Monday, September 7, 2009

Bye Bye Miss American Pie


I don't know if you've been watching television lately. If you have I'm sure you've seen it, but basically it's Chris De Burgh releasing a tepid album of covers. It makes me shudder every time I see it. Plus it sounds like Mr De Burgh and his ocular caterpillars took the midi to a bunch of overplayed "hits" and sang over them. The "studio shots" included in the insert looks a bit like someone's bedroom.

I used to be quite a fan before Chris went off on a strangled path about the whole healing hands business. But "Spanish Train" is still one of my favourite albums of all time, and looking back now the sci-fi Christianity in "Poor Boy" was not as fantastic to Chris as he made it out to be. A few too many glasses of red wine poring over "Chariots of the Gods" methinks.

But this led me on to thinking about our careers and what senility has in store for us. What would we do to keep our slice of the limelight? These are obviously things we can't predict. I might one day be draped over some piano somewhere, varicose veins a-pumping, doing my helling best to murder some Streisand cover. Who knows.

Losing favour with a previously loving audience is hard (and you will lose them, you cannot please everyone) but you should never bring that bitterness from being cast aside into what you do. Crowds are strange and stranger still are "scenes". They are fickle grey undefined masses. Tastes change. People change. Sometimes they don't. You can't predict.

But,

I don't think I will ever think that releasing my own little vapid version of "American Pie" will ever seem like a good idea.

EVER.

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