What makes a great band? Well, good looks, style, imagination, chemistry, chops, a sense of humour, a scattering of mystique (but not too much, we shouldn’t expect a great band to also be a member of the magic circle) and longevity can all play a part. Consistency helps too, more so than volume of output; when it comes to great bands, or indeed any musical act, you often do have to follow the maxim of quality over quantity. But what counts most is having tunes that deliver and tunes that last – without that you literally have nothing. Which is why no-one mentions Menswear much these days. Menswear were, of course, a British band, but only the corpse of a cretin would have the bad taste to suggest they might be one of the great British bands of all time. I write this as I gaze with a mixture of amazement and disgust at a list of 54 British bands which the BBC, and specifically Radio 2, with the help of some “experts”, has compiled, and from which you are now cordially invited to choose your favourite. Now, I’m prepared to be realistic: everyone has a different take on what they think of as a great band, but I’m afraid to say that BBC Radio 2 are having a laugh with this one; though I’m more inclined to cry.
Why there are 54 is anyone’s guess, but if you want my guess it’s because they got to around 20 and then thought they’d better pad it out with a big enough range of bands to make it look all inclusive and fair and up to date, regardless of how horribly this manages to dilute what we should think of when we think of the word ‘great’. I mean, there are a few bands which are no-brainers: The Beatles, The Stones, Pink Floyd, Bee Gees, The Clash, The Kinks, Radiohead, The Who and (though it pains me a little to say this) Queen and The Smiths. Fleetwood Mac are also there, but while I love Fleetwood Mac with all my heart I’m afraid their best work was done when they were two fifths Californian so, well, this isn’t really the list for them. There then comes another layer, stuffed with bands that have certainly done some sterling work but, and with the best will in the world, somehow feel like they should be prospering in the Championship rather than floundering in the Premiership: Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Oasis, Depeche Mode, The Stone Roses, The Police, Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud and New Order. And beneath that are the bands that shouldn’t really be there but, oh-go-in-if it’ll-make-you-happy: Spice Girls, Coldplay, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers, Genesis, The Jam, Muse, Sugababes and Take That. There’s also Wings, but do we need Wings when we already have the Beatles? No is the answer, in case you were struggling.
The rest are just one big fucking joke. It’s not that they are all worthless, it’s just that none of them have any right to be near a list like this. It reminds me of the time the British public were asked to vote on the greatest Britain ever and Princess Diana ended up in the top ten. Indeed, I still find myself, sometimes in public, rubbing my eyes with disbelief when I think about just how untrustworthy and moronic the great British public can be when they are given a chance to express their opinion; to the extent that if someone had snuck ABBA into this list of bands there would be more than an ample enough quantity of fucking idiots out there to vote them right to the top. Just think about that for a minute – you know in your heart that there’s a little truth in there somewhere. In a similar vein, you have to remember that a lot of the people who end up voting for these bands will have slightly less of a clue than no clue at all about good music in general. These will be the people who wouldn’t hesitate to vote in Michael McIntyre as ‘Britain’s Greatest Comedian Of All Time’, or would heartily endorse dog shit and asbestos as ‘Britain’s Greatest Meal’ if Holly Willoughby said she had eaten it at a Gordon Ramsey’s last weekend and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it sounded.
So, bobbing about in the toilet bowl of a crack den near you, we can see just what BBC Radio 2 (was there ever a safer, blander, less adventurous, more devoutly magnolia radio station?) mean when they describe a British band as ‘great’. How did anyone have the nerve to even suggest bands like Bananarama, Duran Duran, Elbow, Electric Light Orchestra, The Human League, One Direction, Pulp, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Stereophonics or Soul II Soul, all of whom, I am happy to admit, have made at least a morsel of bearable music, but none of whom would be worth writing home about unless you lived in a cave on the outskirts of nowhere, happily spending your days staring at a picture of a particularly nondescript house brick . And as for the rest, well, what we’re left with are bands that aren’t just lame but rather bands that are an affront to good music. To call then piss-poor bands would be a complement. These are bands that should be loaded together onto a small boat and send round the Cape Horn on a bad night: The Beautiful South, UB40, Culture Club, Imagination (I had to look them up to remind myself I had heard of them and they were always crap) and, in as close a tie as I could ever come up with for Britain’s worst band ever, ever, in the whole history of all time – M People and Madness. If I was under questioning and forced to listen to a medley of M People and Madness I would happily, giddily and unconditionally confess to being Jack The Ripper before the first song made it to the second note. M People and Madness are the very opposite of great. They are, in fact, badder than abysmal.
But then, it is all really to be expected. After all, the “experts” that the BBC have called upon to compile this list include Vernon Kay, Sara Cox, Scott Mills and DJ Spooney. Yes, they may all be perfectly pleasant and spend a lot of their time on the radio, but they also spend a lot of time playing the same unimaginative handful of songs in rotation, day after day after day, safe in the knowledge that most members of the British public are more than happy listening to a repetitive barrage of mediocre pop, blissfully ignorant that there is so much more out there to sample. In fact you don’t even need to be adventurous to conjure up a quick list of bands that can break wind with more artistic feeling than, to pick just one, The Beautiful South: Portishead, Massive Attack, Belle and Sebastian, Black Sabbath, King Crimson, Talk Talk, The Faces, The Waterboys, Dire Straits, Dr Feelgood, The Specials, The Zombies, Primal Scream, Fairport Convention, Roxy Music, Suede and (seriously) Keane. Any one of those could have taken the place of 80% of that Radio 2 list, and that’s just a few bands scribbled down from the top of my head; there will be many more, because there must be many more, because we can’t afford another minute idling with the suggestion that M People and Madness will ever be worth listening to. But then maybe it’s better to just let it lie. After all, I only ever listen to Radio 2 by mistake these days and, also after all, one person’s garbage is another person’s gold. Now I think about it I’m surprised Garbage weren’t on the list, they’re certainly forgettable and average enough for Vernon Kay to think they’re great but they are also half American, which, oddly enough, is about the only thing they share in common with Fleetwood Mac.
G B Burton. 21.09.2024
PS, this is precisely what you get when you try to be inclusive in an effort not to upset anyone: I failed to get picked for the football team at school because I was shit at football, not because I was a goofy, four-eyed, ginger prick.
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 