Recently in The arts Category

Frankie Cocozza, remember him? Me neither. I understand that he was the 'rock 'n' roll' one on this year's X Factor, the one that was supposed to inject some rock energy into the increasingly dull proceedings. Apparently he got sacked for doing something a bit too rock n' roll, perhaps a case of prematurely believing his own hype or just life imitating television.

Likelihood is that he'd have survived if he'd been any good in the first place but they needed the revelations and front-page stories more than they needed his dubious talent. He was one of this year's 'colour-characters', the contestants they keep in the mix to make it a little bit interesting, to stimulate the 'water-cooler' moments, to keep us chatting about the unfairness of it all - as if anyone believed it is a fair and just contest.

Frankly it was a terrible place for a gig. The room was wide instead of long and the stage, if you could call it such, was bang in the middle facing a bar which was no more than 10 foot (or 3 metres if you prefer) away.

The reason I hesitate to call it a stage is that essentially it was no more than a raised seating platform which barely accommodated a full band and at weekends masqueraded as a micro dance-floor. It was also enclosed by chrome bars (see below) which might've doubled for a crash-barrier if anyone had been inclined to rush the stage - they never were.

Then there was the décor to contend with. Someone had clearly taken the theme of 'disco bar' a little too far, every wall was a glittering or reflective surface and the not-high ceiling sported a number of mirrored balls or half-mirrored where there was not enough space for a full version.

The arguments are redundant, The Roses are reforming.

You can't have missed the news and you probably have a view. If you were at all interested in the beginning then you probably fall into two camps - the can't waits or the can't be bothereds.

I'm not sure we need to debate their reasons for doing so, why does it matter? Maybe it is for money and if so would it really make them any different from any major touring act at the moment? Do you really think the others are only doing it for love, that they don't have their pension plan in mind?

The bigger question is whether they can recapture the glory. As a live act they never really amounted to much but they also never really over-played. After 1990 they were barely seen live in the UK at all so the demand has always been there - there are countless thousands who grew up with their music but never had the chance to witness the 'spectacle'.

For me, and many of my (and later) generations for a while The Roses were omnipotent and their debut album was a crystallisation of various scenes moulded into one work of brilliance. Can we really be cynical about the majesty of I Am The Resurrection or the genius of Fools Gold?

In times of recession we need hope and there's enough goodwill and genuine hope out there that this time they can make it work. Enough time has elapsed that we can forget the comedy delays of their second album take it all back to the beginning and start again. We need a band like The Stone Roses, time will tell whether it's actually The Stone Roses that we need.

In the next blog I will over-elaborate on my personal role in the Roses and their first of very few Birmingham performances.

It's perhaps easier to see what the producers of TOTP had in mind, keeping the older male audience perhaps, with this performance from Legs & Co:

A natural part of the aging process is the discovery that things you considered fundamental or essential in your childhood have no relevance at all to your children. There's a photo currently circulating in social-media-land which depicts a cassette tape and a pencil with the legend that 'our children will never know the correlation between the two'.

They're right of course but it goes further than that: my kids would barely have knowledge of a cassette tape anyway and their kids probably won't have much need for a pencil. I occasionally wander into this cul de sac of thought surmising on what the future holds and the past has left behind - the term cul de sac is appropriate, fitting both the dead-end nature of this thinking using a phrase that no-one uses or needs anymore. Not that I needed to explain that of course.

At any rate this process began with an episode of Top Of The Pops from September 30th 1976 broadcast on BBC4 last week as part of a repeat series they're undertaking week by week with old episodes of the programme. I sat and watched it with some horror in the company of my 15 year old daughter. Sadly it wasn't a classic.

I have regularly commented upon the Mercury Music Prize, usually at some point around the nominations or event and if I wasn't suffering from post-holiday-lethargy I'd probably link to those pieces here. To summarise them all though, I've generally been fairly dismissive about the random nature of it all and the dubious prospect of comparing different genres within one award.

Some of that critique possibly still holds water and you wouldn't compare carpet with chocolate, but since they would obviously argue that all music is an audio art form perhaps you can make a judgement on which is the best, or most artistic.

In retrospect it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel or punching Piers Morgan in the face, too easy and too obvious. Indeed with the 2011 award going to PJ Harvey you might think that a pattern is starting to emerge where I'd initially claimed there was none. If the 'MMP' has a function it may be in recognising music that challenges, that has an artistic purpose beyond sell-out-commerciality.

I love to see a show, a gig that transcends classification and is something more than a band playing their hits without much thought or imagination. I'll go out of my way to see a great show and consequently trekked back to Birmingham (from London) on Monday night simply to see Roger Waters' new presentation of The Wall at the NIA, even though I haven't listened to the album in almost 30 years.

I was never a Pink Floyd fan; I missed that era by a few years. My formative musical early-teen years were dominated by metal of a much more basic variety but the gigs I went to were populated by those with an appreciation of Floyd, one that I'd never fully bought into.

It's an odd day when you get to confront your own hypocrisy. In many ways I've been doing that in public (though not with great visibility as it was via this blog) over the last few weeks in trying to square my views on 'synching', or the use of popular music for commercial/brand purposes.

It was spurred initially by a knee-jerk reaction, a 'how dare they' moment, to the VW commercial and its use of what I consider to be one of the greatest songs ever recorded. I did make the point at the time that my thoughts and views were compromised and far from clear cut. There's a grey area where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and your position is influenced by your views on that artist or piece of music.

I like Volkswagen, it's important that you should know this. I've bought two of their cars in the last decade, it's a reliable brand and I'd be happy to drive with them again. This is not about VW; it's about the denigration of art by association, or commercialisation.

Naturally I'm aware of how pretentious that sounds, I know very little about art and not that much about music but I do know what the song 'God Only Knows' means to me, and it doesn't have anything to do with a fucking van.

I was ready to unleash a stream of bile, an invective, a torrent of abuse against the commercial use of one of my favourite songs; then I paused.

I frequently tell myself (and others) not to hit send on something they might regret, or may not even be fully understood. If I take stock on this maybe it isn't that important, most people don't take music that seriously. Others may just believe that the song concerned is just a nice pop tune, not the major development in popular music or timeless classic that I believe it to be.

It's all about perspective. Maybe some people do love their cars that much, probably the creative types involved in the commercial believe that they're paying homage to the song and the vehicles involved.

It is subjective, of course. I was also wary that I was unleashing vitriol against a company to whom I'd recently proposed a sponsorship deal. They foolishly knocked it back in preference to one of their own ideas, one that they don't actually have the budget to execute properly. Generally speaking I don't take these things to heart and it certainly didn't influence my feelings about the ad - I was having those before the 'knock-back' and would've published them either way.

I suppose I didn't want to think that my thinking, and consequently my writing, was compromised. If I'm going to commentate on popular culture and express my deep-held beliefs then I should just get on with it. Those will be printed above, very soon.