Last month a friend of mine was hovering over the Ticketmaster 'Buy' button, on the cusp of booking tickets for the Undertones show at Dingwalls. Wow, they've finally buried the hatchet with Feargal, he thought, fantastic! No, of course they hadn't – it was the original lineup only without the CEO of British Music Rights on vocals.
It'll be the same story when people go and see the next Led Zeppelin – how many will sign up without knowing that Robert Plant has decided not to come along for the ride?
A handful of years ago, the idea of a group reforming without the original singer was confined to a handful of notable exceptions – the main one, of course, being the Doors. And maybe the fact that we've grown used to the LA psychedelic legends being fronted by a bloke from Cheshire, means that our quality threshold is now so low that we'll accept anything as long as it's got the band/brand name over it.
A few months ago, I noted here how far down the line we'd got with groups reforming, that original artists had effectively become tribute acts to themselves. But we're now in some irony-free world where people will pay money for a new Queen album, which doesn't feature Freddie Mercury. Playing live shows with Paul Rodgers on vocal duties is one thing but releasing an album with that brand is surely flicking the Vs at fans. OK, so they put "+ Paul Rodgers" in small writing on the artwork but I really wonder if Sir Fred would have blessed the project.
But the main thrust of this sort of behaviour is on the live circuit. After all, with the slump in recorded music sales, live shows are where you make your money. So welcome, then, From The Jam, the "From" in this sense being the punk equivalent of Queen's "+". FTJ, as they'll surely be known on Jam messageboards are, of course, everyone from the group, bar the bloke who wrote and sang all the songs. Well, all the songs apart from the theme tune to Mock The Week, that is.
But I would pay good money to see FTJ if faced with some of the alternatives – The Bureau anyone? The Bureau, for those of you not as ancient as me, were Dexy's Midnight Runners at the peak of their success only without Kevin Rowland. Now, very much not at the peak of their success, they have reformed.
And the list goes on – The Magic Band without Captain Beefheart, the Blockheads without Ian Dury, the Bonzos without Viv Stanshall. OK, aside from Queen, I don't begrudge any of these artists having a go: after all, we all have to make a living. But where is this going? The Clash reforming with Jimmy Pursey wearing Strummer's trousers? Wham! with just Andrew and maybe Tony Hadley on vocals (Spam! more like). Over to you!
