Sunday 6 September 2009

Mediocrity killed the reality star

The Quinq is still absorbing the signifance of this. Today sees the 30th anniversary of the seminal track, Video Killed The Radio Star, by the unfortunately named Buggles, then the vehicle for the talented Trevor Horn. Today, as yesterday and the day before, we’re seeing the first publicity for the release of the album Robbie Williams is describing as a turning point in his career, Reality Killed The Video Star, produced by Trevor Horn. Now, back in 1979, few of us saw the relevance or the prescience of the Buggles track. If we liked it, we did so against our will. Many of us have never liked Robbie Williams, who has never had his own style, while borrowing a bit of everyone else’s (mind you, much the same can be said of Madonna, but nobody does). So, some of us will see this new album title as being about Robbie Williams and some will see it as being about Trevor Horn. The Quinq knows where he stands. But the thing is, The Quinq remembers exactly what he was doing 30 years ago the first time he heard Video Killed The Radio Star playing on the radio. Driving up the M1 motorway in a blue Austin Allegro to a rented back-to-back terraced house off Otley Road in Bradford, where he was due to start co-habiting with his then partner for the first time. After months of waiting and preparing, he had finally torn her away from her parents’ smothering clutches and was happily moving up the motorway with her and their seven month-old daughter towards what he thought was going to be the first day of the rest of his life. How optimistic. How wrong. Robbie Williams wouldn’t have known anything about it. He was five years old at the time, fifteen years younger than The Quinq. And his nemesis. In my mind and in my car/We can't rewind, we've gone too far.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk

8 comments:

  1. Its strange how I never liked the song (hated it) or the video - and yet recall it as injecting colour into music and video. They opened pandora's (video effects) box in a time before Youtube (of course) and even before MTV could be conceived.

    How ironic that it was this splash of colour that you heard as you moved, allegro, towards your gritty northern drama; played out in black and white like so many 60's films. Two hues from opposite ends of the spectrum; seeming close but too easily separable. More painful with every passing frame, and no chance of a happy end.

    I am blessed that I never had such chasm to cross. And inside your mental video tape here is one section to commit to fast forward.

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  2. To me, it seemed like the first pop song of the 80s. But what it recalls...I can never forgive and I can never forget. Myself. In time. Maybe.

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  3. I recall feeling inadequate at the time (about so much) but with regard to you and your unhappy state I had no clue then - or now - of how to help.

    My sole medicine was dispensed in pubs, and I convinced myself it bought at least temporary respite; dislocating you from the sharp focus of your life.

    For most of us the same effect is gained over time as we see our past at arms length, in highlights and lowlights.

    You are gifted with perfect recall - a rare and wondrous gift - yet it is your curse too. Until, that is, you find the ways to blur your memory (selectively, where it helps); or until nature takes its course and it happens anyway.

    Sit back, borrow some specs and see yesterday as a blur - its done. See today in full focus and tomorrow as an opportunity.

    .............

    Cod theology as I sit here at Heathrow
    :)

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  4. All time zones are one and the same to me. The past, present, future. Maybe. Couldabin. Shuddabin. When I time travel (and this is often what I choose to do with the present or now), I re-experience whatever I discover I was or will have been in a much more different way to first time around. There is no specific pain. Only curiosity, observation. I do find that other people want to forget. Me, I only want to re-remember, to experience again what was or will be. And, in the way I live my life, I have carved out plenty of time to do that. Then, when I do it, I can choose to feel or view something differently if I want to. Sometimes, I don't want to. But there does seem nothing stranger than memory.

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  5. Ok its an interesting thought, or ability, to time travel in clear focus.

    But I am intrigued by the route you take. I am sure that you can leap from time to time, but is it a straight line, or is it a branching tree full of choices? If its the latter do you trace new routes and if so how far ?

    Elise sometimes asks me questions like "What would you be doing now if we'd never met?" My answers betray my lack of imagination, and also the fact that I never think like this - I just look dumb and say "but we did meet".

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  6. I like the poem by Robert Frost called 'The Road Not Taken'. I've always been very aware of the lives I could have lived had I not taken the turns I chose to take.

    TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim,
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

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  7. A beautiful poem... couldn't help editing the end. Shame it doesn't scan any more

    I shan't be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that road made the difference.

    I took the path which lead away;
    lead a way to my true love.
    I couldn't swear, but doubt sincere, that the other path would have lead me here.

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  8. A wishful thought. But surely the only path that has led you here is the one you took. Another path would perhaps have led you to...form your own version of The Velvet Underground in the late 70s...or set up your own technology company in the 80s...or marry a different woman in the 90s...or emigrate to Cyprus in the 00s. What decisions will you make in the 2010s?

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