Rock’n’roll is not a business that forgives old age. Most of its icons lived fast, died young, or simply got out while they were still ahead.
We venerate Lennon and we scorn McCartney. Barrett is the genius of Pink Floyd, Waters and Gilmour are dismissed as bickering pensioners. Cobain remains a touchstone, Vedder becomes an irrelevance simply by continuing to breathe and refusing to have his youthful legacy set in amber.
Would Pete Townshend’s reputation have been better served by following Keith Moon and dying before he got old? In our present culture, yes. The experience of a 62 year old is considered musically worthless in a medium that becomes increasingly pre-pubescent – coming soon, the first embryonic pop star: keep on rocking in the womb world.
Worse, because the likes of Townshend, McCartney and Dylan continue to write and record what the tastemakers instantly dismiss as sub-senile geriatrica, their back catalogue is similarly trashed.
Had Mick Jagger been killed by the Hells Angels back in 1969 in the wake of Altamont as has been suggested recently by an FBI agent, he would be the ultimate holy man of rock’n’roll. Instead, he’s treated as a running joke. The man who was once the Lord of Misrule, the demonic ringmaster of all that was dark and seductive about rock’n’roll, he has been rendered impotent by caricature. It must be all the more galling for him because of the fact that he shares a stage with one of the few rockers whose legend simply grows larger as he grows older, Keith Richards.
Keef is the indestructible skeleton of the music that tore up the latter half of the 20th century, the Don, the overseer for whom the world only has more affection and more respect as the days roll by, as the wrinkles turn into cracks and the global reservoir of Jack Daniel’s diminishes.
Alongside him, Jagger is dismissed as a phoney. Keef is the real deal, Mick the chancer. Mick says he never reads the papers, and if he’s telling the truth, it’s probably a sound self defence mechanism. All superstars are painted with a few broad strokes, but while Keith’s enhance him, Jagger’s shred him. Nowadays, he’s this hipless, post-anorexic frame, topped by a leer of lips, once sexual, now dribbling.
Then there’s the viper’s tongue that lashes out and wraps itself around the throat of your daughter, maybe your granddaughter – it used to be your sister but all of us have got a little older since then. All except Mick, who never allows himself, or at least his persona, to age. And even that’s somehow sad.
Time then to challenge the conventional wisdom for Mick, in his prime, should be revered not reviled. Jagger invented the rock’n’roll star. He was its poster-child, the real deal. He was the pose, the swagger, the arrogance. Boys wanted to be him, girls just wanted him. In popular music, that’s ten-tenths of the law. Jagger is an archetype, he’s an original and his reputation demands rehabilitation.
More than anything, he is one of the great singers of the rock’n’roll era. Keith Richards might be the human riff, the lickmeister who just churns out those memorable Stones breaks, but without Mick’s voice, Keef’s dark, demonic music just would not be the same.
Imagine any other singer who could have voiced “Sympathy For The Devil” or “Gimme Shelter” on those records at that time. You can’t. Those songs are his, they belong to him, imbued with his personality, Jagger living inside them as they rise and fall on his extraordinary technique. That hasn’t changed since the day they were recorded. Forty years on, that’s a Sinatraesque achievement.
Whenever you think of the Stones, you have to think of The Beatles too, so symbiotic was their 1960s relationship. But they were very different animals, not least because the Stones had a front man, a singer who defined the job. John and Paul were never out front in the way as Mick, who would prowl the stage, a predator, caged for a moment, but always like to leap the chasm between band and audience, always ready to electrify the crowd, always capable of moving the experience from theatre to music hall to bear pit to boxing ring and back again, all with the arch of an eyebrow, the thrust of an arm.
In the end though, it’s as a singer that Jagger’s genius will longest endure. If you want proof, take a listen to “Under My Thumb”, one of the finest vocal performances of the rock era. It’s misogynistic lyric means the song is long since discredited, but so perfect is the phrasing, the timing, Jagger need never have recorded another thing and would still be seen as a giant. The contempt that drips from that mouth with the simple “uhmm” he inserts as he licks those lips and dismisses his girl as the “sweetest pet” is masterly. It’s a cornerstone achievement.
No, it’s not pleasant, but it’s a slice of real life, as it was and so, probably, shall it ever be. How often does music give you that these days?
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Patti Smith & Kevin Shields - The Coral Sea
So here’s the thing. Patti Smith became the “voice of her generation”. Back in the 1970s, she was the Queen of CBGBs, the rider of the new wave, punk priestess, you know all the labels. Yet she did it by taking voices of previous generations, the romantic poets, the beats, then strapping on a backbeat and being urgent. Most of all being urgent, being the seer, the sayer. “I got something to say, you gotta hear this, I don’t know what I’m doing or how I’m doing it, but I gotta get this out of me”.
