Faking History

The real sign of ageing isn't the grey hair or balding, it's knowing the difference between your past and what is presented as history.

I grew up with a pop culture that wilfully misremembered the 1950s and 1960s - the mere act of putting fashion, music, cinema and other things in boxes labelled by decades is clumsy to start with, but what they are filled with is clumsier still.  My parents were the first to point out that "the swinging sixties" barely existed - and they were the people dispensing the contraceptives.  My father-in-law rarely saw Teddy Boys in full glory as seen in a thousand cheap television documentaries because few people in his home town were paid enough to afford the complete outfit.  I have had a love-hate relationship with some of this stuff over the years; as much as driving away with Jane Merrow in an E-type Jaguar may appeal as a fantasy, it's always a pain to have a recent Golden Age mythologised when you are trying to make your own mark on the world.

Of course, I was never around when Patrick McGoohan filmed The Prisoner and The Beatles recorded Paperback Writer and Rain, too young to read J G Ballard's novels when they were first published.  Rather like the television panelist who was a self-declared expert on the 1960s but had never heard of The Seekers, I'm only on holiday in someone else's past.  Living there is out of the question.

Sooner or later, it was going to be my own past that would be distorted.  My last post mentions the first time that it was - reading Ronald Reagan's obituary and barely recognising the man it described - but politics will always come up with extreme examples.  Now we have the twentieth anniversary of Britpop, with all the magazine retrospectives and broadcasts that brings.  As a keen record-buyer and concert-goer of the time, much of what is being commemorated has me puzzled.

It was only ever a loose musical movement in its day and many of the acts I was listening to - The Lightning Seeds, Super Furry Animals, Stereolab, Dubstar - now seem to have been left out.  It's not as though they were obscure cult figures - they all had hit singles - but mid-1990s British pop music has been reduced to its muddiest and least adventurous by cultural policemen.

Now Britpop means Oasis, particularly if you skip their first few singles and start at "Live Forever", or Blur at their laziest and most arch.  Suede tried their best to avoid the Britpop label at the time; I don't know if this was a lucky escape, or if it would restore some balance if they were included.

There's an article on The Quietus that says much of what went wrong; it was too London-based, too retro, too ironic to make any serious points.  This is true of its worst acts, but I don't want a genuinely interesting few years of British pop culture - cinema, television and comics also had a good patch at same time - flushed down the toilet because of such tunnel vision, or the fact that the dullest runners won the race.

Ashes to ashes, rust to rust

It’s been a strange week of watching opinions fly back and forth since I turned the radio on over Monday lunchtime and noticed that everyone was talking about Margaret Thatcher in the past tense. After writing a couple of Facebook updates about the ex ex-prime minister, I felt that Facebook’s soundbite approach was no longer adequate. It’s just as well I don’t use Twitter.

Ken Livingstone repeated during the week the old notion that “history is written by the victors”. If the web has granted the world anything, it’s the fact that anyone free to use it, victor or vanquished, now has a voice, even if it is just to comment on funny cat pictures. No, I’m not going to lazily embed a YouTube link to “Tramp the Dirt Down” - one of Elvis Costello’s worst songs - or celebrate the death of an old woman from a stroke, I’m just going to give my side of the story.

Thatcherism is not dead. In fact, it isn’t even ill. Margaret Thatcher never lived long enough to see her beliefs discredited - the fact that she spent most of the last ten years needing to be told which day of the week it was meant that this was out of the question. Nor do I expect the likes of Norman Tebbit to suddenly shrug to the television cameras and ask “what was all that about, then?” The man’s belief in devil-take-the-hindmost market economics is unswerving, despite its consequences being all around us. He’d have made a bloody good pope.

But Tebbit is only the second-most misquoted Conservative minister of my lifetime. His “on your bike” (look up the full speech and you’ll find a somewhat different message) is only trumped by “no such thing as society” – again, one line taken out of context from an interview given by his boss to Woman’s Own magazine.

I grew up in 1970s and 1980s north-west England and now live in central-belt Scotland; both regions with that suffered under the decline of old industry and largely left out of the soft economies that have dubiously replaced it. All rhetoric, left-wing or right-wing, does well from having a bogeyman, and Margaret Thatcher was gift to her enemies in that. You can fairly blame her for many things in these places, but why not just go for it and blame her for everything?

