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I read this today and found it rather amusing.
So I figure I'll post it here and let you all read it too :o)
'Does music still matter? Yes ... and no!'
Jarvis Cocker, guest editor, sits down with a cast of famous friends to discuss pop in the 21st century, iPods and selling baked beans
Sunday October 15, 2006
The Observer Setting the scene Jarvis: I've been asked to edit the Observer Music Monthly, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about what music is for. Now that sounds a stupidly vague question. But I'll explain why I'm posing it and why you've kindly agreed to join me here in Dublin. It seems as if music is everywhere these days: on TV, in hotel lobbies; it's inescapable in modern life. But is it being used for its correct purpose? Is there a correct purpose? I've made a list, which I'll read out. Music can be for: Mood
Instruction
Dancing
Communication
Atmosphere
Revolution
Comfort
Soundtrack
Advertising To start with: advertising. I don't live in England any more but I came back the other day and was watching telly and that Johnny Cash song came on ['Hurt']. But it was advertising Nike trainers, and that struck me as being a particularly inappropriate use of music. Nick Cave: I personally find that offensive. Iggy Pop's 'Lust For Life' was used for a car ad. I used to drive around in my car when I was 19 screaming that song, and it had an anti-establishment purpose. For it now to be appropriated by the advertising industry ... I think that's fucked. I don't know what situation the people who have written the music are in, if they need the money or ... I'm not trying to take the moral high ground but I wouldn't allow my music to be used in that way. Jarvis: Do you get offers? Nick Cave: Often. There's a song called 'Red Right Hand', and a sanitary napkin company back in New Zealand wanted to use it, which was tempting ... but that was the closest I've ever come. You do get an enormous amount of money waved in front of you, more money than you make anywhere else in the industry, and all you have to do is say yes... Paul Morley: In the early 1980s New Order were offered huge amounts of money to do adverts and they would just say no, and then a soft drinks company in America offered them £200,000 to re-record 'Blue Monday' and eventually they gave in. But the only way Barney [Sumner] could sing it was to have '£200,000' written in front of the mike stand, so he could see that while he was doing it. Nick Cave: People have been married to my music ... and I just don't think it would be very cool for them to switch on the TV and 'The Ship Song' comes on a Cornetto ad or something. Anthony Genn [the Hours]: 'The Ship Song' for P&O Ferries! Antony Hegarty: Artists have to make their way through and support themselves. Paul Morley: I do think it's fascinating that 25-30 years after these pieces of music had a meaning to people who felt so passionate about what they stood for, they're being used to sell something. I think that's what you mean when you say music is everywhere now. Twenty-five years ago, when we were beginning our little lives in this world, music was oddly marginal and, oddly, it meant something, and now it has become a commodity. People of a certain age find it very bewildering. All those things we thought were important ... they've been co-opted by the capitalist world to give what it has to sell the illusion of hipness and cool, so that the whole world feels as if they're in on the revolution and that they're hip and they're cool. But the meaning of it has been sucked dry. I blame Busted. Before Busted there was no guitar music anywhere; it had been wiped away by pop groups and by Pop Idol... Nick Cave [quietly, to Beth Orton]: Who are Busted? Jarvis: They were a boy band but they played guitars so they were like an indie boy band. Paul Morley: It was as if all the boy bands and girl bands had wiped away the illusion of coolness created by the record industry, so they had to rehabilitate the illusion of cool. So a boy band, who would usually sit on stools like a bunch of Val Doonicans, held their guitars to kind of signify they were in rock. And after that came a flood of guitar bands - as if it was 1983 again, but without the politics. It was just that that kind of music by now felt comfortable enough for the mainstream. So that's why I blame Busted. Jarvis: I think you're putting a big burden on their shoulders there. But I agree that post-punk has been revived with none of the ideology. It's been reduced to style. Beth Orton [to Nick]: What about rap? Nick Cave: Well, with punk, people were embarrassed about the money you could make, whereas with rap music it has been the other way round. It's about wearing the right brands, it's very much about advertising.
IPods: Good or bad?
Jarvis: Who's got an iPod around this table?
