I like and admire the popular beat combo outfit Squeeze, albeit not quite enough to buy or regularly listen to their music, nor see them live in concert. I wonder what their actual fans make of the band’s current setlist?
They’re in America at the moment and almost unheard of among bands these days they’re playing new music. And not just any new music but their new album Trixies in its entirety.
The live show starts with four bangers: Pulling Mussels From A Shell, Up The Junction, Another Nail In My Heart and Is That Love. Then, it’s the new record, all 11 songs played in order. Finally, they run through a bunch of bangers before ending with Take Me I’m Yours. Many fans are unhappy with the setlist. If a band I loved did something like that, I’d be thrilled. I appreciate that not everyone feels that way.
A lot of it depends on the act itself. Generally speaking, there are two types of bands. Firstly, the heritage band that plays the hits, only the hits and nothing but the hits. Think of the likes of Oasis. No Oasis fan wants to hear Liam Gallagher announce that they are going to play the new album, which no one has heard before, played in full. I suspect most folk would groan if the band played even one new song. The fans have paid vast sums of money to hear Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back In Anger and Live Forever. Oasis the touring jukebox, openly and honestly doing it purely for the money. Then, there’s the ‘live’ band that still makes new music.
The ‘live’ band, as I call a band that still creates new music, even if they might not actually play any of it at a live show. I loved it when I went to a Crosby, Stills and Nash show a few years ago and each member played songs that were brand new and had not even appeared on an album. New music, new life, I always think. But I am flexible.
Last year, I saw Toto, who have not made an album of genuinely new material since 2015. (They did make an album of old, previously unreleased music under the title Old Is New in 2018, but I felt old wasn’t new.) I knew what I was going to get: brilliantly performed nostalgia. Later last year, I also saw the Doobie Brothers, who played all the hits and a good few tracks from their new album Walk This Road. I enjoyed both shows but I have to say that when push came to shove, I enjoyed the latter more, partly because the band were still creating. Some bands can go too far, though.
In 1972, I saw the prog rock band Jethro Tull at the Bristol Colston Hall. I knew a good few of their old songs, but they only played one of them right at the end, Locomotive Breath. For the rest of the show, they played an extended version of their still unreleased album Thick As A Brick. It was also deafeningly loud. I left, ears ringing violently, and more than a little disappointed. Even as I spotty 15-year-old, I wondered why they couldn’t play even a few hits? I never bothered with their live shows again, but about 50 years later I did buy Thick As A Brick and absolutely loved it.
In 1975, I attended the Midsummer Music concert at Wembley Stadium and witnessed both sides of the coin, so to speak. As the sun went down behind the twin towers, The Beach Boys stormed through a set of 1960s bangers. It was totally awesome. Top of the bill was Elton John, who proceeded to play, in front of what was believed to be a crowd of around 120,000 people, maybe more, his brand new album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in its entirety. From Good Vibrations to a bunch of albeit decent songs which no one knew in a few minutes. I was one of, I reckon, 100,000 people who decided early on that they’d had enough and we made our way to Wembley Park station. Basically, Elton fucked up. On a blindingly hot midsummer’s day, he had decided not to play the hits, at least not until most of us had left, and instead somewhat self-indulgently his new album instead. However, there is no happy medium. Not everyone likes the same thing.
The music ‘business’ has changed. As David Hepworth pointed out in his excellent book Hope I Get Old Before I Die, rock stars don’t retire these days. When Paul McCartney played Live Aid in 1985, everyone thought he was a dinosaur from another age. Yet he was only 43 and it turned out he was just getting started. Like The Rolling Stones, Macca is still going strong today and making great new music, even if his live shows are packed with the greatest of his greatest hits. Then again, he’s a Beatle and he can do anything he wants.
Good luck to Squeeze, I say. Whether I am a fan or not is irrelevant but to me a band still making new music, as they are, means that musically they are very relevant.
There’s room for every type of act, whether they are a live jukebox (or even a lip syncing jukebox, like The Eagles are these days) or a band or an artist still coming up with new ideas. Sometimes I like the familiar, sometimes I like to be challenged. You say yes, I say no, as Macca said. And as one of my best friends always says, “There’s no such thing as bad music, apart from Queen.” As a general rule, I think he’s bang-on.
