Song of the Week - 'South of Love'

As we approach the festive season, this might qualify as rather a topical song.  It's a jaunty little acoustic number that pokes fun at the guy who leaves the office party with a swagger in his step, believing his aftershave aroma to be rather more impressive than it actually is.  

We’d probably want to avoid this guy, perhaps because –in the wrong circumstances- we might well be this guy.  Listen out for a modest little Beatles homage at the end. Let’s hope Yoko and her lawyers aren’t listening.

South of Love 

Will democracy hit the wall?

In the wake of Barack Obama’s victory in the US election, there has been a fair amount of knee-jerk analysis of the demographics of the vote and the possible implications for future campaigns. Many commentators have stated that the Republicans simply have to change (that is, move closer to the so-called centre ground) in order to have any chance of ever winning the presidency again. But, for a party that was perceived by many to have been too extreme to be electable, to have gathered 48.3% of the popular vote doesn’t look like a bad return.

In the rush to suggest what the Republicans should, or shouldn't, do to become 'electable', nobody seems to have considered the possibility that the most important thing in politics might be to have principles and to stick to them. We have become accustomed to the notion that serious (i.e. winning) political parties must be ruthless, focus-group driven, vote-gathering machines, designed to hoover up everyone on the so-called middle ground. It isn’t just that nobody wants to fall out over political ideas anymore, it’s almost as if nobody even wants to have much in the way of political differences. The so-called 'third way’ has become the only way. Given the declining turnout at successive elections, I’d be surprised if that many folk genuinely believed that this arrangement was going well for the liberal democracies.

At any given point in history, there will be certain ideas and philosophies that will be deemed unelectable, but that is not to say that such situations will always prevail. We have no idea of what might happen in the next five minutes or the next five years; we have no way accurately to predict the impact of what Harold McMillan famously called "events, dear boy, events."
It is possible that the middle ground might move. It is possible that conditions may one day prevail in which a political party might be able to stand and win on a set of policies and principles that have not been watered down and hopelessly compromised by focus-group fudging and slavish sensitivity to opinion polls. It would be refreshing to encounter a party with the courage to say: “These are the things we stand for. This is what we plan to do if we get elected. If you don’t like it, don’t vote for us.”

Unfortunately, we appear to be lumbered with a professional political class, ever-willing to adjust its ‘principles’ to appeal to as many pressure groups, minority interests, ethnic factions and voting blocks as possible. It seems that no party can gain power without first bribing the electorate to vote for it. Unless we can break this cycle of electoral sweeteners, the prediction made by the 19th century political writer Alexis de Tocqueville is likely to come true:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

If anyone thinks I am over-egging this particular pudding, I will remind you that there are currently two EU member countries being governed by groups of unelected technocrats. Who would bet against that number increasing at some point in the next eighteen months?

Cock-up or conspiracy?

A few weeks ago, it emerged that the flagship BBC news and current affairs show 'Newsnight' had declined to run a story alleging that one of the Beeb’s leading stars had been a long-term predatory paedophile; the reason given for pulling the transmission was that there was a lack of evidence. Considering the number of Jimmy Saville stories that are now in the public domain, that seems like quite a remarkable claim.
Then, last Friday, having endured a great deal of criticism in the wake of that decision, someone at the BBC thought that it would be a good idea to run a Newsnight programme alleging that another privileged and powerful man had, over several years, sexually abused a number of vulnerable children. Standards for journalistic rigour had evidently slipped a little after the Saville cancellation, because it was decided that this latest edition could run without the bothersome requirement to accumulate anything resembling a body of evidence.

These grim developments made the resignation of Director General George Entwhistle inevitable; anyone who heard his interview on Saturday morning would have realised that he was already a dead man walking.
But how could so many things have gone wrong in the first place? How could so many reporting guidelines have been ignored? There are very clear rules on what should happen when serious allegations are going to be made against any individual. Given that the Lord McAlpine story was all over the internet at least ten hours before Newsnight went on air on Friday 2nd November, it is truly mind-boggling to discover that a 'right of reply' call wasn't made to the man at the centre of the allegations.

In their haste to run with the story, Newsnight forgot the basic requirement to check the facts. Steve Messham, the man who made the accusations, was not even shown a picture of McAlpine and asked the simple question: “Do you think this is the man who abused you?” Now that he has seen a picture, Mr Messham has stated that McAlpine was definitely not the alleged abuser.