She didn’t have the classically beautiful voice, she wasn’t a schooled musician, but what she had to say had to be said. She had to communicate, she had to let her consciousness flow into the mainstream, polluting it to cleanse it. But the mainstream was, is, always shall be, happy enough to stay fouled up. And so Patti’s career has been one of preaching largely to the converted. “The Coral Sea” is not going to change any of that.
Even for Patti Smith, this two disc set is one that challenges, confronts, confounds. After making perhaps the most commercial record of her career in the covers set “Twelve”, this is her mining deep from the well, going back to the source and howling into the teeth of the gale.
It’s not a record in the conventional sense. Patti doesn’t sing on it, bar a few brief snatches. This is a reading of her love letter to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, her bloody valentine as she describes him, who she saw torn from the planet by the ravages of AIDS, forced to sit and watch him suffer in the helplessness that diminishes us all when all we can do is sit and wait for the inevitable, a despair which never truly heals. As Mapplethorpe intimated through his words in her poetry, even in suffering, dying is easy. It’s those of us who carry on living that dwell in purgatory, tortured by our impotence.
Smith’s performance is beyond compelling. It’s not easy to listen to, and it must have been harder to perform. She credits Kevin Shields, her musical collaborator on this, as giving her the environment in which she could separate herself sufficiently from the material to endure the pain of the reading. Shields’ music is respectful, appropriate, Lou Reed like in its textures, wholly in context.
But it’s Smith who captures the attention. I’ve always enjoyed her readings every bit as much as her music, an Old Testament prophet intoning from the hills, bringing truths and maybes and lies and life, making them whole, making them real. If musically she is the next link in the chain after Dylan, as a reader, a beat poet, she’s carrying on the tradition of Ginsberg.
In front of an audience, there is always a responsibility to deliver what you promised on the ticket, and she’s professional enough to do that and do it magnificently. Inevitably, there is the twang of theatrics in there, it could not be any other way, she has to wear some form of mask to enable her to get through material as exposing, as agonising as this must be. But on each disc, there are moments where that mask slips and she’s clearly back in the moment, the moment of suffering, the moment of writing, thrilling bursts of humanity. There won’t be a more compelling record in anyone's collection. It’s not easy listening, it’s not background music, but if you want a slice of truth, get it.
This is reality art, not the garbage that masquerades as “reality” on television. This is life, love, loss. And in the end, what else have we got?
She didn’t have the classically beautiful voice, she wasn’t a schooled musician, but what she had to say had to be said. She had to communicate, she had to let her consciousness flow into the mainstream, polluting it to cleanse it. But the mainstream was, is, always shall be, happy enough to stay fouled up. And so Patti’s career has been one of preaching largely to the converted. “The Coral Sea” is not going to change any of that.
Even for Patti Smith, this two disc set is one that challenges, confronts, confounds. After making perhaps the most commercial record of her career in the covers set “Twelve”, this is her mining deep from the well, going back to the source and howling into the teeth of the gale.
It’s not a record in the conventional sense. Patti doesn’t sing on it, bar a few brief snatches. This is a reading of her love letter to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, her bloody valentine as she describes him, who she saw torn from the planet by the ravages of AIDS, forced to sit and watch him suffer in the helplessness that diminishes us all when all we can do is sit and wait for the inevitable, a despair which never truly heals. As Mapplethorpe intimated through his words in her poetry, even in suffering, dying is easy. It’s those of us who carry on living that dwell in purgatory, tortured by our impotence.
Smith’s performance is beyond compelling. It’s not easy to listen to, and it must have been harder to perform. She credits Kevin Shields, her musical collaborator on this, as giving her the environment in which she could separate herself sufficiently from the material to endure the pain of the reading. Shields’ music is respectful, appropriate, Lou Reed like in its textures, wholly in context.
But it’s Smith who captures the attention. I’ve always enjoyed her readings every bit as much as her music, an Old Testament prophet intoning from the hills, bringing truths and maybes and lies and life, making them whole, making them real. If musically she is the next link in the chain after Dylan, as a reader, a beat poet, she’s carrying on the tradition of Ginsberg.
In front of an audience, there is always a responsibility to deliver what you promised on the ticket, and she’s professional enough to do that and do it magnificently. Inevitably, there is the twang of theatrics in there, it could not be any other way, she has to wear some form of mask to enable her to get through material as exposing, as agonising as this must be. But on each disc, there are moments where that mask slips and she’s clearly back in the moment, the moment of suffering, the moment of writing, thrilling bursts of humanity. There won’t be a more compelling record in anyone's collection. It’s not easy listening, it’s not background music, but if you want a slice of truth, get it.
This is reality art, not the garbage that masquerades as “reality” on television. This is life, love, loss. And in the end, what else have we got?
