I thought "January" was quite a nice song. Personally, I never saw why everyone raves over Bohemian Rhapsody - I was underwhelmed at the time, tbh - but accept two hundred zillion others can't be wrong. And come on, "Barbados" IS pretty catchy? I guess "Bye Bye baby" was the least crap offering from the Bay Sickly Rollers, but if you put lipstick on a dumb tartan-clad jock with trousers halfway up its legs, you still have a dumb tartan-clad jock with trousers halfway up its legs. And "Whispering Grass" was waknerage!

With the above minor caveats, the worrying thing is that I don't see a lot of problem with that analysis.

Meanwhile, sad news that [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21082519 Wilko Johnson[/url is on his way out. But doing a farewell concert tour. How good would it be if they could find a way for him to put in a guest appearance on the bill at our gaff?

Anybody able to have a quick word with somebody?

A big shout to OK for taking a risk on this first stadium music venture. I hope it works, and think it will.
The catchment area for live entertainment tickets is far wider than Bradford alone..
Starting line up is pretty good and varied. It is what it is..blasts from the past.
I see no reason, if this event has reasonable success, why Odsal could not become a regular venue for similar or more adventurous musical events. Better groups at higher ticket prices.
Whist the range of events that could be put on at Odsal is wide I think that occasional ones by respected Asian musical virtuosos and popular groups would be sell out at any price. There is nowhere in the county like it.
Multicultural activity per OK - ticked. Making money - Solid Gold


I presume that the Bulls have a music licence of sorts (or whatever permission) as they have groups playing pre-match.
I further presume that having advertised the event for the 25th May they have the required permissions though there might be a limitation on the time the music should stop.
If rumors are to believed this is why Bruce Springsteen turned down the gig

Wow!!

All this argument about bands, singers and songs....I always used to think that liking music was pretty subjective, but it seems most believe it's objective (though obviously defined by different, and individual, parameters) and can somehow put on a value scale.

In the context of the Odsal concerts the only thing that matters is that they make some brass and hopefully don't disturb the neighbours too much.

Incidentally, my own value system was that if the band could learn learn it in a few minutes (three chord stuff, 90% of top thirty, Status Quo etc = rubbish) but if it took, say more than a couple of rehearsals to get right, then it was deemed 'better' music, though in the end it was always the audience who decreed what stayed in the show and what didn't. Simples!!

It's totally subjective!

Hell, I even know people who liked The Wombles...

Ha ha, everything has its place Adey. Let's be fair, who needs 'challenging' music when you're supposed to be concentrating on the driving?

It's both; but, like a very high proportion of the things in life, the better music often takes some time, experience, perhaps education, perhaps even study, to appreciate. And then it is still subjective, certainly; you can certainly appreciate a particular piece of music without especially liking it.

But again like a lot of things in life, they're often dismissed by many folk, and it's their loss, because they don't make the effort and so don't know what they're missing.

Kids don't begin music appreciation with nursery tunes for nothing. They need to learn the basics. Bands aimed at pre-teens and young teens often come up with simple, repetitive, formula pop but it's a level or two up from nursery rhymes, and it's often as much about the artist/s as the music. But I think as people mature most people's musical tastes do too, although the process then usually grinds to a halt somewhere in mid-life, and then they settle for whatever they settled for as "the best" and nothing that follows is as good.


Screw any complaining neighbours, if you want peace and quiet, don't live next to giant stadiums. (I doubt the Council quite look at it that way though)



But, Quo got it right, and with their 3 chords made some absolutely great music. "Caroline" remains a gem, doesn't have to be at all complicated to be great, and in pop, a great riff is a great riff, and a great hook is a great hook. Also don't forget that a lot of music doesn't involve artists that actually play an instrument, or write songs, many are vocalists, especially charts music, boy bands etc. Also a lot of bands have simply been backing for the real turn, the lead singer, and they are often superfluous and replaceable.

And some really great all-time classics have been written in minutes! Paul Anka famously wrote "My Way", the world's most covered song, in about 4 hours, although tbf it wasn't entirely from scratch. Wish I had 5% of that!

