Some I still associate with those times
include the debut single from Adele, ‘Chasing Pavements’ I
never saw the ‘car crash’ video but those heartfelt vocals and the old-style
lush string arrangements emanating from the speakers struck a chord. The whole
Adele phenomenon didn’t explode until her 21 album came out a few years later
but this track offered a glimpse of what was to come.
It was early days for Onerepublic,
too. Ryan Tedder has since become the go-to songwriter for all sorts of pop
wannabes but back then he and his band were best known for ‘Apologise’, made
into a hit by the ubiquitous Timbaland, typically lacing the original with
trademark “Dep dep”s. However, on ‘Stop and Stare’, I
found the opening continuous electric guitar sound, reminiscent of some kind of
eerie wind whistle, quite hypnotic. Not sure whether the rest of the song lived
up to the intro, but it was one of my highlights in a sea of dross.
North Walean singer Duffy emerged early
in 2008 when she released ‘Mercy’. Its Sixties Northern
Soul feel and her Dusty Springfield-like appearance singled her out from the
crowd, propelling the Rockferry album to sales exceeding 1.7 million by the
year’s end. ‘Mercy’ topped the chart for four weeks but it was the follow-up
‘Warwick Avenue’ which
floated my boat. A gorgeous ballad, and hats off to the reference to the
Bakerloo Line station. Another poignant slowie from that Spring was James
Blunt’s haunting ‘Carry Her Home’.
It only reached number twenty but certainly one of his best, in my opinion.
Probably two of the most annoying
records of any era sent me scurrying back to my geodemographic analysis and
Powerpoint reports. Sam Sparro’s ‘Black and Gold’ was pretty awful but
Nickelback’s hymn to the stoner lifestyle in ‘Rockstar’ seemed to linger in the
top ten forever. And how Virgin Radio loved it! I didn’t. My line manager Ange
got it spot on when describing the song as “the anti-rock”. Aargh!!
At least Nickelback were a rock band.
In that respect they seemed to be one of a dying breed. Approaching my fiftieth
birthday with horrific haste, I was struggling to make sense of the
preponderance of urban music at the top of the charts. I was grappling with the
problem of knowing my Tinchys from my Tinies from my Taios. Messrs Stryder,
Tempah and Cruz seemed to top the chart at will, but I was still none the
wiser. At least I was more confident of recognising Dizzee Rascal in an
identity parade. I wasn't too fond of some of his spelling, though. ‘Dirtee’? It’s spelt with a ‘y’, Mr Rascal,
a ‘y’! Then there was his crossover hit with Calvin Harris, ‘Dance Wiv Me’. It’s ‘WITH’!! Perhaps he was a secret fan of Slade...
British females were doing
pretty well, too. What’s more, I was liking a lot of what they were doing, even if listening to Florence Welch (and her Machine) felt
like being blasted by a hurricane while tied to a wall. The
ever-outspoken Lily Allen returned to the top with ‘The Fear’.
Featuring pithy, sarcastic observations of trashy starlet fame, the track had a
more trance-dance sound than Lily’s usual destruction of ex-boyfriends in
reggae or Country and I recall seeing her perform it on the Jonathan Ross show.
Her lyrics were a tad naughtier live, though.
You’d never hear any profanities in
Pixie Lott’s material. Of course there’d be no swearing from the pretty
teenager living in my home town of Brentwood. She was no mere attractive ditzy
blonde; she had brains and voice to match. Her first chart-topper ‘Mama Do’ was my favourite. Little Boots (aka Victoria Hesketh)
was a welcome arrival in the charts with ‘Remedy’ in
2009, although that proved to be her last Top 50 entry. In the same year, a
more successful, and slightly more enduring synth pop act was La Roux. Fronted
by the androgynous-looking Elly Jackson, they had two big hits which whisked me
back to the heyday of electro-dance while still sounding current. The frenetic
‘Bulletproof’ was a number one but ‘In For the Kill’ was, and still is, the track which, once heard, is very hard to shift from the
brain. The vocals are a bit shrill but the uncomplicated production is
undoubtedly on the money.
From out of nowhere, in 2008 Sugababes
sounded back to their best with ‘Denial’. A
few years earlier, I reckon this would have been a number one, but the trio
were no longer in the limelight and it barely limped into the top 20. Things
got worse soon after when Keisha quit the band. As a result, none of the
original threesome were left, but they carried on regardless. ‘Denial’ may not
have been as blatantly commercial as ‘Push the Button’ or ‘About You Now’ but
it was brash and bouncy and deserved greater success.
