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?

But a professional and serious musician is far removed from the great unwashed masses of his or her audience, your hordes of spotty teenagers, they won't have by and large any knowledge of that stuff.

The sort of up and coming bands and musicians from around the world, the type of people Jools Holland has on, the future of proper music seems to be pretty safe in their hands, it's just I doubt many of their audience would know much about many of their influences.

I just did a spot check on a 20 year old here and he couldn't basically tell me anything about the music of any of those guys you named. I wasn't surprised, although he was when I punched him for not having heard of Neil Young.

To be fair TT, I feel FA is both right and wrong about being relevant. Many artists, like Cliff Richard for instance remain relevant to their particular audience by continually 're-inventing' themselves and he was filling stadiums last year IIRC; no one surely thinks that it's only the young who define relevance? and no-one can be relevant to everyone - though as FA very rightly points out, they still have a wage to earn.

Everyone has their niche to fill, from the spotty adolescent playing his (three ?) root position chords to the virtuosi at a more elevated skill level, and it's all relevant, and probably 'great', to someone.

Thinking of FA's blues music (and mine, as I really love this stuff), the 'relevance' is difficult to associate in a way. It's all mostly 60, 70 or 80 years old for a start and the songs are about a time which very few living people can remember or make any connection with, but then they're mostly about being hurt by love or being generally badly done to, so I guess we can all relate to that in some way. Thing is, it's so old that none of us were around at the time so we all came to it at a much later time and we made it 'relevant', just like some modern kids will do, so I guess there is hope..

Well I personally feel that "The Wombling Song" defined the moment progressive rock transitioned from mainstream essential listening to underground scene that no "with it" teenager would ever admit to listening to, and was itself the harbinger of the ensuing dynamic punk rock movement. With its avant-garde costumes and hard-hitting lyrics blasting environmental waste blazing the trail for that next revolutionary genre, at a time when to all the world it seemed like UK rock would be marginalised by the bland and soporific "soul" from the US. Mike Batt never got the credit he deserved.

Cliff is far more relevant for, possibly, performing the first ever British R&R song >50 years ago. There's nothing he has done for the last 40 years, apart from that one with the Young Ones, that has inspired me. And he looks crap for his age.

The thing is, you don't need to have ever heard a note of original blues to understand its relevance, if you are interested in any study of the history of music. For instance, BB King, inventing the concept of lead guitar. Or, once you know what a blues scale is, or a 12 bar blues, then all of a sudden your eyes are opened and you can suddenly recognise the influence in a zillion great rock (and other) tracks. Not that you need to, but there's the relevance and will be, as long as they play rock'n'roll.


Irrelevant, surely?


Amen to that. They will if I ever get a chance to get in their ear

The overall thought on any type of music must be:

We are all prisoners of our own divise

Heheh, no, they'll have to catch me first!

I was a little beyond my teenage years back in the middle seventies, though IIRC, the difficulty with 'The Wombling Song' was that you couldn't bloody well avoid it if you turned the radio on. Mind, there [ihave[/i been a few like that..and the most embarrassing moments came when you found yourself whistling them - street cred down the pan, gone in a flash!!

I think FA, that there is far more which unites us than divides us..

Talking about muzos having to make a living, I happen to know that playing lead guitar on The Wombling Song was one Chris Spedding, yes, the "Motorbikin' " Chris Spedding. This guy played on Nilsson Schmilsson, featured heavily on Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds and played on the tour, he played lead guitar on Joan Armatrading's album Me Myself I, and loads of other stuff. And yes, I am a fan, and yes that's something to do with him being an old blues guy.

Chris in fact produced the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant" (yes, really), and in 2011 got back with Martin Chambers (Pretenders) on drums, vocalist Stephen Parsons (ex Baker Gurvitz Army - if you don't know -look it up!) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols, co-writer of most of Never Mind The Bolloxks) on bass, to form [url=http://www.chrisspedding.com/session/kmob/kmob.htmKing Mob[/url, and if you haven't got their 2011 album Force 9, get on Amazon and spend that three quid, it'll be in your letterbox tomorrow and you won't be sorry.

Nor will you be if you click on the link for the video of "Selene Selene"

Aye, session musicians have to earn a crust. Truth is the Blues/jazz scene isn't the most lucrative of livings ('cept maybe for those at the [ivery[/i top) so playing sessions and production work is one way of keeping the (not Howlin') wolf from the door. In fact it's a pretty marginal one sometimes and I'm disappointed I won't be able to show my support and catch Martin Taylor and Tommy Emmanuel's Halifax concert together, in March, as I'll be in France to see the mighty Bulls. C'est la vie...as they say.

Never mind, you can always go and see Patti Smith at Haworth parsonage in April.

Oh, no, you can't, because you haven't got a ticket

Quick visit to Mr Google suggests Ms Smith might not be my type either, but of course, as with opera (which is also not my favourite music) it is my loss, not hers - so much music, so little time..

So true. Imagine being born in say 3012, what chance will they have with an extra thousand years of music to try to somehow assimilate?

I like a challenge, especially musical, so let me see if I can give you some food for thought; Patti Smith was really a songwriter, writer, activist and "punk poetess", more than an out and out performer, but her well-worn voice did suit a certain kind of track and while I don't have many albums of hers she did some great work, including one of my top ever tracks, which you can watch her perform live on the OGWT by typing
=#BF00BFPatti Smith - Because the Night - Live 1978
into a popular video search. (She and Springsteen co-wrote this)

Just one example of what she could do as a performer, which I think you'll be surprised by is a little-known acoustic cover:
=#804080Patti Smith - Smells Like Teen Spirit

She crops up unexpectedly all over the place. I have a few albums by the very underrated Blue Oyster Cult, so to give you both them and her, have a listen to
=#804080Blue Oyster Cult-The Revenge Of Vera Gemini
from the superb album Agents Of Fortune, the track opens with Patti doing some of her poetry.

I think Secret Treaties is a better album than Agents Of Fortune but both are worth a listen and a place in your collection.
Blue Oyster Cult are perhaps only best know for a single, "Don't Fear The Reaper", but that was far from either typical, or their best. I like to try to persuade people to give them a listen (with not much success I admit but still!) so if you can be arrsed and have the time some time, I'd recommend checking out tracks like [iETI, Astronomy[/i and [iME262[/i, with your volume turned up to 11.

Would be interested to know what you think if you get a chance

I have "Because the night" on a 7" single somewhere in the eaves, as well as several BOC vinyl albums (and CDs), and fully concur with that assessment...if that's enough to put Tigs or Bulliac off...

One of my favourite groups from my youth, seen them several times. I got into them when Ian Hunter wrote Going Through the Motions for their fab Spectres album. I think they were at their peak at that time & with Agents. My very favourite track though is Then Came the Last Days of May from their first album.

BTW, Patti Smith's version of Gloria is the only 12" single I have ever owned & is her best track that I have heard. The BOC connection is from her relationship with the late Allen Lanier IIRC, ex keyboardist, though I'm not sure if that developed from her song writing partnership.