Everyone puts up their hands apart from Mary Margaret O'Hara and Antony Hegarty - although, reluctantly, he admits to owning one Jarvis [shouts at him]: So why aren't you admitting to it then? Paul Morley: People are starting to collect music in the same way that they collect stamps. People who weren't really interested in music as such are now worried about whether they've got 15,000 songs, and I think that's had an interesting effect... Nick Cave: That's rather cynical. Surely there are kids that are listening to stuff that they might not have otherwise. My kid is listening to all sorts of music, a far greater range of music than I listened to, actually, because I'm still pretty blinkered. Paul Morley: Music has opened up so people can grab whatever they want whenever they want it, which is fantastic, but the music industry is trying to shape and control what's happening. I find the little white box and the little white wires of a company trying to control the decisions we make sinister. Nick Cave: But they're not really succeeding. Anthony Genn: Because kids are downloading music from Limewire for free. And getting away with it. If I sit on the tube opposite 10 people now, seven or eight of them will be listening to music, and that can only be a good thing. I don't know what they're listening to, but... Jarvis: It could be dangerous. Beth Orton: Why could it be dangerous? Jarvis: Because they're not taking notice of where they're walking. Nick Cave: But they might be taking notice of something more important than where they're walking, which is music. Antony Hegarty: I've got a question about whether that radical diversification of people's interest in music threatens the same kind of community that music used to create 20 years ago. If it's mobilising people in the same way, if people are creating soundtracks that are so utterly personalised. Whether it yields the same results in bringing people together, especially counterculture-wise Jarvis: Well, I think that if you can use music on a tube journey to blot out reality, it's a good thing... Nick Cave: Which is one of the things that music is for, surely. Jarvis: ... but it is a very solitary experience wearing headphones. And you choose what is on your iPod and you choose what you listen to. You can say it's empowering because you create your own environment but perhaps it is stopping people talking to each other Nick Cave: The kids - well, I don't know that much about the kids - but the kids I know seem to be really connected with music nowadays. They share music and turn each other on to different music and it seems healthy. Antony Hegarty: I agree that people are really into music, but I wonder how connected it is to reality... Nick Cave: Do you think things should be connected to reality? Antony Hegarty: Well, I think people have retreated into themselves. People feel alienated by the big picture, and people have retreated into a personal universe as a means of survival. I don't think a lot of people are interfacing with the big picture in a way that they may have done 25 years ago. In the way that punk tried to have a dialogue with what was going on in the world. A lot of kids today might be listening to an obscure artist from the 1950s instead... Jarvis: It's true that we haven't had music connected to a social movement for quite a while. Not since acid house. Paul Morley: But it might be that those things are over now, that we're moving into a different set of realities. The next generation might be entering into something that we can't possibly recognise. It might be that punk, acid house and those movements were a part of time, and now that's over and something new is coming that we can't see. Mary Margaret O'Hara: I went to a show the other night, a band called Hot Chip, and they were great. Paul Morley: We're all spoilt for great music at the moment, because everything that's ever been is instantly available and there are some fantastic representations of everything that's ever been available from a lot of new groups. Nick Cave: Are there? Paul Morley: I think so. Hot Chip are a great unexpected hybrid. Anthony Genn: If you go down to Hoxton on a Friday night, there are thousands of people going to see live bands. There are people creating their own scene and it's exciting. Paul Morley: Well, they can create their own scenes because they know how to: they've got so much to refer to and appropriate. But those scenes seem quite cosmetic. Mary Margaret O'Hara: They probably don't believe that, though. They're still trying to find their way, and a way of being different among everything that's on offer. There's so much nowadays and nobody trusts what is bad or good, and everyone's suspect in a way. Before you could tell what was bad and good, but it's like no one trusts what is good or bad any more. Beth Orton: Most people want something to matter again.
Back in the day
Anthony Genn: What was the first concert you ever went to?
Nick Cave: Deep Purple, when I was about 15. Deep Purple, Manfred Mann and Free; it was a triple bill in Melbourne. Mary Margaret O'Hara: The Beatles, and then Bob Marley. Paul Morley: T-Rex. Nick Cave: You liar! Paul Morley: T-Rex, Manchester Free Trade Hall. Twelve shillings. Beth Orton: The first band I really remember was the Fall at the Norwich Gala House, when I was 12. Antony Hegarty: I don't remember ... I'm too ashamed to admit it ... I can't... Everyone: Come on! Antony Hegarty: It was Duran Duran. Anthony Genn: Mine was The Stranglers in 1981. Jarvis: I think mine was The Stranglers as well. Antony Hegarty [mortified]: Mine was the worst... Anthony Genn: People are freer to make music than they ever were. Even in the days of punk, someone had to pay for you to make a record. Now you can download software to make your own music. Twelve-year-old kids make bands and they have their MySpace sites, and it sounds alright, man. Antony Hegarty: My friends [the group] CocoRosie went to Brazil to play a concert, and their music isn't distributed in Brazil but there were 2,000 people there singing along; they knew all the words. But their record isn't even in the shops in Brazil!
Should music be shrouded in mystery?
