Music and Mediocrity

After suggestions from some friends on Farcebook I'm going to write about touch at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, here's a rant while I'm taking time to think about it.

I feel I should apologise first. I've got a touch of 'flu, I'm feeling bloody awful and consequently somewhat grouchy and my chavette neighbour annoyed me this morning with her "musical taste".

Music
I love music. Even before I learned how to play myself (which wasn't until I was well past 30) I was incredibly sensitive to music. Music could raise me to heights almost as exalted as those brought by religion, love and sex.
A particular rendition of Nessun Dorma (from Puccini's Turandot, an otherwise dull opera) once reduced me to a quivering wreck. I'm not exaggerating here: I was shaking all over, covered in cold sweat, crying, unable to breathe and my heart-rate had almost doubled. I thought I was going to die there and then!

It's not just Classical either. In fact I listen to a relatively small amount of Classical music
Here are a few examples to explain my meaning:
When I hear The Sisters of Mercy play Alice, I find it difficult not to dance. Kate Bush's Breathing makes me horny (which I'm sure it isn't supposed to do!) as does Leather by Tori Amos. Sing by the Dresden Dolls makes me exultant for the future of the human race but Tomorrow Belongs to Me from the musical, Cabaret makes me want to hide behind the sofa and try not to wee myself.

I'm sure you get the picture. But there's music and there's music.
This morning my neighbour put some music on. It was what is now called R&B. It sounded EXACTLY the same as every other song labelled R&B. Not similar, exactly the same. It was as if someone had created a worksheet entitled, "This is How you Create an R&B Hit" and followed it to the letter, ticking every box on the way. Sara suggested you can get instructions like you could for a Mills & Boon novel.
Actually, I find the term R&B offensive for this type of music. In the 60's Rhythm and Blues musicians included such radical world leaders as the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin, nowadays it's TLC and R Kelly.
I'd recommend listening to Destiny's Child singing Say My Name (if you can stand it) immediately followed by Janis Joplin singing Piece of my Heart to understand how much the genre has changed.

Mediocrity
I'm picking on modern R&B because it was what my neighbour played, but it's not the disease - just a symptom.
I'm probably coming across by now as some sour middle-aged git who thinks that all music created after 1987 is crap compared to the real stuff from my youth and, if I'm brutally honest, there's a temptation to think like that. Thinking a little more deeply though, shows it to be untrue.
When I was 15 the fashionable and popular music (ie. the stuff that sold) was made by Lionel Richie and Sheena Easton, the stuff I liked was by David Bowie and Japan. What's the difference?

The difference is that the music which sold best was the music which was meant to sell best. Punk and independent labels began because major label executives would not take on artists who couldn't guarantee a specific amount of sales. They knew what would appeal to the mass of the population. It had to be ordinary, bland, homogenized and, above-all, profitable.
It's always been like this since the invention of recorded music, because music is a profitable business. It actually became a virtue in the 80's to provide bland-but-saleable pop aimed to make money and the Hit Factory of Stock, Aitken and Waterman were experts. They gave us Kylie, Rick Astley and Sonia (the bastards!)

There will always be interesting and experimental music made by people who care about music and there will always be bland cash-cows for those using music for making a fast buck. What bothers me is that they do it really, really well. They've realised an unpleasant secret - people are predictable, thoughtless and mentally lazy. People are crap!

Crap!
It's a conclusion I came to quite some time ago. Most people are crap! It's actually quite an upsetting thought for me and it's taken some getting used to because I genuinely believe that the Human Being is one step below a God and capable of reaching two steps higher:

What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and movement how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. I apprehension, how like a God!
(Apologies for any misquotes - I wrote that from memory)

Yet, when I look out of my window I'm not looking at potential gods. Mostly I'm looking at barely alive, transparent zombies without thought, or depth. Without even the realization that they are alive. They wear uniforms so that they don't appear different, they watch the same television programmes and listen to the same bland, ordinary and shallow music because they have made themselves incapable of depth, thought or the realization of being truly alive.
AND - those who create this music, this television, these newspapers, bloody well love it that way!

Social Control (again!)
We live in a society which relies on conformity, which even categorizes non-conformist behaviour so it can be controlled. Human blandness, laziness and lack-of-thought are essential to the system in which we live. It's all about money and the ability to make it by predicting the behaviour of human beings.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Perhaps it's just an impotent rant because I'm feeling rough. Perhaps Lyall Watson was right when he theorised that the human race produces only 5% of special people, and the rest are destined to be ordinary, but I'm damned if I want to believe it.

Dear Reader, YOU ARE A FUCKING GOD! At least in potential!
Don't let them tell you any different.

Love,
Seán

The World's Tiniest Share in a BAFTA!

On Sunday night the BAFTA TV awards were announced. For my non-Brit friends BAFTA stands for British Academy Film and Television Awards. They do one ceremony for cinematic releases and one for telly.

So here's the story.
Almost exactly a year ago I joined Gadbury casting as a supporting artiste (ie. an "extra") and they sent me to Trafford in Manchester for a couple of days to play a factory worker in a film called Boy A. It was my first time and very weird but fun, in an odd kind of way. I had to do really exciting things like walk past a window, or pretend to count bottles in a warehouse.

It turned out that Boy A was taken from a fictional book by Jonathan Trigell, based loosely on the famous Jamie Bulger case; the Boy A in question being one of the young murderers trying to build a new life and identity after his release from prison. For those who don't know, Jamie Bulger was a little Liverpool boy of about 2 years old who, in 1993, was taken quietly away from his mother by two older boys (both 10) in a shopping centre, who then tortured and killed him.
(On a personal note, it actually made me feel ill to write that last sentence. Jamie was born in the same year as my eldest son - in other words, I was taking a two-year old boy out shopping with me at the same time.)

The main part was played brilliantly by a young actor called Andrew Garfield, and bravely too. He would have been 10 himself in 1993, so he's exactly the right age, but would you want to be associated with such a dangerous part?

The film
The film of Boy A came out on Channel 4 (where else?) in November last year. It isn't the sort of thing which would attract me and, frankly, I watched it because I was in it! In many ways I'm glad I did but I also wish I hadn't.
Boy A is bleak, deliberately so. The colours are washed out, the atmosphere is all echo and emptiness and the whole thing does Manchester no favours at all. It was what it set out to be: a hard, gritty, uncompromising drama. From my point of view it was two hours of fucking grim. As you can tell, I didn't really enjoy it much.
As for my part - after all the cuts I appear for about two seconds walking away from camera. I only knew it was me because my beloved and my mother recognized the way I walk.

The award
Amazingly Boy A won a BAFTA. Really, that's not so amazing because it was actually won by Andrew Garfield as Best Actor - he earned it too. He's a really nice lad and a damn good actor.
The odd thing is that because I was involved in it - and despite the fact that I barely appear, have no functional role or input to speak of and didn't actually like the end result - I still feel some kind of weird pride in the award.
Somehow I feel like I've got the world's tiniest share in a BAFTA!
Strange or what?

On a much brighter note, Best Film was won by Mark of Cain which starred my agent, and a proper actor, Matthew (Michael) McNulty. Fantastic!

Love,
Seán