Marcus Berkmann

‘I don’t really like most of the music you play,’ said the tall blonde woman with whom I share my life. ‘There are no tunes. Where are the tunes? A lot of it sounds like the sort of thing you’d hear in Topshop.’ I was outraged. Admittedly, the song playing at that moment — a droll little thing called ‘Boring’ by The Pierces — didn’t exactly boast a killer melody, but even so. Like any music obsessive worth his salt, I pride myself on my ability to spot a decent tune from 40 paces, even if many of them are couched within the acoustic, minor-key, vaguely melancholy textures I tend to favour.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go on about Glastonbury. I wasn’t there, I never have been and, unless forced at gunpoint, I never will be. It has been a source of great comfort to discover that rock critics far more professional than I detest festivals as much as I do. My friend Andrew Mueller tells the story of his appearance on Sky News as a token anti-Glastonbury grouch, doing a two-way with some idiot in a stupid hat standing in knee-deep mud (these are his words). The festival-goer went first, and talked of community and spirit and laughter in the face of adversity. The presenter turned to Andrew and said, ‘Well, Andrew, what do you say to that?’ Andrew said, ‘I’m indoors.

I am suffering, as we all do from time to time, from a shortage of decent new tunes. Of course, ‘suffering’ may be a slight exaggeration here. Very little physical pain has been involved. But research has shown that music obsessives need a constant upgrade of their personal tunebanks in order to perform at full capacity. It’s all very well going back and playing the Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue at top volume and singing along to every vocal harmony, as I might have done once or twice this past week, but a long-term solution it is not. It’s where to find these new tunes that has become the problem. I try radio station after radio station, and then I try them all again in a different order.

Every new product, whatever it is, needs a bit of ‘buzz’, and indeed vast numbers of people around the world make a decent living trying to generate that ‘buzz’, while the rest of us spend much of our time trying to ignore it. Last week, though, much chatter was to be had in music-loving circles about the new single from Daft Punk, a French duo who make dance music and dress up as robots whenever they play live. I bought their 2001 album Discovery, which was awash with references to old soft-rock hits of the late 1970s, and was so influential you could hear blatant steals from it on countless chart hits from the subsequent decade.

When you can do anything you like, what do you do? In Bryan Ferry’s case, the answer seems to be ‘make a 1920s instrumental jazz record out of some of my old songs’. I have to admit that the mere idea of The Jazz Age (BMG), which is credited to The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, appealed to me not at all, and it seems that I wasn’t alone in this, for the record, released just before Christmas, reached only number 50 in the charts and may end up selling something adjacent to Bugger All. The first time you play it, it’s essentially a parlour game. Which one is ‘Slave To Love’? Is that really ‘Virginia Plain’? What on earth have they done to ‘Love Is The Drug’?

I haven’t heard the David Bowie album yet, but the Amazon order is in and Postie has been alerted as to the importance of the delivery. How often these days do any of us feel so excited about an imminent release? The ten-year gap between Bowie albums might have something to do with it, but the 30-year gap between decent Bowie albums is probably more relevant. And all this is down to the excellence of the single. Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet wept the first time he heard ‘Where Are We Now?’, and I was blubbing well into the song’s third or fourth week on Radio 2.

It’s all been happening in the pop world since I was last here. David Bowie released a new song, arguably his best in several decades. Wilko Johnson announced that he had terminal cancer, and a lot of men in their fifties wept for their own lost youth. HMV went belly up, and I ripped my £5 HMV voucher into shreds, hours before they decided they would honour the damn things after all. Is it my imagination, or have prices for CDs risen ever so slightly on Amazon these past few weeks? For them, I suppose, the job is done, and monopolistic practices can now creep in and grab hold of the market by the throat. A music lawyer I know is very pessimistic about the future of recorded music, not least because if there is no more money to be made, she won’t be making any either.

Old blokes make records too; they just take their time over it. Graham Gouldman of 10cc has one out, his first for 11 years. Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra has two out, but they’re his first for 11 years too. Donald Fagen’s new one is his first for six years, but he may be in a bit of a hurry. How long have any of them got left? How long have any of us? It’s a race to the line, for each artist and his audience. Because I doubt that any of these three are adding many young people to their fanbase. We are all ageing together. It’s a little low on dignity, but there are worse ways of living your life. Graham Gouldman is the last man standing in 10cc. Godley and Creme left in 1976, so long ago that even they probably can’t remember why.