My Finest Hour

I read an interview with Paddy McAloon. I’m a great fan of his music. He said, most of your favourite music, you will hear them between the ages of 15 and 23. That’s remarkably true. But also very sad, because you could come across new music for the rest of your life after that, and it would no longer have the impact that the old music did. I first listened to Prefab Sprout in sec 4. I think I’m lucky. From 21-23 I managed to pack in a jazz education. And it’s true, I’ve lost touch. I can hardly name any music from the 21st century that’s caught my attention. OK, “Promiscuous” is catchy as hell. There’s “Beep” by the Pussycat Dolls. Maybe a few Franz Ferdinand songs. Beyond that, nothing. Or maybe nothing new. Or maybe you have to dig really deep before you find something special.

My music collection is still dominated by music that I bought when I was 15 or 16. I may have been spending too much money buying music those days, my parents might have nagged and nagged and nagged at me, but I don’t think so. You have, say $15 in your hand, and you spend it on a CD. If you’re 15, it leaves its imprint on you, and maybe it’s something you love and remember for the rest of your life. When you’re the wrong side of 30, jaded, busy all the time, it just doesn’t have that effect on you. Best spend it on something else. I’d say that money was well spent.

It goes without saying that I hardly spend money on buying new music these days.

2 of the bands I liked in sec 4 were the Sundays and the Lemonheads. The Sundays were very heavily influenced by the Smiths, who had a rabid following in the 80s, and now, 20 years later, they are recognised as one of the all time greats. In contrast, the Sundays, almost as soon as they were formed, were fairly hyped by the press who liked them. They released 3 albums. Although the first, “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic” was the best, the other 2 were fairly decent. They’ve been a cult band with a small but devoted following, and destined to remain that way for a long time.

I’m listening to RRR now. First thing you notice is that Harriet Wheeler’s voice is amazing. She can go from a whisper to a ... well not a scream, since the music is always gentle, but the voice soars. It’s a seductive voice, and if anybody sounds like a lover whispering in your ear, she can. She comes across as a person who’s a devoted daughter, wife, mother, whatever. As it is right now, she and Dave Gavurin, the main songwriter of the band and guitarist, have quit the Sundays and are raising their kids. It’s as domestic as can be.

The dynamics of her voice - this is the classic example of how the way you say things can matter more than what you say. The girl next door. No glamour queen, no party goer. Not the model on the catwalk, the red carpet or the centrefold. (But I tell you there’s so much bare meat on the centrefolds these days it’s beginning to look like a butcher’s shop.)

The song that everybody knows is “Here’s Where the Story Ends”. But my favourite Sundays song is “My Finest Hour”. The Smiths said that shyness is nice. This song is shyness personified. The title harks back to Winston Churchill’s heroic words. This is your finest hour, he said, as the British were the last domino to remain standing in the face of the Nazis. Your finest hour. Never mind that you once had an empire on which the sun never set. Never mind that you were the country who led the world into the industrial age. Never mind that half the world speaks your language. Your finest hour is now, when the Nazis are almost upon you. Those were glorious and romantic words. Even for people who aren’t English. Even for people who know that the British in our part of the world were wankers who couldn’t even keep their 2 battleships afloat on the South China Sea, who were about to get their asses whipped by the Japs and starved at Changi. “My Finest Hour” is a profoundly evocative phrase.

But with great irony, the song tells of a prosaic existence, of a person almost completely overwhelmed by her own inadequacy. Her finest hour, she tells us, was finding a pound in the underground.

Yet she gives a stunning vocal performance. The voice swoops and soars. You’d think that maybe what she’s conveying is that beneath that prosaic existence there is a rich sensitive inner life which amplifies all the experiences into a big tangle of emotions under the surface. Yes, it’s indie music, not known for being technically difficult, but you try singing that song - if the high notes don’t kill you, there is the angular melody, where the tune jumps intervals of octaves. Wheeler gives a flawless performance. I’m guessing that she has perfect pitch. Just like limpeh.

The Sundays and the Smiths are known as 2 of the most English bands ever. The attitudes are English, they borrow liberally from folk music. But you know. Morrissey is a star, and Harriet Wheeler, lovely person though she may be, is a most profoundly ordinary person.

I think that both bands are equally capable of making beautiful music. So why is it that the Smiths are great and the Sundays are merely a cult band?

I think it's because they never really wanted to be special. They're far too introverted. They don't reach out. Their lyrics don't really say that much - it's clear that while Harriet Wheeler has a better voice, Morrissey has the better lyrics, lyrics that stand out, are iconic, and purport to speak for a generation of disaffected youth. Much better than "my words keep stumbling out, then I went tumbling out" in any case.

A lot of music from the indie scene of the 80s were about people who talked about how inadequate they were, about how they wore their limitations almost as a badge of pride. The world treats them roughly and they wear their scars with pride. Could you call it an acute lack of ambition? Evan Dando sings "I want a bit part in your life". Kurt Cobain talks of being a mosquito. Dinosaur Jr is a little furry thing in a jar who wants to "know what you're nice to me for". All of them are cousins of Kafka who finds himself turned into a giant insect.

Ultimately in this song they come across much like those people we saw in "4 Weddings and a Funeral". Attractive, pretty to look at, shy, good company. But perhaps too retiring to make much of impression.

I think you can guess why I'm revisiting the music of my teenage years. I want to see more closely the stuff that I've been influenced by. I want to know what are the values that got fed into my head. I still like the Sundays. But I don't want to be uncritical of them. I hope I don't come across as calling them weak: I think Wheeler and Gavurin are raising their kids right now and I think they're living quite sensible lives. But I want to think about what I used to listen to.

One attraction of indie music was that maybe I needed to know that somebody out there to accepted me for who I was, warts and all. But would I think like that anymore? I think I should have been more ambitious, driven. I should have thought that it would mean something. I guess Singaporeans don't get taught ambition very well. Maybe I needed somebody to tell me that at one point, that things are alright, whatever happens.

I don't think I need that now. I think I seriously need my butt kicked these days.

Footnote. You won’t believe what happened 1 week after I wrote this entry. I was at the SAM machine at an MRT station, where I get rid of my small change (typically by buying stamps - I need a lot of them for my Yahoo auctions.) After a lot of pressing buttons, it came to the stage where I was to put in my coins. To my intense annoyance, I saw that the coin jam button was (irony of ironies) jammed in, and all the coins I put in immediately came out through the coin return. I punched the machine in disgust, at which point, miraculously, the coin jam button came unstuck, and a coin popped out with a “clink!” It was a $1! No pound in the underground, but a dollar in the MRT station! Fancy that! Thank you, the Sundays!