In general, the top thirty is 'dummed down' to the lowest common denominator to be honest, the 'three chord wonders' I mention, so selling a lot of records doesn't equate to 'great', or difficult music as such. There is certainly a knack, maybe even a science, in producing the sounds and riffs which become popular though and not everyone has it, that is a fact. It certainly isn't usually the 'clever' or hard to learn stuff which makes the no. one spot.

Got to admit I find it hard to accept much of the really simplistic stuff as being 'great' though. Obviously that's just me and other have a different opinion and all opinions are equally valid at the end of the day. We like what we like - so back to my Tommy Emmanuel, Martin Taylor and Django CDs.....

But sometimes the beauty and greatness is in the simplicity; I call your simplistic and raise you McCartney's "Yesterday"

The Wombles trumps that...

I think it's fair to say there is more than one way of listening to music, either from a 'technical' level or from the heart (whatever that is) and both are equal in their own way. It's true I'd get just a very similar buzz from listening to Yesterday as I do from hearing Mozart's Jupiter and there is a (different) greatness in both imo.

It's strange how we feel about music. There used to be a guitar player called Wes Montgomery, he was an American jazz player who did this ability to play a solo on single strings then double strings and then moving onto block chords, he did all this without losing the speed, fluency or musicality of the solo and for a guitar player it was just mesmerising, and to be honest, pretty unbelievable to listen to.

Wes' technique was so good they brought out a gadget which would do the same thing electronically; you played a note and the box added the octave at the same time BUT even though it sounds just the same (well almost) I can't accept the sound produced as being the equal of what Wes did. A computer probably couldn't tell the difference but to me there is something false about it all.

That's humans for you, we're a funny old mix.

I thought the Wombles were absolutely marvelous...though I doubt it will ever replace music..

I don't really know about that; I have great admiration for virtuoso musicians, whether it's a genius guitarist like Hendrix, or a pianist like Barenboim, and what is certainly true for me is that watching these performers 'in the flesh' is an awesome thing, and infinitely better than listening to a recording. But I think you'd need to 'get' the music first to really get the effect; certainly the natural universal human trait is to want stuff that's familiar. People prefer to listen to new stuff, even by their favourite performers, in their own time, and come to terms with it, but they prefer not to hear it at THIS concert, thank you very much, just play the STUFF WE KNOW. A classic example was Dylan coming out and playing an electric set.

It's certainly true that the better you get to know a piece, the more you appreciate it.

But OTOH when trying to assess the "greatness" of an old song, what's hard is to divest it of the personal emotional or sentimental baggage it may well have. For just one example, you happen to know that Dylan is a legend but if you'd never heard of him, how good would you rate him? More to the point, does it make a difference if you lived through those times, protest songs, Woodstock, the Dylans and the Baezs, and understand the context from which certain songs emerged? Can The Times They Are A-Changin" [iever[/i have the same resonance in the ears of someone born in 2000 as it does with "children of the sixties"? (In my opinion, the answer to that is a qualified "yes", it might, but not if they don't take the trouble to learn about the song, and put it, and the artist, in context).

It would be great, because when I tried for tickets yesterday afternoon they had sold out in the morning. I saw the Feelgoods last year & though it was a cracking night it was a bit like watching a tribute band.

It's totally subjective. You can be objective & appreciate someone's talent without actually liking the 20 minute drum solo.

Some songs take years to grow on you & fully appreciate, but most great pop songs hit you immediately. I will never forget hearing Peely playing 'Teenage Kicks' for the first time on the little radio in my bedroom, I'm with him, still the best 2.5 minutes of pure pop ever made. he then played it again straight after it was that good.

From 72-76 Quo were almost incomparable as a pop rock band, one of the best concerts I have seen at that time. Sadly they have deteriorated gradually since then IMO, with some real dirge. A mate, doing his own farewell tour in 1992, got tickets for Sheffield Arena. It was awful, lots of middle aged couples in matching Arran sweaters, with none of the power of the early 70s. Still, as someone said recently, they play as many chords as the Ramones ever did.

Which basically shows there is only so much mileage to be got from the three chord trick and the sixteen bar pop format is just too formulaic to be interesting for long if done the same way. Good driving beat though, but of course, so were many bands.

Also, don't forget that pretty much all musos change over the years as they pick up influences from other people and styles, just as the individual listener changes as the years go by. There were many things I thought were the dog's proverbials when I was younger which I'm not [iquite[/i so enamoured with today, so you are far from the first to lose touch with an 'old flame', musically speaking.

