Same backstory with this as with my other Bob Geldof album. Only, when Bob played two or three tracks from this, his newest album in 2002, he did this schtick about having to go into a very dark place inside himself to perform them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not belittling in any way the trauma of his personal life in the years immediately prior to that performance. Deep tragedy seemed to be stalking him, and leaving him to pick up the pieces, despite him appearing from a distance to be acting with integrity and dignity throughout. Managing to keep family and multi-faceted career on the tracks is more than I could have done.
So it's cynical and objectionable of me to detect in Sex, Age & Death a hint of opportunism. As in, "I've gone through all this heartache and pain: I ought to be able at least to get a few good songs out of the experience." How many singers now have had that label applied to one of their albums, "Oh, that's his/her Blood on the Tracks" (cf. Beck, even Nick Cave)? And Bob is on record as a big BotT fan. It sounds like he opted for the spontaneous and direct approach, underwriting rather than overwriting. Sometimes that works best. Not sure about this time, though. Repeating "What the fuck's going on inside your head?" lots of times — well, it's hardly "One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes, blood on your saddle," is it?
I'm listen to Bob's follow-up to this album, released just last month, as I write this. It's mostly less preoccupied with sounding "contemporary" and Sex, Age & Death — though that could be just because it's harder to detect the acoustic fingerprint of 2011 from within 2011. It's too early to say whether I really like it. But I still really like Bob. I saw him doing one of those daft keynote speeches at an event organised by NESTA three years ago. So often those talks are just empty puff and bluster, especially when you've got a celeb speaker who's no specialist in the topic s/he's supposed to be addressing. But Geldof was genuinely interesting and inspirational (not a word I use often in relation to conferences). My notes don't capture what made the talk special, but I'll leave you with them anyway.
Bono is short and fat, and I'm not [this comment was prompted by his expectation that some would be disappointed at getting the Number 2 Irish rock-star-do-gooder]. The power of unreasonable people (George Bernard Shaw), who find themselves uncomfortable in the world and persist in trying to change it. Thus is necessity the mother of invention, and desperation is the father of necessity.
The future will have terrible wars, terrible economic problems. History has shown that people are unteachable. In 1908, they had no inkling of the War, that flu would wipe out more than the War, or of the 1929 crash.
We turn to innovation because we're forced to in a period of change.
Business finds a way to make progress pay. But progress towards what? We can't have more of everything. We have to rearrange things. Everything is running out: air, water, time.
Social entrepreneurs are the people GBS was talking about. Examples of microloans in Bangladesh.
I'm Irish: I came here because Britain had that entrepreneurial culture. Ireland had this crouching deference to the UK. In the last quarter of the last century, the UK dominated in culture.
Tim Berners-Lee [who had spoken just before Bob] fits the British mandate, and you love him more because he didn't make any money out of his invention.
Daily Mail makes its living from contemptuous sneer at those who try and fail. I was just desperate, and a rock band is a classic cooperative entrepreneurial venture. NHS and Open University were created out of desperation. Can those institutions survive as they are: what kind of review and revision do they need.
Britain defines itself in opposition to almost everyone/anyone else.
You can't encourage the young to be entrepreneurial. Born not made.
Existential problems are looming in front of us. We are desperate. The political body doesn't give us solutions any more. The notion of leadership comes to your self.
I was innovating in charity. In the UK, you can't say 'charity' without saying 'chaaridee', or 'love' without 'lurve'. We are embarrassed about using these words without irony. Innovation may come from society not from the top: if enough people give to a charity, government policy has to adapt. And now organisations need talented people more than talented people need organisations, so the organisations have to change to attract them.
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