Music

In August they played their first gig at the Cavern Club (minus McCartney, who was away at a Scout camp in the Peak District). Ivan Vaughan began the set on tea-chest bass, but when he left to finish his homework Garry took his place. The club’s jazz-loving owner Alan Sytner sent a note to them on stage telling them to “Cut out the bloody rock”, but got short shrift.

The following month it was back to school for Garry – in the Remove at Liverpool Institute alongside McCartney, who had been held back after failing his Latin O-level, and Neil Aspinall, who would become one of the Fab Fours’ right-hand men and the head of Apple Corps.

Homework, scout camp, Latin O levels……

Beyoncé is now a billionaire, according to a report from Forbes – becoming the fifth musician to obtain the status.

The Grammy award-winning artist, 44, has joined the world’s wealthiest people following the success of her Cowboy Carter tour, which grossed more than $400m in ticket sales, and an additional $50m in merchandise sales. Her previous Renaissance world tour brought in about more than $579m.

Her husband, Jay-Z, was the first musician to become a billionaire on Forbes’s list in 2019. Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift have also achieved the elite status.

So that’s five more to be subject to extortionary taxation then.

Right?

If not, why not, and fearing the Swifites defending their Goddess does not, no, work.

Is there a music AI yet?

Are full musical scores available in digital format? Mozart, Beethoven etc? Led Zep?

Does that music AI grasp different sorts of ensembles? Brass band, big band, jazz trio, Mozart size orchestra, Bruckner size?

So, feed the digital scores into the different ensemble models, create the Pastoral by jazz trio (more likely, brass band, but why not kazoo orchestra?) and, maybe – different because still copyright – run Led Zep on different sizes of orchestra.

Flood Spotify and live off the proceeds.

So, what’s wrong with this idea? If the creation is cheap enough – as in, a few keystrokes for each piece per style – then the pitiful streaming payments still add up.

Anyone?

At the turn of the decade, gay male and non-binary pop stars seemed poised to take pop music by storm. Lil Nas X broke out with Old Town Road – which blew up on TikTok, sold about 18.5m copies and remains tied with Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You as the longest-running No 1 single in US history – and artists such as Sam Smith, Troye Sivan and Olly Alexander from Years & Years were all singing about gay love and sex.

But the initial promise has stalled. Lil Nas X’s attempts to build on his smash debut album have fizzled, and he is publicly dealing with mental health issues. In October, Khalid released his first album since being outed by his ex last year but only sold 10,000 copies in the first week in the US. A previous album, 2019’s Free Spirit, sold some 200,000 copies in the first week and led to him briefly dethroning Ariana Grande as the most listened to artist on Spotify.

That the rest of the music isn’t all that good?

This pushes some artists into behind-the-scenes roles as writers and producers, such as MNEK, who says: “Major labels aren’t searching for an openly gay pop star. They are searching for something that sells and is palatable for families and middle England.”

This also works and works even if we reverse it. The vast majority are not gay so people who sell to hte vast majority are not going to be talking about – say – minority sports like gay sex. You know, it’s a business?

Andrew Lauder obituary: record label executive who shaped rock
Influential A&R man who signed the Stranglers, Buzzcocks and Motörhead in the Seventies but let Queen and Elton John slip through the net, dies aged 78

OK:

As head of A&R at Liberty and then United Artists in the late 1960s, his British signings ranged from the cosmic space-rock of Hawkwind to the surreal humour of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band via the high-octane electric blues of the Groundhogs

And:

He was one of life’s incurable enthusiasts. Into the 1970s he signed Dr Feelgood, Motörhead,

There’s a definite thread that connects Groundhog, Dr F and Motorhead.

But their most obvious immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”

There’s a bit on Primal Scream’s live version of Screamadelica, in “Loaded”. Mani’s playing bass for them by this time. And the whole thing simply does swing – as a result of his bass playing – in a way that the recorded version just doesn’t.

The AI plays Bach.

People Watching won because it is an album of both universal appeal and local colour. It has evergreen melodies holding down songs about guilt, urban decay and the tension of leaving behind working class life for global fame,

Be Joe Walsh singing “Life’s Been Good To Me So Far” next.

Fusing Bolan with Blondie by way of the New York Dolls and Sex Pistols, the band scored hits including I Want Your Love, Baby I Don’t Care and Landslide of Love,

Baby I Don’t Care is really “Wild Thing” rewritten. So Transvision Vamp were a Troggs cover band.

Sly Stone is gone but as everybody will be pointing out he left the stage a long, long, time ago.

They were the only band at Woodstock who had had a number 1. This is it.

Cracking piece…..

When contacted directly by The Telegraph and asked whether the band denied any modern day slavery offences, Moffat said: “All denied. It’s all fake. No one is a slave and everyone is ok. We have begun criminal lawsuits against the persons behind this hate campaign.

“We don’t believe in social media trials – we only believe in a democratic system of innocent until proven guilty, with fact-checking and hard evidence.”

Sgt Tom Ottley, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said: “As part of our response to the initial incident, we identified several of the occupants of the van as being potential victims of exploitation offences. They are receiving specialist support and being safeguarded at this time.