Paul Morley: What about if everyone gets involved? Everyone has an opinion nowadays on everything, everybody has a blog. What if everyone made music? Doesn't that ruin the point of it being essentially something magical, if everyone does it and it just reduces it to the point of filling the shelves with baked beans. Mary Margaret O'Hara: The best thing is to be connected but you also want to stand slightly apart ... sorry, I'm rambling. Paul Morley: No, that was good. ... What I'm saying is that if music becomes so democratic that everyone can do it, then surely it loses some of that mystique of being something that only some people can do. Jarvis: I don't know about that. I mean, there might have been fewer people making music 30 years ago, but there were still a lot of crap bands. There have always been bad bands. Beth: Not as many as there are now, surely Jarvis: Probably proportionally, yeah. Antony Hegarty: It kind of reminds me of another era when everyone made music in their kitchen. When music was almost like a family experience, or a local experience. Nick Cave: It takes a talent to be able to sit down and write a hit. You're catchy [to Jarvis], you can do that. Beth Orton [to Anthony Genn]: You're catchy. Anthony Genn: The flu is catchy! Paul Morley: But going back to the beginning of the conversation, lots of people form bands now as if it's a career choice they're making. Because of certain TV audition shows, and the materialism of hip hop, you can actually envisage a career in pop music now, whereas back in our day, you would just make a song at a time, and go from week to week. The thrill of playing a gig and you never knew when or where it would end...
What makes people create?
Beth Orton: Ultimately - this is my hippy self talking here - but ultimately, it's a desire to create akin to having babies. I was talking to someone about this yesterday and it's like, 'Why is that so many men are artists and writers?' It's because we all have a desire to make and create, it's part of our nature and, for me, it's about connecting to that nature and that eternal other side...
Nick Cave: What happens in the market, I don't consider it, downloading and all that. For me what music is for is very much a selfish thing. All I know is that I have to do it on a regular basis or I don't operate correctly. What happens with the records and the history of the thing: I feel I have absolutely no control over that, and I'm not even interested in it personally. It's just very much a selfish act of going in there and... Beth Orton: Connecting with beauty... Nick Cave: It's just an act of survival. To go in there and have that feeling, which is incredibly addictive and doesn't really go away. Whether it's with lyrics or whether it's with the music itself where you feel something happen, some change of body chemistry that happens when you actually make music and a few musicians actually play something together and it's like, 'Shit, that's really good' and you get lost in the moment and everything else is just unimportant. And for me that is what music is for... What I mean to say is we can talk about where music is going but we don't really know where music is going and there might be some wonderful stuff that comes out of this. That's what it's about and what it has always been about. That's not to say what I do is good or bad, it's just that it has this effect on me that I don't get from anything else. I don't get it from playing with the kids, I don't get it from my wife, I don't get it from anywhere else. I guess that's why I was getting upset at the start when we were talking about advertising, because it seems a very cynical betrayal of that moment, of that precious, almost religious experience.
The other thing about music that I really like ... when I was kid there was no real information about music. You got a record with a cover - and you didn't really know much about the band - and you put the record on and stared at the cover and that's pretty much all the information you had, and these people were heroes. They were mysterious, heroic people ... And the internet and everything else has taken a certain amount of that away.
The mystique is disappearing. Now that might be a good thing or a bad thing, but for me, I don't want to know everything. I want the people I really love to remain difficult to get to. Jarvis: Really, the detail about people's lives isn't that important. Nick Cave: Anything that anyone has to say outside making a record isn't that important. You get a record and you think this is pretty cool and then you read 15 interviews and you're like [pulls face] ... And there are some very big bands [who operate] like that. Paul Morley: I guess what we're saying is that more and more is being written about music and less and less is being said. Jarvis: What I'm saying is music is becoming more mundane, because it surrounds us so much, it's no longer something that tears through modern life, it's something that is the part of the fabric of modern life. Beth Orton: It does all go in cycles, so after a period of heavily manufactured music, something else will come again. If we think that our instincts are being messed with, we will return to the source. Jarvis: I think we've established the distinction between the artistic process and what happens afterwards to it. I suppose as long as people don't allow what happens next to affect the first bit, everything will be alright.
Who's who
Nick Cave
An author, screenwriter and creator of classic albums such as Kicking Against the Pricks and 2004's Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus.
Paul Morley
OMM's critic-at-large is also a celebrated author and one-half of the group Infantjoy. Beth Orton
The contemporary folk singer released Comfort of Strangers, her first album for four years, in February. Mary Margaret O'Hara
Publicity-shy Canadian songstress and creator of 1988's classic cult album (and her only full-length LP), Miss America. Antony Hegarty
The New York-based voice of Antony and the Johnsons, winner of last year's Mercury Prize for the extraordinary I Am a Bird Now. Anthony Genn
Front man of hot new band the Hours, whose first single 'Ali in the Jungle' is released this month on Polydor. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1923704,00.html | 
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