Radio Ga-ga

At work, while scraping away at innumerable lab plates and microslides, to alleviate the potential for boredom the radio is on. And who should come on but Sandy Thom with her latest release. Now, on initial hearing, it's not so bad, utterly disposable but repeat performances highlight the whiny, self-pitying at the heart of 'I wish I was a punk rocker (with flowers in my hair)' - clearly Sandra has not heard of Funky Monks in Canterbury High Street. And the lyrics can be called in question as well - "in '77 and '69 there was revolution in the air" - was there? What revolution is not fully explained. Why not throw in 1789 and 1848 for good measure? And what's with '77 and '69 - is this back to the future? Put the Delorean back in the garage. Couldn't you find a rhyming link with 1977 (I assume 1977 and not 77 A.D.)? Moreover, 1969 may have been the year of Woodstock, summer of love and blah-di-blah, but was it really a revolution - if anything, it was the coda to far more explosive years earlier in the '60s. And anyway, you may have been born too late but to look back rather than forward is to be reactionary not revolutionary - you create your own revolution, as the others have already passed.
Born too late to a world that doesn't care? Why should it care about your self-indulgent will-o-the-wisp nonsense?
On a more positive note, I have been enjoying the deposed Nelly Furtado, with her 'Maneater' falling off the UK top spot. A piece of fluff for sure, but at least it makes no self-pitying trad claims dressed up as utopian dreaming. Nelly Furtado's voice oozes power and sexuality, that she is the eponymous 'Maneater'. This is the song's main strength which more than covers a weak moment later in the song marking the break where guitar solos used to be, with this latter moment little more than a sassy re-working of 'la-la-la', the locus classicus. All in all though, a strong outing. I'm also liking The Automatics 'Monster' with the lyrics "What's that coming over the hill/Is it a one-hit wonder/one-hit wonder".