Jarvis Cocker Guardian round table

Jarvis: ... but it is a very solitary experience wearing headphones. And you choose what is on your iPod and you choose what you listen to. You can say it's empowering because you create your own environment but perhaps it is stopping people talking to each other

YES BECAUSE BEFORE IPODS TUBE CARRIAGES WERE A VERITABLE HAVEN OF CONVERSATION

SHUT UP BETH

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"Hi kids, Miss Rogers won't be in today so I'll be taken your music lesson. My name is Mr Cocker, I'll just write that on the board for you..."

Paul Morley's guide to dementia.

Antony Hegarty: It was Duran Duran.

IE THE BEST BAND MENTIONED IN ENTIRE ARTICLE

Nick Cave: ...I'm not trying to take the moral high ground but I wouldn't allow my music to be used in that way.

Jarvis: Do you get offers?

Nick Cave: Often. There's a song called 'Red Right Hand', and a sanitary napkin company back in New Zealand wanted to use it, which was tempting ...

Lex! It's like you and the Talking Heads! :-)

Thanks for turning up Mary!

"Paul Morley: People are starting to collect music in the same way that they collect stamps. People who weren't really interested in music as such are now worried about whether they've got 15,000 songs, and I think that's had an interesting effect ..."

and

"Paul Morley: What about if everyone gets involved? Everyone has an opinion nowadays on everything, everybody has a blog. What if everyone made music? Doesn't that ruin the point of it being essentially something magical, if everyone does it and it just reduces it to the point of filling the shelves with baked beans."

MMM A THOUGHT-PROVOKING THOUGHT

Jarvis [shouts at him]: So why aren't you admitting to it then?

More people should be shouting at Antony.

I find these interesting though

Viz, those are both about as interesting as specks of dust. I first read something that like from Elvis Costello twenty years back and I was deeply unimpressed then too.

PEOPLE HAVING OPINIONS! OH NO! THE PLEBS NEVER DID THIS BEFORE!

Should read:

Nick Cave: It takes a talent to be able to sit down and write a hit. [to Jarvis] Considering you haven't had a top ten single in nine years, does n't this imply that you're talentless?

I was kinda wondering about that myself.

NURSE! TIME FOR MR MORLEY'S MEDICINE I THINK

SHUT UP BETH!!!!

qft

On the other hand, hanging out in dusty bins all day couldn't be healthy.

But this is arrant NONSENSE. There are tons of secrets out there! I learn about new things practically every damn day I'd not heard about before.

you don't have to download illegally or go on myspace or even own an ipod if you don't want to, you know!

dust builds character! you need it when you're going to spend all night arguing Magma vs. Amon Duul

xpost Ned you're wrong, there's nothing really elusive is the point

TT OTTM.

As someone who grew up hearing who knows *how* many songs in that 'wrong' fashion via a different medium -- ad plays, dumbass morning DJ says whatever the fuck, "oh by the way here's some new English pop group" and I hear "Don't You Want Me" for the first time ever or something similar -- I don't see why that instant gratification approach is somehow *always* bland and leads to emptiness, I just don't.

Rap on Nick. You get an artist who has some pretty cool albums, and then you read some 8 page article in the Observer where he sits at a table with Paul Morley for an afternoon and moans like an old man about the state of music, and you're like [pulling face]. And there are some pretty good artists who do this.

I got the Observer on Sunday for the free Buena Vista DVD, and the whole supplement (which was edited by Jarvis Cocker) was a complete joke.

there are loads of bands who i don't get to hear for ages and ages after my curiosity is first piqued. maybe not, uh, years afterwards, but i was never one for digging round in second-hand shops anyway.

