Skip to main content

Better Ed than Dead

Image
(Steven J Wilson)

Ed Sheeran - He looks like Van Morrison, kinda, huh? Check the tats.  

Ed Sheeran is the highest paid entertainer on the planet. I think. I don’t know. They say he’s worth 65 million. Anyway, I read that somewhere. God knows he travels light and doesn’t have to share that dough with an orchestra or anything.

I saw Ed once. At least that I’m aware of. He opened for the Rolling Stones in 2015 (or was it 16?) at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Just me and several thousand of my closest friends. He came out with a guitar in front of that throng and mesmerized the crowd. Okay, not really. Some kids seemed to like him. Old people, eighty percent of the attendees, treated him as a curiosity or mild irritant, not uncommon for a warmup act served up before the Stones’ Lions and Christians, bread and circuses exhibition. Later, he sang “Beast of Burden” with Mick. He was better than Dave Matthews.

I see his ruddy little mug and tousled ginger top here and there in the social media. He seems like a nice fella. What little of his music I’ve heard I found inoffensive, innocuous, fairly musical. But nothing to get hung about.

But context, you know, can be everything. Last night I was driving home from having seen If Beale Street Could Talk, which put plenty on my mind, about white privilege, the souls of black folks, and all kinds of stuff. I located the FM station with the best reception for the KU (Jayhawks) basketball and distracted myself with the talents of young African-Americans (mostly) performing for proprietary white (mostly) people. Go, team.

I’d tell you that I’m semi-retired and I just work at my encore career as a library flunky at Lawrence High School because I want to stay active and give back to my community. That would be 1/3 true. The other 2/3 is I need the money because life in the music business left me where it leaves most people in the music business – nowhere. I get social security; which Mitch McConnell wants to take away from me to pay for David Koch’s appropriation of National Public Radio. But I digress.


Alright, cut to the chase, I’m driving to work at 6:54 in the morning and the radio is tuned to the same station as the night before, only now the station has returned to its usual programming of ‘hits.’ And on comes “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. I caught a fragment of lyric that was pedestrian, but evocative in its way. Attached to it was a sort of melody. Surrounding it was this predictable wash of “I, too, treasure my original copy of The Unforgettable Fire sounds.” And you know, it wasn’t bad. It told a story (you know, like country music … doink, doink, doink) and as I listened I was transported. Specifically, to being the age most of his target audience is. To not having a million prejudices and the weight of the western pop music canon on my temples. To hearing this not charmless little graft of “Brown-eyed Girl” and “Summer of ‘69” (without, perhaps, ever having heard either) and thinking … I like this.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

The people have spoken.

Wire is having a 40th anniversary. Yes, I feel old.

(Steven J Wilson)
"Editor's" Note: One Mr. Colin Newman of Brighton observes that it is he who plays most of the keyboards on recordings by Wire. I'm not sure where, or if, I indicated otherwise, but Mr. Newman's contributions (in the studio and to SPEW'S accuracy) are noted. He is certainly an authority on the subject.  Wire is celebrating the 40th anniversary of their debut Pink Flag with the release of their fifteenth studio album Silver/Lead.   Wire’s first three records, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154 formed a blueprint for much of what came next in the wake of punk; showing how the drive and anger could be channeled beyond the roar and rage. Wire did, however, share with the Pistols a sense of the absurd. Uncomfortable with the conventions of rock, Wire set about reworking and subverting rock ’n’ roll. From Flag’s short, sharp blitz of songs to the more Kraut-Floyd atmospheres of Chairs Missing, to 154’s dark consolidation of Wire’s elements (immaculately...
Post a Comment
Read more

2019 - Six months in. These records don't suck.

(Steven J Wilson)
In the first six months of 2019, these sixty-six recordings impressed me favorably. Some of them I'll rarely listen to again. Some will become old friends. The ten in bold stand out a bit from the rest of the pack. I haven't been of a mind to write record reviews for some time now. However, if you want my spontaneous two cent's worth on any of these titles, I'll be happy to give you a quick take to affirm, bolster my support. In no particular order: 21 Savage – I am > I was Kel Assouf – Black Tenere Deerhunter – Why Hasn’t Everything Disappeared Divine Comedy – Office Politics Stella Donnelly – Beware of the Dogs Dream Syndicate – These Times Du Blonde – Lung Bread for Daddy Willie Farmer – The Man from the Hill Felice Brothers – Undress Flesheaters – I Used to be Pretty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppn_T5b_Lo Fontaines D.C. – Dogrel Fleshtones – Budget Buster Robert Forster – Inferno Better Oblivion Community Center – s/t B...
Post a Comment
Read more

The death and future of punk, pt. 37, THE IDLES

(Steven J Wilson)
The Idles are from Bristol. The one in England, not Connecticut. They’ve been plunkin’ about since 2012, but their first album was released this year. It’s called Brutalism.   The cover features a photo of singer Joe Talbot’s mother, whom Talbot cared for in the last years of a long illness, mounted above a stark shrine constructed by Talbot and his father. These are placed in the corner of a bare room with brick floors and white painted brick and stone walls. It has the barren, but emotionally loaded austerity of Joseph Beuys work. It’s an eerily   perfect image for an album entitled and themed around the notion of brutalism.   Ever seen this movie called My Architect? It’s about the architect Louis Kahn, revealed through the eyes of his sometimes estranged son, Nathaniel Kahn. It’s heartrending, as a dad and lad tale, in its austere, sadly masculine way. The younger Kahn, as a budding filmmaker, with a heavy, still hurting heart find the beauty in his father...
Post a Comment
Read more