the long and winding road    |    i should have known better    |    brits do it better
more than words    |    this charming man    |    sing your life    |    lost(?)    |    home

by Saint Paul's, by Big Ben / by God's name, I repent / but see / I will be gone by morning / my dear London, goodnight "London," Patrick Wolf What is it about dear old blighty that makes it just the right incubator for incredibly successful and gender-bending, yet nonthreatening male artists? Surely, there are plenty of shocking artistes in America but why is it that I'm not drawn to any of them? And they never hang around long enough for me to keep my interest? I find it astonishing and rather bad form that lazy media talking heads and reporters find it necessary to compare the latest flavour of the month to those that have come before, when there cannot be made a clear or even reasonable comparison between the old and new. My current gripe is the comparison that is inevitably made between Patrick Wolf, the mature twentysomething seemingly locked in a Peter Pan complex (though not at all in a bad way), vaguely reeking of a down-on-his-luck poet. Besides what the media considers "obvious" heavy-hitting forebears David Bowie (the androgynous) and Morrissey (the nongender-specific), he has even been compared to Soft Cell's Mark Almond (the disco-ey fey). And to his credit (or perhaps to himself deciding that he must prove he's something unique to the music business) he waves off these comparisons. But what I find most interesting about Patrick Wolf as a case in point is that he surely isn't like anyone else before him or even any of his musical contemporaries. I don't have a lot of favourite American bands or singers - the first band I ever fell in love with, for their sound and their individual personalities, was the Beatles. I doubt the Beatles never would have survived as long as they did, putting out the artistic level of music they did, or have been as famous and known around the world as they were/are if they had been American. I'm sure the music business is much different now than it was in the '60s, but one thing that seems abundantly clear to me about "popular" bands and singers in America is that success is handed to them on a silver platter. They're like shooting stars - they reach the summits of stardom at the height of their popularity, but then they fade out to the blackness from whence they came. When they're big, they're big. But few manage to maintain that popularity. Many suffer from what the business calls "sophomore slump," because the second album always has to be bigger, badder, and sell more than its predecessor or it's curtains for the artist's recording contract. Contributing to the temporary staying power is the American publicity machine that promotes these acts. It's like a record company will fire all their guns at the beginning of a band's career in the hopes that the big push will secure the longevity of their investment. Unfortunately, this strategy doesn't succeed for a multitude of reasons - sometimes the band itself can't keep up (blaming relationships, drugs, and drink), the musical climate changes (witness the rise and fall of disco and boybands, just to name two examples in the last 30 years), or the machine just runs out of steam. So what is it? Is it something in the water? I'd really like to know. I had the opportunity and sheer pleasure to see Patrick Wolf this past October at the intimate Black Cat club in D.C. And it was one of those "wow" moments that I'm sure I'll remember for years. Something special from our cousins 'cross the pond. Unlike that uninspired drivel that comes out of the speakers here, played by populist stateside radio stations. continued...

2008 - mlmchang