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From recent 'Sir Coxone RIP' thread:
During a lengthy drive in my Mum's car last week, the radio was tuned to Radio 2, and in a bafflingly incredible stroke of joyfullness, none other than TV arsewit Mark Lamar came on and respectfully played an entire hour of Studio One records in tribute to Coxsone, and every single one of them was AMAZING, making me think I should get my hands on some of those Studio One compilations..
It was so weird sitting there listening to Radio 2 with my Mum and suddenly being confronted with an hour of thunderous ganja-inspired grooves and revolutionary Rasta pronouncements.. my respect for Mark Lamar has increased by about 10000%..
And from my blog the other day:
I never thought I’d find myself saying this, but... did anyone check out that great programme on Radio 2 last week in which Paul Morley narrated an alternative history of popular music in terms of how it related to modern composition and the avant garde? It was really cool… you’ve got to love someone who appears on the most populist radio station in the country and totally disses the Beatles and Radiohead (YES! THANK YOU!) before envisioning an alternative timeline wherein “Stockhausen is Chuck Berry, Can are the Beatles, Throbbing Gristle are the Sex Pistols..” and so forth. Admittedly most of the artists discussed were pretty familiar to avant-rock fans, but all the same hearing snatches of all this amazing crazy music, and tracing how certain ideas and sounds travelled through it and developed into the language of electronic/dissonant sounds we take for granted in today’s pop music, was pretty exciting and inspiring stuff. It’s certainly inspired me to fill in some gaps in my musical knowledge by heading down to the library to scoop up armfuls of Can, Neu!, Eno, Throbbing Gristle, Robert Wyatt, John Cale etc. Sadly I drew a blank on Le Monte Young, Sun Ra and Faust, but I guess I’ll bump into them when the time is right.
The only beef I had with the programme’s presentation was that it had a tendency to suggest that innovation and experimentation was the only thing that made music worthwhile… no room for emotion, tradition or entertainment value in Mr. Morley’s shiny, clinical Wire-subscriber world!
Nevertheless though, It was such a good programme (and so daring for Radio 2!) it almost made me want to give up listening to Black Sabbath rip-offs 18 hours a day. Not quite though.
Damn you, Radio 2! |
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