Most commentators have put this mess down to monumental incompetence, but is there just a possibility that there is something more significant at play? The BBC is under fire; it has long-term political opponents who claim that it is ripe for radical reform. It is currently confronted with allegations that it allowed a senior employee -despite persistent rumours and allegations- to not only get away with various sexual offences, but granted him a flagship light entertainment show that allowed guaranteed, continuous access to children.

As the revelations and the resultant media attacks accumulate, anyone inclined to conspiracy theories might suggest that somehow floating the idea that “everyone was at it back then” could be seen as a legitimate part of any defence strategy. Dragging major government figures into the mire might help paint a picture of a pre-PC ‘anything-goes’ culture in which pop stars, politicians and actors could, so long as they were relatively discreet, pursue their somewhat unusual tastes. In the context of such a permissive culture, the BBC's indulgence of Saville and his chums might appear to be just that little bit less heinous.
In mounting this counter-offensive, it would also be in the BBC’s interests to impugn its putative opponents, thereby damaging the credibility of their arguments. Perhaps it is not entirely insignificant that the man at the centre of the unsubstantiated Newsnight allegations, Lord McAlpine, was a senior Tory from the Thatcher era.

So -by default or by design- the debate over the future of the BBC may have taken an unexpected twist. The Director General has gone and it is likely that one or two journalistic heads will also roll, but some might consider that a small price to pay if the institution itself manages to survive the coming storm.
All you have to do is spend a few minutes online and check out any number of discussion boards to realise that, for a significant number of folk, the idea that Margaret Thatcher's cabinet was probably riddled with child molesters is germinating quite nicely. For a beleaguered BBC, faced with implacable opponents threatening root and branch reform of its entire operation, that might turn out to be rather a useful card to play.

But sadly, for whatever else it has achieved, this wretched affair has done nothing to help the cause of any victims of abuse.

What makes you Scottish?

Now that the deal is done, some aspects of the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence remain puzzling. I suspect that Mister Salmond thinks he has won a major concession by including young people under 18 in the vote; he’s a pragmatic operator and will no doubt fancy his chances of persuading younger voters of the benefits of independence. Lowering the voting age is quite an innovation for a party which, not so long ago, raised –from 16 to 18- the age that cigarettes could legally be bought and would like to raise the legal age for buying alcohol from 18 to 21. The Scottish government appears not to see (or chooses to disregard) any contradiction between granting these young folk a say in the most important political issue of the last 300 years, but not allowing them to have a fag while they think about how to cast their vote. And, at the very least, it seems something of an oddity that a kid of 16 or 17 will be able to vote in the referendum but not in a general election. I've yet to hear a convincing explanation as to how that makes sense.

Another troubling aspect of this referendum is that any British, Commonwealth or EU citizen will get to vote, as long as they are resident in Scotland. A Frenchman working in the oil industry and living in Aberdeen, for example, will get the chance to determine Scotland’s future, but a Scotswoman who has moved as far south as Durham will have no say.

I know that if I moved to Manchester tomorrow, I wouldn’t presume to describe myself as a Mancunian and wouldn’t expect to have much of a considered opinion on issues pertaining to political life in Manchester; my roots would remain in Scotland and I’d still consider myself Scottish. According to estimates, there are around 800,000 Scots living in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would not be unreasonable to guess that a high proportion of these exiles might think like me and would wish to have a stake in the future of their country but, in the 2014 referendum, they will be disenfranchised. What exactly would be difficult about arranging a postal vote for these exiled Scots? Perhaps the main ‘difficulty’ is that Mr Salmond has calculated that people who have moved south for economic reasons might be more inclined to vote in favour of the union.

One of the big arguments being put forward is that the independence issue shouldn't hinge on our ethnicity. The ‘Scotland’ that will vote is merely the diverse community of peoples who happen to be registered to vote here in 2014. I have no particular difficulty with the argument that the cultural or ethnic background of the voters isn’t that important, but surely you can’t have it both ways?
If 'Scottishness' is not about your ethnicity, but is mainly about your post code, what exactly is the point in going to all this fuss to break up a partnership that has worked for more than 300 years? If someone can move a few miles up the road from Carlisle to Langholm and instantly become ‘Scottish’, what’s the big deal about national identity?

What exactly is the point of 'Scottishness' if there is no ethnic component to it? And if there is an ethnic component, why are we denying 800,000 Scots the right to vote?

