MOJO Bar - Music for the people

Here at MOJO it’s fair to say we like a well attacked axe. Whether it’s a low slung Jimmy Page Gibson onslaught or a midriff hanging howl of Alex Turner, we like ‘em all. The walls are adorned by the greats, Richards, Townsend, Mick Ronson, and B.B. King.

But it looks like we are about to enter a prolonged Guitar band drought. Second and third albums by what we thought were fairly established bands like Razorlight and Kaiser Chiefs have failed to do the expected business with the Kaisers playing to a half empty MEN recently.

The Killers have abandoned their fenders for a bizarre Saxophone/Keyboard hybrid approach whilst the NME said lately of the previously guitar dependent Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, ‘killer album, but where are the guitars?’.

We have been here before though. Before the Stokes arrived fully formed to shake the cobwebs from the nations guitar racks was the post Britpop black hole. If a guitar band emerged in this period they were often unfairly tagged with the ‘Saviours of Rock’ label.

I was at Starsailors first major UK gig, in a hall full of people who had been told that they were watching one such band. A room full of expectation that they had neither the songs or the attitude to meet. Not their fault, more the Stone Roses generation hoping to have their lives transformed once more.

So like Britpop before, it seems to have got too big, too pop. Was the beginning of the end The Arctic Monkeys? For Britpop read Tony Blair appearing within the same Cool Britannia Vanity Fair issue that had Liam and Patsy on the cover. Perhaps Gordon Brown’s claim that he had the Arctics on his iPod did for it this time (hell, even Alex Turner is now making Scott Walker albums). It may have been this huge selling record that put the first nail in.

Chins up though, Johnny Marr has joined the Cribs. So there’s always that.

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