Some People Are Crazy
An outpouring of grief for somebody not a relative nor a close friend, it has a horrible ring of falseness about it, the Diana effect. But the death of John Martyn on 29 January 2009 cut deep. Why wouldn’t it?
The music had been doing just that for 40 years, and whatever the stylistic shifts over those decades, the kernel was the same. A giant, raging bear of a man, a wee, delicate folkie, and every compass point in between. Martyn peeled back his hide and let us peer inside at the good, the bad, the ugly.
Let’s not canonise the man in death, not least because you’d hear him bellowing at you from the other side at such ludicrous caricature. Martyn was a consumer of life, a voracious drinker of its delights and its despairs, a man of short temper and genuine gentleness, who recognised his faults and threw them as wide open for discussion as he did his merits – more so, actually. Big John was a flawed man, and all the more interesting for that, holding up the mirror for us to better see ourselves did we dare to look.
Martyn referred to his recordings as his diaries, and in that sense, the man’s life, his autobiography lies out there for us all to enjoy and endure, for at times, not least on the magnificent “Grace And Danger”, it’s harrowing stuff. He pulled no punches be he in the first flush of love or ripping his fingers to shreds amid the shards of its disintegration.
The music had been doing just that for 40 years, and whatever the stylistic shifts over those decades, the kernel was the same. A giant, raging bear of a man, a wee, delicate folkie, and every compass point in between. Martyn peeled back his hide and let us peer inside at the good, the bad, the ugly.
Let’s not canonise the man in death, not least because you’d hear him bellowing at you from the other side at such ludicrous caricature. Martyn was a consumer of life, a voracious drinker of its delights and its despairs, a man of short temper and genuine gentleness, who recognised his faults and threw them as wide open for discussion as he did his merits – more so, actually. Big John was a flawed man, and all the more interesting for that, holding up the mirror for us to better see ourselves did we dare to look.
Martyn referred to his recordings as his diaries, and in that sense, the man’s life, his autobiography lies out there for us all to enjoy and endure, for at times, not least on the magnificent “Grace And Danger”, it’s harrowing stuff. He pulled no punches be he in the first flush of love or ripping his fingers to shreds amid the shards of its disintegration.
The big, bluff showman was part of who and what he was, but it was also a screen door, keeping people at a distance from a man whose skin was translucent. His emotional thermostat was irreparably damaged but the music circulated whether the temperature was raging hot or ice cold, all moods and means, ends and beginnings.
An evening in his company was a rare delight, from the surreal between song banter, often trapped in some ongoing conversation with his inner self that we were eavesdropping upon, occasionally doling out an end of the pier joke, always grabbing another belt of beer. Then picking up that Gibson and making it soar, laugh, weep, tease, taunt. Or picking at an acoustic, lilting, haunting, beguiling, chilling, naked.
Then there was that voice, silken nails, words often inaudible yet always subconsciously seeping, sweet soul music, consolation and conversation. A jazzer, a rocker, a folkie. Above all, a great old blues man, a voice from a different past and a troubadour for a future that will perhaps forget him. It will be the future’s loss.
Up there, or down below, he’ll be looking at these tributes and giving them the narrow stare, the mocking glance, because emotion was for songs, not for conversation. But John, don’t laugh at it you swine. We miss you. You should have stayed longer.
Some people talk wouldness and couldness. Some people are just plain good.
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
From Here To Eternity
Help for Heroes is a charity that football has done a great deal to support in the last year or so, with the Football League in particular adopting it as an official charity and offering plenty of assistance and fundraising opportunities for a cause that raises funds for those who have been wounded while serving in the armed forces, notably in recent conflicts such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet the link between football and the services is one which dates back many, many years, inevitably so given that footballers and soldiers tend to come from the same place – the expendable factory fodder and cannon fodder that the working people of the nation were once dismissed as. Football, like boxing, was the great escape from the trials and tribulations of that life, but in time of need, whether they had escaped the factory or not, footballers like their peers, could be relied upon to rally to the flag.
Never was that more apparent than in the 1914-18 conflict, the Great War, the war to end all wars as it was billed at the time. Football actually carried on through the 1914/15 season after the war had broken out early on in that campaign and everyone was busy insisting that the war would be over by Christmas which, was as big a lie as “the war to end all wars”.
By December 1914, it was becoming increasingly clear that not only would the war not be over by that Christmas, still others might come and go before peace broke out. So it was that Fred “Spider” Parker, the captain and inspirational leader of Clapton Orient – now Leyton Orient – took his men over the top, away from the safety and security of organised football and into the Army.
Parker became the first footballer to enlist with the 17th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment at a special meeting in Fulham. A further nine of his team mates took their captain’s lead and took the King’s shilling that day, joining what became known as the Footballers’ Regiment, the first football team in this country to join up in such concentrated fashion. By the time of the Armistice in November 1918, some 41 players and officials had left Clapton Orient to sign up for their country, blazing a trail that the rest of the country followed.