Of course, I’ve no knowledge of anything at all here. But “criminal lawsuits” sounds like bluster to me.

Irv Gotti, the chart-topping producer and music label executive who was instrumental in the careers of Ja Rule, Ashanti and DMX as the co-founder of Murder Inc Records, has died at the age of 54.

I have never – to my joy and relief, I think – heard of any of these. Which, given thatthe one of them is famous enough to have his death reported in the newspaper is a pretty big hole in my knowledge of the world. An appropriate hole perhaps, but one all the same.

Two teenagers arrested over fatal stabbing of 14-year-old drill rapper on bus
Police detain two boys and 44-year-old woman in connection with murder of Kelyan Bokassa in south-east London on Jan 7

Not to make light of a young lad cruelly done away.

But this idea of someone being a “drill rapper”. Seems a very common occupation judging from newspaper coverage. Now of course I’ve never heard of any of these people – it’s not really aimed at pale and stale like me. Also, there’s no way I listen to teenibop chart countdown each week.

But I’m getting the impression that this isn’t quite what drill rapper means – that connection to the teeniebop charts. Rather, given the cheapness of new media, this is something more like having a Facebook page. Pretty much everyone’s got a video camera these days – phones will record video. Mumble something while filming, stick on social media of choice, you’re a drill rapper. But, not really – in the same way that 60 years ago ringing your bicycle bell didn’t make you a campanologist.

Your “drill rapper video” is seen by the 50 to 200 people in your wider social circuit and that’s it. Some, obviously, do make it to the teeniebopper chart countdowns. But the newspaper descriptions of this or that lad as rappers are about someone shouting into a microphone for Instagram, not anything else.

Given my intense and detailed knowledge of todays youf scene of course all the above could be complete bollocks. But that is how it seems to me.

What was your worst financial decision?
It wasn’t really a decision so much as a deal I couldn’t do. It was about 1978 and I asked my bank manager for a £4,000 loan to sign the publishing rights for the songs of an unknown group called U2. He looked at me as if I were joking and turned me down. The rights to U2’s songs must be worth trillions now.

Umm, yes…..

Elton John on the keyboard geniuses who blew his mind: ‘With Zoot, you were in for a party’

It’s much better than that headline makes it sound. Worth reading properly and dipping into the linked samples they have. More than anything it’s about being a musician and realising that others may or may not be better but they’re different and you cannot do that.

As we all know I’m not too hot on The G and as we might not know Elton’s never really struck me. But this is *good*.

The Australian punk band has been praised by Billy Corgan and Karen O for their explosive live act and uncompromising politics.

Uncompromising politics, eh?

Social commentary is never far from Taylor’s lyrics, which could just as easily contain brutal ragers about life under oppressive systems (Capital)

“They also champion safe spaces and advocate for Palestine at every performance

no classism and racism

“The security guard might live on a farm in Kentucky and shoot animals and eat them – he might not know about, like, identity politics,” she says. “I don’t want them to feel ashamed. I want to use our opportunity to say, ‘Hey, this is something we care about. Maybe it’s something that you could start looking into.’”

Same o, same o then.

Walk on the Wild Side, Grandad, Tuba Smarties, Herbie Flowers played on the first and wrote the other two.

I’ve always liked this:

But as long as there are ambitious tuba players – and brass bands – they’ll be playing this for centuries:

Vale

I knew that Bobby Gillespie had been a drummer for Jesus and Mary Chain:

Naturally, the Mary Chain would have a standing drummer (a position that rotated so much – including a stint by Bobby Gillespie – this joint memoir should come with an “other guys” spreadsheet).

And it’s a nice little trick that the drummer here is standing:

And I like the song, the album etc. But the confusion. Drummers are supposed to have a sense of beat, of timing. But by the way he dances Gillespie doesn’t have that. Which is just so terribly confusing to me….

Liam Gallagher has hit back at claims that Oasis are set to reunite because they are “broke” following his brother Noel’s £20 million divorce last year.

The band’s former lead vocalist took to X, formerly Twitter, to tell users that “your attitude stinks” after they posted that the brothers would only be reforming the band because they needed money.

He responded after one user posted: “It’s better off left it the 90s … they must be skint.” Another was told the same after claiming that “cash is drying up”.

I spent the 90s pretty much unplugged from British culture – and music. First Russia, then the US. So I missed all that excitement.

I’ve heard some of the music at least since. Some of it I’d even voluntarily listen to. Not a lot, but some.

Still, if the brothers can cash in 25 years later – and it will obvs be cash in as their audience is now itself 25 years richer – good luck to ’em.

They toured the UK in 1962 and returned in 1968. During this visit they were filmed for the BBC and had a two-week residency at the Batley Variety Club in West Yorkshire.

“They” is Louis Armstrong and his All Stars.

You’d not even manage to get Acker Bilk’s coffin to visit Batley these days…..

And this is rather sterling work, no?

The church played a fundamental part in family life. At the age of five, she joined the junior choir. She began to enter — and win — talent contests at a local masonic temple from the age of nine, having learnt songs from listening to records at a local “jukebox joint” where youngsters would congregate on Saturday afternoons. She saved all the money from her talent show prizes and put it towards the house that she was able to buy for her parents when she was 17.