The UK Music Charts need a S.P.A.M. filter. Fast.

I started banging on in the end of January blog, but its not just me with a hankering for something more real. Of course there is less rock in the chart. The Radio 1 etc playlist is as unimaginative and dumbed down as all the other weapons of mass distraction as the world goes through a frightening era on the news. Recently I spent an afternoon with family members. We are all music fans with different tastes but I came to realise that we need S P A M filters on our charts.

Soul Free? Passionless Auto-tuned? Manufactured?

Perhaps the X Factory charts could contain karaoke and conveyor belt pop that gives parody videos on YouTube the number of views that some new major label artists even can only dream of.

34,000 views and counting for the above.

A teenager with a profound knowledge of Katy Perry (whose "I Kissed A Girl" is actually a fantastic pop classic), Justin Bieber, Lily Allen, Sisqo,Rihanna etc and her grandmother were watching 4Music TV UK chart show run down. Much of it had taken the sick danger of hip hop, fused with the slick marketability of pop to create a safe, bank clerk's car soundtrack, of what I suppose is hip pop. The beats were great, don't get me wrong, but the sampling and "featuring" of the majority grew tired for me. Great original music is still possible.

Even Oldplay, Unkeane, Snore Patrol and the rest of the Snoozepop bands have actually got SONGS. This was brought home by the teenager remarking on how good the adverts tunes were. This, dear heart, is because they were a nifty  lyrical prose fest married to hooks you could fish whales with. So even after a pensioner's lifetime they still sound immediate and fresh with a singalong factor.

Grandma noted that one video seem to be quite long. "This is a different song now", explained Teenager. Myself, Young-ISH adult, kept quiet. I'd not noticed either, that the bland tune had been followed by a weak one.

Grandma remembered Top Of The Pops starting with the break from Whole Lotta Love by Led Zepellin. Teenager was wowed by the classic rock and pop on the BBC 4 documentaries.

A 21st Century Take on this from new and wonderful rock band Hedoniacs;

Possibly scare the pants off most day time radio play lists, but why? Riffs don't kill people, weapons do.

It is still possible for real people, using nothing more than their song writing skills, vocal abilities, musicianship and charisma to make a crowd fall in love with them. LIVESTARS.

Beyonce, Duran Duran, Adele, Cee Lo Green, Amy Winehouse, Dizzee Rascal, Lady Gaga et al are great pop stars, but without the dynamics of The Pixies, Nirvana or Mona, there wouldn't be enough light and shade. A high percentage of the great 20th century classics are too dangerous for day time play. Radio 1 has burned the bridges that connected it to Radio Caroline excitement. The main thing about Tamla Motown wasn't just how fantastic everybody looked (still cool) but the sounds that are now woven into the fabric of our Western lives.

Crazy - being a song case in point.

I feel that "Pass Out" by Tinie Tempah will last like this, but he was on that very chart show that Grandma and Teenager were watching and I cant remember the song (tho Ellie Goulding was in the video for some reason).

Dubstep, pubstep, whatever. I don't want a new music only station, I like to hum along often. There are 37 artists so far on the Star Soaked Music 2011 Tips List - just three more and I'll have my own Top 40. Not only that, but, sweet vindication!, its February and they actually are all moving and shaking.

The #nmeawards didnt trend last night I noticed. It was a bit too London for me, and thats the capital of Rock N Roll as far as I'm concerned. Besides with Libya, New Zealand and a crumbling UK (its actually the Disunited Queendom, surely?) its not exactly the Brits/Grammys and would have probably fared better coming before them. Or even celebrating its own scene before its proved itself.

I assure myself that if I mixed those onto a playlist culled from a hand picked selection of Brit Award winners, national BBC Radio stations / Xfm playlist stars and some of the Great Escape, City Showcase, God Is In The TV and Artrocker tips that StarSoaked Radio would be listenable for many Grandmas and Teenagers alike.

Mick Jagger pays homage to Solomon Burke at The Grammys 2011

Sir Mick. Grammys 2011. (Incidentally upstaging Lady Gaga, who arrived in an egg carried high above heads, with this performance).

The Grammys is about all kinds of music and they are both around now, and really happening. That's certainly something good for 21st Century music.

There's Something About Watching A Band Play Together

A personal favourite
Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and out there beats from Ginger Baker
playing together.

Simply.

Richey Edwards forever on the juke box.

more meaning though,


On February 1, 1949, RCA Records issued the first ever 45rpm single, the invention of this size record made jukeboxes possible. Thanks to Dean Street Studios for the twitter fact. Also, this is the day that Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers went missing from the Embassy Hotel in London. I may have to find them on a jukebox today.


This is the controversial documentary with Simon Price, Steve, Steve Lamacq and (for some reason) Boy George, Shaun Ryder and a sci fi narriative. "The Vanishing Of Richey Manic". Now there's a book, Richard, by Ben Myers. A modern music mystery.

Having seen Shaun Ryder 'singing' on the National Television Awards with Stacey Solomon last week, after being in Celebrity Jungle thingy, there is some irony watching this now.