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There was a line in yesterday's Evening Standard commenting on the Grammys, where a journalist touted that old favourite: "Proof that age was not a barrier to winning came with an award to Stevie Wonder...."
Which kind of missed the point. Age is indeed a barrier to winning Grammys, since it would appear that these days it is more advantageous to be over 50 than under 30. The major set of awards, to no-longer-controversial late-20-somethings The Dixie Chicks, concealed an underlying conservatism that makes you wonder whether the award-givers hanker for the 1970s all over again. The adulation accorded to The Police, a group that was behind the times and derivative even when they were young, Joan Baez (still gorgeous, still brilliant, but not, I fear, still young) and the Wondrous One show that this is really nothing to do with the modern music industry, and everything to do with drug-busted old farts reliving the past again and again because, basically ,their short-term memory is shot.
Luckily, you can still find good music, live, in London, with Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) and Brooklyn-based Clap Your Hands Say Yeah both appearing at medium-sized venues. Meanwhile the Police's "World Tour" will doubtless bring them in by the hundreds of thousands, allowing Sting to buy another county, while playing music with all the emotional force of a saturated sponge.
++++++++++++++++
A couple of years ago I bought shares in Vodafone, mainly because I considered telecoms to be a mature market and thought that Vodafone would eventually become a yield stock. Well, things didn't work out quite as planned. In the interim the share price dropped, Vodafone finally sold off a chunk of shit (hooray!) and paid out a special dividend (double hooray!) which means that I've got a yield of about 4% a year out of the stock, which is now about 5% higher than the price I paid. All set for the future as a nice boring company that has put its troubles behind it, has become cash-generative, and can churn out the dividends, I thought.
No such luck. Once a "capital growth" company, always a capital growth company. Totally not put off by the disaster that was Mannesman, Vodafone decides to splash out billions and billions on an Indian telecoms business. Bloody hell. Fortunately, the analysts are as in love with expansion, at whatever cost, as many company boards, and the Vodafone share price went up as a result.
I'm solidly tempted to sell into this show of strength, if only I could remember my Barclays Stockbroker passwords....
Which kind of missed the point. Age is indeed a barrier to winning Grammys, since it would appear that these days it is more advantageous to be over 50 than under 30. The major set of awards, to no-longer-controversial late-20-somethings The Dixie Chicks, concealed an underlying conservatism that makes you wonder whether the award-givers hanker for the 1970s all over again. The adulation accorded to The Police, a group that was behind the times and derivative even when they were young, Joan Baez (still gorgeous, still brilliant, but not, I fear, still young) and the Wondrous One show that this is really nothing to do with the modern music industry, and everything to do with drug-busted old farts reliving the past again and again because, basically ,their short-term memory is shot.
Luckily, you can still find good music, live, in London, with Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) and Brooklyn-based Clap Your Hands Say Yeah both appearing at medium-sized venues. Meanwhile the Police's "World Tour" will doubtless bring them in by the hundreds of thousands, allowing Sting to buy another county, while playing music with all the emotional force of a saturated sponge.
++++++++++++++++
A couple of years ago I bought shares in Vodafone, mainly because I considered telecoms to be a mature market and thought that Vodafone would eventually become a yield stock. Well, things didn't work out quite as planned. In the interim the share price dropped, Vodafone finally sold off a chunk of shit (hooray!) and paid out a special dividend (double hooray!) which means that I've got a yield of about 4% a year out of the stock, which is now about 5% higher than the price I paid. All set for the future as a nice boring company that has put its troubles behind it, has become cash-generative, and can churn out the dividends, I thought.
No such luck. Once a "capital growth" company, always a capital growth company. Totally not put off by the disaster that was Mannesman, Vodafone decides to splash out billions and billions on an Indian telecoms business. Bloody hell. Fortunately, the analysts are as in love with expansion, at whatever cost, as many company boards, and the Vodafone share price went up as a result.
I'm solidly tempted to sell into this show of strength, if only I could remember my Barclays Stockbroker passwords....