Song of the Week - 'Reign of the Stupid'

It was once said that if you put a million monkeys on a million typewriters, they would eventually come up with a Shakespearian play.  Someone very smart has pointed out that the internet has rendered this remark demonstrably untrue. I hold to the theory that the person who came up with the monkey /typewriter /Shakespeare / theory was probably a monkey.      

When I wrote this song, I was influenced by watching a TV programme on the ‘National Television Awards’. There were some very well-dressed people being rewarded, celebrated, congratulated and fawned over for their various televisual efforts. As this song says, they were giving themselves prizes and everything.  As a consequence, they probably felt even better about themselves than they did before.  Isn’t showbiz just great?

 

Anyway, I can’t sit here talking all day ... I’m going to zap channels, because I really don’t want to miss ‘Help, I’m almost as fat as my dog!’  On a musical note, the chords on this song are pretty nice and I feel truly honoured to have nicked them from some of my favourite artists. 

The image is by Dan Meyers at the wonderful Unsplash.com.

Reign of the stupid

'Philip Larkin - A Writer's Life' by Andrew Motion

This comprehensive account of the life and work of Philip Larkin is remarkable in its detail and scope, particularly when you consider that the poet insisted, on his deathbed, that his diaries be destroyed. At times, it reads like a novel as we follow the development of the bookish, precocious middle-class child who became a jazz-obsessed undergraduate before ‘settling’ for a career as a librarian. Showing some flair for the work, he made his mark in his first job by reviving a dowdy Shropshire branch before moving to Leicester, Belfast and eventually, Hull University. Library triumphs aside, the writing is what we are interested in and Motion reveals a great deal about the poet’s various struggles with his art. Concerns about the worth of his endeavours loom large, as does the influence of his autocratic father and demanding mother; it is no wonder that one of his most famous lines was: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”.

Some modern critics have foolishly chosen to judge Larkin by today’s politically correct standards and, invariably, he is decreed to be ‘unsound’ on just about any topic you could mention. There is, however, a sense in which his life and work can be seen as illustrative of the disillusionment of the post-war years; many of the best minds of his time will have shared his opinions on, say, social engineering, modernism and the decline of empire. Motion is broadly sympathetic and, rather than condemn the poet for some of his ‘old-fashioned’ views, tacitly recognises that he was a product of his times. Complicated and contradictory as Larkin often was, one suspects that some of the so-called ‘damning’ correspondence detailed in this book was written in something close to the spirit of caricature, designed to amuse and tailored to what he thought the other person wanted to hear; his letters to Kingsley Amis and Barbara Pym are examples of that.

Having long feared –presciently, as it turned out- that he would not live beyond the age of sixty-three, his final years were marked by alcoholism, bitterness and regret. Towards the end, he confided to Monica Jones (one of his long-term girlfriends) that he was “spiralling down towards extinction”. In truth, that was the kind of remark that he could easily have made at any point during his previous forty years. Reading Larkin’s poetry, one knows -for all the mordant humour- that boredom, failure, disappointment and death are never very far away. It is quite sad that in spite of accumulating an impressive body of work, he could often view his artistic life as a rather tepid failure.

Chosen to edit the Oxford book of Twentieth Century English Verse, Larkin made enemies in literary and academic circles when the final selection appeared to reflect his own view that modernist poets were often elitist, wilfully obscure and somewhat over-rated by the cognoscenti. But what some interpreted as a cantankerous and conservative eccentricity on this topic actually reflected a principled belief in the value of verse that was accessible to all. There is something very English about that kind of unfussy and unpretentious approach to art; indeed, it is probably one the reasons that Larkin’s work endures.

Until reading this biography, I was unaware that his love life was quite so complicated. He obviously had strong desires for love and sex, but also a need for solitude. Having made the decision to put his writing before other considerations, he scrupulously chose to avoid making a firm commitment to any one of several women with whom he might have led a very different kind of life. His work turned out to be remarkable, but one can't help but wonder whether the women in his life would have considered it all to have been worth it.

There is no such thing as musical 'guilty pleasures' #2

Further to my recent observations on the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ in music, something has reminded me of another episode of foolishness that probably stopped me getting as much enjoyment from music as I should have.             

 

Nik Kershaw’s recent UK tour, in addition to promoting his new album ‘Ei8ht’, featured a complete run-through of his platinum-selling ‘Human Racing’ album from 1984. I was particularly happy to attend a couple of these shows because I had more or less missed out on the ‘Human Racing’ album first time around, not because I was unaware of its existence, but because I was daft enough to have felt guilty about liking a certain kind of pop music.    

