Wednesday 26 July 2017

Dogfood and Dan

Scott Walker has been omnipresent lately (at least in some circles) due to the BBC Proms event last night. Scott Walker is one of those artists that I tried to get into for a very long time. Friends would buy me his records. They would be put on at parties (rather sedate parties). Heads would nod sagely as his baritone voice sung of lost loves and melancholy and I couldn’t help but think “Can we not just put the Betty Boo album on again?”. As time goes on and you get a little older you stop pretending about many things, and one of those things for me was that I had any love for Scott Walker beyond Jackie. And even then Marc Almond and Momus did it better.

Sooooo…since no-one reads blogs these days unless they’re in easily digestible list form, allow me to present three songs I’d rather listen to than Scott Walker.

Vanilla – No Way, No Way. 
 


Yes, yes. The video is terrible and it’s the very worst of the Spice Girls bandwagon jumpers but it’s long hanging fruit. We’re here for the song. And the song is even worse. It is musical dog-food. Poundshop dog-food from the good old days of Poundshops selling health hazards instead of brand names. Gloopy, gelatinous horror that leaves only the taste of ash. A queasy mess staggering home stopping only to vomit up the refrain of “no way, no way” at the most inopportune moment. It is grotesque. Nothing on The Drift can compare, Scott Walker could not dream of creating something so painful. Even if he had a can of dog-food and a stick for percussive use and locked himself in a darkened room for a week with nothing but an open mic for company. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Steely Dan – Do It Again.


I know an awful lot of Steely Dan fans. Damn near everyone who was on Soft Bodies seemed to like them. You could understand it with the more traditional songwriter types, but then you’d also have people doing ambient/noise/harsh bastard techno being fans. The Dan bridges the void. At least with most people, I have and probably always will be of the opinion it’s MOR bobbins….AND YET, I’d probably rather hear Do It Again than the Seventh Seal.

Slade – Run Runaway


In 1983/84, Scott Walker started to reinvent himself with Climate of Hunter. And so did Slade by morphing into Big Country for a bit. Scott Walker would never have thought of that, and thus he found himself outplayed by Wolverhampton's finest, disappearing from view until the mid 90s, wondering what could have been.

Righty-o, enough sacrilege. WE HAVE MUSIC OUT. Please do download and/or listen to it if so inclined. Ta!



No comments:

Post a Comment