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Off the record
Evening Standard 18.04.08
Taking the rap: Jay-Z slow ticket sales for Glastonbury have been blamed on Jay-Z
Look here too
David Smyth defends Jay-Z as the Glastonbury headliner, considers why being a movie A-lister is a hindrance to a music career and discovers what's new on the net.
JAY-Z WILL MAKE UP FOR THE GLASTONBURY MUD
When Noel Gallagher declared that he wasn't going to Glastonbury this year, I'm surprised the festival's remaining tickets didn't sell out instantly. The Oasis guitarist has joined the clamour of unadventurous voices suggesting that rap megastar Jay-Z is an inappropriate choice for the Saturday headliner. “I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong,” he grumbled, but as ever, the fact that the self-appointed chairman of music's Flat Earth Society is against it is concrete proof that the rest of us should all be for it.
Noel sang on a couple of dance tracks by The Chemical Brothers in the late Nineties, but since then has given the impression that even so much as a keyboard solo is a bit racy for his plod-rocking band. He seems to file hip hop in a list of fads that will never catch on alongside the internet and mobile phones
Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis defended the controversial booking in print this week, rightly emphasising the festival's incredible musical diversity but somewhat undermining her claims about a long-term love for rappers by spelling Californian crew Cypress Hill's name “Cyprus Hill”. It's true that Jay-Z, seller of some 33 million albums and the richest man in hip hop, doesn't necessarily epitomise the Glastonbury hippy ethos of sitting naked in a stone circle juggling crystals, but neither do Oasis.
To suggest, as Noel does, that a festival that books over a thousand acts a year has “a tradition of guitar music”, is laughable. It also seems bizarre to lay the blame for slower than usual ticket sales at the door of one of the biggest musicians in the world when, as Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis has accurately put it, it has far more to do with “three years of mud and despair”.
I endured Glastonbury in 2004 and 2005, both years hampered by weather that made the site look like a humanitarian disaster. The first time, the senses are so overloaded with surreal sights and sounds that any amount of swampiness seems like an exciting new experience to be savoured.
Once the novelty has worn off, however, shuffling through brown glue for an hour each time you want to get between stages just doesn't seem worth the hassle. By 2007, when the rain was even worse, I was watching it on telly and congratulating myself on my great wisdom. I don't doubt that thousands of others also think last year was the final straw.
It is also being assaulted more than ever before by rival festivals that take its best bits and put them in a more manageable scale. There's Bestival for the quirkiness, Latitude for the artiness and Reading for the music. In Europe, Spain's Benicàssim guarantees sunshine, Werchter in Belgium has an extraordinary line-up that boasts all three of Glastonbury's headliners plus Radiohead, Neil Young and REM, and this week the organisers of Roskilde in Denmark even claimed that their weekender is quicker for Brits to get to than Glasto.
Even so, there's nowhere quite like that Somerset farm. Embattled and catastrophically unlucky with the weather it may be, but everyone wants to have a pop because it remains the biggest and the best. Provided Jay-Z comes up with the kind of earth-shaking performance he's capable of, it will keep its crown, rain or shine.
AN EARLY LISTEN TO...
Scarlett Johansson
Anywhere I Lay My Head (Rhino)
As with other actress albums by Minnie Driver or Juliette Lewis, Scarlett Johansson's singing debut is unlikely to be a big seller, but in this case it's because the music is far too cool to chase hits. Anywhere I Lay My Head, released 19 May, scores so highly in the credibility stakes it gives hope to pampered Hollywood starlets with musical ambitions everywhere.
She has already established herself as a girl with taste by appearing in a Bob Dylan video, singing on stage with The Jesus And Mary Chain and shimmying along to The Pretenders in Lost In Translation's karaoke scene. Here she ropes in David Sitek from cult art rockers TV On The Radio and prodigiously talented guitarist Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and even lands David Bowie on backing vocals for an album of impeccably chosen Tom Waits covers.
Johansson isn't much of a singer, employing a low, unexpressive register that has hints of Debbie Harry on her electronic-pop version of I Don't Want to Grow Up, but its lack of flash is well suited to Sitek's dreamlike production job, a woozy sound he describes as “Tinkerbell on cough syrup”.
There's lots of echo, cavernous drums, a spooky alt-country feel on Green Grass and sleighbells everywhere. I Wish I Was in New Orleans features just a delicate music box and Johansson's whispered vocals, while on Fannin' Street Bowie's oohs and aahs form part of a multilayered slow-builder that is stunningly beautiful.
Let's draw a discreet veil over the lone original track, the forgettable ballad Song For Jo, and the fact that before Sitek became involved, even Johansson admits that “the songs were sounding terrible”. Being a movie A-lister is as big a hindrance to a music career as being Madonna is to film success, so the album should be praised as one that succeeds despite the status of the person on the cover.
NEW ON THE NET
*Those who can't wait to hear Portishead's first studio album in 11 years will be able to wander the dark corridors of Third a week early from Monday, when it is streamed in its entirety exclusively at www.last.fm/music/portishead/third.
*The latest band on every record company man's shopping list has been west London trio White Lies, whose grandiose rock looks certain to be booming out of major venues by the end of the year. The first taste of their impressively widescreen sound, debut single Unfinished Business, is available to download everywhere from Monday.
*Veteran grime MC Wiley has been overshadowed to date by his protégé Dizzee Rascal, but it looks like he's finally about to land a big hit with Wearing My Rolex, an infectious rant about gold-diggers set to old school synths and a thudding house beat. It's in download stores a few weeks early from Monday. Type “Wiley McCartney” into YouTube to see a spoof video of the track as sung by Macca and Heather Mills, who can now afford a few dozen Rolexes herself.
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