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peterbirksBy pure chance, I found myself watching Top of the Pops last night. From this I now know that The Jam's Snap! is at number eight in the album charts. Now, I'm not sure what praise one should give to an album chart that has Jack Johnson at number 1 and James Blount not far behind him, but that's besides the point. The interesting thing was that one of the presenters (a female aged about 12, I think) called him "The Modfather".
Well, it's a decent pun, so why not? Except, of course, people of our age remember that Mr Weller was part of, if anything, the Mod revival, a good 14 years after the birth of the Mod movement. None of this is surprising. For people of different ages, different periods of time have different levels of significance. For me, the musical developments of the 1990s are mainly an irrelevant blur (I remember the Oasis-Blur battle of 1995, but nothing else seemed to change all that much). For someone currently aged 23 or thereabouts, I guess that the 1990s can be remembered year by year.
That same person will see 1980 (the year that Quadrophenia was released?) as "a bit before I was born" and 1963 as "quite a bit before I was born". Mod revival, Original mod, whatever.
There's nothing to resent here. Although I am aware that 1950 was very different from 1940 (despite the absence of bananas in both years) I couldn't really tell you how musical styles developed over that decade. It's inevitable that periods which we experience in our youth are delineated more precisely than those before we were born or after we don't really care any more.
But, who would be the Modfather? The Who? Hard to say, really. But, well, bliss was it then to be alive.
Well, it's a decent pun, so why not? Except, of course, people of our age remember that Mr Weller was part of, if anything, the Mod revival, a good 14 years after the birth of the Mod movement. None of this is surprising. For people of different ages, different periods of time have different levels of significance. For me, the musical developments of the 1990s are mainly an irrelevant blur (I remember the Oasis-Blur battle of 1995, but nothing else seemed to change all that much). For someone currently aged 23 or thereabouts, I guess that the 1990s can be remembered year by year.
That same person will see 1980 (the year that Quadrophenia was released?) as "a bit before I was born" and 1963 as "quite a bit before I was born". Mod revival, Original mod, whatever.
There's nothing to resent here. Although I am aware that 1950 was very different from 1940 (despite the absence of bananas in both years) I couldn't really tell you how musical styles developed over that decade. It's inevitable that periods which we experience in our youth are delineated more precisely than those before we were born or after we don't really care any more.
But, who would be the Modfather? The Who? Hard to say, really. But, well, bliss was it then to be alive.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 02:57 pm (UTC)Pah. Bandwagon-jumpers. I vote for the Small Faces.
Modfather
Date: 2006-02-28 06:19 pm (UTC)Not just the music but the whole look, style and attitude. Defintely one of the (if not THE) coolest fuckers of the 60's...but then again wasn't cool a 70's word?
Stevie 'the Baldfather' Bennett
Re: Cool
Date: 2006-02-28 07:47 pm (UTC)-- Jonathan
Revolution, evolution
Date: 2006-02-28 08:01 pm (UTC)Music of the 1960s or any subsequent decade can be (and is) played in public now alongside contemporary music, and it's recognizably the same kind of thing. Popular music of the early 1950s or earlier was pre-revolution and wasn't the same kind of thing at all.
I went into a pastry shop in Sant Pere de Ribes a week or two ago and the radio was playing Steely Dan's "Do it again" (1972). I mentioned to the shop assistant that the song was more than 30 years old, and she looked startled. Oh, really?
-- Jonathan
Re: Revolution, evolution
Date: 2006-02-28 08:15 pm (UTC)Which reminds me of a piece that was due to appear in the NME at the height of Britpop. Steve Sutherland, then editor, had a piece leaked to Private Eye in which he'd made the link from James Bown (Godfather of Soul) to Weller (Modfather) and he was fishing around for a similar sobriquet for Noel Gallagher. He suggested, without a trace of irony, that he should just be called God. Mercifully, for Sutherland's reputation, the piece was never published.
Funnily enough I work in the same building as Sutherland, and a few years later I heard him slagging off his fellow staff members for being overly reverential towards Oasis.
Jamie
no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 10:23 pm (UTC)But popular music's always gone like this with bursts of hyperactivity and quality followed by long drab periods. When you're a kid, you tolerate them and I'm sure someone who was born in 1970 would think the late 80's and early 90's was a great time to be young and alive.
For me it's all gone a bit quiet and I haven't acquired anything new and great for a while. Obviously there are the drawbacks of the Daniel Powter/James Blunt brigade but the alleged Big Thing of these days, the Arctic Monkeys leave me completely cold and I'm left twiddling my thumbs and looking towards a number of new albums due out this Spring/Summer for something great.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 01:52 am (UTC)Too much Waugh, methinks.
Titmus
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 06:11 am (UTC)"James Blunt (born James Hillier Blount, 22 February 1974)".
I rest my case. (Unless, of course, this is all an urban myth, in which case, I apologise to Mr Blunt...)
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:17 am (UTC)I always associated the word "cool" with the Beatniks (late 50s, early 60s). First usage is not the same as common currency. For example, Google was probably first used in print around 1999, but the verb to google has only been common for, what, two years? Similarly podcast was first used by The Guardian in 2003 or 2004 (as the paper never ceases to remind us -- ok, guys, you used the word first. Time to move on) but it was 2005 before it gained common currency.
I hadn't realized that the NME was to blame for "Modfather". Strange, since I read the NME at the time. Oh well, the 12-year-old is forgiven.
Yes, music has not radically revolutionized since some time in the mid 1960s. This gives people of our age the pleasure of saying "I told you so" to our parents. We were right. It was special. But it must be hell for the youngsters of today, whose musical tastes don't so much generate the comment "turn down that noise" as "hmm, sort of pseudo thrash-metal that. I think I have some Swordmaster Crash in my collection of 12-inches. They showed how it should be done. 14 tracks in 10 minutes."
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:34 am (UTC)What it does leave is a rebellion vacuum. They can't really dress much worse or more outlandishly than previous generations. The girls seem to manage sluttier but that's kind of reached a limit. Maybe that's why text-speak has evolved and is protected from adults understanding it. But it's hardly the Dead Kennedys is it?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 11:50 am (UTC)Give up. Some obscure Wodehouse character?
Titmus
Re: Revolution, evolution
Date: 2006-03-02 07:37 am (UTC)Glad to see that you visit here occasionally. I assume that you are aware that you are one of the percentage of Gutshot readers/contributors who I certainly wouldn't include in my blanket rubbishing.
"Overly reverential towards Oasis". Good grief. They wre good times but, well, man, move on...
My own prejudice against Oasis was that I was always worried that Liam would rick his neck while he was singing, and I wondered why he didn't just move the microphone six inches higher.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 07:38 am (UTC)Weird.