It must be difficult to maintain relevance as an artist over 40-50 years. Rod Stewart, with the Faces, were brilliant, now I cannot abide his style. People like Richard Thompson, Bowie, Neil Young, Ian Hunter - I still run over to the radio & turn it up when a new song comes out.

Agreed to a large extent about the Quo, but then they were only ever a goodtime band, they weren't after changing the face of music, and I suppose they got into a permanent groove of doing what they had always done in front of audiences who wanted to see just that. Nowt wrong with earning a living, and some of those early classics make up for everything.

Ramones were something else completely. America never "got" them really, well not until after the event when they started giving them awards, and but the whole point of what they did was to dare to go out and put on power performances thrashing and screaming out what you wanted to do, and stuff the fact you couldn't actually play as such. A sort of "screw you" music, probably responsible in large part for what became the UK punk movement. A reaction against every other kind of music, and rejection. I really love some of the punk stuff, although was never a punk, but isn't that a bit weird, as if it was supposed to appeal to anyone, it wouldn't be the likes of me, and it wasn't ever supposed to even be commercial, more anti-commercial if you like (though Malcolm McLaren would no doubt privately laugh and disagree!)

That's very true mate. To keep 'relevant' over three or four years is a real achievement, to do so over twenty or thirty and more is outstanding in itself - you can't really knock those who manage it.

Do you need to, though? And just how would you? What is their "relevance" in terms of the young? Of course I know the difference, but as basically no young people listen to any of the acts you name, is whatever they do "relevant"? If it's relevant only to ageing rockers, given there might be as many if not more of them than spotty teens, can that make it "relevant"? Or is "relevance" only judged through the ears of a 17 year old?


But after his early years, he still had a living to make, and the Neil Youngs of the planet, who seem to have a pretty inexhaustible creative well to tap, are a rarity. Most artists/writers/etcs only have so much new in them, that they can get out, and then they're done. If we're talking about relevance then I don't think longevity is really relevant at all to the question of great music. (Though is to the topic of great musicians)


Yes, you do, but how many teenagers (assuming any ever even had a "radio"!) would? And how many would switch stations?

IMHO this oft-used criterion of "relevance" is irrelevant. What almost everyone who uses the term means is "contemporary", or stuff that is "down wiv da kids". I reject the concept of relevance used in this way. If you want to be a genuine music fan, then (to name but one category) the work of the old blues masters remains just as relevant in music today as ever it was, even if most spotty youths will never hear a note of it.

Oh dear, punk.

As I think back to that lost decade of the eighties it's hard not to make a comparison with with what I think may have been the thoughts of the last guard in the final standing bastion of the Roman Empire, who had to endure the sight of the Goths Gauls and Vandals running amok through the streets of Rome destroying the fruits of culture and learning, then burning the books and destroying civilisation. Thatcher politically and socially, and punk culturally/musically - not my favourite period of history.

Still, mustn't be judgmental.....

Oh yes they do, my daughter has no option, as much as she protests.

But they are all still relevant. If you listen to young, currently creative/relevant, musicians talking about what influenced & still influences them it is often those people I mentioned & the music they are still producing. I do not hear it was Rod Stewart's latest bland album of covers.

Yeah, I was once musing on whether I could rationalise feeling the power and the anger and the emotions of John Lydon and the pistols on Pretty Vacant, and then I compared it with any other theatrical performance, and suddenly I thought I kind of got it: when you watch Death Wish, you don't clap when a villain gets his just desserts because you've turned into a bad person, you are just going through the same suspension of disbelief as makes any visit to the theatre work. There's some sort of catharsis at work - for a brief while I can identify with and believe the punks (or with the Phantom of the Opera as he sings Music of the Night, or with Jesus Christ in Superstar as Ian Gillan sings Gethsemane) and I reckon that's the process, pretty much.

Don't forget that to the spotty teenager, punk is ancient history. It had its heyday over 35 years ago. And didn't punk, rather than destroying anything, shake up the scene and sow the seeds of a lot of great music that followed?

Oh and you're mistaken, too. Or had you forgotten that the biggest band in the world in the late 70s was a new wave punk band Debbie Harry's Blondie?