On Thursday, I spent a total of almost five minutes of my life watching a video on YouTube and posting about it to rec.music.opera and to here. Just one of those link-and-move-on posts.
II didn't bank on it spending most of Friday as the number one hit on Google for P4ul P0tt$ the Phone seller from Port Talbot.
And, so, I got more visits to that one post than I normally get to the entire blog in half a week (or indeed a whole week, if you discount the hundreds of people who come here because a photo I stole, and subsequently removed, is number one on Google Images for Marilyn Monroe).
I realised that a fraction of one per cent of those new visitors actually bothered to click elsewhere (if you are one of the five people who did, and has decided to stick around, welcome...!)
(By the way, this is a different stats counter to the one on the front page. Geek, moi?)
Some of the people who left comments were perfectly reasonable. I didn't publish the most offensive comments, nor those that consisted primarily of personal attacks. I received four emails, one supportive, one oppositionalist but polite and reasonable, and two that were personal attacks.
With the comments standing at 52, I decided to have the last word, and close the comments with a characteristically long-winded rebuttal and summation. I have decided to reprint my closing statement below. From now on, I am never going to wish to be one of those blogs that gets lots of comments. It's nice to get comments either from regulars or from people who stumble in by chance, especially when they're thoughtful, even when they state their disagreement. It's not so nice to get them from some really angry people who feel a need to hit out. (I'm also puzzled why I got so much hate from one particular, unnamed, country. With few exceptions, all the hate I have received on the internet has been from that one country, yet all the citizens of that country I have met, either there or here, in Real Life, including off the internet, have been the diametrical opposite of hating, well, apart from the flasher in Central Park, and that fckd up taxi driver in New Orleans, obviously...):
The reasons for me closing the comments are: a) seeing that less than 1% of people who have read this post have bothered to click anywhere else on the blog, you don't matter to me in the way I cherish my regular and occasional readers; b) far too many of you are leaving comments that show that you haven't actually read the previous comments - that isn't a conversation; c) far too many of you seem incapable of debating facts and opinions without making a personal attack - throwing in personal attacks is not only childish but also diminishes the point you are trying to make. If you haven't clicked elsewhere on the blog, it's hardly surprising that you think I'm a professionally trained musician (I'm not) or I don't like pop music (I do). Or that you're surprised at negativity. Don't make assumptions when there is evidence to the contrary just a click away
To summarise, the man has a degree of raw talent; if that makes him far better than the average talent show contestant that probably just shows how poor the average talent show contestant is. It doesn't make him better than the many other people who sing at amateur level up and down the land.
Up to a point, "better" is definitely in the ear of the beholder, and I have witnessed and participated in heated debates between people who have been at exactly the same performance and have heard it quite quite differently. At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to like what they like, regardless.
If you are going to claim that someone is "better than" or "the best" you should make your criteria clear and provide some evidence that you have examined the alternatives.
The idea that someone can become an instant expert on a subject after three minutes exposure from TV is ridiculous; however, after many years of experience, often backed up by further research and learning from others, someone who is a keen amateur can form opinions that are worthwhile.
It is not snobbish or elitist to like the best - we have no hesitation in proclaiming what is the best in certain fields - I cited football and cars - and also acknowledging that second and third rate, and even barely adequate, have their value.
If people think Paul P077s has passion, they simply haven't heard enough alternatives. In comparison to some of the singers I have heard, classical and pop, he's like a wet blancmange. If however, you think he is passionate, and think that that 'passion' matters more than technique, consider how an absence of technique will help him project to the furthest corner of a hall holding 2,000, 4,000 or 6,000 people, whether it be the most delicate pianissimo or a full-bodied riding over a hundred-strong orchestra and fifty strong choir. Consider how absence of technique will enable him to sing, not just for three minutes in a TV studio, but throughout an opera lasting two, three, four, maybe five hours. Twice a week, week after week, year after year. All without a microphone. For decades. Sometimes while lying flat on his stomach, or with his head in the orchestra pit, or climbing stairs, or attached to a woman, or in cumbersome costumes.
Puccini was the master at manipulating audiences by tugging at the heart strings with music that some - by no means all - listeners have described as syrupy and sentimental; have you considered that you are responding to his music just as he intended. As it is claimed he wrote arias of the just the right length for the recording media of the day, it is pretty certain he would be delighted by You Tube. But there is plenty of evidence that a wobbly performance by a pub singer isn't what he had in mind when he wrote Turandot.
If you think that somehow, this fairly decent pub singer can suddenly become an international opera star, think again. Like just about everything, in the arts, sport, business, driving, cooking, one becomes good by study, practice, practice, practice, experience, learning from mistakes (and triumphs), starting small and working up. And practice.
It is said that all that matters is the audience. Well, I wonder how many of those instant experts have become an audience for an opera, as in buying tickets for an actual live production, or buying a CD/DVD of an actual opera. I would contend that that is vanishingly few, so please leave the critical judgements to the actual real paying audiences, not those carried away in short-lived wave of hype.
And of course Potts will get a recording contract. He will be summoned into a studio by promises of rich rewards (sales dependent). He will record a number of tracks, probably pretty much the same stuff that Russell Watson has previously recorded, and with a similar absence of individual interpretation or insight. The best engineers will manipulate and change the product to make it sound like he has a voice. He will be booked to tag along on Katherine Jenkins' next tour, which will tie in with the release of the album, and be combined with signing sessions in record shops, and scripted interviews on local radio. Tesco etc will receive the standard commission to display the product prominently, and ClassicFM will receive their usual bribe 'payola' to plug it. The records will sell to exactly the same people who think that having a collection of CDs of Andrea Bocelli, Russell Watson, Katherine Jenkins and Il Divo crooning arias and massacring pop songs makes them "opera fans" and thus, in their minds, superior to people who are into rock, pop, world, folk etc, yet their lives will remain untouched by the beauty of the unamplified human voice riding over an orchestra and choir and filling a hall with its sound. Yes, I do feel smug that I can enjoy that. But it's not difficult for anyone else to do so, if they so wish - every city has at least occasional opera performances and every town and village has its unamplified performances of live classical music, usually cheaper than a night at the pub.
I'm only going to approve comments from people who have either commented before on this blog or otherwise give me a sense of not just cruising in on a hit-and-run from a search engine