There were plenty of sassy female
Yanks around, such as Pink, Kelis and even Kelly Clarkson. Yet it was Katy Perry
who had millions of girls around the world dabbling in lesbianism – well, if
you believed the Daily Mail! I didn’t really see the virtues of
Perry. Her voice was nothing special and I doubt she would ever have become the
star she is had she not kissed a girl and liked it. Ranking even higher on the obnoxiousness
scale were the various products of the twin American conveyor belts of
commercial crap, the casts of High Street Musical and Glee. Principal guilty
party was the latter TV show’s cover of a little-known Eighties flop ‘Don’t
Stop Believin’’. Add in a young Canadian brat called Justin Bieber and X
Factor novelty duo Jedward, and the world of musical entertainment seemed to be
wracked by an insidious virus.
Thank heavens for Lady Gaga!
My first experience of Stefani
Joanne Angelina Germanotta was not a positive one. Her first appearance on the
Jonathan Ross programme in 2009 was genuine ‘car-crash’ TV. She seemed totally
unengaged and uncommunicative, gratifying fodder for the older generation keen
to denigrate the talentless trash posing as modern pop stars. ‘Just Dance’ and
‘Poker Face’ went to number one and Brand Gaga was all-consuming. She was
inextricably linked with outrageous costumes (remember the raw meat dress worn
at the 2010 MTV Awards?!) and sexually-provocative lyrics which recalled
Madonna in her heyday. Except we were now in the twenty-first century, so the
celeb-obsessed media demanded notoriety to be ratcheted up to eleven. Gaga was
no conventional beauty but she had – well – the X Factor.
Her second
interview with Jonathan the following Spring was far more revealing. Behind the
in-yer-face fashion it was patently obvious there was an intelligent woman,
excellent voice, talented songwriter and musician. Had she been born twenty
years later, Madonna simply wouldn’t have been able to compete. After she had
steered her extravagant white peacock costume to the piano and began to play
and sing ‘Brown Eyes’ live,
it was a pivotal moment.
I had already
appreciated the perfect pop of ‘Paparazzi’ (shown in its best light, like all Gaga’s music, live on stage), followed by
the synth stomper ‘Bad Romance’ and the slower-tempo of ‘Alejandro’ (move over,
La Isla Bonita) so here was a pop star I could recognise as the full package. I
was compelled to make a rare foray into Taunton’s HMV (probably) to buy a new
CD which wasn’t a compilation album: The Fame and the nine-track Fame Monster.
For all the ubiquity of Lady Gaga in
2009, she had fewer number ones than the three chalked up by The Black Eyes
Peas. DJ-producer David Guetta added the Peas’ fifth album ‘The E.N.D.’ to his
growing list of credits although the hits sounded like typical fare from Will,
Fergie et al. I wasn’t fussed about the first chart-topper ‘Boom Boom Pow’ or
the third, ‘Meet Me Halfway’ but ‘I Gotta Feeling’ screamed “instant classic” when released in August.
Gaga finished ahead of the Peas in both singles and albums
lists, but not at the summit. That accolade went to a 48 year-old Scottish
spinster with Asperger’s Syndrome by the name of Susan Boyle. The complete
antithesis of Lady Gaga, she nevertheless grabbed more headlines in the second
half of 2009 and 2010 than Gaga, Rihanna or Katy Perry combined. Like millions of others, even my jaw dropped when
I heard her stunning voice filling the room with ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from Les
Miserables.
She was the archetypal overnight
sensation and a gift to internet searchers worldwide. Her massive
publicity made her such a nailed-on favourite to win the BGT final in June that even
I cast a vote – for dazzling dance troupe Diversity. To my astonishment, Ashley
Banjo’s boys actually triumphed. Nevertheless Cowell knew he was on to a sure
thing with Boyle, and she converted column inches and YouTube hits into
enormous album sales worldwide. To my relief, she didn’t
shift many singles but I had to grudgingly admit that her success demonstrated
the adage that anyone can do it if
you really try.
Bruno Mars didn’t need a peaktime TV
talent show to make it big. The pint-sized Hawaiian was one of the top artists
of 2010 and 2011, churning out umpteen hits singles either as a solo or
‘featured’ vocalist. He seemed to switch seamlessly from vanilla pop to reggae
humour and R’n’B ballad, none of which really floated my boat. Take That’s rebirth received new impetus in the form of a new member; an old new member by the name of Robbie Williams. Fifteen years after
quitting the boy band, Robbie Williams returned to the fold, albeit
temporarily.
But where were the REAL bands. You
know, the acts with guitars and drums. Real instruments. They weren’t anywhere
near the top of the UK singles charts, that’s for sure. Of course, there were a
few exceptions.
Irish trio The Script weren’t exactly
high-energy rockers but did produce a handful of decent ballads, led by ‘The Man Who Can’t be Moved’. This one grew on me, and ‘Break Even’ also met with my approval. I wouldn’t
have recognised any of the personnel had singer-songwriter Danny O’Donoghue not
been one of the judge/mentors on BBC1’s new talent series The Voice UK.
