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Spectator
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
How Live Aid ruined pop music
Today is the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid, the epic televised pop concert – or 'global jukebox' – designed to raise funds to alleviate the devastating Ethiopian famine. The proceedings were divided between Wembley and the Kennedy stadium in Philadelphia. It was billed, even at the time, as an epochal day, an event that would change the world and change pop music. And I think it was – but maybe not in the way everybody thought. So, we exported Marxism to Ethiopia and it starved to death – and now we had the temerity to add Spandau Ballet, Phil Collins and Nik Kershaw on top I was 17, and though I couldn't articulate why, I felt that there was something wrong about the whole affair. 'Crowds, properly worked up by skillful demagogues, are ready to believe anything,' H.L. Mencken wrote in 1918, and I felt in my bones that Bob Geldof, however well-intentioned, was rousing a rabble and flattening their thoughts. Modern mass-produced western pop music, for me, just doesn't belong outdoors. It is a wonderful thing – but it is unnatural, synthetic, and contrived. It is best enjoyed alone at home or in small interior venues. Enormous rallies exalt it beyond its range, or rather they alter it into a mass Bacchic rite. I could feel a strange cultural gear shifting, even though I couldn't put it into words. For me, Live Aid felt like the end of something, or a transformation of something beyond its natural limits. A study of Spotify data in 2018 reported that our musical taste is locked in when we are young teens – 14 for men, 13 for women. It follows that the first changes in music that happen after that age are going to be particularly jarring for us. To an ordinary disinterested observer, the differences between the charts of 1982 and 1985 will seem very minor. But to me, at that crucial age, it was very apparent that something had dropped off, and Live Aid put the tin hat on that. The pop scene of 82 was playful, varied and – however flat footed – innovative. Soft Cell, ABC, Yazoo, The Associates, The Teardrop Explodes, Shalamar, Dexy's; they were all very different. Live Aid was a massive top-down corporate flattening-out of all that. It was the return of superannuated rock gods and the establishment of a gaggle of newer, much dumber concerns – Madonna, U2 and Paul Young. Pop was never exactly Mensa, no, but the brains it did have evaporated that day, and they never really came back. My little new wave bubble was well and truly burst. It had run off the fumes of Bowie's 1977 albums Low and Heroes, and in a strange way this came full circle with Bowie's set at Live Aid. The song 'Heroes' was reborn that day – the edge and the angst of it sawn away as it became a self-glorifying stadium rock anthem. There were other oddities and infelicities in the line-up. The inclusion of Adam Ant, who hadn't had a sniff of a hit for years, just seemed peculiar in 1985. Bryan Ferry, with a back catalogue of huge singalong smashes, decided instead to plug noodling non-single tracks from his latest album. And there were frequent crass juxtapositions, the most 'powerful' being the playing of the twee, maudlin synth whinge 'Drive' by The Cars over footage of dying Ethiopian children. Pop music, a marvellous bauble, was simply not equipped for these emotions or situations. The other thing which gave me the abdabs was the idea that pop stars were now moral exemplars. From that day on we were supposed to revere these people. Cue the pompous windbaggery of Sting, Bono, etc. jetting around the planet combining their grotty little ditties with geo-politics and trite zero-sum economics platitudes – 'they have nothing because we have everything'. Because the troubles of the world were somehow all our fault. In a way, they were. The Ethiopian famine certainly was, but not in the way Live Aid blithely assumed. It was the direct result of the deadliest of western exports, Marxism. The Derg regime of Ethiopia, the Red Terror, the forced farm collectivisation and land 'reforms'. The Marxist government of the dictator Mengistu is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of two million Ethiopians in the famine. But don't worry. Mengistu is living in luxury in exile in Harare, today. So, we exported Marxism to Ethiopia and it starved to death – and now we had the temerity to add Spandau Ballet, Phil Collins and Nik Kershaw on top. Worse, we had idiot westerners like the Style Council advocating for the same ideology, from the safe distance of Woking, enjoying all the freedoms and plenty of western capitalism, and knowing full well that their puerile political bluff would never be called. So I won't be joining in the Live Aid anniversary celebrations today. It makes me feel quite queasy, even 40 years on.