The wholesale slaughter that characterised the First World War means that it was inevitable that some of that early band of brothers would pay the ultimate price of serving their country and, on the Somme in 1916, Richard McFadden, William Jonas and George Scott were killed. Given the horrifically iconic nature of that battle and the way its name rings down the ages even a century on, those three have become symbolic of the way in which football sacrificed a generation to the war, a truly golden generation of men for whom service and sacrifice was an ingrained virtue.
In recent times, those three in particular have become the focal point for a campaign by supporters of Leyton Orient, led by Steve Jenkins, to ensure that they and the club’s contribution to the Great War should never be forgotten. As a consequence, the O’s Somme Memorial Fund was launched in August 2009 in order to raise some £15,000 in order to produce and erect a permanent memorial to them on the Somme.
Badges are being sold in aid of the fund, donations are being taken and funds are desperately needed ahead of the planned dedication of the memorial in the summer of 2011. The fund is around half way to its target and, in a game where money is a deeply debased currency these days, perhaps it’s time that we helped it recapture its soul.
Just £15,000 for a monument not only to fallen heroes, but to working people who have always banded together when their country has called upon them, is a pittance. The memorial will speak not only to the fallen of Clapton Orient but to those who across football, and across football fans, who willingly gave up their lives in the service of the country. If football fails to raise such a trivial sum for such a powerfully compellingly cause, what will that say of us, of the current generation who revel in the freedoms those deaths won for us? How will we answer the charge that we have forgotten them, that we have fallen asleep in our comforts? We can do nothing but give anything we can , however little, to prove that football was a noble calling followed by noble people, and that it still can be, that it can still answer the call.
For further details on the appeal, and for information on how to contribute, go to: http://www.orientsupporters.webeden.co.uk/#/somme-memorial-fund/4535333173
Yet the link between football and the services is one which dates back many, many years, inevitably so given that footballers and soldiers tend to come from the same place – the expendable factory fodder and cannon fodder that the working people of the nation were once dismissed as. Football, like boxing, was the great escape from the trials and tribulations of that life, but in time of need, whether they had escaped the factory or not, footballers like their peers, could be relied upon to rally to the flag.
Never was that more apparent than in the 1914-18 conflict, the Great War, the war to end all wars as it was billed at the time. Football actually carried on through the 1914/15 season after the war had broken out early on in that campaign and everyone was busy insisting that the war would be over by Christmas which, was as big a lie as “the war to end all wars”.
By December 1914, it was becoming increasingly clear that not only would the war not be over by that Christmas, still others might come and go before peace broke out. So it was that Fred “Spider” Parker, the captain and inspirational leader of Clapton Orient – now Leyton Orient – took his men over the top, away from the safety and security of organised football and into the Army.
Parker became the first footballer to enlist with the 17th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment at a special meeting in Fulham. A further nine of his team mates took their captain’s lead and took the King’s shilling that day, joining what became known as the Footballers’ Regiment, the first football team in this country to join up in such concentrated fashion. By the time of the Armistice in November 1918, some 41 players and officials had left Clapton Orient to sign up for their country, blazing a trail that the rest of the country followed.
The wholesale slaughter that characterised the First World War means that it was inevitable that some of that early band of brothers would pay the ultimate price of serving their country and, on the Somme in 1916, Richard McFadden, William Jonas and George Scott were killed. Given the horrifically iconic nature of that battle and the way its name rings down the ages even a century on, those three have become symbolic of the way in which football sacrificed a generation to the war, a truly golden generation of men for whom service and sacrifice was an ingrained virtue.
In recent times, those three in particular have become the focal point for a campaign by supporters of Leyton Orient, led by Steve Jenkins, to ensure that they and the club’s contribution to the Great War should never be forgotten. As a consequence, the O’s Somme Memorial Fund was launched in August 2009 in order to raise some £15,000 in order to produce and erect a permanent memorial to them on the Somme.
Badges are being sold in aid of the fund, donations are being taken and funds are desperately needed ahead of the planned dedication of the memorial in the summer of 2011. The fund is around half way to its target and, in a game where money is a deeply debased currency these days, perhaps it’s time that we helped it recapture its soul.
Just £15,000 for a monument not only to fallen heroes, but to working people who have always banded together when their country has called upon them, is a pittance. The memorial will speak not only to the fallen of Clapton Orient but to those who across football, and across football fans, who willingly gave up their lives in the service of the country. If football fails to raise such a trivial sum for such a powerfully compellingly cause, what will that say of us, of the current generation who revel in the freedoms those deaths won for us? How will we answer the charge that we have forgotten them, that we have fallen asleep in our comforts? We can do nothing but give anything we can , however little, to prove that football was a noble calling followed by noble people, and that it still can be, that it can still answer the call.
