Reformation Defamation

Jack Orlick reports on the recent spate of bands reunited.Music, they say, is like a chicken. It can be particularly bland when served with the wrong sauces. So you head to the old rack in the corner of the room – cumin, tarragon, ginger, baby, sporty, posh and scary. Funny – the last five were full the other day. Now they’re empty. Break down in tears – the world is once again Spiceless.It was reported last month that the Spice Girls have split again, apparently down to the argumentative nature of five such unpalatable flavours. Mels B and C are said to have stated simply, ‘We’ve had enough’, while Victoria Beckham has cited her ever-growing presence in the fashion world. This news may have been on the cards for a while (news of trouble and strife has been pervading Heat for months), and it not only spells the crushing of dreams by those fans in South Africa, Australia and China, but also, following the disappearances of both East 17 and All Saints, an end to the spate of reunion tours to have cut hot (or rather fairly lukewarm) inroads through the musical world in the last year or so.The real musical rooster roasters have been not the 90s pop bands, who have in fact come rather late to the scene, but the older rock bands. The Rolling Stones seem to have had so many ‘very last’ tours, and ‘very very last’ concerts it’s likely that they’ll have to force Mick Jagger into the grave, chomping and spasming in that special way of his before we’ve seen the end of them. Last November, Led Zeppelin saw 20,000 greased up, aged up, air-guitar masters sliding through the aisles of the O2 arena in London, each paying £125 a ticket. In the last year, nostalgic fans have had the opportunity to experience The Police, Genesis, Van Halen, Smashing Pumpkins and even Crowed House stumble undead across the earths many stages.Why, we ask, have such bands taken it upon themselves to rise again? Cash, of course, would be the cynics answer, yet with such musical luminaries as the Stones and The Police, this just doesn’t hold up: their records still sell like Hassan’s/Hussein’s/Ahmed’s cheesy chips on a Friday night. What’s more likely (and I’m romanticising) is that these bands are made up of people who have a bloody need to perform – junkies of the stage. Their fans, rather than being fellow addicts, are the dealers of their drug: anyone who’s been to see Harmar Superstar (shame on you!) will know that an ‘artist’ is less than nothing without its audience.But exceptions follow every rule, and this is where we return to our 90’s cut-and-paste pop. Various members of Take That have been trying, and failing, to make it as solo acts for years – the same goes for the Spice Girls. Here we see a combination of performance desperation and the drip-drip of money down the drains of Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Attempting to regain the fame and glory of their former lives, they reform – in the case of the Spice Girls, only to once again fall apart. Take That, on the other hand, have been raking in both new fans and sterling coinage- rather than surfing the diminishing wake of their prior success, they’ve managed to identify exactly what it is that mainstream pop is today: a strange combination of classic Beatlesque, rock and, almost, funk. The cohorts of teenage girls who paid their way the first-time-around have grown up, and so, accordingly, has their music. ‘Beautiful World’ has now sold around 202,202,300 in the UK alone, reaching number 1 and going seven times platinum. Worldwide, they’d sold more than three million copies by December 2006. Take That have proven particularly innovative and successful, probably much to the annoyance of their counterparts. They’ve proven that given a good old shake, those tired flavours can still produce a mighty spicy singing sauce. And when reformed bands allow both re-discovery of certain musical styles, while simultaneously re-lighting the hearts of their middle-aged followers, how can we complain? Drab tribute bands just can’t provide the true experience of watching a gang of sexagenarians hop and hobble across the boards. We’ll just have to wait and see, though, if the many personalities of Britney can ever reunite…