Music

And they’re off. The ensuing conversation about the development of the area, home to The Clash’s beloved Westway, takes in the Ladbroke family’s purchase of Ladbroke Grove, Lord Hill’s ownership of Westbourne Park, the Rachman era and the Profumo affair. Albarn and Simonon’s impressive command of local history would make a great open-top bus tour, although it probably wouldn’t move very fast, or go very far.

Even though the album won’t be released until next year, ‘The Good, The Bad And The Queen’ makes its debut next week at the Electric Proms, a new urban festival set up by the BBC. The Electric Proms are intended to lend the same weight to pop music as the somewhat more famous classical Proms, which the Beeb has been sponsoring for an astounding 80 years. Feature continues

The electric version has a similar raison d’être – all the artists who have been invited to take part have been asked to produce something new for the event, whether that’s arranging their existing works in a new way or, say, putting together a brand new super-group spanning three continents and three generations. Sadly the tickets for the GBQ night sold out ages ago, but that doesn’t mean you can’t see the show. Each performance for the Electric Proms will be shown on TV and streamed over the internet so that everyone in the country can join in the fun, as part of the Electric Proms’ remit to provide some value for all that licence fee money.

Festival director Lorna Clarke says, ‘I don’t want people to just do tried and tested work, I want it to be a mixture, I want people to present music that people haven’t heard before. Some people said, “Well, that’s not gonna work, is it? People won’t know the words, so they won’t know if they like it or not, and how are you going to sell any tickets?” I said, “Well, you have to give more faith to Londoners. They’re pretty sophisticated actually.” ’

Quite aside from the GBQ debut, the rest of the line-up draws a line through the evolution of London’s music, from a rare appearance by first-generation calypso guru Young Tiger to a set from Time Out favourite Jamie T, whose punky songwriting casually subsumes elements of all forms of music from dub to hip hop.

Between its dubbed-out basslines, uncomputable Afrobeat rhythms and sprawling ambitions, the GBQ album should sound like it comes from an undiscovered continent. In reality, it sounds like it could only have been made in London. The actual sound of it, however, is hard to describe. It’s filmic, certainly. Atmospheric, without doubt. And it’s definitely good. Very good – you’ll like it. Beyond that, you’ll have to make your own mind up what it sounds like. It’s the product of four very individual musicians (five counting Danger Mouse) taking a sound in numerous very different directions. Ultimately, it’s in the greatest tradition of London music, and life. That is, it’s a jumble of styles, attitudes, language and fashions stolen from all over the world, recombined and repackaged in a fresh way, and stamped for export. After all, most of the things that make London so great, from Cleopatra’s Needle to shwarma kebabs, were stolen from other countries during the age of empire.

‘We’re a nation of pirates, really,’ muses Simonon. ‘And I suppose musically we’ve been that too. We took what’s become known as rock ’n’ roll and we sold it back to the Americans. Unfortunately The Beatles, in my opinion anyway, ruined American music, because they displaced a lot of great music. Now Americans have generally never heard of Bo Diddley and aren’t really in touch with their heritage.’

‘The Beatles are to America,’ deadpans Albarn, ‘what Green Day was to The Clash.’