“I double clicked on Bad Romance and I was away. Before even the first note struck, I knew I was going to be listening to one of the greatest pop records ever made and definitely one of the best two of the last decade.
(…)
Listening to an album by Lady Gaga is totally the wrong way to engage with her genius. It is only after Monster, Speechless and Dance In The Dark drift aimlessly by, that I knew what I should be doing. I should be watching clips of her on You Tube. I start with Bad Romance again. There is no point in me describing the video; you will have already seen it. There is no point in me trying to dissect it like I am some post-modern philosopher, which would only do it a disservice.
(…)
Next up is Paparazzi; it was when I first saw this video that I fell under the spell of the idea of Lady Gaga. When I first realised there was this girl out there in the world of pop, who had created her whole universe. A universe that seemed to be about nothing more than escapism but at the same time seemed to be about everything in world right there and then.

Then Bad Romance again for good measure. By now the viewing figures were up to 344,130,883. That means it has 2,776,284 more views since I watched earlier this morning. And it is this video that is the epoch defining one. The one that people in 200 years time will be watching in the equivalent of their art history lessons. For those that just see her as a piece of meat being exploited by men are missing something huge. She is one of the very few artists working in the mainstream of culture today, without compromising anything. She totally and completely understands her medium and she is total mistress of it.

And what makes it even better, is that you can see that she is basically a pretty plane girl under all the costumes and make up. A … weiter lesen

Ich habe ja ein besonderes Faible für Bands vom Schlage der Television Personalities. Jenen ewig verkannten, in kleinen Kreisen schwer verehrten Gruppen, die ob ihrer Unfertigkeit oder Unangepasstheit nie am kommerziellen Erfolg schnuppern durften.

Wenn dann gute aktuelle Bands ausgerechnet auf eines dieser verlorenen Goldstücke der Popkultur hinweisen, sollte man das auch wiederholen und zitieren. In unserer ersten Folge Heldenverehrung also die verrückten Amerikaner MGMT über den britischen Exzentriker Dan Treacy und seine Television Personalities:

Ben MGMT: “We met Dan Treacy because the guitarist from the Television Personalities contacted Andrew. I think they knew we were big fans.”

Andrew MGMT: “So we started emailing a bit and we set up a couple of shows with them – they were wild shows. When TVP play they can be completely disastrous, or just really good. It confused the hell out of our fans.”

Ben MGMT: “It was hilarious. Performing with this veteran who’s been through heaps and made so many brillant albums, and here’s this group of kids watching him onstage with no idea who he is. “Who’s that guy intimidating us, calling us names?” It was like a lot of our early shows; where we’d play to piss people off and get them to leave.”

Andrew MGMT: “We didn’t mean to piss anyone off or make anybody sad but we like to promote people we like. We do hope people discover Dan Treacy and the Television Personalities through us. They’ve made some of the best music of the last 30 years.”

Ich habe in den letzten zwei Jahren auch drei TVP-Konzerte gesehen und kann nur zu gut verstehen … weiter lesen