Home Taping is Killing Music

That’s what they told us in the 80s. They were, of course, so very wrong. What they meant to say was: “Unfeasibly one-sided and punitive contracts designed to line the pockets of record company executives are killing music”. Or perhaps, “Indie label heads: their hearts are in the right place but they have less than no business sense, and they’re killing music”.

One, possibly two, but not all three of the above statements explain how The Stone Roses went from creating a series of singles and a debut album that took the indie guitar template, and funked with it, creating an unlikely but entrancing crossover that allowed scruffy indie urchins to feel like dancing (if you can call the left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot back, right foot back swagger dancing), to spending their days thumb-twiddling in the offices of record company lawyers, and gradually losing their madchester muse.

Regular poll-topping debut album (until Radiohead crashed the party) The Stone Roses still sounds fantastic, follow-up Second Coming still sounds, with the exception of one or two tracks, crushingly disappointing. Ian Brown still cannot sing (his miming might have improved over the years, though), but that was never really the point, was it?