The Rubberbandits: #1 in our hearts, no messin'...

This blog is a longstanding subscriber to Viz comic, believes that a little coarseness in humour can go a long way - can even be morally necessary - and so it has keenly supported the efforts of Limerick's Rubberbandits to beat the victorious X-Factor candidate to Christmas #1 in Ireland, courtesy of their quite delightful 'Horse Outside' record. Alas, today's Irish Independent brought grim news:
"It was always going to be a David and Goliath struggle and it seems the dark horses have lost. With this year's Christmas Number One to be announced tomorrow, it looks as if 'X Factor' winner Matt Cardle will take the top spot ahead of Limerick Youtube stars Rubberbandits. Latest figures reveal that Cardle has sold 33,281 copies of his debut single 'When We Collide' ahead of Rubberbandits' 'Horse Outside' with 13,533 purchases, both physical and download. Last night the gap of almost 20,000 units was described as "insurmountable" by one industry expert, but a spokesman for Rubberbandits claimed there was still everything to play for until shops closed this evening..."
It looks bad. But sure the battle's not done 'til it's done, right fellas? Or how else would the Irish Republic have been won...?

Singing live, for your vote, Robert Allen Zimmerman...

This year’s X Factor competition? I'm wishing success on the young black woman with the Liverpool accent, who has a very good voice – but more importantly because a fortnight back, if I heard rightly, she sang a Dylan song. It’s possible she knew it by way of its more popular covers, but I’d rather believe she was displaying a spark of musical intelligence and feeling hitherto unseen among X Factor wannabes and their ludicrous panel of 'mentors'/'judges'.
Granted, it’s a ridiculous notion, Bob-does-The-X. If by some magic the young Greenwich Village Dylan were a candidate for the c. 2010 show he’d be ridiculed and kicked out at audition - partly for the voice, which Larkin (who liked it!) thought ‘cawing’ and ‘derisive’, but mainly for writing his own songs, being an artist, his own man, etc etc...
Still, I’ve begun to amuse myself by imagining an entire X-evening devoted to Bob’s songs… just as I understand there have been tributes to such heavyweights as Elton, Queen, Take That, George Michael… Most likely the biggest scrap among contestants would be had over ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’, with the winner probably deciding to knock off the Guns N’ Roses version – whereupon one can picture Simon Cowell doing 'that pause' and pulling 'that face' (by which he tries to pretend that he is thinking impossibly complicated thoughts, thoughts for which language, even by his high standards, is inadequate) before saying that the performance was quite unprecedented in its brilliance and the X Factor just so great because it’s so much more than karaoke, blah blah etc.
It could be done, though: a whole night of X-Goes-Bob. One of the older contestants would do ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ with a choir and get those arms a-waving in the crowd. One of the young lads could sing a new sort of number for the laydeez - maybe ‘Visions of Johanna’, or a quirkier choice, ‘Sweetheart Like You’ off Infidels? I’d expect one of the ‘girls’ who specialize in that vibrato thing they all do these days could bring a new stretched-out-ness to one of the ballads of the Christian phase – ‘I Believe in You’ perhaps. And there’d be a special prize for the claiming by any candidate who took on ‘Idiot Wind’ and strolled boldly right up to the judges’ table, spitting each syllable into their awful freeze-dried life-denying faces:
‘Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe…’

Handel, Simon Cowell’s Fortune, and The Strange Business of Talent

Watching a performance of Handel’s Samson broadcast from the Proms a few weeks back, I found something very suddenly affecting about the wealth of musical talent on display – not just the obvious superbity of the vocal soloists and choir, but the discipline and discernment behind every instrument in the orchestra, the concertedness of the performance, even the acting qualities of the singers, something I usually find obstructively deficient in opera.
On this business of discipline I got to thinking about what Sean Penn once said to me about why, as a young aspiring actor, he had been so inspired by Robert De Niro:
“Primarily because – besides that he was great in the films, and the films were also great – one was aware of the discipline that he had and the commitment to what he did. That was inspiring. It’s something I associate with ballet: I don’t particularly like the aesthetics of ballet, you know, but when you see a great dancer and you know the sacrifice that went into it – that is moving to me."
The same goes for that Samson by the English Concert and friends. Britain has indeed got talent.
Now then: I’m going to try to be self-critical, to speak as one among fellows in society, and assume that all of us (or a goodly proportion of us) must be held responsible for making Simon Cowell a ‘star’, and probably the best-remunerated person on television. We the people have gifted him his success, and that of his TV-talent-show protégés. What have we got back in return? Hours of listening/viewing pleasure? A deeper insight into precisely whom in Britain has really Got Talent? You tell me.
The more I think on it, the more extraordinary I find Cowell’s achievement. Here are a bunch of shows of his that urge the public at large to come along and live the dream that they could be somebody, so assuring a huge turnout of auditionees, most of whom are then, for the purpose of entertainment, subjected to sneers on the theme of ‘Whatever made you think you were anything?’ I can think of few sights on telly more loathsome that Cowell’s patented leaning-back roll-of-the-eyes. And yet this is the gleeful, sadistic ‘Gotcha!’ hit that X Factor fans can’t seem to live without.
Eventually the series proceeds to its business end, the serious stuff of selecting the acts over whom the judges will fawn or else advise with tough love on how best to shine. And what exactly are the bona fides for Simon Cowell’s powers of discernment when it comes to talent? The acts he has nurtured toward pop glory? Sinitta, Sonia, Five, Westlife, Robson & Jerome, Ultimate Kaos? No, don’t tell me – Leona Lewis?
Amid the latest blanket coverage of the latest Beatles reissues, there was room for a dissenting voice, and yet I only heard Robert Elms put the Case Against as badly as it could be made by comparing McCartney’s vocal on Let It Be unfavourably with Aretha Franklin’s later cover version. Let’s not make the best the enemy of the good, eh? What we should do is compare Aretha Franklin to Leona Lewis. The annihilation that would follow would be good for the general ecology of talent.

Meanwhile, I hope for its own sake X Factor never inflicts on us another show where the contestants line up to do Beatles covers, as this spectacle is all too gruesome a reminder of how once-glorious British pop music has sadly regressed to the pre-Lennon/McCartney era of slimy impresarios packaging hits for kids too hormonal to know better.