A View From The Lanterne Rouge

So, the hedonistic rock star lifestyle has claimed another victim, or at least it looks that way, even if Rick Parfitt’s demise at the age of 68 is hardly that of a spring chicken. As Francis Rossi, his band mate and long-time friend, said of his ill-health in a portending interview the day before Parfitt died, “It’s payback for being a wild-man and he admits that himself”.

Still, it’s yet another icon of one’s youth to disappear. Top of the Pops in the seventies wasn’t Top of the Pops without Status Quo power-strumming their way through another incarnation of extremely loud, three-chord boogie-woogie (head-banging optional).

Whenever their musicianship was criticised their answer was simple: “We’re not musicians – we’re players”. And very loud players too, so much so that I guess if a journalist had told them in those days that the future would see them explore the acoustic route they’d have thought the hack’s snout had been buried rather too deeply in their coke trough. But they did, even if they called it ‘unplugged’ rather than acoustic.

Here’s a valedictory limerick for Parfitt:

I once wrote a limerick obit
For a rock star who called himself Parfitt …

… not really, that was a non-starter – here’s the real one:

You rocked the world over with ‘Caroline’
And your twelve bar blues that came to define
The essence of Status Quo
(A boogie-rock, three-chord show)
But, sadly, you’ve now reached the end-of-line.

Postscript: You may know that in 1975 Steeleye Span had a chart hit with ‘All Around My Hat‘, an up-tempo version of a traditional folk song that rose to number 5 in the UK top ten. In the same year Status Quo released ‘Roll Over Lay Down‘ which charted at number 9. Maybe it was being out-charted by a folk group that led to the subsequent fusion of Steeleye’s Maddy Prior with Quo in the latter’s 1996 studio album of cover versions.

‘All Around My Hat‘ (with Prior dad-dancing on the video oblivious to the watching world) was one of the singles taken from the album, peaking at number 47 during its mega two-week run in the charts!

Faith, hope and gluttony.
That’ll be Christmas!

Big business dictates the modern spirit of Christmas (its marketing departments ensure that) and throughout its annual, tawdry attempts to wrest even more money from the season of goodwill we, as consumers, unfailingly comply.

Nothing new of course. On his album ‘An evening wasted with Tom Lehrer‘, the songwriter/mathematician introduces his attempt at a tongue-in-cheek consumerist’s Christmas Carol with:

“It has always seemed to me after all, that Christmas with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in. I refer of course, to money“.

Many a true word spoken in jest. Or, as Kevin McKenna writing in the Observer argues:

“At Christmas time though, the UK turns into a vast themed funfair reserved exclusively for the enjoyment for people with money … . At no other time of year does a person who  is experiencing real deprivation feel more alienated or deprived“.

Therefore, as response to marketing departments the world over and in honour of Scrooges and Grinches everywhere, I give you:

It’s clearly within my ability
To indulge in a certain proclivity.
So, because our modern-day
Christmas has lost its way,
I’ll  eschew all the seasonal festivity!

Postscript: The perceptive amongst you will recognise the subtitle of this post to come from Thea Gilmore’s not-quite-a-hit Yuletide song, “That’ll be Christmas” in which her attempt to head for high ground to “forget it all” comes to nought. I suspect that will be my lot too.