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Tim Pope: my golden age of music videos from Bowie to the Cure
One autumn afternoon in 1982, Tim Pope, a budding film director, had a life-changing meeting on the roof of an office block in Soho in London. A young goth by the name of Robert Smith had enjoyed a music video that Pope had made for the synth duo Soft Cell (for their single Bedsitter) and wanted some of that creative magic for his own band, the Cure. • The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review — a decaying masterpiece Was there immediate chemistry? Undeniable sympatico? Not quite. 'We were what I'd call shy bastards,' Pope recalls. 'We rarely met eyes with each other, and he had a very quiet voice, so it was hard to hear him over the noise coming from the fruit market outside. I had no idea it would be the start of an almost 50-year relationship.' Beginning with a promo for the Cure's uncharacteristically upbeat single Let's Go to Bed, that collaboration spawned more than 35 extraordinary videos (and counting) as part of Pope's extensive career. He'll be talking about these experiences, and many more, at Fringe by the Sea, in an event that's a trail for his forthcoming memoir, which has the working title My Wonky Eye: The Tales of a Maverick Music Director, out next year. 'It follows the arc of my relationship with David Bowie via Iggy Pop,' Pope says about a book that's going to be devoured by music fans. 'That's the main story, but along the way I work with lots of other bands.' Those others include Neil Young, whose playful side Pope is good at teasing out, Talk Talk, Queen and The The, and what the films have in common is technical ambition (all done before the days of green screen), a sense of humour and a colourful disregard for authority. As he puts it: 'I've got quite a rebellious streak and I think that's what connected with the artists who also had one.' Another common thread is the glee with which Pope playfully tortures his bands — from hanging them upside down and swinging cameras into their faces to trapping them in tight spaces — all for the perfect shot. A great example is the claustrophobic masterpiece Close to Me, for which he got the Cure (who'd been 'partying' for several hours beforehand) squashed up into a wardrobe, which he then flooded with water. For The Lovecats video he had the band dancing about in a woozy world of threadbare feline taxidermy; while for Lullaby Smith was cocooned by spider webs made from glue, had a micro camera in a medical probe inserted into his mouth, and was eventually swallowed up by a giant spider. When the book comes out it will include some never-before-seen photos from these shoots, including a selfie of Pope and Smith just as they were finishing the Lullaby video — 'Just at the end, when he called me a bastard,' the director says with a laugh. In many ways it was a golden age of music videos, with — in Pope's experience at least — the artists given artistic carte blanche, free from the constraints of corporate intervention. As a result boundaries weren't so much pushed as blown up at times, as evidenced in the gory video for Soft Cell's outrageous Sex Dwarf, which was, unsurprisingly, banned. (Word to the wise: do not watch this video in the workplace.) • Soft Cell singer Marc Almond: 'I find it hard to have relationships' Pope recently found the call sheet with a list of props for that shoot, which included a working chainsaw, raw meat and some maggots. 'I can still smell that studio,' he recalls. One of Pope's early jobs, shortly after leaving television school, was making films to help train politicians, and he was often in Downing Street in the dying days of the 1970s Labour government. He would 'borrow' equipment to film gigs in the evenings, and at one performance by the Specials some skinheads invaded the stage, headbutted him and grabbed the expensive camera. These kinds of scuffles were a world away from his later success. He developed such a strong relationship with Bowie that the singer asked him to direct his 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden, in New York, requesting that he be his 'eyes and ears' on the day. As well as working on the book, Pope is planning to make a feature film called The Beating of a Moth's Wing, starring Béatrice Dalle, who graced many a student's bedroom wall in the 1990s. Also on the horizon is a 50th-anniversary film for the Cure, hopefully due out in 2028. 