What I did for love
On Saturday night my Beloved made me come with him to an awards night for commercial radio. I didn't recognise any of the radio stars unless they were also on television and I kept forgetting to clap when I was supposed to.
What was strange was that I kept asking people the names of the songs they were playing because they sounded VAGUELY familiar from my childhood and FM104 listening youth in Brisbane (before we got Triple J and the only alternative was the unaccessable to teenage girls uni community station Triple Z) but I couldn't QUITE place them. And some of them WEREN'T BAD at all. For instance, David Bowie's "Let's Dance" is a top song. I don't understand why Triple J doesn't play it occasionally. And um some of Bruce Springsteen's early work is quite exciting. And, after enough bubbly, Shania Twain CAN impress me. At the end of the awards, Marcia Hines came and belted out some songs that made her the Queen of Pop thirty years ago. And 500 people danced under the world's biggest mirrorball (not us - we went somewhere else to watch some important soccer match.)
It was all rather like being in a time warp. Instead of listening only to the supposedly cool new music as determined by the Alan Jones's "chattering classes" (or Richard Kinsmill) we were listening to, um, highlights of the musical canon that had survived the slings and arrows of temporary chart success.
Not that there's anything wrong with valuing the great songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today... It's sort of what no-new-books-except-as-a-special-treat bookreading strategy is like, except I don't read the same Colleen McCullough bestseller or David Copperfield every month. And I like looking in the byways for the overlooked and forgotten. And I do have a sneaking respect for what book reviewing equivalent of Richard Kingsmill say. And quite often I borrow new books or I buy the ones I desperately wanted a year later when they're discounted.
What was strange was that I kept asking people the names of the songs they were playing because they sounded VAGUELY familiar from my childhood and FM104 listening youth in Brisbane (before we got Triple J and the only alternative was the unaccessable to teenage girls uni community station Triple Z) but I couldn't QUITE place them. And some of them WEREN'T BAD at all. For instance, David Bowie's "Let's Dance" is a top song. I don't understand why Triple J doesn't play it occasionally. And um some of Bruce Springsteen's early work is quite exciting. And, after enough bubbly, Shania Twain CAN impress me. At the end of the awards, Marcia Hines came and belted out some songs that made her the Queen of Pop thirty years ago. And 500 people danced under the world's biggest mirrorball (not us - we went somewhere else to watch some important soccer match.)
It was all rather like being in a time warp. Instead of listening only to the supposedly cool new music as determined by the Alan Jones's "chattering classes" (or Richard Kinsmill) we were listening to, um, highlights of the musical canon that had survived the slings and arrows of temporary chart success.
Not that there's anything wrong with valuing the great songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today... It's sort of what no-new-books-except-as-a-special-treat bookreading strategy is like, except I don't read the same Colleen McCullough bestseller or David Copperfield every month. And I like looking in the byways for the overlooked and forgotten. And I do have a sneaking respect for what book reviewing equivalent of Richard Kingsmill say. And quite often I borrow new books or I buy the ones I desperately wanted a year later when they're discounted.
posted by Mary Bennet | 10:16 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home