For further details on the appeal, and for information on how to contribute, go to: http://www.orientsupporters.webeden.co.uk/#/somme-memorial-fund/4535333173
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
War is stupid
The shrewd, insightful words of Mr Boy George esq, shortly before he won his first Nobel Peace Prize, opining, through the medium of the pop charts, that war is, indeed, stupid.
It seems that Mr George was indeed correct in his prognostication for no less an authority than the former chief of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, agrees with him. Speaking at the current inquiry into the Iraq war, she said, “"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine. It is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment.” A unit to make the facts fit the story Dubya wanted to tell.
More compelling yet though was her insistence that "Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam”, adding that Britain and the west are more, not less at risk from terrorism than we were before this all began.
Given that we remain in Afghanistan, this opinion is of far more urgent importance than deliberations of just how we got into Iraq in the first place. That cannot be undone. The current catastrophic loss of life among British and American troops in Afghanistan can be halted.
It’s sad that we seem to learn so few of the lessons of history, particularly when they should be so recent and fresh in our minds. Sadly, truths do not always fit into the narratives the ruling classes want to hand down. They would have us believe that the Cold War was won by Ronald Reagan rounding up a posse, saddling up his horse and winning a shootout with that varmint Gorbachev. That it was all down to the west winning the arms race, that the threat of Star Wars eventually toppled the Kremlin.
In the end though, it was all rather more banal than that. The eastern bloc was beaten from within, by its own citizens, who tired of their own oppression, who railed against the grey, drab conformity. It was MTV, Levis and Coca-Cola that won the Cold War, the urge of those in the east to sample the same kind of consumer lifestyle that we had long since taken for granted. And in the end, it is the same kind of things that will be more effective in bringing some kind of peace again. Provide aid, hope, eventual wealth to those who are currently living in poverty and the motivation for them to take up arms will melt away. If the lives of you and your people are comfortable rather than constant struggle, the imperative to strap explosives to yourself is no longer there.
Not that that will rid the world of the problem of religious extremists, but nor should we pretend that the only such extremists are Islamic, not when anti-abortionists still firebomb and intimidate those who work in abortion clinics in the USA for instance. By their very nature, religious nuts are just that – nuts. If they are motivated by a religious hatred of the infidel, how are you going to stop it?
You can’t wipe out vast swathes of population in nations that might just harbour such extremists. All you can do is create social and political conditions that make it harder for them to radicalise and recruit others to the cause. Invading a nation and stamping all over it is not the way to go.
Which, in roundabout fashion, brings us to Trident and the innate lunacy of replacing it in the years to come at ruinous cost, some £100billion over 25 years – wouldn’t that make a hole in the bank created deficit? This is a very different world to the one of the post-war settlement some 60 years ago, when there was a genuine arms race and the threat of mutually assured destruction. That threat is broadly gone, there appears to be no realistic possibility that any nation state, not even Iran, has any desire or intention of unleashing nuclear weapons upon other nations. It may be that Britain should keep an independent deterrent, though frankly, its hard to see why, but if that is the case, the infinitely cheaper Astute system should certainly be considered.
That was certainly the view of the supine Liberal Democrats in the days when they had principles, ie when they were in opposition and could say anything because it didn’t matter. Nowadays of course, they think that being allowed to disagree with nuclear power policy is ok as long as they don’t vote against it, a little like saying you don’t believe in burning down houses as you pass an arsonist a box of matches and a tin of petrol.
Once upon a time, when Labour needed the votes of the Conservatives to get their last vote on Trident through, the then Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell – who’d be turning in his grave at the current fiasco if only he were dead – said, “The government's got its way, but it's a humiliation for the prime minister that on a policy to which he has attached his own personal reputation he is unable to carry the House of Commons without the votes of the Conservative Party. It's a bit like the Iraq vote once again."
Although the coalition agreement allows the Liberal Democrats to argue for alternatives to Trident, it’s pretty obvious that will amount to nothing, which is why Cameron let them have it. But what is it for? The nation threat has gone. The threat of nuclear destruction lies elsewhere, inside the briefcase of a fanatic who, one day, will wander into Times Square or Trafalgar Square, and open Pandora’s Box. And what good will Trident be then?
It used to be true that, as various Presidents were quoted as saying, if you had them by the balls, their hearts and minds would follow. Those days are gone, blind servitude to the man with the money is over, and politicians need to wake up to that fact and the danger it presents. Hearts and minds are suddenly much more important.
Send that £100billion to aid the developing world and that briefcase might just remain closed.
It seems that Mr George was indeed correct in his prognostication for no less an authority than the former chief of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, agrees with him. Speaking at the current inquiry into the Iraq war, she said, “"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine. It is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment.” A unit to make the facts fit the story Dubya wanted to tell.
