I know it's all for the kiddies, but that's no excuse. Frank Skinner and Lee Mack gallivanting through Europe on the first leg of Children In Need's Around the World in 80 Days was largely as uncontroversial as you'd expect entertainment in the name of charity to be. That's fine. However...why did they have to drag Massive Attack into it?
It is, these days, very standard for a programme of any description (from Top Gear to Property Ladder) to use a vast array of music from a multitude of genres. Secret Machines don't get a look in on Radio 1 but their booming drum-heavy sound will end up showcasing a shiny vehicle (you could tell it was a good one because it was silver and went wooooosh and stuff). And on the aforementioned Save the Kiddies travelogue they even had room for School of Seven Bells amidst the echoes of England's greatest ever football spanking in Budapest.
But then, to accompany a slightly fretful moment involving a Visa (or lack of, seemingly solved pretty quickly by a few bob), we had Massive Attack's "Angel". Sure, they looked a bit anxious, but this is a piece of music so monumentally malevolent that it could (no - should) soundtrack the coming of the devil, something so deeply foreboding that it's throbbing bass refrain feels like it's being played by a ghoul somewhere in the caves of your soul. It's like putting Picasso's Guernica on a cereal box to represent a story about a bunny rabbit with a sad face.
Music and images and context used together well creates something fabulously multi-layered and powerful. Used badly and it's Hollyoaks. Next week Nick from The Apprentice gets his soup served to him slightly too cold to the tune of Mozart's Requiem. Maybe.
It is, these days, very standard for a programme of any description (from Top Gear to Property Ladder) to use a vast array of music from a multitude of genres. Secret Machines don't get a look in on Radio 1 but their booming drum-heavy sound will end up showcasing a shiny vehicle (you could tell it was a good one because it was silver and went wooooosh and stuff). And on the aforementioned Save the Kiddies travelogue they even had room for School of Seven Bells amidst the echoes of England's greatest ever football spanking in Budapest.
But then, to accompany a slightly fretful moment involving a Visa (or lack of, seemingly solved pretty quickly by a few bob), we had Massive Attack's "Angel". Sure, they looked a bit anxious, but this is a piece of music so monumentally malevolent that it could (no - should) soundtrack the coming of the devil, something so deeply foreboding that it's throbbing bass refrain feels like it's being played by a ghoul somewhere in the caves of your soul. It's like putting Picasso's Guernica on a cereal box to represent a story about a bunny rabbit with a sad face.
Music and images and context used together well creates something fabulously multi-layered and powerful. Used badly and it's Hollyoaks. Next week Nick from The Apprentice gets his soup served to him slightly too cold to the tune of Mozart's Requiem. Maybe.
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