Saturday, November 12, 2005

You call that music?

One of the surer signs of advancing age is that you find yourself saying things you remember your parents saying. I've long been detached from the pop music scene, but yesterday marked a new level of dissociation. In the never-ending fight against flab, I went to the gym. There is always something blaring out of the speakers, and I usually manage to ignore it. Yesterday, though, it was so loud and insistent, I couldn't avoid it. Several long tracks were played. They all had near identical throbbing beats, but the lyrics were different. Track one went:
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
I can't wait until the weekend
(Repeat ad infinitum)
The second track was a subtle variation on this masterpiece:
I can't wait until Saturday comes
I can't wait until Saturday comes
I can't wait until Saturday comes
I can't wait until Saturday comes
I can't wait until Saturday comes
I can't wait until Saturday comes
etc etc
The third track explored a whole new area of the artist's emotional palette:
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
Put your hands in the air
(and so on until I had virtually given up the will to live)
Now, I'm not going to claim that in my day we had proper music, made our own entertainment, could have a night out at the pictures and a bag of chips and still have change out of sixpence for the tram fare...but we did actually require our heroes to write lyrics (often fey and pretentious it's true) and we did require them to master the rudiments of their instruments. Now we seem to have (almost) lyric-free, and certainly instrument-free "songs" that are almost identical to each other. I just don't get it. But then, I'm an old git.
memo to self:
1. Buy iPod
2. Load with Vivaldi
3. Go to gym.

6 comments:

francessa said...

You're sure this wasn't some instruction for physical movement? Put your hands in the air? I used to know a song that went like this: put your hands in the air, simple Simon says ... An mp3-player is a good thing in any case, there's so much noise that needs substitution.

kat said...

I'm feeling a bit poorly today but your post managed to make me laugh. Being forced to listen to other people's poor choice of music is awful, I agree.

Rob said...

Simple simon - if only... No, this was a relentless disco (house? garage? trance? I don't know the terms) beat with, in each case, as far as I could make out, just the single line repeated ad nauseam.
Kat - laughter is the best medicine, as the Reader's Digest used to say...

Nogbad said...

Rob - I see one small but perfectly formed flaw with your argument. Vivaldi was rubbish at lyrics wasn't he? :-)

Rob said...

Vivaldi was hopeless at lyrics, true - but he had a couple of helpers for the words...

Buggles Balham High Road said...

Oh dear me! You have made me laugh. My imagination is running away with me.