Rant: Say No to beige!
Frazer - 23 January 2006
No beige!
For the Nth time I curse and lurch over to the radio - turn it off quickly - and turn on a CD.
Once again I have suffered a 'beige-attack' - all of the local radio stations - Viking FM, Lincs FM, Radio Humberside, Radio Lincolnshire - put on back to back 'beige' tracks. One minute it is James Blunt. Another it is Coldplay. And then James Blunt again ... it's futile trying to change channels as you only get back to another beige track.
I had expected when I had become a boring old f**t turning 40 I would start to dislike "young people's music" - what I hadn't anticipated was that the whole world seems to have gone 'beige-crazy'. At least the radio world.
Both the album and singles charts are packed with great music from up and coming groups. For example, this week's album chart contains:
- Franz Ferdinand - You could have it so much better
- Kaiser Chiefs - Employment
- The Strokes - First impressions of earth
- Gorillaz - Demon days
- Scissor Sisters - Scissor sisters
- Black Eyed Peas - Monkey business
All excellent stuff. Some old, some new groups - but all original, interesting and worth listening to. The singles chart too is chock-full of good-stuff:
- Nizlopi - JCB song
- Black eyed peas - My Humps
- Sugababes - Ugly
- Arctic Monkeys - I bet you look good on the dancefloor
- Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
- Kaiser Chiefs - I predict a riot
... and yet. And yet. There also in the chart are the 'masters of beige': James Blunt (twice!), Coldplay, Richard Ashcroft - and it is only a matter of luck that the queen of beige, Dido, hasn't got a single out.
How is it that Mr Blunt is (apparently) so popular when he sounds like a Swede gargling with helium crossed with 'Eccles' from the Goons? Producing self-pitying saccharine nonsense for sad students in bedsits painted black is obviously good business. When I saw James in the video on the cliff I shouted at the screen 'Jump, James, jump!'. But did he listen? No.
Blunt and Coldplay both share the same way of 'singing': hitting a semi-tone below the note and fading away in a coyote howl of self-important smug pity. I don't want to take anything away from their achievement, however - it must be difficult to miss every note and create a pure bland beigeness which saps the will to live from the listener for a complete CD.
Where Morrisey was plaintiff, tortured and intelligent, Blunt Coldplay et al are plain, torturing and superficial. They put the L in 'Band' and the '-less' in 'tune'. It is no accident that their nicknames are 'James Bland' and 'Coldsore'.
There is hope, nevertheless. Having grown up through the rise of punk-rock - when the then masters of bland stadium rock had bloated their way across the stage for the last time and were ousted by a streak of pure, primal energy - I can hope for the same to blow away the beige-cloud that is hanging over popular music airplay.
Indeed, groups - the Arctic Monkeys are a fine example - are using the internet to connect once again with their audiences directly in a way that the beige-dinosaurs such as James Blunt and Coldplay can only dream of.
Say no to beige! Surf to these websites and make your feelings clear: no more beige!
Remember: every email that you send to these stations pushes back the beige-tide.
Feedback: What do you think of beige-rock?