The Independent today informs me that (the) “All Saints release teaser video signalling major comeback and new music”. Quite a mouthful, that, but the gist of it appears to be that the “R&B motivated vocal girl group”, the All Saints are making yet another comeback and there might be “bigger things to come”. I can barely contain my lack of excitement.
I am not against the All Saints, or any other heritage music act, making a comeback, although the very fact that they need to make a comeback at all suggests that things have not necessarily been going all that well for the girls since their heyday around the time Tony Blair was getting elected for the first time. In fact, their last major hits were so long ago they are in my Guinness Book of Hit Singles, which hasn’t been published for yonks. The article continues with the fascinating information that the girls supported the Backstreet Boys on their tour last year and have also played major sets at various festivals. Having split up 14 years ago, reformed a few years later only to split up again suggests to me that they have probably had their 15 minutes of fame.
The one talented member of the band, I seem to recall, was one Shaznay Lewis who wrote all the tunes, although the only one I recognise from the title is their number one smash (you see: I still know the terms) from 1997 entitled Never Ever. Apart from that one – no hang on: including that one – I have little interest in their music but maybe with a little push on the Jonathan Ross Show and maybe Alan Carr’s Chatty Man comedy vehicle the comeback could be on.
If they don’t work their way back to the top of the tree, there is always the nostalgia circuit which is bigger than ever and functions at all levels of music these days. Right from the pub “tribute” acts right up to the super groups (and I include some of my favourites in this category, like the great Steely Dan who these days turn up and trundle through all their old songs with nothing remotely new on the setlist). there is a huge appetite for hearing old stuff.
In Bristol, we have the annual “Let’s Rock Bristol” festival which is aimed specifically at the middle aged market whose musical tastes are intrinsically and inexorably linked with the 1980s. What better to do on a sunny summer’s day than to hear the Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey banging out Hold Me Now and Doctor Doctor (that’s the same tune, isn’t it?), or three-quarters of Bucks Fizz “Making Your Mind Up”? I am not really into festivals that last longer than a couple of hours these days. The thought of shivering in the tent or standing in a long queue for an urgent bathroom break frightens me half to death, but I suppose if you want to sing along with Samantha Fox as she digs deep into her back catalogue, then this is obviously a price worth paying. As they say, don’t knock until you have tried it so as there is no chance whatsoever of me trying it I won’t knock it.
There is a fine line between heritage acts and old bands or singers still making music and there is an enormous grey area too. I would put someone like Elton John in this grey area because he still makes new music and lots of it, but his current live show includes hits that go back to 1970 and nothing from any of his recent records.
The problem is that we don’t buy records like we used to (well, I do). We are able to download music, legally or illegally (this option is known commonly as stealing), but the idea of buying an album and playing it all the way through has long gone. We have all, I suspect, skipped through the odd vinyl album or CD to miss out that less than stellar tracks and in the case of the New Radicals album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, you skipped all the tracks except You Get What You Give. I know I did.
I must say here and now that there is nothing wrong with living in the past where music is concerned. I am as guilty as anyone on this front, regularly turning up to gigs where the artists are in their seventies and probably going through the motions in order to top up their pensions or perhaps they like the sound of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd.
We shall see how well the All Saints do and I for one wish them well. I am not sure their music is quite of the enduring level of, say, Lennon and McCartney, or even Stock, Aitken and Waterman, but if it all goes tits up, there’s always next year’s “Let’s Rock Bristol”.