My position relies heavily I think on indwelling Catholicism.

i think morley's being an unutterably boring "it were all fields round here in my day" old man.

this is part of why I enjoy spending idle hours on music-related internet message boards

OTM, although sometimes I like to have a little bit of myth in there too. But then I'm just generally weird about new music -- I've been known to purchase a new album and take a first listen on headphones at a nearly inaudible level, so that only the faintest traces of the actual music impress themselves on my brain, leaving my imagination to fill in the gaps.

i think it's possible to appreciate both at the same time! it depends a lot on my own headspace at the time of listening: sometimes i'll end up listening to eg tori amos's virtuoso technical skills, others i'll be willingly captivated by her persona and myth. and depending on what the music is one will end up being more weighted than the other - i am not going to listen to tomas andersson's 'washing up' and think about its context, i am just going to think OMG BANGING.

i really like the process of context-gathering, but i kind of need to have the solid base of knowing what people are talking about first. reading the context of something i haven't heard feels insubstantial, and lots of things go over my head.

This thing he says about "if music becomes so democratic that everyone can do it, then surely it loses some of that mystique of being something that only some people can do" makes me sick. Anyone can learn music and the personal enjoyment they get from it has nothing to do with the dull "consumption as lifestyle" bollocks he has supported for decades.

The thing I can't fathom about people like Morley and Jarvis, is that they continue to burden themselves with coolness and relevance, even as they approach 50 years of age. I agree that this whole Jarvis issue was sad. "Man of the people" my arse.

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), October 17th, 2006.

I think this is the first thread where I am in 100% total agreement with Lex. Context is great and all, but it's never enough to make me like music that I don't already like, so I prefer to hear something first and then go "holy shit, this is brilliant! where the hell did it come from?!". Otherwise, I end up reading pages upon pages about how good Amnesiac is, and then I finally buy it and I just can't get into it and I become bitter and angry and act like a dick to dudes who are just trying to go about their bidness (sorry about that, btw). Anyway.

I also think it's sort of a weird false dichotomy that you're building here, TT; sure, the internet makes it easy to randomly download an MP3 by a band you've never heard of, but it also makes it easier to track down obscure records you've hunted for for years, or to find interviews that ran in some dinky little 'zine back in 1994.

bernard obv otm, I'm not saying "destroy the internet!" or anything, I'm just arguing that the drawbacks of general availability of everything are understated by most and most curiously attacked when they're raised

everything1967 I hardly think "the guy's shitting himself" - what nonsense, he's "having a discussion and stating his opinions," you may have heard of it

Never thought I'd agree with Lex.

the thing is i don't think one has become the dominant mode, anyway. oh sure every second lame newspaper article is myspace this and podcast that but this rampant technophilia isn't as...seismic as the hyperbole would suggest. one would think, reading these articles, that everyone in the decadent west spends most of their time organising their itunes or going cross-eyed hunting down mp3s on the internet or endlessly 'discovering' bands on myspace, but though a fair few music geeks do this - the same music geeks who practised 'overconsumption' pre-internet by hauling a ton of second-hand vinyl home each weekend - most people just use technology to fit music around their life.

also: if you don't LIKE the general availability of everything then don't take advantage of it! i'm someone who WANTS to and yet i still don't download, own an ipod, or even go on myspace that much.

point of order: if you end up reading pages and pages about how good amnesiac is, that is a sign that those pages are not to be trusted. amnesiYUCK more like

I've certainly heard of Morley's opinions. He's barely altered them in 30 years after all.

i love nick cave. i think he's a real special person and makes awesome music. birthday party was a sweet band, too.

(Off topic: see Al Gore in "Inconvenient Truth" talking about how "many Pacific Islands are being washed away, forcing residents to flee to New Zealand." Really? Never made the papers in NZ).

I don't like it when songs are used in films or commercials, hardly ever is the entire song used, just the "catchy bits" reducing the song to a mere jingle, designed for instant recognition in the joe public's ear once played enought times.

Because sexuality is a beautiful, natural thing that forms a cornerstone of human existence, and hamburgers make you fat?