'Robert's got 50 boxes of film no one's ever seen,' he says. 'It'll be amazing for fans.' This Fringe by the Sea session, hosted by Vic Galloway, will also be a treat for music fans, with Pope more than happy to answer questions and share memories. Start revising those videos now to get the best out of 2, 2.45pm, the Dome, £12/6 Blur fans will be in heaven during this session. The Britpop band's drummer, Dave Rowntree, captured many of their early adventures on camera, and loads of them will be shown here. Close-up shots of Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Alex James messing about on tour buses and video shoots and in hotels reveal the fresh excitement of those youthful days. Parklife in real life!Aug 8, 1pm, the Dome, £12 One of the most famous sons of Leith, Irvine Welsh, brought the less chocolate-box version of Edinburgh to the world's attention when his debut novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993. Welsh was partly inspired to write by his experiences in the punk and rave scenes, and when Danny Boyle adapted the book into a film, his creative use of music took it to another level. In this session Welsh, who recently published his 16th novel, will be talking with the DJ Vic Galloway about the magic of music and film (and will also, surprisingly, curate a 'family rave' in the Dome)Aug 2, 1.30pm, Big Top, £12/6 • Irvine Welsh: I turned up wired to the Trainspotting launch in 1993 Ever since bursting onto the scene in 1995, Mogwai have entranced music fans with their expansive cinematic sounds. While band members have come and gone, Stuart Braithwaite has remained at the helm, pushing Mogwai into more complex and hard-to-ignore compositions. This documentary, made by Antony Crook, will trace their history with a rich treasure trove of archive footage, and afterwards Braithwaite will stick around for a post-screening 3, 6pm, the Dome, £12/£6 Eunice Olumide's debut film looks at the pioneers of the underground UK rap scene, giving a particular focus to founders of the genre who have been written out of history, and highlighting the impact that technology has had on artists' 3, 2pm, the Dome, £10/£5 Join a decade-by-decade adventure into the history of Scottish girl bands from the 1960s onwards. Made by the prolific musician Carla J Easton, this feature-length documentary takes a scrapbook-style audiovisual approach to celebrate trailblazers, game-changers and some of those acts who would have achieved more global success under a more equitable music business model. The screening includes a discussion with Easton, who's also performing at 10, 4pm, the Dome, £10/£5 • Remembering Scotland's sonic sisters who tore down music industry barriers Fringe by the Sea, Aug 1-10, North Berwick,
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Wave Icon 'Looks Great' As He Transports Fans Back To High School With '80s Anthem
New Wave Icon 'Looks Great' As He Transports Fans Back To High School With '80s Anthem originally appeared on Parade. Robbie Grey of the '80s new wave band Modern English looks and sounds like no time has passed since the band struck gold with its 1982 hit 'I Melt With You.' The song became synonymous with the 1980s after it was featured in the cult classic teen film Valley Girl in 1983. Modern English is currently on tour with fellow '80s darlings Simple Minds and Soft Cell, much to the delight of Gen X fans thrilled to be taken back in a video shared to social media, Grey, 67, looks svelte and fit as he introduces the band's most famous hit. The band then launches into a rousing version of the song before Grey encourages the crowd to join in—as if they needed any help. Grey sounds as good as he looks, and fans were quick to take note. One fan wrote, 'Wow, he looks great!'—a sentiment that summed up what many were only thing fans loved more than seeing a beloved '80s rocker looking and sounding as youthful as ever was the band's ability to transport them back in time. One fan wrote, 'Aah, my childhood. When things were good,' while another shared, 'And suddenly I'm back in the '80s!!!' 'And now I'm dancing away,' added one excited fan. And now we are, too. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 New Wave Icon 'Looks Great' As He Transports Fans Back To High School With '80s Anthem first appeared on Parade on Jun 18, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 18, 2025, where it first appeared.
