be proud of. Many of us who have this feeling know we’ll never be able to pay appropriate tribute to it in voice and looks and dance moves, many of us are awkward and clumsy and lonely, so we gotta spew out crap like this instead. And that, in a single paragraph, could be a pretty good history of that strange misfit discipline that Americans call ‘Rock Writing’ and British people prefer to term ‘Music Journalism’.

The sun’s out – time to get a haircut and shave. Thanks, pop music.

And rock music’s even better obviously – gee, wait till I get round to some of that!