Too Much, Too Soon.... Too Bad
I once met Duran Duran bass player John Taylor and, being a bass player myself, I realised we had nothing in common. It was at a club in London in 1984 during a period of my life when I forgot that I hate clubs in London. Our respective bands once appeared on the same edition of Top Of The Pops, just as Duran's star was on the rise, and ours was rapidly falling back to Derry. Standing beside them in the same studio, we felt like the younger brothers of Harold Steptoe who had strayed from around the corner in Shepherds Bush.
But I read a John gave in Los Angeles recently that summed up a lot of what I feel about the over abundance of music today. There's too much of it too readily available and he illustrated his point by talking about the first time he saw Roxy Music on TV in 1972. Three minutes of them, performing Virginia Plain, and when it was over, it was over. No video recorder, no YouTube clip, no download to a phone. The flash of brilliance was made brighter by not having it in your possession. It took an hour or so of cycling round the shops to even find a copy of the single, so that he could listen to it again. If he saw the equivalent today he would be reading every utterance of the band, watching every performance online, reading every tweet. He makes some very interesting points about the effect of all that on the creativity of today's impressionable minds. It's worth a look.
Still doesn't excuse him for Hungry Like The Wolf, of course.
But I read a John gave in Los Angeles recently that summed up a lot of what I feel about the over abundance of music today. There's too much of it too readily available and he illustrated his point by talking about the first time he saw Roxy Music on TV in 1972. Three minutes of them, performing Virginia Plain, and when it was over, it was over. No video recorder, no YouTube clip, no download to a phone. The flash of brilliance was made brighter by not having it in your possession. It took an hour or so of cycling round the shops to even find a copy of the single, so that he could listen to it again. If he saw the equivalent today he would be reading every utterance of the band, watching every performance online, reading every tweet. He makes some very interesting points about the effect of all that on the creativity of today's impressionable minds. It's worth a look.
Still doesn't excuse him for Hungry Like The Wolf, of course.
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