last thoughts on Take That and the comeback of comebacks

I recognise it’s stretching a bit to do 3 postings around the subject of dropping my family off and collecting them later from a Take That concert. But hey if I’m going to do these 50 postings in December than I need to extract juice from anywhere. I was reflecting during the long drive home how incredible has been the turn around in the fortunes of TT. They were huge of course as one of the early boy bands and then when Robbie left the slide started and within a year or so they’d decided to split. I think that was around 1996. Then they just disappeared.

Advertisement

otis will be turning in his grave

One of the most soulful songs in contemporary music history has been adopted for a so-so car ad I’m sad to say. The song of course is Otis Redding’s Dock of the Bay and for some inexplicable reason Renault’s advertising agency have used it as the sound track to the TV ad for their new Laguna model. It’s a hauntingly poignant piece of music delivered by one of the all time great soul singers but, that apart, I just cannot see the relevance of the song to the car or the marketing message. This goes something like some people pick a car for it’s safety features, or its looks, or its performance etc but the Laguna has them all. Umm if you say so Renault. But how this relates to a guy passing time just watching ships coming in and out of port escapes me. Am I missing something? Sorry not a bad ad but a complete mis-match with the music. 5 out of 10.

do we really really want a spice girl reunion?

No of course not. The world’s moved on and the Spice Girl’s have at least 7 kids between them and only one husband. They should be heading for the Trisha Goddard show rather than a world tour but that’s life under a Brown Government I guess. Is it just me or is this simply a cynical excuse to try and make a lot of money from re-hashing the back-catalogue? Everyone’s seen what a brilliant job Take That have done in re-forming. But at least those guys wrote some decent new material and brought out a new album to coincide with their tour. The timing was perfect too, exploiting the dramatic downturn in Robbie Williams’ own fortunes. Oh how Gary and the other lads must have enjoyed that having been snubbed by RW when their initial reunion was captured on film for a TV documentary. But the Spice Girls aren’t bothering – it’s just another rehashed ‘hits’ album backed by a tour. Grim….