Toronto Star
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
A major 1980s nostalgia concert, Canadian pop punk and an imploding submersible: what we're obsessed with this week
Concert: Simple Minds Sure, everyone knows that song from that movie. But there's a lot more to Simple Minds than meets the eye, beginning with their fantastic early albums, on which they merged David Bowie's flash with the Velvet Underground's verve and Kraftwerk's Euro-cool grooves. And in a live setting, the band, featuring original members Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, are simply thrilling and uplifting. They're bound to play a few deep cuts along with their latter-day stadium fillers at Budweiser Stage on Wednesday night. Opening are two equally credible one-hit new wave wonders: Soft Cell and Modern English. John Hughes would definitely approve. —Doug Brod
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Darwin-verse may be a maddening world for Slot but he needs to keep Núñez onside
Stop getting Darwin Núñez wrong! At the very least, can we please stop comparing him unfavourably with Andy Carroll. This should be taken as a general cease-and-desist plea from those of us with an interest in preserving the Carroll legacy. But it also feels like an important note of distinction in a week when Arne Slot has unexpectedly made Núñez into a person of interest in the Premier League title race by dwelling on his now-famous miss against Aston Villa. There may be sound internal reasons for this. Slot is very shrewd. The season has so far been an exercise in control and smart judgment. But from the outside, telling Núñez off in public feels unnecessary at this late stage, like shoehorning jeopardy into the third act of a generic Hollywood movie, the needless car chase four-fifths of the way through Paddington 5: Paddington Harder. Possibly, and all conclusions will as ever be outcome-based, this will end up being a significant mistake. But it's also interesting in its own right, and for various reasons. First the Núñez/Carroll dynamic. This comparison is purely visual. Both are tall and have slick dark ponytails in the 'Croydon Facelift' style. The music press used to do this a lot, grouping bands together on the basis of hairstyles. Núñez-as-Carroll is like listing both Spandau Ballet and Soft Cell as New Romantics in the early 1980s. Both had quiffy, feathery haircuts. But watching an early Spandau Ballet performance is like being jostled by angry handsome plumbers shouting Marvin Gaye songs. Whereas listening to Marc Almond is like perching on a stool in a basement bar while a skinny, unsettling man sings Jacques Brel-style torch ballads dressed only in a metal codpiece and nipple clamps. Both good. Both with good hair. But contrasting vibes. In football terms the key difference between Núñez and Carroll is spatial and range-based. Carroll at his best was a set of powerful and surprisingly precise patterns enacted in a small space. Núñez, by contrast, is about creating space with unpredictable movements over a much larger area. Carroll was a footballer of the skies, which led to him being compared to many things during his career. The carcass of an ox siege-catapulted over the castle walls. A mattress thrown from a balcony on to a crowded dancefloor. But his best moments were at close-quarters and precise, from the famous header for England against Sweden at Euro 2012, perfect spatial awareness, elite neck-muscle flex, to those overhead kicks where he seemed somehow to have turned the rest of the world upside-down while he remained static, a foot suddenly where his head used to be, a miracle of explosive control in a very narrow range. Núñez operates at ground level, and more expansively. There was the goal at Brentford last season where he ran 60 yards, just eating the space, and produced a finish so absurdly out-there, a floating miracle-scoop on the move, that it seemed to really upset people, to say, yes, this is frankly unsustainable. This season he produced a winning turn at the same ground when he came late into a tight, settled game and broke it open with his more random angles. And now we have this, Wednesday night, That Miss, and Slot's decisions to dwell on it as a significant note after the game. Is this a sign of being rattled? Probably not. Slot is super-smart. Dutch people often just say things. There may have been a dressing room imperative to employ the nuclear option of going public. Maybe being ratted is OK anyway. Football is rattling. People who win also get rattled. We just don't hold it against them for years on the internet. Slot was also very clear it was Núñez's perceived lack of effort afterwards