More compelling yet though was her insistence that "Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam”, adding that Britain and the west are more, not less at risk from terrorism than we were before this all began.
Given that we remain in Afghanistan, this opinion is of far more urgent importance than deliberations of just how we got into Iraq in the first place. That cannot be undone. The current catastrophic loss of life among British and American troops in Afghanistan can be halted.
It’s sad that we seem to learn so few of the lessons of history, particularly when they should be so recent and fresh in our minds. Sadly, truths do not always fit into the narratives the ruling classes want to hand down. They would have us believe that the Cold War was won by Ronald Reagan rounding up a posse, saddling up his horse and winning a shootout with that varmint Gorbachev. That it was all down to the west winning the arms race, that the threat of Star Wars eventually toppled the Kremlin.
In the end though, it was all rather more banal than that. The eastern bloc was beaten from within, by its own citizens, who tired of their own oppression, who railed against the grey, drab conformity. It was MTV, Levis and Coca-Cola that won the Cold War, the urge of those in the east to sample the same kind of consumer lifestyle that we had long since taken for granted. And in the end, it is the same kind of things that will be more effective in bringing some kind of peace again. Provide aid, hope, eventual wealth to those who are currently living in poverty and the motivation for them to take up arms will melt away. If the lives of you and your people are comfortable rather than constant struggle, the imperative to strap explosives to yourself is no longer there.
Not that that will rid the world of the problem of religious extremists, but nor should we pretend that the only such extremists are Islamic, not when anti-abortionists still firebomb and intimidate those who work in abortion clinics in the USA for instance. By their very nature, religious nuts are just that – nuts. If they are motivated by a religious hatred of the infidel, how are you going to stop it?
You can’t wipe out vast swathes of population in nations that might just harbour such extremists. All you can do is create social and political conditions that make it harder for them to radicalise and recruit others to the cause. Invading a nation and stamping all over it is not the way to go.
Which, in roundabout fashion, brings us to Trident and the innate lunacy of replacing it in the years to come at ruinous cost, some £100billion over 25 years – wouldn’t that make a hole in the bank created deficit? This is a very different world to the one of the post-war settlement some 60 years ago, when there was a genuine arms race and the threat of mutually assured destruction. That threat is broadly gone, there appears to be no realistic possibility that any nation state, not even Iran, has any desire or intention of unleashing nuclear weapons upon other nations. It may be that Britain should keep an independent deterrent, though frankly, its hard to see why, but if that is the case, the infinitely cheaper Astute system should certainly be considered.
That was certainly the view of the supine Liberal Democrats in the days when they had principles, ie when they were in opposition and could say anything because it didn’t matter. Nowadays of course, they think that being allowed to disagree with nuclear power policy is ok as long as they don’t vote against it, a little like saying you don’t believe in burning down houses as you pass an arsonist a box of matches and a tin of petrol.
Once upon a time, when Labour needed the votes of the Conservatives to get their last vote on Trident through, the then Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell – who’d be turning in his grave at the current fiasco if only he were dead – said, “The government's got its way, but it's a humiliation for the prime minister that on a policy to which he has attached his own personal reputation he is unable to carry the House of Commons without the votes of the Conservative Party. It's a bit like the Iraq vote once again."
Although the coalition agreement allows the Liberal Democrats to argue for alternatives to Trident, it’s pretty obvious that will amount to nothing, which is why Cameron let them have it. But what is it for? The nation threat has gone. The threat of nuclear destruction lies elsewhere, inside the briefcase of a fanatic who, one day, will wander into Times Square or Trafalgar Square, and open Pandora’s Box. And what good will Trident be then?
It used to be true that, as various Presidents were quoted as saying, if you had them by the balls, their hearts and minds would follow. Those days are gone, blind servitude to the man with the money is over, and politicians need to wake up to that fact and the danger it presents. Hearts and minds are suddenly much more important.
Send that £100billion to aid the developing world and that briefcase might just remain closed.
Monday, 26 July 2010
Jackie's still sad about it
Wrong time, wrong place. Gordon Brown knows all about that, though history will ultimately be rather kinder to him than the media and the ballot box was. The same will be true of one of the finest bands you’ve probably never heard of, Diesel Park West.
A glorious guitar band just at the point when indie was on the wane in the late ‘80s, when baggy was in and every band had to pretend “there’s always been a dance element to our music”, the Diesels stuck to what they believed in and sold only a fraction of the number of albums they should have before heading back to obscurity.
Diesel Park West were the band that should have been Oasis. More technically accomplished, a better songwriter in frontman John Butler, a sound with more heart and greater depth, with a truly political edge, the Diesels were highbrow to Liam’s unibrow. But they ran straight into a music press that only had ears for the, admittedly magnificent, Stone Roses.
