roars as if greeting the winning goal in the World Cup Final. (And this was the opening number, the loosener, the warm-up â by the end of side two things start to get really rowdy.) To me back then, this, not Tamla Motown, was The Sound of Young America â loud, baffling, exotic, cool, wild. It comes from the same place as Kramer in Seinfeld , and âSurfinâ Birdâ, and âPapa-Oom-Mow-Mowâ, and James Brown being wrapped in a cape and led off stage before bounding back to the microphone, and Mohammed Aliâs boasts, and the insane celebrations when a contestant won a lawnmower on The Price Is Right .In our quiz shows, people smiled when they won. Not always, though.
I eventually saw the J. Geils Band for myself, some six years later, but I saw them in Hammersmith rather than Detroit, where Full House was recorded, so the atmosphere was respectful rather than insane, and, though they were soon to become much more successful, they were past their peak. And I saw them on 12 May 1979, the night that Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister for the first time. We drove back to college just as old Britain was turning into modern Britain â ironically, a dour and tacky version of America, with the McDonaldâs and the shopping malls, but without the volume or the delirium or the showmanship. âIâm so bored with the USAâ, The Clash were singing on stage every night around that time, and, though we all sang along with them, it wasnât true, not really. We were only bored with our obsession, and thatâs a different thing entirely.
16 âSmokeâ
â Ben Folds Five
Weâre sitting in my back garden on a hot summer night, eating barbecued chicken and listening to Todd Rundgren, when a friend suddenly explodes into a rant about pop music. His argument, as far as I could follow it, went asfollows: itâs crap because the words are crap, pathetic adolescent poetry rather than lyrics, and so if itâs all crap then you might as well listen to music that performs a function and has no pretensions whatsoever . . . Which is why he only bothers with house music. House music doesnât bother with words very much, and has an express goal, namely making you dance when youâre off your face.
This, it seems to me, is like saying that because most restaurants are very bad, one should play the percentage game, forget about trying to find the good ones, and eat at McDonaldâs every meal. There is no doubt, though, that lyrics are the literate pop fanâs Achilles heel. We have all lived through the shrivelling moment when a parent walks into a room and repeats, with sardonic disbelief, a couplet picked up from the stereo or the TV. âWhat does that mean, then?â my mother asked me during Top of the Pops . â âGet it on / Bang a gongâ? How long did it take him to think of that, do you reckon?â And the correct answer â âTwo seconds, and it doesnât matterâ â is always beyond you, so you just tell her to shut up, while inside youâre hating Marc Bolan for making you like him even though he sings about getting it on and banging gongs. (I suspect that this humiliation continues, and that it makes no difference whether the parent doing the humiliating was brought upon a diet of T. Rex, or Spandau Ballet, or Sham 69, and therefore should really avoid the literary high ground altogether. My mother, after all, belonged to a generation that danced â danced and smooched â to âHow Much Is That Doggie In The Window?â and if she felt able to be snooty about âGet It Onâ, then surely snootiness is a weapon available to all. Rubbishing our childrenâs tastes is one of the few pleasures remaining to us as we become old, redundant and culturally marginalized.) I do not, despite (or possibly because of) my day job, pay that much attention to the lyrics of my favourite songs.
I eventually saw the J. Geils Band for myself, some six years later, but I saw them in Hammersmith rather than Detroit, where Full House was recorded, so the atmosphere was respectful rather than insane, and, though they were soon to become much more successful, they were past their peak. And I saw them on 12 May 1979, the night that Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister for the first time. We drove back to college just as old Britain was turning into modern Britain â ironically, a dour and tacky version of America, with the McDonaldâs and the shopping malls, but without the volume or the delirium or the showmanship. âIâm so bored with the USAâ, The Clash were singing on stage every night around that time, and, though we all sang along with them, it wasnât true, not really. We were only bored with our obsession, and thatâs a different thing entirely.
16 âSmokeâ
â Ben Folds Five
Weâre sitting in my back garden on a hot summer night, eating barbecued chicken and listening to Todd Rundgren, when a friend suddenly explodes into a rant about pop music. His argument, as far as I could follow it, went asfollows: itâs crap because the words are crap, pathetic adolescent poetry rather than lyrics, and so if itâs all crap then you might as well listen to music that performs a function and has no pretensions whatsoever . . . Which is why he only bothers with house music. House music doesnât bother with words very much, and has an express goal, namely making you dance when youâre off your face.
This, it seems to me, is like saying that because most restaurants are very bad, one should play the percentage game, forget about trying to find the good ones, and eat at McDonaldâs every meal. There is no doubt, though, that lyrics are the literate pop fanâs Achilles heel. We have all lived through the shrivelling moment when a parent walks into a room and repeats, with sardonic disbelief, a couplet picked up from the stereo or the TV. âWhat does that mean, then?â my mother asked me during Top of the Pops . â âGet it on / Bang a gongâ? How long did it take him to think of that, do you reckon?â And the correct answer â âTwo seconds, and it doesnât matterâ â is always beyond you, so you just tell her to shut up, while inside youâre hating Marc Bolan for making you like him even though he sings about getting it on and banging gongs. (I suspect that this humiliation continues, and that it makes no difference whether the parent doing the humiliating was brought upon a diet of T. Rex, or Spandau Ballet, or Sham 69, and therefore should really avoid the literary high ground altogether. My mother, after all, belonged to a generation that danced â danced and smooched â to âHow Much Is That Doggie In The Window?â and if she felt able to be snooty about âGet It Onâ, then surely snootiness is a weapon available to all. Rubbishing our childrenâs tastes is one of the few pleasures remaining to us as we become old, redundant and culturally marginalized.) I do not, despite (or possibly because of) my day job, pay that much attention to the lyrics of my favourite songs.
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