Virtual unknown dies and hardly anyone notices

[The Beard]

Celebrity is a funny thing. Whenever the press and TV decide that someone is going to be on our screens and in our papers and magazines, these people are often done to death so to speak.

The most recent in a fly on the wall documentary series about Peter Andre was on tonight. A thoroughly nice chap and he certainly seems to be attractive to a certain section of the community, namely women. But otherwise I'd say he's particularly unremarkable. As far as music is concerned he will only ever be a footnote.

Similarly, virtually the whole country has heard of Katie Price who's done little apart from getting her kit off in the Sun and spending a fortune on cosmetic enhancements.

However, sadly, a young racing driver was killed recently, and unless you are a real motor racing fan you'll have never heard of him. His name was Sean Edwards. He's one of the band of young-ish drivers who race in a a sub-F1 race series, namely GT3 and among his victories is the fact that he is only the 2nd British driver to win the Nurburbring 24 hours.

He was the son of Guy Edwards who drove for Graham Hill, Hesketh and BRM in the '70s and also for Lola and Porsche in the Le Mans 24 hours. I can remember seeing him many times in the old Aurora British F1 Championship racing against Rupert Keegan and another racing driver who's no longer with us, namely David Leslie. Edwards Sr. also used his experience and expertise to obtain sponsorship for young racing drivers. In addition to this he also received the Queen's Galantry Medal for helping to pull Nikki Lauda from his burning car and Sean recently portrayed his father in the film of Lauda and Hunt's F1 Championship rivalry, Rush.

The fact that I read about his death in yesterday's Sunday Times a week after he died perhaps underlines the title of this thread.

 

[StevenRB45]

If you frequent more motorsport related sites eg. Pistonheads they've done various things to mark his passing as he was known personally to some of the sites contributers. If I'm honest I had never heard of him as I only tend to follow uk 911 racing as it's part if the toca package but doesn't stop it from being a tragedy, not heard anything about the driver of the car who was seriously injured (Sean Edwards was not driving he was providing tuition from the passenger side when the incident happened).

 

[pooroldcodger]

Well said Beard. It's a great shame, and very unfortunate to happen when he wasn't behind the wheel himself. That's probably why it happened I suppose, but a great pity.
The "celebrity" culture drives me nuts. It is a whole industry that has been driven by the endless need to fill column inches, fill websites and TV schedules.
I recently mentioned on this forum a magazine / book I saw on sale in Sainsburys:
"A-Z of celebrity tatoos".
I stood looking at it on the shelf for a couple of minutes in disbelief that after a million years of evolution, that's what we have come to.
(Bangs head on wall).

 

[The Beard]

If Lady GaGa has a new tattoo the Sun, Hello and virtually every other tabloid makes sure it gets in there somwhere.

Apparently there are thousands of girls lusting after somebody called Harry Stiles and that makes the press and TV as well. What I'm not sure of is whether "we" actually want this c**p or have it foisted upon us, and in the absence of anything more substantial, just accept it.

Elton John was having a rant in this week's Sunday Times about "Robot singers" and part of what he was on about was the fact that with one or two exceptions, Adele springs to mind, female singers are more dependant on their sex appeal than their singing ability. Although I don't watch it as a matter of course, X-Factor was on last night with Lady GaGa as a guest. Personally I thought she was rubbish, but that must be because I've become an old git. Her song was about (I think) the fact that somebody could do what they wanted to her body but her mind was hers.....sort of. The emphasis was on the do what you want with her body though and her performance seemed to be based on the fact that she was wearing a bra and nickers but nothing else apart from a headset microphone.

Had she been fully dressed the song might have had some message, but as her target audience seems to be largely based around teenage boys then I can't help thinking they really wouldn't give a damn about the message.

The days of the Beatles, Stones and countless other singers and groups getting their training traipsing up and down the country in an old Transit and learning their craft playing in pubs and clubs, then getting the big break seems to have largely gone. Instead they are being coached in all aspects of performing and as a result we are getting more and more identikit entertainers.

Stand up comedians were the same throughout the late '80s and the '90s in as much as all they had to do was wear shoes and trousers bought from a 2nd hand shop and take the p**s out of Margaret Thatcher and lots of University types thought it hilarious, and of course the BBC gave us these people by the bus load.

The only good thing is, that as I hurtle into sad old git-dom I have more and more CDs first made years ago to listen to. I've become a regular customer of King Bee Records in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where I buty loads of 2nd hand CDs and immerse myself in the past.

 

[(CZ)enda]

Elton John was having a rant in this week's Sunday Times about "Robot singers" and part of what he was on about was the fact that with one or two exceptions, Adele springs to mind, female singers are more dependant on their sex appeal than their singing ability.

Surprise, surprise.

Beatles? The best British exports became a real and f*****g omnipresent nuisance. I really can buy my groceries in Lidl without McCartney singing "Hey Jude" while I put the discount cauliflower into the basket and I really, honestly do not want to hear "And So This Is Christmas" every time the supermarkets decide it is high time to start getting rid of the stuff which turns unsellable in January (meaning one is tortured since October).

Rolling Stones? I never understood how they made it. Must have been their live shows, which I never bothered to see. Their albums are pure and condensed boredom. Just like Bob Dylan´s, BTW.

Welcome to the machine...

 

[The Beard]

Surprise, surprise.

Beatles? The best British exports became a real and f*****g omnipresent nuisance. I really can buy my groceries in Lidl without McCartney singing "Hey Jude" while I put the discount cauliflower into the basket and I really, honestly do not want to hear "And So This Is Christmas" every time the supermarkets decide it is high time to start getting rid of the stuff which turns unsellable in January (meaning one is tortured since October).

Rolling Stones? I never understood how they made it. Must have been their live shows, which I never bothered to see. Their albums are pure and condensed boredom. Just like Bob Dylan´s, BTW.

Welcome to the machine...

Well you can hardly blame the late John Lennon for supermarkets playing one of his songs, as for Hey Jude, I don't think I've ever heard a Beatles song played in Aldi, Lidl, ASDA or any of the other sheds for that matter, unless it was a CD that was on a repeat play to try and sell some discs.

Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell are only interested in two things, namely Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell. Between them they managed to produce (and I use the term advisedly) teenage boys who will stand, sing and dance the way they want them to in order to attract pre-pubescent girls who will buy the songs for around 5 years which will be about the length of any contract these kids are liable to be able to get after negotiating via a lawyer introduced to them by their relative mentors while tying them to songs that put back the cause of the creative musicians and singer/songwriters 4 decades.

If you want to find a mentor worthy of the name, you could try John Hammond. He was a civil rights activist, producer and a talent scout. He either discovered, or influenced to a very high degree the following who, unlike Walsh and Cowell's influential proteges, were clearly a bunch of no account talentless fly-by-nights: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin, George Benson Leonard Cohen and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Had to refer to wikipedia for that lot, to be honest, but there was a man who loved music and although he could have made a living out of the music business, was already independently wealthy didn't depend on it descending from the Vanderbilt family and, like his mother was also a philanthropist.

There were no identikit performers in his list of contacts, they'd all come up the hard way