In the words of Russ Abbot, “I love a party with a happy atmosphere”. But in a parallel, monochrome, universe, the ‘Atmosphere’ playing on a crackly radio is the considerably less cheery tune of the same name by Mancunian post-punks Joy Division.
I’m reminded, via Facebook, that it is 35 years ago since that band’s singer, Ian Curtis, died, which immediately had me totting up the aeons on my fingers.
Although, you know you’re getting old when… pop stars start looking younger than Harry Stiles, all the tunes sound the same (see: Harry Stiles) and you start writing columns harking back to the days when pop music was pop music.
Happily, this weekend, the perfect antidote – Eurovision! Which to be fair could drive you to drink, and even rekindle memories of the Cold War as the usual voting patterns emerge (though recently it seems that even foes like Russia and Ukraine or Turkey and Cyprus unite, for one night only, to vote the UK into last place).
However, it does send us down another alleyway of dark nostalgia… whatever happened to those glory days when pop was simple – ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Puppet On a String’, Lulu and Buck’s Fizz? Even stalwart host Wogan has been replaced with an equally grizzled Irish broadcaster (Graham Norton in a bushy grey beard) while Nigella Lawson is lined up to make “Royaume-Uni nil points” sound as seductive as her recipe for spotted dick.
Sadly, it seems that the days when British songwriters could inject saccharine pop straight into European hearts are long gone. There have been calls for proper songwriters to take over the UK entry – in fact, Morrissey once volunteered his services. Not this weekend in Austria though, as it’s National Vegetarian Week and wiener schnitzel are available in the foyer.
For a while the contest seems to have been plagued by desperate attempts to lose – Ireland winning and thus hosting the final six times in 16 years doing more harm to their economy than the early noughties property bubble. Although it did spawn the ‘My Lovely Horse’ episode of
Father Ted.
Finland took things to extremes with Lordi’s ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’, which inevitably won, but that’s the last time I saw the contest, merely catching up on bearded hipster Conchita and the Polish milkmaids on news programmes and Youtube. But I look forward to the Finns again pushing the boundaries – with an 85-second tune by PKN, which features members with autism and Down’s syndrome.
That’s not the most unlikely feature of this year’s event in Vienna, however. Australia are taking part – not a typo; rather, we
assume, a desperate attempt to garner ex-pat votes for the UK.
Among my ‘research’ on Eurovision, I spot some more sad news – Rutger Gunnarsson, who played bass on every Abba album and tour, passed away last week, which has cast another black cloud over the party. The campaign for Russ Abbot to represent the UK in 2016 starts here.
CLOSE LOBSTERS
Firestation Towers
(Fire)
The UK music press has the habit of ‘inventing’ scenes – Britpop, Romo(?), er, Skunk Rock…
Coming from a NME cassette, ‘C86’ became the byword for jangly sparkly pop music even though many of the 21 bands on that tape were anything but).
However, Paisley quartet Close Lobsters fitted the bill nicely. And their two albums, plus a third CD of odds and sods including the ‘C86’ tune which gives this sprawling collection its name, are gathered here alongside ‘Let’s Make Some Plans’, eventually covered by cassette neighbours The Wedding Present as a B-side on their top 40 hit ‘California’.
While it’s ‘one for the
completists’, that’s no bad thing, the foursome’s chiming guitar sound having lasted the course pretty well. One for the journos to take pride in… HHHHH
(This column originally appeared in the Portsmouth View)