But The Script were hardly genuine
meat-and-two-veg rockers. Muse and Kasabian were winning awards, more for their
stupendous stadium tours than their recordings. Nickelback I have already
summarily dissed and dismissed. The biggest selling rock single of 2009 or 2010
was a re-release of a barrage of roaring riffs, a flurry of “fuck”s and not a
lot else, entitled ‘Killing in the Name’. I hated the record but applauded its
use as a vehicle for halting the run of bland X Factor Christmas number ones.
In December 2009, the anti-Cowell campaign coalesced behind the Rage Against
the Machine single and, incredibly, succeeded. The latest pretty boy winner,
Joe McElderry, was thwarted at the critical time. It was only a transient
triumph but for one glorious week, real music lovers had raged against the X
Factor machine and won!
Coldplay, of course, were more to my
taste, and they didn’t disappoint with their 2008 single ‘Viva La Vida’.
It sounded different from their previous singles, with prominent strings, bell
and a thumping tympanum in place of traditional drums. Despite the melancholic
lyrics describing a ruler’s fall from his lofty position of power, it’s a
thrilling, uplifting four-minute production. Sally gave me the album for my
birthday. Sally was blessed with a musical
download collection more eclectic than any 15 year-old had any right to
possess. From Marley to Florence, burly Yank rockers Bowling for Soup to
ginger-dreadlocked Newton Faulkner, Vampire Weekend to Lordi, she took great
pride in blazing trails for acts long before they struck stardom in the UK. Another
of her favourites were Kings of Leon.
Prior to September 2009 I honestly
could not have named a single song from their three-album canon, nor did I know
they were in fact a genuine band of brothers by the Tennessee family name of
Followill. However, when I first heard that growling, prowling intro I knew
’Sex On Fire’ was a
surefire hit. I was also intrigued by the unorthodox placement of the drumbeat
on the opening verse before normality was restored for the exhilarating chorus
and subsequent stanzas. Apparently the original intention was to call the song
Set Us on Fire but a technician’s quip led to the change and the rest is
history.
I would later discover that ‘Sex On
Fire’ was a favourite of Angie, too. It’s virtually the law that I request it
for her at any discos, the inevitable result being her shaking everything she’s
got on the dancefloor. Never mind the knee replacement, hearing those guitar
siren calls and Caleb’s soulful vocals never cease to unleash Angie’s inner
rock-chick emotions! Hell, isn’t that why rock music was invented?
When it came to
musicals in 2008 there was only one name on everyone’s lips. Well, two names, to be
precise. It made lots of money, money, money for Abba, the winners who took it
all: Mamma Mia! We enjoyed the touring stage production at the Hippodrome,
Bristol, in January and hurried to the local independent Bridgwater cinema for
the much-heralded movie in its first week on release in July. Abba have been a
recurring feature of this memoir, and for good reason; their music has
continued to bound back joyfully into British culture at frequent intervals to
remind us of their incomparable back catalogue of pop perfection.
Given the lavish cast-of-hundreds Greek location treatment, it was a guaranteed success but nobody could have predicted
it would become the UK’s biggest box office hit of all time. Based on the
behaviour of those around me, I reckon the cinema receipts benefitted from
repeat visits of middle-aged women and their daughters intoxicated by the
beautiful setting, the winning performances of Meryl Streep, Julie Walters et
al, the stunning set-pieces (for example, Dancing Queen and Voulez Vous) and
the feelgood love story.
Mamma Mia would also provide popular
raw material for one of the productions by the Quantock Musical Theatre
Company (QMTC), of which I was a member for over three years during my time in
Bridgwater. It had a surprisingly striking impact on my life, enticing out the
latent performer inside me, instilling self-confidence and establishing an
inner strength which would benefit me far beyond the evenings in front of an
audience.
Until 2008 my experience of being in a
choir was restricted to my brief spell at primary school, singing the likes of
‘Little Spanish Town’ or ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. That was all to
change. Before I had taken the courageous but
ill-fated decision to buy a Victorian house in the ‘nicest street in
Bridgwater’ and become a full-time member of the Binstead family, I was already
well acquainted with their involvement in the QMTC.
It was run by Brian and Barbara Williams’,
incomers from London who had become part of the fabric of Nether Stowey, a picturesque place at the foot of the Quantocks. Company rehearsals were held at the modern village hall. The Williamses were massive fans of
West End musicals, and had established the QMTC as a mean of directing their own
productions of classics such as My Fair Lady and Oliver. For the latter,
bolstering the membership created from friends of the family, a host of
youngsters had been drafted in, giving the Company an impressive age range.
This blend of youth and maturity was
also to serve the QMTC well in its secondary phase. The single-show format,
toiling like stink for just a week’s performances a year, didn’t suit everyone.
