Another one bites the dust

There are certain episodes in your life that shake you to your very core, and disturb you in ways you couldn’t even begin to fathom. One such episode occurred last night when I was sitting down to watch Eastenders and was forced to witness a sobbing Samantha Janus sing Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ to her dead daughter’s coffin. No wonder the girl gormlessly walked into an oncoming car…

There are some traumas that not even the most adept power-showers can wash off.

Which got me thinking about the nature of death, funerals and music in general.

When a rare 70s soul track was played at Jade Goody’s funeral recently, a herd of Jade-ites from Essex reportedly bombarded their local HMV with requests for the track.

Staff at HMV revealed they were inundated with people trying to get their hands on a CD of ‘Ooh Child’ by The Five Stairsteps….and I quote, “it obviously had a real impact.”

This might be a controversial confession to make, but of all the tunes I’d imagine Jade picking, this one ain’t one of them. Thinking about it further, the song choices you make during (arguably) the two “biggest” events in your life – marriage and death, say an awful lot about how you view yourself, and….more importantly, how you wish others to view you. Are the two necessarily compatable? Of course not…

When Hunter S Thompson was laid to rest, he ensured the oppositive would happen in true Gonzo style by having Johnny Depp fire his ashes from out of a canon to the tune of Bob Dylan. Not bad, not bad at all…

Which singular track sums you up?

When I asked folks to send me the songs they’d like to be played at their wake, the results were gloriously eclectic: from The Who, to The Stones, Patti Smith and Green Day…

Top marks, however, goes to my mate Guy for revealing he’d like to be cremated to the melody of Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’. Guy, if you’re reading, you win a mars bar.

On record, the official list of the most popular tunes played at funerals range from the predictable, to the bizarre, to the sublime.

Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ took the gold medal, but up there with him sits AC/DC with ‘Highway To Hell’, Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ and Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’.

Which just shows the divide between people who still wanna wind people up at their own funeral, and those who are determined to get every single member of their congregation miserably blubbing into their cut-price Tescos flowers.

In fact, the UK top three is currently:

1. ‘My Way’ – Frank Sinatra/Shirley Bassey
2. ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ – Bette Midler
3. ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ – Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli

Which only goes to show how many deceased people still lack musical integrity – even in the afterlife.

For the record, the song I would most like played at my own funeral is T-Rex’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’.  Closely followed by: Verve’s ‘History’, Melanie’s ‘Little Bit Of Me’, Cat Steven’s ‘Lilywhite’ and PJ Harvey’s ‘The Desperate Kingdom of Love’.

So someone please write that down before some Co-Operative idiot whacks on Bette Midler…

Ta. I’ll leave you with Marc Bolan:

Men are from Marr, women are from…

It’s been some time since a supplement feature has provoked a tirade-fuelled blog from me.

The feature in question holds fort on page 12 of today’s Sunday Times Culture. The headline kicks off a patronising theme that clumsily treads its lumpy boots throughout an entire double page of un-researched, irrelevant and back-dated opinions, peppered with woeful generalisations and laughable stereotypes. 

Apparantly ‘Men are into Marr, women prefer Amos’ and the common dividing line between the sexes is down to musical integrity. (Namely, that men have it, and women…don’t.)

Couple this clunky manifesto, with a headline that reads ‘Listen, darling, they’re playing your song’ and perhaps you can see where I’m going with this…

For broadsheet writer Andrew Smith, the sexes are divided and consequently listen to two types of music. For our reading delight (and perhaps this is Smith’s handicapped idea of contextualisation) he lists both, defining them as thus:

ARTISTS THAT WOMEN LOVE BUT MEN HATE

James Blunt, Take That, Cat Stevens (Cat Stevens? ‘The thinking woman’s James Blunt’ apparantly. I’m sorry, does this man know anything about musical integrity himself? Or does he just compile tedious articles about it?), Justin Timberlake, Tori Amos, Alanis Morisette, Simply Red, Janis Joplin, Early Genesis (I’ve italicised Early there because Smith clearly didn’t think he had been patronising enough, therefore he quickly adds ‘Before they for all serious and jumped on the boys’ side’. Lovely)

ARTISTS THAT MEN LOVE BUT WOMEN HATE

Neil Young, The Smiths, The House Of Love, The Fall, Steely Dan, Joy Division, Gang Of Four, Led Zeppelin.

To label this feature as testosterone-fuelled, cock waving ignorance masquerading as mature arts-based journalism would be doing this piece a disservice. It’s a winning formula that (at least) goes to show just how bogged down this industry still is in blatant sexist stereotypes. 

I am probably less shocked that (and I’m going to hedge my bets here and categorise Andrew Smith just like he has attempted to categorise an entire sex) a male writer, approaching his middle-years subsequently enjoys a double-page spread in a weekend broadsheet with a piece that (yet again) scrapes the idea-barrel. It’s a running theme that regularly defines music journalism as we know it.

Getting back to the feature at hand, and one question remains: Are we really still expected to believe (in todays’ climate) that the world is actually made up of two such simpleton generalisations?

Let me crank this down a notch: What is Andrew Smith actually trying to say here? That men scratch their bollocks to Led Zep with a can of Stella in hand whilst girls whip up cosmopolitans in their pink pyjamas to James Blunt? 

As Smith creakily attempts to back up this (unimaginative excuse for an opinion piece) with scientific research that he clearly has no knowledge on (or indeed, experience in), the feature descends further into circus journalism.

Merely attributing his science to “recent research” (recent research where exactly?), he goes on to rhetorically raise the question of whether the musical divide between the sexes is a direct result of how differently we as adults talk to our children…and so he meanders:

‘…if we talk differently to our girls, as we very well might without even realising, could we be predisposing them to different types of music later in life?’

I shit you not…

Speaking as a woman who obsesses over Neil Young, The Smiths and Led Zeppelin, just as much (and with as much passion if not more) then her male counterparts; I have found today’s feature an embarrassing and insulting waste of paper, endorsed by countless male readers and editors no doubt, but as far off the mark as one is ever likely to get.

Men are from Marr indeed…

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