I have to admit that I'm sort of sympathetic to what I'll call the modern British model of rock (MBMOR): a band comes along and is the biggest hugest band in the world, and then for the next five years there'll be a moderately successful band that imitates one particular aspect of that band's sound that was abandoned by the original huge band and had heretofore remained unexamined, followed by a slew of other minorly successful bands working less interesting variations of this particular sound. Oh, sure, it produces a lot of really, really, really medicore music, but it's also very pip-pip socialist of them--everybody gets a turn! You, you're moderately attractive and somewhat talented--let's get your band on TV for a few weeks, then! And then off you go to the rest of your life, which is where you probably should've been in the first place, but hey, doesn't everyone deserve a little bit of attention! Sure they do. Plus, you know, me and most of the people I know are working in guitar-based bands, so it would be nice for us to have a single or two on the radio just because we sound like some other band that had its singles on the radio.

That said, British bands, I do have an assignment for you for the next few years: make your guitars sound like something I would actually want to listen to, rather than like background noise that, at best, reminds me of a poem I just made up:

Here are some guitars!
These guitars will make us stars!
We played in bars with these guitars
And now that we are to be stars
The producer says "play your guitars"
And so we do, and shout, "raaar!"
And then the producer gets in his car
And goes and mixes those guitars
And they sound like we've come very far.
They sure do sound like guitars.

I probably shouldn't have listened to that Hard-Fi EP so many times.
posted by Mike B. at 5:31 PM 1 comments