Totally Dublin

Mama Cass - subject of a fascinating pop “fact”.

Several songs on the new Hot Chip album were written by chimpanzees! Newton Faulkner grows parsnips in his hair! George Michael has a special door in the roof of his mansion which he has to be lifted in and out of by crane! Yes readers, those were some appalling fibs. But from time to time the world of rock and pop throws up stories which are stranger than anything you could make up. For example the recent revelation that Dion Dublin has invented a new musical instrument. A percussion instrument in fact. Yes, that’s Dion Dublin the ex-England international footballer who played up front for Coventry City in the late 90s. The instrument is called the Dube and it has its own website and everything. “I literally went to Jewson and got some off-cuts of wood - I bought a hammer and some nails and I made a cube,” says Dublin, “I made it myself and got a few cuts trying to play it. It’s just sort of snowballed from there.” Well I never. Is there a long tradition of footballers inventing musical instruments? Did Frank Worthington invent the keytar? Were syndrums dreamed up by Trevor Francis? No, they didn’t which is why Dion Dublin following in the footsteps of Les Paul is rather odd.

I’m telling you this now because one day this will be the answer to a tricky pop pub quiz question. You have been primed. You need to bone up on your musical trivia if you’re ever to fare well at a pub quiz, but you don’t necessarily need to untangle the truths from the falsehoods because most fascinating pop facts turn out to be boringly false without ever being corrected. Mama Cass didn’t die by choking on a sandwich, despite a vicious rumour to the contrary, no doubt given currency by the fact that Mama Cass was indeed rather portly. David Bowie didn’t invent Connect 4. And it’s not true that Stevie Wonder lost his sense of smell in a car accident. Except it is. But he got it back again or something. Oh I don’t know, leave me alone alright? I’ve got a pop blog to write.

Which is why it’s helpful to keep coming back to Snopes.com, the website that takes urban myths and subjects them to a “rigorous critical analysis” (or something). It has lots of different subsections including a page about music. Lots of the spurious musical rumours (i.e. lies) seem to involve notions about female pop stars being blokes - see the entries on Ciara and Lady Gaga. It’s as if people think a woman couldn’t possibly really be responsible for making great music, so non-existent genitals must be conjured to explain away the amazing power of brillo female pop. Didn’t the Spice Girls kick those barriers down years ago? You know when they had all those number ones? Snopes can’t verify the point, but it can put paid to the old story that Keith Richards likes to have his blood replaced every so often (aw, that’s the sort of story you half hope is true), and it can confirm that Michael Jackson owned the rights to the Beatles back catalogue – indeed it goes into exhaustively lengthy detail concerning the small print of the deal. But truth is boring so let’s make up some more lies: Florence Welch is terrified of water! Julian Casablancas’ next album will feature backing vocals by tennis “ace” Andy Murray! Mollie from The Saturdays was once a member of Riot Grrl band Huggy Bear!

(The pop blog will return next week after its author has a nice long lie down… - Ed.)

On Saturday night Morrissey stormed off stage in a huff because somebody in the crowd threw a plastic cup at him. Although the missile didn’t hit its target Morrissey was splashed with some of the vessel’s liquid content. Whether that was beer, water or luke-warm piss is not yet known. Recently he has had to pull out of shows because of illness, and last month he collapsed onstage in Swindon. Googling the phrase “Morrissey cancellations” throws up over 35,000 results. Morrissey has spoken of his “titanic struggle against an intolerable virus” (whether this is still an allusion to illness or further exposition of his views on immigration, I’m not sure), but for over two decades pop fans have had to suffer their own titanic struggle against an intolerable virus; that is, the grey, fetid, indie “legacy” of the man they call “Moz” or the “Mozfather” or… oh God make it stop…

What would this sour, increasingly irrelevant, oh-woe-is-me, NOT-AT-ALL-RACIST (because it’s just a coincidence that he hates music made by black people and disapproves of multi-culturalism, right lawyers?), temperamental whingebag actually have to do to shed the last remnants of his fanbase? Morrissey’s mirthless irritability and self-imposed isolation has been the source and inspiration for so many of his lyrics and surely this is what his fans buy into, so it must really hurt when they bear the brunt of his curmudgeonliness by having to suffer his periodic hissy fits. They’re certainly a loyal bunch, happy to vouch for Morrissey’s “legendary” status in the face of cancellations, embarrassing interviews and being made to shell out for inferior revisions of his quite-dull-in-the-first-place mid to late 90s albums. What else could explain the apparently indiscriminate worship of the man, and his fans’ amazing cultural blindness? This is purely anecdotal of course, but most (not all) Morrissey fans I know despise urban music, reggae, soul, dance music, pop and hip-hop because fun, vibrant music that makes you dance or makes you happy or puts a spring in your step says nothing to them about their lives. Some people will even tell you that Morrissey is a genius, as if being a bit grumpy is a sign of intelligence.

