We all lie about music, especially new music. The especially is because we haven’t really had the time to assimilate what we are listening to so we are really guessing as to whether it is any good.
We lie about older music as much due to sentimentality as to, well, senility, simply not knowing what we are talking about.
Some older musicians and the truth behind their careers:
1. Springsteen -has sucked for 11 years straight. Great live, no doubt, but one lousy album after another.
2. CSN – Saw them sing out of tune at Lincoln center once. How many years has it been since déjà vu?
3. And Y? Great in the 60s to mid 70s, then the drugs kicked in and sucked till the late 70s when punk kicked his ass, then he got experimental and sucked straight thru to the 90s, great in the 90s and has written one truly pathetic album after another since 2001’s Are You Passionate -as dodgy an album about a national tragedy as you’ll ever listen. And not his worse. That would be the unfinished Living With War. Live? All over the place, but the past coupla years have been a drag.
4. U2 – people think I hate U2 because Bono is an egomaniac or because I’m jealous or to knock the big boy -or something like that. No, no, no. I hate U2 because their last great concert was in 2001, coinciding with their last great album, and they have sucked ever since.
5. Elvis Costello – Sure, Nessing recommended it and I listened to “Church Underground”. Here is what’s good. The vocal is fabulous, the instrumental is very sharp. El was right, it sounds great. The chorus is really excellent, and the bridge to the chorus is stunning. THE VERSES SUCK. And all the penny laine-y horns aint gonna save you when your skills as a songwriter are failing you. The problem isn’t genre busting, it is songwriting. Those bluesy verses throw me right out of the song. And it is what Costello has done non stop for years and years and years. He is too damn busy. Write the fucking song. If you get the song right, everything else will take care of yourself.
6. Bob Dylan – After the heights of the early 00s he has fallen to earth a little. But except the christmas one, every album, even the Bootleg Series, is a must own if you’re a Dylan lover. Live? In the 90s, say from 1993 to 2001, the man was on fire. But around 2005 he decided to play keyboards instead of guitar and then Charlie Sexton left the band, and he has never fully returned to those heights.
7. Eric Clapton – When Clapton loses everything else? He still has the blues. And should keep to it.
8. The Rolling Stones – In the 2000s, the technology and the Stadium Stones coincided on three brilliant tours. They haven’t recorded a good album since Some Girls.
9. Nick Lowe – We have a word for this: growing old gracefully. Every album he recorded in the 00s was excellent. He knows what he is doing and he does it very,very well. Best moment: Johnny Cash’s cover of “The Beast In Me”.
10. George Jones And Merle Haggard – these guys? Just keep repackaging your greatest hits and touring when the mood takes you. It is alright by me. Because when you record new material, as haggard does from time to time, it ain’t happening.
11. Chuck Berry, Squeeze – Nostalgia acts.