“Wish I had a home with ten million rooms/I’d open up the doors and let the street children through/Wish that I could scoop up all those children in my arms/Give them all they needed to protect them all from harm”
That’s a lyric from the new Ian Brown album, an album that apparently tackles other socially conscious subjects such as war in the middle east and environmental concerns. It’s great to see someone doing this, sad to hear that he’s been getting swiped at in the press for it, but as is so often the case, Andrew Collins writes about it in a great way.
It’s such a shame that labels such as ‘earnest’ and ‘worthy’ are applied pejoratively, and artists who dare to express an opinion on anything bigger than their own sex lives or fancying the woman opposite you on the tube are considered ‘self-important’.
As someone one said, artists are the nerve-endings of society, and can either reflect back it’s concerns – or lack thereof – or can seek to offer something of substance in terms of a way forward or a change in focus… I for one am delighted that Ian Brown’s writing about things he thinks are important. Long may he continue.
It’s also the first time I’ve been interested in actually buying anything he’s done since the 12″ of Fools Gold came out, so that can’t be a bad thing!
I believe the modern perjorative term is “emo”
These young people talk funny these days, don’t they.
Ian Brown’s a genius IMHO.
…but most of the ’emo’ bands I’ve heard don’t seem to be tackling much bigger than ‘oh my life is shit, how can I go on?’ etc. Doesn’t seem to be much in the way of dealing with the bigger stuff of the world… If Ian Brown had never been involved in another record after the first Stone Roses album, he’d still be a genius IMHO, though having heard the live stuff from around that time, it seems like John Leckie deserves equal billing in any measure of the genius of that album…