New Music, The Pink Floyd, Muddy Waters etc So this bloggin' cat goin' by the name of Mouldy hits me with some rap about how I go on alot about 'old' music, but wants to know my opinion of 'new' music, and the deal brothers & sisters is this: I know alot about 'new' music (by which I guess we mean POST-LIBERTINES INDIE ROCK) but I don't really feel like I've got much of a handle on it, if you catch my etc. I rely on the indie-orientated cats & kittens I know to hip me to what's currently flipping wigs on the rock scene, and I hear CONTEMPOARY ROCK being played at parties or in people's cars or what haveyou, or maybe Joe Whiley'll play somethin', or I'll get a FREE CD with the NME, or I might have to review a NEW BAND for the paper, and I sorta ingest it that way, but I basically make absolutely no pro-active effort to know what's happenin' today, 'cept buying the NME, which is more outta habit than anything anyway. Like, Anna Waits digs The Arcade Fire (have they even got a 'The'? They should. They should be called The Arcade Fire..like, The Pink Floyd sounds way cooler than Pink Floyd, I've got an old John Peel session of Pink Floyd from '69 and he introduces 'em like - 'Ladies & Gentlemen...The Pink Floyd'. It's the coolest thing in the world...aw, jeez - this is OLD music, sorry) & I can see that it's all very dramatic high quality Waterboy's sorta stuff, and there's a million of 'em, and they play zithers and stuff, and it's obviously VERY GOOD music...but I just don't really, y'know, feel them particularly. Alot of this is down to production, (and I'm gonna sound like I'm a dull muso shmuck now, but I guess you'll have figured that much about me anyways) and it basically boils down to the simple fact that I Like How Records Recorded Between The Early 50s And The Mid 70s Sound. I ain't gonna lay a rap on you 'bout 'how drum miking techniques' changed or none of that boohockey, but it's enough to say that there's a vibe about the Muddy Waters - Early Led Zep (that'll do) era that I dig, and I guess that ain't no different to somebody sayin' they're a fan of a given era of literature, film, art yadda yadda yadda. The other big factor here is HISTORICAL CONTEXT, and my obsession with music from this period is part & parcel of a much wider fascination with mid-2oth centuary culture and history in gen, from Kennedy, Marilyn, beatniks the Bay Of Pigs to Nixon, Watergate, hippies & Vietnam. The music of this era is PART of the history, and that simply ain't the case now. Razorlight don't say anything about Iraq, Blair, Bush etc, and I find that sort of hard to get past, in terms of really liking them. Post mid 70s, the only stuff I really, truly dig is - ahem - old skool hip-hop (ie rough, badly recorded, very basic, very loud James Brown drum breaks being shouted over by a buncha school kids called something like The Incredible Disco 5) which I dig for the same reason I dig Jimi Hendrix, which is to say I dig it because it's so authentic a reflection of the desperate, fascinating climate in which it was produced -it's THE SOUND, THE SMELL of the drug / gang / Vietnam fallout that decimated the Bronx district of Manhattan circa 1977. I don't get that sorta feeling from much these days. Which means I'm missing out, fer sure. I envy young cats who dig the new scene. I like The White Stripes alot, infact I think they're utterly brilliant, but they're basically a garage/punk RnB band who got lucky, so they really don't count as New Music anymore than any Nuggets-revivalist band from Dee-troit does, ie The Mummies, The Greenhornes etc. I like & enjoy alot of new music, I think The Kooks write nice songs, I think The Arctic Monkeys are basically A Good Thing, I think Madonna is pretty great, I think The Flaming Lips are wonderful entertainment & very smart, I think Pete Doherty remains an interesting if pitiable figure and I think Lilly Allen is pretty NOW and good luck to her.

I while ago Keith Richards was interviewed in Q Magazine and they asked him what he thought about the 'NEW CROP' of BRITISH GUITAR BANDS; ie Razorlight, Franz etc. His reply was that he didn't really know much about them, and ended his response with the following question:

"I mean - are they as good as Muddy Waters?"

Q Magazine had to concede that no, of course they weren't. Keith thus considered the matter closed - if they're not as good as Muddy Waters then he's not really missing out, and he may as well stick with Muddy Waters. Keef's an old blues reactionary, possibly of the worst kind, and on one level his attitude sucks. But on another level, I sorta know what he's saying, and my attitude to NEW MUSIC basically boils down to: nobody has the time to Be Into Everything. If you're gonna devote your life to collecting all the great blues LPs in the world, you're never going to have the time, energy, money or inclination to really get into anything else. Things will appear on your radar, like a really great single by some great new band, but if it comes down to deciding whether your £10 is gonna go on an LP by A New Band That Sounds Like Black Sabbath or an LP by Black Sabbath, my money's always gonna go on Black Sabbath.

I run and DJ at a 60s funk/psyche/prog/RnB club called the Revolutionary Freaked Out Fuzz Club, and we have a motto, which I think I half- ripped off from Lester Bangs; "It's Not Retro, It's Just Good Taste." Whether it's good taste or not is up for debate, but I certainly don't think of it as retro.  ¶ 10:30 AM