Later Live… with Jools Holland BBC2
No one’s suggesting anyone brings back The Old Grey Whistle Test, but if it’s accepted that there’s a dearth of decent music programmes on the TV, why did they have to give Jools Holland another slot? It seems music shows on the box only fall into two categories: the zany, epileptic fit-inducing sort for the yoof, presented by some cunt from Wales in association with a friggin’ phone company, and the old bugger ‘real’ music kind, presented by… Jools Holland. Everyone’s a loser. On Later…, bands you want to see, play like their dad said it was a good idea, and anyone doing anything in front a hair gel logo looks like a grease ball.
So, the hook for this was ‘Jools goes live over half-an-hour’ on a Tuesday night. But you can see it all again, not live, on Friday. He made a good hoo-ha about this being real TV happening RIGHT NOW, perhaps to excuse the fact that he wasn’t having a good run of luck. Only Adele managed to nail her song, but then the poor lass had to suffer the embarrassment of doing a duet with Jools. I wept for you, Addy.
Gnarls Barkley were meant to be the big pull for this debut, but failed to turn up. Cee-Lo was sick, apparently. To make up for them, Estelle stepped in. Number 1 in the charts at the time, she looked confident - in fact, she looked amazing - but delivered a super lacklustre and plain odd version of ‘American Boy’. Lacklustre, because her voice never settled, and odd because rent-a-rapper Kano was playing the role of Kanye. So it was ‘London Boy’, not ‘American Boy’. Strange.
Even stranger was seeing The Only Ones - not your typical Jools band - who wheeled out ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’, the, um, only one of theirs that anyone knows. And, yup, Pete Perrett still looks and sounds like a wheezing crack-head.
The kids, or rather The Black Kids, hardly showed him up. Flimsy, twee, and scared of their own shadows, they just shouldn’t be on TV yet. But, y’know, cheese sandwich for their plugger, with EXTRA PICKLE.
And, then, James Taylor - too nice a man to have ever taken seriously and, Good Lord, how badly have his songs aged? Sweet Baby James? The fucking baby’s probably 70 by now.
So, pretty much a disaster, not least because everyone looked like they were bricking themselves. Will the show get better? It can only, but two things will always drag it down: Jools, because he’s become a vulgar nightmare, and the format. Half an hour means only hearing the artist/band’s big song, which most people are probably tired of, and no editing naturally means rough-as-a-badger’s arse performances.
There’s a reason why live music on TV is a bad idea. It’s called gigs. Gigs are gigs. TV looks better polished.