So it was, by the time I entered its lustrous circle, that the 30-odd members
were instead spreading their range to encompass material from a host of
sources, culminating in a Magic of the Musicals production. With no scenery or
costumes to worry about, the QMTC could tour the village halls, appearing on
Friday or Saturday evenings to entertain the local populace.
I saw no role for me in such an organisation. However, on my 47th birthday, Jan persuaded me to accompany the others. Believing I would have the chance to sit at the back and listen, I duly obliged. Jan probably smiled to herself. With
the short, silver-bearded Brian running proceedings, nobody would be permitted to lurk in the shadows.
She was right. I was swiftly set upon by Brian and interrogated on my voice. Was I a tenor or bass? I
hadn’t a bloody clue. I decided to sit with the men at the back. Easier to
hide, I thought with cunning but naivete. It wasn’t long before Barbara sussed
me out and shunted me forward to the tenors who comprised Scott, his close
buddy Dom and Daniel, an entertaining trio who welcomed me into their wacky teenage world.
It was a steep learning curve.
Although our first live shows weren’t scheduled until the new year, there was a
lot to take in. For starters I could not then, nor can I now, read music.
However, like many others around me, I found it possible to follow the staves,
recalling long-forgotten teachings about crotchets and quavers, sharps and
flats. Then there was the singing itself. As well as struggling with the notes,
it became obvious my vocal muscles needed hours in the virtual gymnasium of
each rehearsal. Never mind, as each week passed, my voice became more reliable,
less likely to sound like Rod Stewart after a 48-hour bender.
And so to 14th February
2009: my debut performance! My diary records that despite a paltry audience in
the tiny environs of Kilve - its parish one of the oldest in Somerset – we had
a “good workout”. Four days later came an altogether different proposition:
performing the same show on the sizeable stage of Minehead’s Regal Theatre. Unnerving but
gloriously exhilarating! I considered my own voice to be “crap” but the
audience seemed to leave happy. The performing bug was in me. Bloody hell, I
could DO this….
Way back in my Rotaract days, I
remembered going to see Les Miserables in London and departing feeling
distinctly underwhelmed. A trip to a school production in Bridgwater Town Hall
had me adjusting my opinion. Now I began to appreciate the power of the
storyline as well as the music. Until then, ‘One Day More’ had been merely a nightmare of a song to learn: a complicated jigsaw of
four-part harmonies, solo parts and chorus. When it worked, it sounded
incredible. If someone came in too late: disaster! For three years, it was our
show-stopping finale and I was a part of it.
I also immersed myself in the organisation itself, becoming its treasurer. We got through a few pianists in my time there, but most of them contributed different ideas designed to help us develop as individuals and, more importantly, a vocal unit.
For example, Peter threw in some random suggestions such as ‘Save the Best for Last’, ‘Eternal Flame’ and
the a capella ‘Only You’. They
weren’t strictly speaking songs from the musicals at all, but they undoubtedly
developed our skills and repertoire. Peter’s promotion to head of music at
Haygrove School left Paul as the custodian of the QMTC keyboard. He was more
‘old school’; a connoisseur of Latin and
musical history, precise and a perfectionist, he also brought us on considerably. Even now, if I want to
exercise my chords for presentations, interviews or even karaoke, I still
practise his “Dah-meh-nee”s and “Ri-ta Chak-ra-va-ti”s to fine-tune my legato and staccato techniques.
The arrival of Shelagh in September
2011 proved a masterstroke. She gamely acquiesced in ceding the musical
director’s role to Alice and with her
at the piano the QMTC’s future seemed secure. In addition to works such as Oklahoma,
West Side Story and Joseph…, there were also memorable performances of songs
from Abba and The Beatles. I take particular pride in having my own suggestion
of arrangement and audience participation in ‘Hey Jude’ accepted. I wasn’t just
a weak tenor and part-time tambourine tapper, you know!
Our Christmas performances also became
more important. Our sessions at the Hestercombe House Christmas Fayre and from
the balcony of Bridgwater’s Angel Place shopping mall proved popular with
players and public alike. However, for atmosphere and a genuine feeling of
togetherness, nothing could compete with our mini-concerts on the grand
staircase of Dunster Castle as part of the two-day annual Dunster by
Candlelight event. I think even Angie enjoyed being in the audience for that
one!
Come 2012, my relationship with Angie
was blossoming and I was spending more time with her in Cardiff. With attendance at rehearsals becoming more
sporadic, I graciously
bowed out in February. I confess I do miss the buzz of performing on
stage. I may not be up there with the Michael
Balls or Alfie Boes, nor even my fellow QMTC-ers, but my years with the Company
gave me confidence and those years as a live performer remain with me for ever.
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