Let me be Frank

Monkee and diminuitive cheeky chappie Davy Jones died this week after suffering a massive heart attack. But did you know that short people are 50% more likely to have a heart attack than tall people?  There was a study in 2010 in the European Heart Journal…

The systematic review and meta-analysis, carried out by Finnish researchers, looked at evidence from 52 studies of over three million people and found that short adults were approximately 1.5 times more likely to develop cardiovascular heart disease and die from it than were tall people.

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/14/1802

Anyway this is not an obituary or medical blog. So back to the music.

After watching the top 40 today. I was surprised at how much of the music was bland and uninspiring impotent homogenous pap. This reminded me of something Frank Zappa had spoken about many years ago. Watch this!

Frank talk:

This was before the Pop Factor(y) shows yet he hits the nail on the head and describes the ascent of a Simon Cowell character who will not take any risks. (For instance Cowell has had his “acts” Robson and Jerome, Gareth Gates and Susan Boyle all cover Unchained Melody).  Cowell too started as the coffee boy and became an A&R man before inventing the talent show.

There’s little wrong with manufactured pop if the delivery is good. It can look and sound great. Some of the Monkees back catalogue is superb. The mighty Motown was really a pop music factory and neither Elvis nor Sinatra were songwriters themselves. It is all about the choons and they had the best songwriters on the payroll.  So of course the music sounded good. The hit factory conveyorbelt approach  just isn’t (and wasn’t) innovative enough. I’d even suggest that these days, they are running out of song ideas. It’s hardly surprising that people are less inclined to pay for this junk.

I’m not saying bring back nostalgia or lamenting the old days and The Stone Roses (more on them later). I was just genuinely taken aback by the lack of imagination and the slickness of the videos.

Indeed, there was a saying in the music business that you can’t polish a turd. After watching the filler in the chart countdown today I’m positive that there are some smelly dusters under the sinks of the major labels.

It may cheer up some music lovers to know that  3 quarters of JLS are under five foot six.

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