Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Oh my life. If anyone feels that they don't have enough anger in their lives, I'd strongly advise them to watch this programme.
I'm normally a bit of an apologist for rockism, but this programme was astonishingly shit. I mean, I don't mind the fact that it's a series about rock to the exclusion of everything else (although I'm already annoyed at the prospect of the indie one trying to convince us that the Arctic Monkeys represent a new golden age of something or other rather than a pretty good stab at a tried and tested formula) - noone complained that Folk Britannia didn't have enough about hip hop or Soul Britannia failed to mention any of the greats of Breton Shawm music. It's not that I don't like the music involved (the first one centred on Cream and, in particular, Jimi Hendrix, both of whom I consider to be pretty acceptable.) I'm not even going to complain that they seem to be focussing on a couple of the most canonical artists and events from any given period - they're trying to cover the whole of rock in seven episodes, I'm not expecting an in depth feature on Bogshed or anything.
It was just so bloody predictable.
Essentially the BBC have decided that they have to target it at people who've never so much as leafed through a copy of Mojo, and as a result their attempt to condense the history of 60's rock into one hour was precisely the two dozen cliches that would show up on a Family Fortunes 'predictable cliches about the sixties' list. Jimi Hendrix revolutionized the way people played guitar. Oh really? Sgt Pepper revolutionized the way people approach recording albums. No shit. Everyone was like 'omg, Clapton is god', but then they were like 'omg, no, HENDRIX is god!' Altamount kind of represented the death of the spirit of the sixties. Oh my god make it stop.
It didn't help that they had that complete twunt from Rolling Stone (whose sole virtue seems to be making Charles Shaar Murray seem like a good thing in comparison) and a load of other arseholes going through smugly restating the orthodox party line on What The Sixties Was All About giving the impression that the programme makers didn't make the least effort to actually think of anything to say about the subject but just wheeled out the usual suspects to say the usual things in the usual way accompanying some fairly reasonable archive footage. And while I don't mind the odd bit of nu-rockism - insofar as I don't go apopleptic as soon as people start talking about significance or meaning in music - hearing the level of self importance and self congratulation on the part of the people who wrote about or listened to the muic about how culturally significant and incredibly high-art it just made me want to vomit.
Sorry about the rant, but I haven't been so annoyed by any bit of culture for quite some time. So did anyone else catch it? Or does anyone plan to watch the next one, which is probably going to leave me unable to listen to the Velvet Underground for weeks in a horrible bit of Clockwork Orange-esque conditioning?
I'm normally a bit of an apologist for rockism, but this programme was astonishingly shit. I mean, I don't mind the fact that it's a series about rock to the exclusion of everything else (although I'm already annoyed at the prospect of the indie one trying to convince us that the Arctic Monkeys represent a new golden age of something or other rather than a pretty good stab at a tried and tested formula) - noone complained that Folk Britannia didn't have enough about hip hop or Soul Britannia failed to mention any of the greats of Breton Shawm music. It's not that I don't like the music involved (the first one centred on Cream and, in particular, Jimi Hendrix, both of whom I consider to be pretty acceptable.) I'm not even going to complain that they seem to be focussing on a couple of the most canonical artists and events from any given period - they're trying to cover the whole of rock in seven episodes, I'm not expecting an in depth feature on Bogshed or anything.
It was just so bloody predictable.
Essentially the BBC have decided that they have to target it at people who've never so much as leafed through a copy of Mojo, and as a result their attempt to condense the history of 60's rock into one hour was precisely the two dozen cliches that would show up on a Family Fortunes 'predictable cliches about the sixties' list. Jimi Hendrix revolutionized the way people played guitar. Oh really? Sgt Pepper revolutionized the way people approach recording albums. No shit. Everyone was like 'omg, Clapton is god', but then they were like 'omg, no, HENDRIX is god!' Altamount kind of represented the death of the spirit of the sixties. Oh my god make it stop.
It didn't help that they had that complete twunt from Rolling Stone (whose sole virtue seems to be making Charles Shaar Murray seem like a good thing in comparison) and a load of other arseholes going through smugly restating the orthodox party line on What The Sixties Was All About giving the impression that the programme makers didn't make the least effort to actually think of anything to say about the subject but just wheeled out the usual suspects to say the usual things in the usual way accompanying some fairly reasonable archive footage. And while I don't mind the odd bit of nu-rockism - insofar as I don't go apopleptic as soon as people start talking about significance or meaning in music - hearing the level of self importance and self congratulation on the part of the people who wrote about or listened to the muic about how culturally significant and incredibly high-art it just made me want to vomit.
Sorry about the rant, but I haven't been so annoyed by any bit of culture for quite some time. So did anyone else catch it? Or does anyone plan to watch the next one, which is probably going to leave me unable to listen to the Velvet Underground for weeks in a horrible bit of Clockwork Orange-esque conditioning?