Upon browsing through Paul Heaton's - he of The Housemartins, Beautiful South etc fame and some say infamy - blog today I found this all too true comment and prophecy that Heaton penned at the end of 2009...
These indeed are low times for a high brow singer and it would be tragic
for us to lose home grown artists such as Hawley, Cocker and Heaton, to
the passing storm of The Cowell Dollar and the plastic breast. We must
cling to the rocks together, safe in the knowledge that this storm, like
all those before it, will pass or burn itself out, battering the very
rocks we cling to. Then slowly we shall rise- Tilbrook, Costello,
Morrissey, Difford, Heaton, Hawley, Cocker, Weller, Bragg and many more,
til next year will finally herald the return of something we thought
we'd lost, the sweet call of the English Songbird!
Now I might have a slightly different view of one or two of these artists - I've never been a fan of Elvis Costello for example and I personally think Paul Weller is a pumped up wannabe-cool haystack-haired southern puff - but all in all never a truer word has been spoken about the malaise that is the British music industry.. and the international one (read American) is in all too much of the same dire straits. And a lot of the blame has to be foisted on the same black t-shirted individual to be honest.. and I ain't talking about my black t-shirts!
So, sat in 2010 I'm eagerly waiting the passing of the silicon/shit storm and, in my mind anyhow, today I have elected that God is Paul Heaton..
Turns out Mr Heaton has been busy cycling around and getting fit for a bike tour of British pubs to sing new songs. Who better to highlight the plight of 100+ local pubs closing every week around the country than the man who has sat in a lot of them for a lot of time - watching, waiting, observing, writing in between drinking himself very nearly into the grave at one point in order to bring us some of the finest songs (of all time?).
Ol' red eyes is back, this time they're only red from all the miles that he's cycled!
The full blog and details of his pub cycle tour during 2010 are here
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