I recall that when he first appeared on Top of the Pops, my girlfriend described him as looking like a cross between Gary Numan and someone from Buck’s Fizz; I don’t think it was meant as a compliment. He had obviously had some kind of fashion makeover and looked like what I would have pejoratively described as a ‘manufactured’ pop star (as if other more ‘authentic’ pop stars just appeared out of the ether, fully formed and bursting with talent and integrity). On the final night of 1984, the BBC showed a live transmission of one of his gigs. In spite of the fact that I quite fancied watching it, I kept only half an eye on proceedings and eventually consented to the TV being tuned to something else. I knew deep down that I found his music quirky and tuneful, but I couldn’t give myself wholeheartedly to it, because, well … it just wasn’t ‘cool’ to admit to liking someone who featured in Smash Hits and who was screamed at by teenage girls. I mean, come on.  That kind of stuff, surely, was just not culturally significant? It didn’t have, to use Woody Allen’s phrase, ‘total heaviosity’. 

          

Some would argue that 1984 was a great year for British pop music. Wham, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Culture Club all topped the charts, but they made little impact on me.  Haughtily and ostentatiously snubbing the charts, I would have been too busy with other stuff. When, for instance, I bought my 12 inch copy of ‘What difference does it make?’ by The Smiths, I was convinced that I was witnessing the rise of the coolest and most culturally significant band on the planet. There is no doubt that they made a cultural impact, but –to my ears- much of their work now seems bereft of melody, with many of the songs failing to cash the cheques written by Morrissey’s witty titles.   

I was a big fan of the introspective singer-songwriter David Sylvian. His ‘Brilliant Trees’ album was one of my favourites of 1984, but nowadays I struggle with his constipated vocal stylings and humourless existential angst (and any songwriter that references Picasso and Sartre in his work is surely trying a wee bit too hard). I also admired the dreamy post-punk soundscapes of Cocteau Twins, but find now that I tire rather quickly of their ethereal, meandering, effects-driven epics. Although Liz Fraser’s melodies are sometimes pretty, the lyrical gibberish I once thought charming (or even mysterious) now seems merely annoying.      

Another act that I would definitely have name-checked in any conversation in which I would have felt the need to appear cool (namely: any conversation that would have taken place between ‘waking up’ and ‘going to sleep’) was Echo and the Bunnymen. But whenever I hear their stuff now, I find it difficult to like; much of it appears plodding and pedestrian, drearily anchored by what sounds like a very limited range of keys and tempos.  Most of the time, Ian McCulloch is not so much singing as posturing, sounding like a lippy social sciences student who wished he had studied at the Sorbonne. His lyrics somehow manage to sound vacuous, gauche, pretentious and glib at the same time. The Bunnymen’s 1984 album ‘Ocean Rain’ was launched with a PR campaign that proclaimed it to be the greatest album ever made. It wasn’t. It had a few decent tunes, but the tasteful orchestration helped disguise the fact that most of the songs were little more than average.   

So, off the top of my head, those are four acts I would have enjoyed in 1984, but am quite indifferent to now, along with one act that I pretended not to like in 1984, but am pretty keen on now. 

Hamstrung by silly student snobberies, I let Nik Kershaw’s chart-busting glory days pass me and only deigned to catch his act once his commercial star had started to wane. During the nineties, he took a long sabbatical from performing before returning with the sublime ‘15 minutes’ album in 1998. Mature, reflective, tuneful and adult in its lyrical concerns, it was all that good middle-of-the-road pop should be. His albums now sell in modest amounts, but the recent tour gave his fans the chance to relive the halcyon days of 1984 and, of course, presented a fool like me with a belated opportunity to see those big hit songs performed live.  

The enjoyment I got from these concerts has led me to reflect once more upon how we experience, perceive and enjoy music. How do we judge musical quality? What makes folk imagine that some music is ‘cool’, while other music isn’t? What gives a piece of music longevity? Does age bring greater clarity about what we like, or does it merely make us more conservative in our tastes? Why do some songs remain in our hearts while others lose their lustre?  

I have the feeling I might return to this topic.

In the meantime, here is Nik Kershaw bringing in the New Year at the Hammersmith Odeon on 31^st December 1984, complete with balloons, eighties-style dancing and screaming girls.