stylistic nuances

 

A singer called Bonio from a popular music combo called U2 was talking about himself on a television programme called The Late Late Show.

"I'm in it for the money," he said. "I don't care about the Third World or about the starving millions, or about peace on earth, or anything else. That's just a trick to keep people forking out the cash. The cash is all I care about."

He really said it.

And the audience lapped it up.

They veritably loved him.

Oh that's Bonio, they were thinking, he's being post modern again. He's so ironic.  He's really mocking himself and the whole  notion of fame. What a cute little dog biscuit. We worship the ground he walks on.

Then Larry Mullen who is the drummer with U2, tried to do the same thing on the same chat show.

"I don't care about human suffering," he said. "I just want money."

And the audience sucked in its collective breath. The studio went very quiet. There was a frisson of hostility that you could feel through the TV screen.

"I'm only joking," said Larry Mullen hurriedly.

Post modern irony is not as easy to carry off as Bonio makes it look.

Nuances baby.

Back in 1967 a British music combo calling themselves the Kinks performed a song called Waterloo Sunset.

The song was written by Ray Davies who was lead singer with the band, and performed by Ray along with his brother Dave Davies, Nicky Hopkins, and Mick Avory. Its studio production is attributed to an American producer, one Shel Talmy.

I name them all because the thing is pure poetry in the form of a pop song.

A genuine timeless jewel glistening amid the cheerful mostly vapid cacaphonic noise that was the 1960s.

It's still much played and its poetry of poignancy still produces a pang of recognition across the generations in people from all walks of life.

For such a classic song, surprisingly few musicians have tried to do a cover version of it.

The music industry legend is that no one felt they could come close to what the Kinks did with it, so no one tried.

Then in 1996 a British girl performance phenomenon styled Cathy Dennis gave it a go.

She was prodigiously talented, as a singer, musician, dancer and clothes horse.

But she had struggled to find an audience.

The record companies had tried her with a few big budget dance singles.

The videos looked great and she looked great but the songs failed to make a dent in the public consciousness.

The dilemma for the record company executives was that Cathy Dennis was a winner at every level, exemplifying everything they thought qualitative in popular music from performance to voice to looks to character to dance to production, but with such an embarassment of riches it was paradoxically difficult to target her on any one interest group.

She was too grown up for the teeny boppers but a bit too sensational for people interested in serious music.

She was good at everything but seemed to be falling between all the stools.

Of course the songs the record company gave her didn't help. They were excellently engineered  in studio but bland as all hell.

Then they gave her Waterloo Sunset as a last ditch attempt to bring her to a broader audience.

And her attempt to cover Waterloo Sunset finished her career as a singer.

There was nothing wrong with it.  It just wasn't the original.

After the Waterloo Sunset gambit Cathy Dennis all but disappeared from public view.

What was pure poetry for the Kinks was career death for Cathy Dennis.

That's some nuance right there.

By the way when I say career death, perhaps I should note that Cathy Dennis consoled herself at the panning out of her singing career by becoming one of the most phenomenally successful studio producers of the past twenty years specialising in producing superb contemporary songs for other performers. She's the most famous woman the teeny boppers of today who buy her music have never heard of.

But I digress.

Cry me a nuance.

Yes, nuances, baby, nuances.

Auberon Waugh was one of the most provocative literary commentators of the past half century.

His style was witty, acerbic, curmudgeonly, ratty, bad tempered, unpredictable, and deliberately offensive.

Yet the Brits loved him.

His seemingly deliberate stylistic abrasiveness was considered by millions to be tongue in cheek, hilarious, and roguishly good hearted.

As a writer of social satire in Britain, he became a sort of national treasure.

Ho hum.

I've tried it here you know, being acerbic, ratty, bad tempered and all that.

It doesn't work.

No matter how rude I am, the Irish people remain benignly indifferent.

In fact the only real response to twenty years of magnificent churlishness on the Heelers Diaries is that for the last decade I've been stalked and harrassed by drug dealers Pat, Pete and Vince Maloney, as well as by an IRA Tinker mob styled the Hutch gang, and by the clan gang that operates out of the Alke Babish chipper, and by a corrupt thug ex cop called Stephen Kinneavey.

I suppose it's fame of a sort.

I tell you, I'm hoist on the voodoo of stylistic nuance.

If I want to reach a broader public than gangland, maybe I'll just have to try being nice.

Nuances, baby, nuances!