I assume that you, dear reader, are an enlightened pop cultural dilettante, and that you agree that people like what they like and that’s that. Ideas of “credibility” and “authenticity” don’t really matter and because we’re not snobs we won’t allow them to trouble us here. Perhaps you own Smiths records and enjoy them (as I do), or you may well get your kicks listening to Metallica or Dido or DJ Otzi. So you’ll have been to discos, you know what goes on within. You listen to upbeat pop music. People drink alcoholic drinks and get a bit messy. Some people take drugs. People flirt with each other and sometimes cop off. In Morrisseyworld this is a disgraceful state of affairs. Ordinary people, in their spare time, letting their hair down – how uncouth! Some of them, like Morrissey, go and stand on their own and leave on their own and go home and cry and want to die. True, this is often the lot of the hopeful singleton who goes out in the hope of finding love in a club, only to find disappointment - a fit subject to write about in its own way. So what sort of person sees this grim reality as escapism? Answer: indie kids.

For lots of people, going out and getting trashed whilst listening to loud uptempo dance music is a way of escaping the mundanity of day-to-day life. Pop music reflects that desire for escapism, indeed pop fans expect it. But not unreconstructed Morrissey fans, oh no. They apparently want some sort of misery musical to soundtrack their apparently oh-so-intolerable lives – all set to a trad indie-rock backing. They’re missing out. Morrissey is a nostalgist at heart, and obviously in love with a certain kind of northern Englishness; the kind depicted in 60s kitchen sink dramas, the world of Ena Sharples era Coronation Street and Cilla Black. But there’s another history of pop waiting to be written – a history of black pop. Away from the Beatles and The Beach Boys, this is the story of Motown, Millie, The Impressions, Stax, Aretha Franklin, Culture, Grandmaster Flash, Jam & Lewis, Public Enemy, Rihanna and Kanye West. It’s an ongoing story, and it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than the excruciatingly white history of pop which declared that The Smiths (or The Stone Roses, or Nirvana, or U2 or bloody Radiohead) were the “best band since The Beatles”. This is an on-going problem and I blame, at least in part, the adulation afforded to The Smiths in the 80s and ever since.

Amerie and Ciara, for example, have released two of 2009’s best albums, but they get nary a whiff of attention from the music press outside of Vibe magazine. Work, Ciara’s single with Missy Elliot is a stupendous sonic assault just as Parliament and Sly Stone’s best work was in the 70s, but not in a backward looking way – this is a single that could only have been made in the 21st century. Where Amerie’s album contains nods to the past - the shuffly hip-hop breakbeat and scratching on Why R U calls (among other things) Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet to mind – it’s done in a spirit of adventure, mashing a myriad of sounds and styles from pop history together into a kaleidoscopic whole. Indie-kids, and I mean real “that’s not proper music” types here, sneer at modern r’n’b (or “urban music”)’s supposed generic blandness when all the time these producers are busy smashing all sorts of styles of music into a futuristic pan-cultural soundclash. That’s what pushing boundaries is about, that’s where genius lies. In Morrisseyworld, genius involves being able to quote Oscar Wilde. R’n’b isn’t right-on, but then nor is Morrissey. Whatever it is about, say, the Black Eyed Peas that offends people probably deserves to be offended. And whichever way you look at it, Morrissey would never have written a lyric as upbeat as “I’ve got a feeling/ That tonight’s gonna be a good night”. It’d be truer to the reality of the man if he were to write “I’ve got a feeling/ That tonight’s going to be a disappointment – not least for the fans who have paid in to see me”. And for all their online outrage following his most recent flounce, in reality, his fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

Rihanna’s single Russian Roulette is released on November 13th with album Rated R to follow, both on Def Jam. Amerie’s In Love & War (Def Jam), Ciara’s Fantasy Ride (RCA) and The Impressions’ Complete A and B Sides 1961-1968 (Eclipse) are all out now.

Words: Ciaran Gaynor