Pop music
Should I take up golf?
Marcus Berkmann
Now that there is no genuine pop radio any more — or, at least, none that adults can listen to without wanting to hit some- one — there are fewer and fewer ways of discovering the wonderful new records that presumably exist out there but never quite complete the gruelling journey to our ears. Radio One has wilfully abandoned every- one over school-leaving age, while Radio Two still concentrates on its core audience of the elderly and the infirm. Commercial stations like Virgin seek to emulate Radio One's youth policy while . patronising its older listeners with occasional snatches of Phil Collins and Eric Clapton. Most local BBC radio stations are so poor they can't afford to play records; most ILR stations seem to employ Dave Lee Travis. MTV rots the soul. And, according to every newspaper and magazine in the world, there's no new release more brave and exhilarating than Oasis's Be Here Now. No wonder record sales are plummeting. The labels seem powerless to react. So tied are they into the pursuit of the young that they forget the vast bulk of thirty- somethings with too many credit cards and a desire to listen to something a little liveli- er than Classic FM. So they fob us off with duff soul like The Lighthouse Family or ever more desperate repackagings of ancient material. Out this week is David Bowie's Greatest Hits 1969-1974, which may not supersede his 28 previous greatest hits collections, but at least presents the songs in a slightly different order. It's not a new problem. As I have noticed before, the pop market has been fragment- ing over several years into a series of dis- crete and utterly dissimilar genres, whose associated sub-cultures help adolescents decide which clothes to wear and which drugs to take, but mean little to the rest of us. We try to keep up with new trends, we really do. But I defy anyone over 35 to admit they genuinely enjoy the dissonant, clattery rhythms of drum 'n' bass. And mainstream rock, as currently represented in the charts by dozens of apparently iden- tical young bands, has become disastrously narrow in its definitions and ambitions. It's hard enough to get excited by Oasis's dis- mally limited musical palette, but when a mediocre pub-rock combo like The Sea- horses enjoy a hit album and a stream of hit singles, it may be time to throw in the towel and take up golf.
Those who suffer most are the artists who do not fit into any of the approved genres. A whole generation of song writers and performers has become effectively dis- enfranchised from the pop process, and must subsist on the scraps of coolness tossed aside by other lesser talents. Some- one like Terry Hall, whose Laugh (Telstar) is one of the richest and most satisfying pop albums of the year, is deemed worthy of attention mainly because he recently col- laborated on a couple of tracks with the trip-hop dullard Tricky. Not that these tracks were a patch on the normal stuff, of course, but they represented the sort of career move that now has to be made. Accordingly Laugh won some glowing reviews and even the occasional play on Radio One. But no one is buying it, because the people who would most enjoy it probably don't know that it exists. If compromise is not your game, you are completely sunk. Just about my favourite album this year is Prefab Sprout's come- back Andromeda Heights (Columbia), an odd, almost fearlessly straightforward batch of swoonsome Paddy McAloon love songs that fit into no known marketing category• Rock? Hardly. Easy listening? Not quite, although it is heroically smooth. Techno, electronica, Britpop, grunge? You might as well try to file it under ‘slciffle'. Andromeda Heights is merely an uncommonly accom- plished piece of work aimed unequivocallY at grown-ups. Sales are barely in single fig- ures.
Off to the driving range for me.
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