Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

The 250th LATER with Jools Holland

In a televisisual world bereft of substantial music, live or otherwise, we should love LATER; shouldn't we? Well if the answer is yes, answer me this! Why do I find it so F**CKIN HARD to do?

With the 250th episode of LATER a week away I cleansed the TV room of evil spirits with some black Ethiopian resin (I thought I might need to) and sat down to watch the LATER retrospective THINGY. I shouldn't of! What we got was some great clips yes - but clips that were punctuated by reminiscing celebs who babbled on mundanely describing what they'd seen without lending anything whatsoever to the music that followed. The comments of these LATER "viewers?" only reinforced what I've believed for a long time are the piss poor perceptions that LATER perpetuates.

Firstly the comments of Jo Brand (comedienne? - I wasn't laughing). She went from extolling the virtues of the youthful Paolo Nutini (the great impressionist) to selecting "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead as her favourite track. Now at the expense of being a musical fascist here and telling folk what they should or shouldn't like, WHAT THE FUCK HAS Paolo Nutini GOT TO DO WITH Radiohead! Where is the musical connection? Well I'll tell you Jo -THERE ISN'T ANY!

And this is the problem with LATER it makes the musically woolly minded think they're being offered a box of chocolates bereft of coffee creams. They ask "which are the good ones" and their equally musically weak minded friends reply "they're all good". And if "they're all good" a selection can be made without any need for personal taste or discernment.

Wayne Hemmingway came up with this BOLLO too in his comments "You're good anyway and that's why you're here" he said. No that's not how it works Wayne. The idea that all the artists on LATER are "good" could only be proposed by an intellectual dwarf or someone who knows zip about music. If your personal taste allows you to believe that every band that has appeared on LATER has been "good"; then music for you, must be a truly horrible thing. The only "good" bands on LATER are the bands you personally love. The rest are just bleedin annoying time stealers.

Nikki Wire was bang on with his sound bite. LATER is not a place where "they're all good" it's a place where occasionally (like in the case of The Libertines) something wonderful appears - a gem that makes the hours of watching the bands you have no empathy with suddenly seem worth while. And for me there is a lot of excruciating suffering and fast forwarding that needs to be done when watching LATER.

But what can be done in this grand epoch of the idiot to stop people from thinking that everything that appears on LATER is immediately good. Well Later could be curated properly. Episodes built around genres or moods or eras etc; in the same way as LATER is sold on DVD - Mellow - Louder - World - Hip Hop etc. Then perhaps the sheep could at least form a passion for a certain style of music. But this is probably too much to ask for, and if proper curation was applied, LATER it would loose its position as a key marketing tool for the MUSIC industry. Oops sorry. I should have said from the start that this article may contain elements of TRUTH.

No to rid LATER of the "they're all good" fallacy is simple, all that is needed is for Jools Holland to stop being a sycophant and to start using a bit of editorial body language. FIND OUT WHAT SORT OF THING I MEAN AT THE END OF THIS GRINDERMAN CLIP.

Back in the day (I think it is fair to say) that Bob Harris & I did not share the same taste in music. On the Old Grey Whistle Test Bob would beam after showing a cobbled together bit of old tatty film backed by an album track by Frank Zappa. But during a performance by a new fangled PUNK act you could hear the sound of Bob's teeth grinding over the music. It didn't make me want to switch off the OGWT just cos Bob didn't like the same music as me, quite the opposite I knew I was watching something bereft of fakery. Similarly when John Peel did his stints on Top of the Pops he was able to make you well aware with a nod or wink what he really thought of the pile of pop shit he was about to introduce. He didn't need to be overt, but he did need to do it. If Jools Holland would only enthuse wildly about the stuff he passionately loves and be indifferent about the rest it would be a start; and would perhaps eradicate the piss poor perception that "they're all good".

Back to Wayne Hemmingway; a man who I generally got a lot of time for. He came up with some more amazing words on this special retrospective, he said….Later is "not about trends" "not about fashion" "no ones on their guard thinking if I don't get this right my careers finished" "on Later you're not judged on anything." (oh dear). If music has no pressure, doesn't align itself with fashion or trend then we might as well listen to computer generated muszak Wayne. Fortunately Nikki Wire and KT Tunstall did put the record straight by conveying the opposite - talking about the pressure and career defining performances that have been a fundamental part of LATER. Wayne then went on to choose "a performance by Billy Preston, before he died". Billy Preston before he died - oh dear - the challenges of the spoken word.

The self important ones, Andrew Marr and Jo Wiley added to the celebrity bullshit by not surprisingly choosing clips by Lilly Allen and the Foo Fighters just because they were in the audience on the nights they played LATER - nuff said - "Lilly Allen kissed me" said Andrew Marr - grow up you tasteless TORY lickspittle!

Then there was the lovely Peter Blake who said he liked the signs of mutual respect between musicians. Oh sorry Peter no, I couldn't agree less. I refer you to Harry Lime in the Third Man "in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock". Mutual respect between artists, FUCK No! It gives us only one thing - Blandism!

Finally, just when you'd thought you'd heard all the cock that was going to be crowed, along came the COCK MASTER himself Zane Lowe. He chose clips by "Michael McDonald" and "At the Drive In". Sorry, there's no punch line. That is what he chose. And it perfectly sums Zane Lowe up. He's a blank.

OK so LATER will never ever be able to convey in the slightest degree what its like to go to a REAL LIVE performance; and no doubt it will continue to plant incorrect ideas in the minds of the musically woolly minded. But would I be without it? Nah! The clips featured on the LATER retrospective were a perfect representation of the show and I was able to love, like and tolerate it all; with the exception of "Stylo" by Gorrilaz, featuring Paul Simonon and Mick Jones. Watching this was like being repeatedly stabbed in the heart by a thousand knives.

But it was good to see The Libertines being featured and to hear (once more) how out of tune Paul Weller's guitar was by the end of "Sunflower" - Weller you gave that Gibson one hell of a beating! And anyway with The Manics and Grinderman due to play episode 1 & 2 of the new series, LATER must go on and on and on and on - well at least as far as episode 3 anyway!

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