You can have too much of a good thing and it’s rock ‘n’ roll suicide
ROCK music is more comfort food now than anything else. Very little out there makes the kind of global statement that would have a whole generation tuning in and dropping out at the same time.
That sense of the great collective experience is long gone.
Downloads have killed the album as a concept, anyway, and newer guitar bands tend to be either so blatantly derivative or samey that they leave no sonic footprint.
But those who like melodic pop or sweaty rock still have a pulse and the industry wide-boys know that this ageing demographic has the disposable cash to indulge their passion.
That’s why we have heard so much about ‘The Joshua Tree’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’s’ these past weeks.
Their anniversaries were heralded – correctly, of course – as moments of great pop cultural significance, but really it was about getting baby boomers to shell out again for expensive ‘delux’ remastered vinyls and boxset memorabilia.
It is why Cliff Richard, at the age of 76, and 54 years after ‘Summer Holiday’ was a hit, will be treading water at the Marquee next Thursday night.
The reason too that Elton John, a mere novice at 70, will twinkle the ivories on the same Cork stage a few nights later.
Great to catch your heroes while you still can.
But we should be careful what we wish for.
When I saw Paul McCartney live for the first time in 2003 it was nothing short of a religious experience.
The second time in 2009 was, yes, wonderful.
A third time would have reduced him to a mere mortal.
Rock might no longer be the force of nature it once was, but it would be tragic if the shameless greed of the music industry’s nostalgia hustlers drained it of its final vestiges of power and pride.
99s: is the number up for my own little camino?
THERE are precious few streets you can wander down without someone trying to sell or market you some class of tat or fast food you don’t want.
But there are places you can escape to where salesmen can’t whisper sweet nothings in your shell-like or where the ching-ching of the greasy till isn’t within earshot.
The twisty, spectacular cliff walk between Bray and Greystones is one of them.
Twenty or so minutes out and all you are likely to hear are the cries of razorbills, kitty wakes or great black-backed gulls. Or perhaps the distant phut-phut of a leisure craft lazily negotiating the headland.
The rest is silence. It’s been my salvation for years.
But perhaps not any longer because an intrepid entrepreneur has managed to wedge an ice cream van into the two-abreast path about 20 minutes out of Greystones. How he managed to negotiate his wheels this far up the bumpy trail is a candidate for the third secret of Fatima. I’m partial to 99s and hundreds-and-thousands myself, but not on this sacred little camino of mine. And do people even care? If the numbers who walked past me greedily wrapping their gobs around melting cones are anything to go by, not really. In fact, not at all.
Agony before the ecstasy
WATCHING the Republic muddle through World Cup and Euro qualifiers is a bit like going to the dentist. You know it’s going to be painful but you have to sit through it anyway. If any team can grab defeat from the jaws of victory it is our lot. Even if Ireland score first, it is generally only a ploy to maximise the despair when we contrive to throw it all away later on. But my job is to be there. Watching. Through my fingers. Praying, effing, begging. On Sunday we should go a long way to securing automatic qualification for next summer’s World Cup finals by beating Austria at the Aviva. But if we do I will go through the agony before the ecstasy. You know that scene in ‘Marathon Man’ where Laurence Olivier drills deep into Dustin Hoffman’s teeth without an anesthetic? That’s me in the chair. A patriot.