Ironic then that the Roses and the Diesels were different heads of the same coin, both drawing on jangly, psychedelic ‘60s roots, both built around a guitar sound that owed much to the Byrds and The Beatles, yet only the Roses prospered. They played the game more cleverly perhaps, courted controversy superbly and created a commotion where the Diesels simply plugged in and played anywhere that would have them, building a loyal audience but not commandeering the necessary column inches.
Those that failed to listen closely enough simply cast them aside as ‘60s retreads, though that never stopped Oasis once the tide of trends had turned again and guitar groups were back in vogue. But where the Gallaghers crafted an entire career from “I Am The Walrus”, the music of Lennon, McCartney, Stills, Young and other acid drenched creators of rock music’s handbook, Diesel Park West used it as a starting point and took the music elsewhere.
Never afraid to engage with the grotesque realities of Thatcherite destruction of the country, nor the hypocrisy of the press or religious leaders, Diesel Park West had a relevance and a bite that music needed but the arbiters of taste looked instead to the Soup Dragons and the Mock Turtles for guidance. With an aggressive musical edge that you’d expect from three front line guitarists, their souped-up take on acid rock pointed the way towards BritPop, the denizens of which mopped up the money after dance music had crashed and burned and indie kids returned their roots.
Wrong time, wrong place. But records were made and they will endure, and people will return to them again. No effort in life is ever wasted. Mistimed, temporarily misplaced perhaps, but never wasted. Diesel Park West left their mark, most notably with “Shakespeare Alabama”, and continue to do so. Maybe their time might come, they might be rediscovered the way Big Star were. In the meantime, Liam and Noel owe them as big a chunk of their royalties as they ever owed John, Paul, George and Ringo.
www.dieselparkwest.com
All the myths on Sunday
A glorious guitar band just at the point when indie was on the wane in the late ‘80s, when baggy was in and every band had to pretend “there’s always been a dance element to our music”, the Diesels stuck to what they believed in and sold only a fraction of the number of albums they should have before heading back to obscurity.
Diesel Park West were the band that should have been Oasis. More technically accomplished, a better songwriter in frontman John Butler, a sound with more heart and greater depth, with a truly political edge, the Diesels were highbrow to Liam’s unibrow. But they ran straight into a music press that only had ears for the, admittedly magnificent, Stone Roses.
Ironic then that the Roses and the Diesels were different heads of the same coin, both drawing on jangly, psychedelic ‘60s roots, both built around a guitar sound that owed much to the Byrds and The Beatles, yet only the Roses prospered. They played the game more cleverly perhaps, courted controversy superbly and created a commotion where the Diesels simply plugged in and played anywhere that would have them, building a loyal audience but not commandeering the necessary column inches.
Those that failed to listen closely enough simply cast them aside as ‘60s retreads, though that never stopped Oasis once the tide of trends had turned again and guitar groups were back in vogue. But where the Gallaghers crafted an entire career from “I Am The Walrus”, the music of Lennon, McCartney, Stills, Young and other acid drenched creators of rock music’s handbook, Diesel Park West used it as a starting point and took the music elsewhere.
Never afraid to engage with the grotesque realities of Thatcherite destruction of the country, nor the hypocrisy of the press or religious leaders, Diesel Park West had a relevance and a bite that music needed but the arbiters of taste looked instead to the Soup Dragons and the Mock Turtles for guidance. With an aggressive musical edge that you’d expect from three front line guitarists, their souped-up take on acid rock pointed the way towards BritPop, the denizens of which mopped up the money after dance music had crashed and burned and indie kids returned their roots.
Wrong time, wrong place. But records were made and they will endure, and people will return to them again. No effort in life is ever wasted. Mistimed, temporarily misplaced perhaps, but never wasted. Diesel Park West left their mark, most notably with “Shakespeare Alabama”, and continue to do so. Maybe their time might come, they might be rediscovered the way Big Star were. In the meantime, Liam and Noel owe them as big a chunk of their royalties as they ever owed John, Paul, George and Ringo.
www.dieselparkwest.com
All the myths on Sunday
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Sound and fury, signifying nothing
It was the slogan of the election if you recall. “I agree with Nick”. After last week’s shambles at Prime Minister’s Questions, you can’t find anybody who’s going to go with that one.
The level of the tea boy’s reputation is going down quicker than a Cumbrian reservoir for, after two months of hanging around with his mate, trying not to look bewildered, the truth is out. He really is bewildered. And dangerously so.
Question time in the Commons may look as if it’s just a bit of pointless knockabout theatre, but it’s one of the very few forums where the government of the day is held accountable, and where its views go on the record. It’s not like making an off the cuff comment on television that you retract in a press release later, it’s an arena where what you say, goes. Never more is that true than in matters of warfare.