that bothered him, not the miss itself. This makes sense. A Núñez who gets discouraged when he misses is basically a 1% Núñez, the butterfly-lifespan Núñez. This person cannot exist on a football pitch. On the other hand is it actually wise to do this when everyone out there is looking for cracks and signs of stress, a plateauing that could, in the broadcasters' most fevered dreams, turn into a choke-based entertainment vehicle? If Slot really doesn't want that moment to 'get in his head', how is hearing his manager talk about it going to help with this? The real objection is that to raise it in public seems to miss what Núñez's role is going to be in a successful title run with 12 games to go and the need to just not collapse. Asking him to be hyper-professional, shaming him in public. Is it the moment? In this situation Núñez is the spirit animal, the hype man, the goodwill mascot, there at the end, beaming and dancing and firing a champagne cork into his own eye. Núñez is also the only part of the entity Slot inherited from Jürgen Klopp that doesn't really work properly, which adds a slight note of ingratitude. It is important to be clear at this stage. Núñez has not been a success. His transfer fee remains an absurdity. It hasn't all been bad. He was good last season when Mohamed Salah was injured. But he is also a player who spends a lot of time sprinting away from the game, making all the right runs, just not necessarily in the right order. He misses a lot. He doesn't have that ice-cold filter. He isn't a good fit in a high-precision team. The Darwin-verse is a looser, chancier place. It makes him great fun to watch as a neutral, exhilarating and maddening if you're a supporter, and a one-man heart attack if you're his manager. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion As a result he has often been treated as a toxic inheritance, nobody really wanting to take the rap for signing him. The former Liverpool data analyst Ian Graham wrote an interesting book about his time at the club called How To Win the Premier League. Sadio Mané (massive success) is mentioned 50 times, Salah (even massiver success) 41 times and Lionel Messi (random, but great brand recognition) 129 times. Darwin, who was signed on his watch: zero times. But then, Graham has a job to do and a company to promote, not to mention his Pitch Control model designed to 'mathematically understand the game the way a professional footballer understands it', which isn't really going to fit here. Throw your calculator down the stairs and then stamp on it. This is the best way into the maths of Darwin's game. Graham has pointed out in interviews that it was Klopp who made the call on Núñez based on two good performances against Liverpool. And in fairness he also admits that the data said yes, that the model had him as 'one of the best young strikers in the world'. This is also significant. In many ways Núñez-to-Liverpool is a victim of modern metrics. What we have here is a set of elite physical attributes crowbarred into the outline of an elite footballer. Take his top speed, his distances covered, a rare combination of height, pace and agility. Add one good goalscoring season. It kind of makes sense in a Klopp attack, although not in a Slot team, where picking Núñez is like living in an immaculate 17th-floor apartment with an overexcited labrador who won't stop knocking over your laptop, spraying the Barcelona chair with mud, drinking out of the toilet. This is also why Núñez is so much fun to watch. Modern football can be tediously risk-averse and systems-based. Perhaps the real lesson of Núñez is that building a team or trying to understand talent should never go too far one way into either data or feelings. An old-school Kenny Dalglish-style sniff test would probably save you from signing Núñez. The data wanglers could stop you spending £30m on Carroll. There is still a place for Núñez in this world. Probably he should be at a less overclass club, using his energy to disrupt more orderly teams. He may even end up winning Liverpool the league this season in a more arms-length kind of way. There is no doubt Arsenal would be a more potent team right now if they'd taken a chance and splashed out on a goalscorer. Why didn't they? Because data says this is a risky move that often doesn't pay? Hmm. And who is the most persuasive current example of this, living proof that when in doubt it's better to save your money and go for control? Clue: he's tall and has a ponytail. This is perhaps a stretch. For now, 12 games from the end, there is surely more to be gained from taking it steady with Núñez, from tickling his neck and just making him feel good.
