Busted - Glasgow Hydro - 14/05/16

I've been to the year two thousand and sixteen.

Not much has changed but we look a little older.

And in some ways it’s true, but in others that’s not the case at all.

Busted are back, and while it would be easy to cast a jaundiced eye over the reformation to fit with the stereotype of the older -, but still trying to be hip - curmudgeon music fan looking down my nose at the teenybopper icons, I just can’t find it in my heart to do so.

Why?

Well to put it in very simple terms there’s not a lot that anyone could comfortably hang a critique on.

A claim of not liking what they are doing is the airing of a subjective view, but to say they aren’t cutting it musically, or in the delivery of their material, would be a downright lie.

From the Blade Runner styled reboot of the Pink Floyd pig balloon floating past, to the darker dystopian angle on the animal farm pig masks that nudged the playful ‘pigs can fly’ tour title out of the frame, the band have stepped up and coloured their brand with much darker adult tones that eases visually towards Roger Waters territory.

The new music doesn’t reflect that, but it is far more introspective and mature as it veers into the adult orientated niche that the Goo Goo Dolls have such a firm grip on.

That tiny step musically does however make sense, as to go away as Busted, the teen dream scream of yesteryear, and come back reflecting all the ugliness of adult life without a slicker veneer would be career suicide.

So instead the visuals are a little ahead and the music is still transitioning, while the over all impression given is that they know exactly what they are doing.

Listen to new single ‘I’m Coming Home*’ next to ‘Crashed the Wedding’ and there’s nothing to link them, but with a careful eye on the running order of the hits and newbies the band avoid any jarring clashes, and there is arguable not even a hint of a dip in the crowds reaction as they lap up everything thrown at them.

Busted literally have this nailed down.

The crowd is of course still largely made up of young women.

The preteens and teens of over a decade ago, - yes over a decade ago – and they are still enthralled by Matt, James and Charlie, but the hyper response that they keyed into has now been tempered by their own maturity and they are ready to be taken by the hand and guided towards the reality that will be Busted 2.0.

This changing gears career wise from a band that’s core audience is largely young and female into something that has a wider demographic appeal has proven to be far too difficult a stumbling block for so many others, and only time will tell if Busted can do it, but all the pieces are most certainly in place and if they fail to secure a second bite of the apple then there can be no blame laid at their feet as it will be more a case of wrong place and wrong time rather than a reflection on their efforts.

On leaving the cavernous Hydro there was only one thought that reared up in my head, and that was ‘well that just kicked the awful taste of McBusted doing that truly fuckin offensively pop punk by numbers abortion of a track ‘Air Guitar’ out of everyone’s mouth.’

Not a bad thing really.

*On listening to the electronica version from the studio it fails to come close to the guitar driven live rendition.   

Sunday morning ramble - Music snobbery.

Music snobs, as opposed to fans, are a strange breed.

On one hand they profess to love music, but dig a little deeper and what they mean is that they love what they like.

Very often that's just one genre.

Everything else is rubbish.

A friend recently commented about the cliquish nature of aficionados of folk music, and how he has a very small degree of loathing for them.

Although loathing may be too strong a word for it. Even when prefixed with small.

It actually wasn't a word that he used to be honest.

In fact I very much doubt he lies awake at night dreaming of fire-bombing folk clubs and burning effigies resplendent in Arran knit sweaters.

Although he might.

I mean you never can tell can you?

So lets change that from minor loathing to a great deal of distaste for them.

There.

That's better.

Anyway, this wasn't any sort of snobbery on his part, nor was it a dig at folk music in itself.

Or even a jab at every single solitary folk lover.

What he was really getting at was the attitude that is displayed from a certain type of fan.

The sort of fan that carries a silent eh! tagged onto the end of the descriptive term.

The snobbish sort.

I suspect his distaste is actually rooted in how they consider that the music has to fit into a neat little box, and how some woolly view on authenticity must be adhered to.

It is the woe betide anyone who doesn't commit to their very rigidly self imposed views of the genre attitude that is the thing that is really off putting.

There's no room for growth, experimentation or much stretching of the genre at all when that sort of view is clung to.

This is refined and exclusive snobbery at its best.

There's nothing very healthy about it, and thankfully it does seem to be one that is losing its grip on people to an extent.

Or maybe it is just shifting a bit?

Sort of evolving into something else, but I will get to that in a bit.

In the past, when I was a young man, we had tribes of music fans, and in some cases never the twain could meet.

Mods vs rockers, everyone vs punks etc etc.

