London Times, June 11, 1995

Bibliography   72 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 UK & Ireland weeklies UK & Ireland magazines UK & Ireland newspapers US newspapers US rock magazines US music magazines US magazines US alternative weeklies European magazines European newspapers Canada  •  Mexico  •  Asia Australia  •  New Zealand South America  •  Africa Blogs  •  Fanzines  •  Books Online publications The Times index Newspapers   The Australian Belgium Soir Berliner Zeitung Cleveland Scene Columbus Dispatch Connecticut Post Correio da Manhã Corriere della Sera Le Figaro Financial Times Gazeta Wyborcza Hamburger Abendblatt Irish Examiner Irish Independent Irish Press Irish Times Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Liverpool Echo London Daily Mail London Evening Standard London Guardian London Independent London Observer London Telegraph London Times Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Louisville Courier-Journal Mail & Guardian Marin Independent Journal Mail Tribune Melbourne Age El Mundo Neue Zürcher Zeitung New Zealand Herald Otago Daily Times El Pais Philadelphia Inquirer Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh Tribune-Review La Presse Providence Journal Radikal Reading Eagle la Repubblica Satakunnan Kansa South China Morning Post Der Spiegel La Stampa Der Standard St. Petersburg Independent St. Petersburg Times Süddeutschen Zeitung Svenska Dagbladet Trondheim Adresseavisen Trouw De Volkskrant La Voz de Galicia Wanganui Herald Wiener Zeitung Die Zeit — Rebuilt to last Music cannot be divided into the old artificial groups. Elvis Costello has always known this, and now he is paving the way to a more eclectic future. Robert Sandall There are, broadly, two schools of thought on the way music is heading in this country. One view — enthusiastically supported by commercial broadcasters, ad sales folk and others with decided and proudly specific tastes — foresees the future in terms of proliferating boxes, or niche markets. If this view were used, it would conjugate as follows: I am a rock fan, you like jazz, he listens to classical, we ignore anything that doesn't meet the narrow membership criteria of our chosen niche, you had better turn that off, they are never going to catch me listening to that. The other vision of the future in music is a far more chaotic affair, and if this one were a verb its tenses would be hopelessly mixed up: I used lobe a dedicated rock fan, now I attend the odd prom concert, next week I am off to Ronnie Scott's club, I will play you the Portishead album when you come over next week, and lean hardly wait to see Ry Cooder performing with the Malian guitarist Ali Parka Toure in July. "Eclectic" is the term normally applied to this nonconformist, categorically evasive approach, and while nobody can claim that eclectic is a new idea, or that it is as popular at the moment as little boxes, it is clearly gaining ground. Headline proof that music does not have to be a matter of strict tribal affiliation came with the massive album sales generated by Nigel Kennedy, the Three Tenors, and a double CD of Gregorian chant by the Benedictine monks of Silos, which has, over the past year and a half, sold as many copies around the world as the latest release by the Rolling Stones. Pavarotti In The Park conclusively demonstrated that the classical repertoire strongly appeals to people who do not subscribe to Gramophone magazine and who are, in Pay's case anyway, considerably younger than the crowd who turn out for Eric Clapton in the Albert Hall. But the eclectic case is being more subtly and persuasively put in other ways. When the psychedelic ambient duo The Orb had a top-10 hit in 1993 with Little Fluffy Clouds, few of their fans probably realised that the rolling guitar figure that propels the track is a sample from a recording by Pat Metheny of the American avant-garde composer Steve Reich's piece, Different Trains. Music, as Reich would appreciate, now travels in strange ways. While that most impenetrable of all niche markets, rap, has been thoroughly ghettoised in the media, it has been warmly supported — on stage and in the studio — by respected jazz musicians such as Donald Byrd and Courtney Pine, who see in today's outraged insistence that rap isn't "real" music echoes of the furore created in Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come... The Sunday Times, The Culture, June 11, 1995 Robert Sandall profile Elvis Costello. Images Cover. Page scans. Photos by Andy Lane.

External links

• TheSundayTimes.co.uk
• Wikipedia: The Sunday Times