So, after around a quarter of an hour of general humiliation for Clegg, who clearly hadn’t got the foggiest – no wonder they’re finishing “Last of the Sumer Wine” – he finally lost his rag and accused the previous government of waging “an illegal war” in Iraq. Nice that Clegg has decided to become judge, jury and executioner on a decision that has to be made elsewhere and by people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Sadly though, that isn’t the end of it, for as Deputy PM – God help us, how did we get into that kind of mess? – his allegations have weight. Some are suggesting that they use his words as the basis for some kind of legal action given the government of the day has declared the war to be illegal, an apparent admission of guilt for many. Which means that an out of his depth politician throwing a tantrum could end up putting former ministers, forces personnel and ordinary servicemen up on trial for war crimes.
The government issued strenuous denials that Clegg’s declarations were actually the views of the coalition, but his performance thus far makes John Prescott look like Gladstone. The tea boy has been promoted about 250 levels above his appropriate pay grade, somewhere below minimum wage, and needs removing from office. Except they can’t can they, because the Tories are currently hiding behind him and Cable who offer some vestige of cover for their version of slash and burn economics that are designed to destroy the welfare state even more ruthlessly than Thatcher massacred the unions.
But we won’t forget the guilty men on an ego trip in government cars when the chance comes round to vote them out. And let’s not be too harsh on Clegg for in the longer term, he may have done us all a great service, for he might finally awaken us from the mistaken belief that voting in a general election is exactly the same as voting for an X-factor winner. That, after all, was the criteria on which he managed to shore up the Liberal voter, that he was the new, young, clean cut, exciting pretender on the stage with a winning smile and a way with a one liner put down. And yes, if he were voting for somebody to read the weather forecast on Orkney TV, I’m sure he’s have been a fine choice.
Sadly, we were actually voting for somebody with the intelligence, vision and gravitas to lead the country through tough times. Instead, we got the government that nobody wanted which is, day after day, making it perfectly clear that we really ought to invest a bit more thought in choosing our leader next time. And if Clegg gets us to do that, then he hasn’t been all bad. Which will represent some achievement considering what he’s done so far.
The level of the tea boy’s reputation is going down quicker than a Cumbrian reservoir for, after two months of hanging around with his mate, trying not to look bewildered, the truth is out. He really is bewildered. And dangerously so.
Question time in the Commons may look as if it’s just a bit of pointless knockabout theatre, but it’s one of the very few forums where the government of the day is held accountable, and where its views go on the record. It’s not like making an off the cuff comment on television that you retract in a press release later, it’s an arena where what you say, goes. Never more is that true than in matters of warfare.
So, after around a quarter of an hour of general humiliation for Clegg, who clearly hadn’t got the foggiest – no wonder they’re finishing “Last of the Sumer Wine” – he finally lost his rag and accused the previous government of waging “an illegal war” in Iraq. Nice that Clegg has decided to become judge, jury and executioner on a decision that has to be made elsewhere and by people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Sadly though, that isn’t the end of it, for as Deputy PM – God help us, how did we get into that kind of mess? – his allegations have weight. Some are suggesting that they use his words as the basis for some kind of legal action given the government of the day has declared the war to be illegal, an apparent admission of guilt for many. Which means that an out of his depth politician throwing a tantrum could end up putting former ministers, forces personnel and ordinary servicemen up on trial for war crimes.
The government issued strenuous denials that Clegg’s declarations were actually the views of the coalition, but his performance thus far makes John Prescott look like Gladstone. The tea boy has been promoted about 250 levels above his appropriate pay grade, somewhere below minimum wage, and needs removing from office. Except they can’t can they, because the Tories are currently hiding behind him and Cable who offer some vestige of cover for their version of slash and burn economics that are designed to destroy the welfare state even more ruthlessly than Thatcher massacred the unions.
But we won’t forget the guilty men on an ego trip in government cars when the chance comes round to vote them out. And let’s not be too harsh on Clegg for in the longer term, he may have done us all a great service, for he might finally awaken us from the mistaken belief that voting in a general election is exactly the same as voting for an X-factor winner. That, after all, was the criteria on which he managed to shore up the Liberal voter, that he was the new, young, clean cut, exciting pretender on the stage with a winning smile and a way with a one liner put down. And yes, if he were voting for somebody to read the weather forecast on Orkney TV, I’m sure he’s have been a fine choice.
Sadly, we were actually voting for somebody with the intelligence, vision and gravitas to lead the country through tough times. Instead, we got the government that nobody wanted which is, day after day, making it perfectly clear that we really ought to invest a bit more thought in choosing our leader next time. And if Clegg gets us to do that, then he hasn’t been all bad. Which will represent some achievement considering what he’s done so far.
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