‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.’ Stuart Maconie opened his show with a dissection of this typically Noel Coward quote from ‘Private Lives’. His new book, The People’s Songs is about the potency of pop music through history. It is a genre which he refuses to oversimplify as ‘cheap’ with an influence he wishes to celebrate. With that, we delve into a very pleasant hour of music, musings, questions and answers.
‘This is not a beard-stroking-blokey-rock-music book,’ Maconie hastened to inform us, as he tried (not without difficulty) to play the 1974 song ‘Vivia Espana’ by Sylvia off his iPod through the sound system. What followed was a universally enjoyable chat with the DJ and music journalist, but I’m not entirely sure it was a show.
Maconie reading extracts from his various great books, such as Cider with Roadies and Pies and Prejudice (with a noticeable absence of readings from The People’s Songs itself) didn’t quite cut the mustard for me as a full-blown Edinburgh performance. The People’s Songs also operates as a show on Radio 2. It makes for an interesting, rose-tinted listen and it is therefore a great shame that so little music came up in this Edinburgh show.
There are frequent references to songs: Queen’s ‘Radio Gaga’, Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’, the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ (and the female empowerment the group represent). A mention of ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles is accompanied by a delightful comparison of Ringo Starr’s facial expression when drumming to that of a dog sticking its head out of the window of a moving car. I can’t resist now moving on to Maconie’s description of pop as a ‘mongrel art form’, made up of a myriad cultures and sounds.
By this point in the show I was desperate to hear some music. Maconie kept apologising for occasionally stepping up onto his soapbox, getting carried away with matters from the political to the personal. There was never a dull moment and the opinions of this man, not unfairly labelled a national treasure, were interesting to hear. However, the perfect thing to kick the soap box out from under him would have been a pop anthem from the unreliable but underused iPhone/sound system combination.
In the Q&A that concluded the talk, Maconie argued that Plan B’s ‘Ill Manors’ is a rare example of modern political discontent expressed through music (an area previously championed by The Smiths). He talked of the anger running through the song and its importance today. Stuart Maconie has some charming anecdotes and a lot else to say besides, but if his talk and his book are anything to go by, I’m sure he’d agree a good song is more worth hearing than a good story.