Sold not in the way we usually think of it, but you use the word in that way sometimes. "I totally bought that actress's tears. They seemed totally real to me!" or "I wasn't sure about that idea of yours, but you really sold me on it after that amazing pitch you gave."

Think of this example: You're trying to sell a relatively cheap brand of car that would be ideal for college students and young people in general. You want your brand of car to be associated with irreverence, hipness, energy and a general sense of good, clean American fun. You even make a commercial featuring young people playing at the beach, attending concerts, etc to show that this is the kind of car young people would drive. What kind of song should you put in the commercial and why would you put it in there?

A bad song to sell your car would a song by the Andrews Sisters, as they are not considered irreverent, hip or really wild by the average American college student. A decent choice might be to buy a Ramones song to cater to young people. The Ramones are popular, but not too popular, and are generally considered by many to be hip, irreverent and generally energetic and crazy (in a good way!). They're punk rock (which is to say somewhat rebellious) but they're not necessarily anti-establishment as we like to think of it.

So you'd end up using the Ramones brand name, as well as the actual song, to sell all those abstract qualities I've mentioned above. Now my example is for a fictional car brand that you're selling for a commercial, but the song could just as well be for a montage in a film that has a lot of fast-paced behavior or shows a generally good time. You'd probably still want it for the same exact reasons.

So in the end you'd be using the Ramones for the exact same purpose, to sell hipness and an energetic experience. You'd just be selling it to different people and for different products. Now is it less "sinful" to sell that Ramones song and the connotations it provides to a Hollywood producer than to a Taco Bell exec? Maybe, but that's not really what I'm trying to say. I'm just showing you how in the end you're still selling essentially the same same thing, whether it's to a movie or to a Big Mac.

When I say SELL I'm referring to a literal value exchange. An emotion is not a product. I suppose you could say that a scene can be sold technically, but I'm not aware of anyone who pays money to see a specific 5 minute segment of a film.

You are absolutely wrong on this. Things as abstract as peace of mind, happiness, etc can be considered economic goods. There are all sorts of situations in life where you will part with your money or another physical good just so you can sleep better at night or worry less in general.

Think about it, everybody on this board can be said to have parted with money and time to receive round pieces of vinyl, discs and computer files. What was the point of this? Well, we got really nothing out of these goods in a physical sense, they just took up space and provided vibrations. But I'd like to think at least some of these products all produced good "abstract emotions", the kind you keep telling me are not bought and sold.

You are a magically banal person who thinks that going way too far with an economic metaphor makes you like real deep and shit.

The reason the panel was *this* panel was that they were all in town for a Leonard Cohen tribute concert. Also, they are all mates of Jarvis' (which is why Lou Reed wasn't part of it I guess).

I actually agree with nearly 100% of what Lex said, apart from the Shuttup Beth bits.

So, Duran Duran are not the best band mentioned in the article.

lol still thinks he's 25

yeah because you couldn't BUY music at all in 1981 ffs

I seem to remember a big Morley article in the Friday Guardian music section about 2, maybe three years ago, when Words & Music came out (HE WAS SELLING IT, OH NO), where he praised the iPod and overconsumption to high-heavens because it reduced music to a beautiful endless list and oh how he loves lists and now, three years later, he's saying the opposite, is he? The Busted thing is borderline mental retardation.

Well, judging from all your responses to me, if I ever need any help figuring out the economic value of condescension and snideness on internet message boards I will now know the person to ask!

Step by step I'm learning.

I'll add that to the wallchart.

"Mmmm...who can we get to discuss the state of music in 2006? How about an artist that 98% of people have never heard of and last released a record 15 years ago!"

mine was The Power Station + Nick Kershaw + Paul Young!

and OMD opened the show and we thought they were too weird!

Jesus.

I'll get back to the ILX wallchart.

Otherwise, Cunts are Still Running the World is sort of Pulpy/anthemic.

if they could have mixed it up and got some people with slightly less one-sided views the debate might have been interesting.