Postscript - Rod Stewart

Just as a postscript to this mornings entry regarding Rod Stewart.

Napster are featuring his new album "Still The Same - Great Rock Classics of our Time".

I've been streaming it today in the office.

Its fucking awful and I'm ashamed to admit that I used to be a big fan.

It really is awful, just dreadful.

And worse still - its apparently gone straight to number one in the American album chart - shame on you Americans for proving what we British always suspected - you have no taste.

The choice of songs is a mystery for a start, remember the title "Great Rock Classics of our Time" ? Have a browse through this lot...

Have you ever seen the rain
Fooled around and fell in love
I'll stand by you
Still the same
Its a heartache
Day after day
Missing you
Father & son
The best of my love
If not for you
Love hurts
Everything I own
Crazy Love
Lay down Sally

Rock Classics ?

Do me a favour.

Its obvious, clearly obvious that Mr Stewart has lost it - I'm no musician but even I can tell just by listening to the dreadfull album that all of the above songs have been selected simply because they are in a single key and are by and large sung in a monotone style - he's lost the ability to sing properly and now simply speaks the words to each of the songs in a similar manner to Johnny Cash on his last album "Hurt" - but at least Johnny Cash had an excuse - he was dying.

There are two stand out songs for awfulness on there - the Bob Seger classic "Still the Same" and the Eric Clapton classic "Lay Down Sally" - both of these renditions would be boo'ed off in any pub kareoke competition.

"Best of my Love" the Eagles classic love song is just a laughable dirge at the hands of the 2006 version of Rod Stewart as is the Cat Stevens "Father & Son", I'm shaking my head in amazement and sorrow at how poor a singer he is now.

At least I didn't buy those tickets to see him at Newcastle arena.

Its all wrong, its just wrong...

I've just heard the most dreadful so-called vocal entertainment perpetrated on GMTV - Rod Stewart has just murdered a Bob Seger song.

I may have mentioned elsewhere that I used to be a fan of Mr Stewart, back in the days when he and I both looked like that photo of him (above), but I don't now and he hardly does either.

His musical output fell out of favour with me when he left The Faces and moved to Los Angeles and started producing albums full of shoulder padded, spangly-suited disco rubbish and in recent years his production of what he calls "the standards", ie songs that the original crooners were producing so much better than he can back in the 1940's and 50's, has been just, well, just simply, awful.

So when he sat on the couch this morning on GMTV and announced that his new album was full of music which reflected his soft-rock roots then my ears pricked up a little - this may be worth listening to on Napster thought I.

Then he stood up and sang "Still the Same", the classic Bob Seger song.

Took a wonderful song and turned it into bland 3 minute filler, a crime worthy of my turning my back on him once again, Rod Stewart has become a parody of an old club turn, churning out tired productions of other peoples work, unable to invent his own original stuff anymore, he now relies not only on the words and music of other more talented artists, but also their arrangements, so what you get is Rod Stewart trying to be Bob Seger.

It will never work.

It will sell lots of albums to the gullible though, because the music business works like that now.