There was a minefield of unwritten rules about what you could like, and if you liked that one thing then how you couldn't like another thing.

It was an attitude that I was well aware of, but it didn't really have much to do with.

Those of a certain vintage will remember it well.

For myself I always found it to be a strange, and petty, mindset.

(This was probably because as the oldest of three I had no one to guide me in discovering music and had to forge my own path forward.

Another reason for my failure to subscribe to one tribe or another is because I lived in a village that by dint of size didn't lend itself to pockets of disparate music fans flourishing.

It's entirely possible that if a had been a city kid with an older brother, or sister, then my formative years as a music fan would have been very different.)

Now after decades of genres crossing over most people who claim to be music fans are comfortable in having an eclectic range of taste.

No one would raise much of an eyebrow any more if an individual expressed their love of Frank Sinatra and Slayer in the same breath.

In fact their wide tastes would be applauded.

You could be forgiven in thinking that musical snobbery really was a thing of the past, but it's not, and this is where the evolution of it comes back to bite us.

Instead of it vanishing I would claim that all the sub genres appear to have made an alliance together in opposition to what they consider to be the common enemy, and that enemy is pop music.

Now I will readily put my hand up and admit freely to often bemoaning the state of popular music, but my lack of enthusiasm isn't rooted in snobbery, as give me what I think is a good song and I'm unashamedly happy to tell anyone how much I like it.

I don't care who sings it, or even if it comes from a franchise like the x-factor.

When I write a song off as rubbish then it is of course a subjective view, but it is also based on my opinion that much, but not all, of popular music is shockingly one dimensional and rarely strays from a template that has very little artistic worth any more.

It's the repetitive nature of much that is popular at the moment that is a turn off.

After a few hours of a music channel that focusses on pop music playing the latest hits in heavy rotation I - like others who profess a love of music - need to be kept away from sharp utensils in case I harm myself or others.

That's not snobbery.

That's an aversion to a sort of chinese water torture.

Or maybe I'm rationalizing my own loathing.

Now here's an example of snobbery as I see it.

When Scouting for Girls released their second album I sent some friends an mp3 of one of the tracks without telling them who it was.

Everyone who got a copy felt it was okay to very good.

No one thought it was rubbish.

Or to be more accurate no one did until they found out who it was, and then most did.

The song didn't matter any more, and the fact that it was a pop band was enough to sway their opinion into the negative.

Similarly many years ago I expressed an opinion that Luke Goss and his Band of Thieves had released a good song and that was met with much derision due to it being 'the guy from Bros'.

More recently Charlie Simpson (he of Busted) has been getting played a great deal as his solo album is in my opinion what we in the west of Scotland would call a 'belter'.

That he was part of a very successful boy band means little to me.

All that matters is the song, or songs in his case.

Why is there still some baggage hanging around what he is doing I don't really know.

Isn't it more relevant what his current projects are rather than what has come before?

I suppose my rambling about this is really just getting at one thing, and that's that it is 2013, and while we have moved on a great deal from the tribes fighting on Brighton beach it would seem that we still have a way to go before the walls are completely knocked down.

That's not to say that everyone should like everything, but just that maybe we should all open our ears a bit more and just get down with whatever it is regardless of the name tag that is attached to it.

There's a great deal of good stuff out there and it is a great shame that some of it is being ignored for nonsensical reasons.

Here's some Charlie to enjoy.

The Dollyrots - The Dollyrots

The Dollyrots have always been a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.

Sugary sweet pop punk that would give you cavities if you didn't rinse after use with something with a bit more of a bite.

They trod a tightrope above a split crowd of punk fans on one side and prepubescent teenyboppers on the other.

Personally I never had a problem with this, but now here we are on the cusp of their first pledge funded release hitting the streets, and my preview download shows them as a band who have fallen off the wire and landed on the side of the crowd who live under the shadow of parental guidance, and will discuss the merits of what colour of retainer to wear that will go with their mall bought converse.

All I can hear is Avril Lavigne backed by McFly with Miley Cyrus doing some backing vocals.

Thankfully I got this through before I bought a ticket to see them.

If I had turned up at the gig I suspect that my motives for hanging about in a crowd of under-age girls would be questioned.

If the gig is an over eighteens show then I have no idea who will attend.

I suppose the album is what it is.

I wouldn't break a leg jumping to change the channel if the Dollyrots appeared on screen, but equally I wouldn't feel any urge to remember who they are either.

Very disappointing.

It just sounds like a backwards step for the band.