So, I used to be a chart-show addict. Every Sunday at 4pm I’d be glued to the sound of Dr Fox…oh yeah, I was a commercial radio baby not the bbc for me…until my beloved Dr Fox stopped doing it at which point the Pepsi Chart lost it’s appeal. Now this is from the bespectacled kid in the corner who had a quiet thing for Nirvana. (Do bear in mind at this point quite how mainstream Nirvana have since got – maybe I always gravitated to the pop even before it became pop).
But more importantly – I love radio. I love Radio Four at any time of the day or night, Radio One when I’m in need of something modern, The Bay (used to be Lincs FM when I was back in The Green County) when I want to sing along, Radio Three if they have a concert on or something that I’m interested in, I even bung on Radio Two on those occaisions I get irritated by the adverts on The Bay. I admit the only time I’ve listened to Radio Five lately was just to hear Rage Against The Machine swear and the panicky producer demand that they ‘get them off!’
But I love Radio and the freedom of music. That sentence probably tells you where I’m going with this. Watching The Boat That Rocked lately I found myself back in my bedroom as a teenager listening to the Pepsi Charts on Sunday afternoons, or late at night John Peel as well as wincing through The League of Gentlemen over dinner, obsessing over Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter…etc.etc. But I didn’t just listen, I obsessed over songs like Radio Ga Ga, Video Killed The Radio Star, gained a HAM license and could have reeled off a dozen facts about Caroline, Luxembourg and a couple of others I can’t now remember the names of. I spent much of the movie really irritating the Jellicle Cat by going ‘Kenny Everett that is so Kenny Everett!’, ‘John Peel OMG John Peel!’, ‘Do you think that’s Tony Blackburn?’ – in other words total fangasm. I love radio, it’s always seemed to me to be much more original than TV. Of course now we have the internet and that’s freer again…but my first love will always be radio more so even than the pages of books sometimes. Books you enjoy by yourself, the radio is for everyone to love.
Now, over the years I have bought Mr Blobby and all sorts of really awful Christmas Number Ones. As far as I’m concerned it’s the time of year for Slade, for Cliff Richard, for The Pogues and for Frankie Goes To Hollywood…because you have to have the odd genuine song that makes it…the odd one. Years ago I would have bought the Muppets just because.
I like it when people do their own thing. Now, when I first heard about this Facebook Group organising people to buy Rage Against The Machine I rolled my eyes and hoped that The Soldiers would get to number one because I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Then I heard that Simon Cowell had said that he was glad he’d killed number one…Now you see, I honestly don’t care about Mr Cowell, he’s this guy whos a judge on The X Factor which I don’t watch and couldn’t care less about. He makes pop music.
I like pop music. What would I have against him?
However, he thinks he should have the Christmas One automatically because he dislikes the cheesy crap I like buying? Oh no no no. So I pretty much automatically went and bought Killing In The Name Of. This isn’t about being anti-pop or anti-Simon Cowell or even anti-big music corporations (considering Sony are in profit whoever wins) this is about being for creativity and inanity and the fact that The Muppets should have been versus The Soldiers this year not some cheesy schmaltz being automatically number one because of when a TV show holds it’s final.
Maybe for me this is a little Radio vs TV.
I did go and listen to The Climb and have discovered my own very personal reason for not likeing Jo McElberry’s version of it. I found the original (from all the way back in February this year) and the original’s video. Now it’s by Hannah Montana herself, Miley Cyrus…not any immediate reason for me to like it…except that damned video – if it’s not a concious reference to Jung was completely on the right track. As it was with my occasional gender polarity I was left thinking – that’s a womans song and Jo McElberry has yet to take on any form of gender fluidity to sing it. Thus, my own personal reason for buying Killing In The Name Of and also a whole load of things by Mile Cyrus (besides I used to dance to Achey Breaky Heart by her dad when me and The Princess still thought a night out had to include dancing at The Woolpack in Bridge Town).
I’ll return to listening.