Goldbug and EBTG

Simon Everest (S.Everest@plymouth.ac.uk)
Thu, 21 Mar 1996 17:11:02 GMT

It's strange how rapidly things change in the music business in
general, and this is particularly evident in attitudes towards bands
such as Goldbug and EBTG in the list at the moment. In the UK,
Goldbug has been a huge hit, and was always likely to be so from the
buzz that was created as soon as everybody heard it . This buzz was
based around the new found popularity of so-called 'easy-listening',
witness the Pearl and Dean theme, the enduring popularity of a
classic song such as Whole Lotta Love, combined with the latterly
trendy Acid Jazz thing we all know and love. It would be easy to
examine this record as by a group of chancers, who cleverly brought
together a bunch of rapidly accelerating trends, with a big chunk of
nostalgia and mixed it with a huge party vibe, to cynically cash in
on these trends. I don't agree with this theory, and I
personally think it's a brilliant idea; a pop tune, that is likely to
turn a greater market onto the music that I love. That can only be a
good thing, unless you want to adopt a 'holier than thou' attitude
towards the masses, keeping classifications and genres of music away
from the popular market, keeping them for the so-called educated few.
There has been an element of this in recent postings, which could be
seen as a form of snobbery by subscribers, shocked at
the new found popularity of their favourite form of music. This is
wrong, surely, the list is genuinely about a far more open minded
perspective of music in general, but does stray in the wrong
direction at times.

I believe the EBTG issue to be more of a concern, it would be hard to
look at a band who have been known for their uncontroversial coffee
table music; which is fine, it's not bad, just not my cup of tea.
But I personally believe that they are predominantly trading off of
other peoples talents at the moment, such that their new-found
credibility is more down to the talents of Todd Terry for remixing
'Missing' into one of the most popular records of last year, and the
DJs that picked up on it, both in the USA and on the Costa del
Sunburn, the credibly Junglist Spring Heel Jack, and the genius of
Massive Attack. Tracey Thorn has an excellent voice, and this certainly
contributed to the Massive Attack album, but this was still
undoubtedly a Massive Attack album, not an EBTG album. Anybody who has
heard the new Spring Heel Jack tracks, or 'Missing' or 'Protection'
would surely find it difficult to balance out the relatively small
contribution from EBTG to the massive input of the respective
producers. While all this does not take away from a good record, I
am personally very sceptical about such bandwagon jumping, as a
junglist EBTG seems to be, and await further developments from the
new EBTG easy-listening compilation, with covers of Goldfinger, the
'It's a Knockout' theme, Girl in a Sportscar, and the theme from
'Hawaii-five-oh' with baited breath.

If this second paragraph appears to contradict the first, that's down
to my not being able to explain myself properly with a really bad
hangover. My point is, firstly, snobbery is a very bad thing within
music, but second, I personally believe hypocrisy and cynicism to be
worse. I await being flamed to death by EBTG coffee table owners
very soon . :-)

See ya
Simon