I have sat next to old men in a shopping centre built on the site of a former steel forge saying that Thatcher closed the works down, when the factory in question barely survived the 1960s. I have been on trains crossing the River Clyde hearing Glaswegians telling their Canadian relatives that that section of the river used to be all shipyards until Thatcher did away with them – the more prosaic truth being that shipbuilding moved west years beforehand as the water in Glasgow city centre is too shallow and narrow for modern vessels.

My parents were both pharmacists who spent much of their careers dispensing tranquilisers to people in social dumping grounds before weaning them back off. The rioting in inner cities was logical; these places had been screwed for years, it’s just that the residents were now awake and alert to their surroundings in the short term. In the long term, heroin replaced Valium.

Many of the tributes have come from overseas. People who never saw the lop-sided treatment of the economy have eulogised some miracle worker who ended the cold war and apartheid. Both Gorbachev and de Klerk were astute enough to realise they’d inherited countries that were unsustainable. Painting Thatcher (and Reagan before her) as visionaries is ridiculous; they merely picked up the telephone. Let’s not let history exaggerate their importance just because big events happened on their watch.

Her true legacy is the continued delusion that we can all be successful in business, the castration of local government, the lie that free markets provide the solution to social issues, the demonisation of the poor rather than of poverty, the cockeyed faith in tertiary industry rather than maintaining a mixed economy. Her spirit is alive in “the bedroom tax”, which acknowledges the real-life problem of misallocated social housing but then financially penalises tenants as though they are responsible for someone else's administrative error. The Conservative Party, both then and now, can spot a social issue or under-performing public institution but will always blame the easiest target, or do away with the institution rather than repair it. It’s a good job Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron never qualified as vets; they’d have shot the horse every time.

Lastly, I’m not even going to blame her for all of that. Without public support she would have been a crank, even within her own party, or just somebody who helped invent cheap and nasty substitutes for ice cream. I’m going to blame the millions of people who voted for her, time after time, even though they knew that the success of her policies depended on writing off whole areas of the country.

We Don’t Need No Education (Slight Return)

My oldest child is in the second year of high school.  The new Scottish qualifications that replace Standard grades and Intermediates are National 4 and National 5, and my local high school now wants its pupils to choose the subjects that they will take to this level over the next two academic years.  As well as the four core subjects of English, Maths, PE and Religious Education, six others are chosen; one from each of the following groups:

SOCIAL SUBJECTS Geography; History; Modern Studies SCIENCE Biology; Chemistry; Physics CREATIVE & AESTHETIC Art; Music; Drama; PE Studies; PE Dance TECHNOLOGY Computing; Administration & IT; Accounting; Business Management; Graphic Communication; Design & Manufacture; Woodworking Skills; Food Technology; Textile Technology ELECTIVE 1 Spanish; Biology; Physics; Drama; Art; Food Technology; Computing; History ELECTIVE 2 French; German; Chemistry; PE Studies; Music; Administration & IT; Graphic Communication; Religious, Moral & Philosophical Studies

When I was thirteen, I would have chosen the same subjects as my mates did so I could hang around with them, or avoided subjects where I hated the teachers.  A couple of years can make all the difference between making decisions out of some sort of realism rather than just wanting to look cool.  But the way the subjects are laid out shows two big problems that the school system dumps onto everyone else.

First, despite all the evidence that this country’s workforce can’t sell a single thing overseas unless it’s to another English-speaker, all foreign languages have been sidelined in such a way that they can be avoided altogether by someone just looking for easy subjects.

The other is the redundancy of some of the more “modern” subjects.  Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies sounds like a big deal but any decent teaching of History will cover the ethics behind conflicts and political events.  Accounting is only really useful to people who have already proved their worth at maths, which most fourteen-year olds have yet to do.

I wonder if the exercise is more to make schools and their pass statistics look good than provide the universities, colleges and the job market with qualifications that would be of any use.

TV21

The first time I saw anything by Gerry Anderson was when Granada TV repeated Space 1999 and Thunderbirds during weekend lunchtimes in the early 1980s. I was growing up in one of those much-joked about homes where ITV was almost never watched; Gerry Anderson was one of the few exceptions.
I had heard about his illness with Alzheimer's a while back, and he died yesterday.

The great irony in Gerry Anderson's story is that he had no real desire to work in televison puppetry, yet he made his name there by being so good at it. When he came to making the live action series that he would have preferred, posterity hasn't been as kind. The obituaries I've so far read have dwelled on the puppet shows like Captain Scarlet and - inevitably - Thunderbirds, rather than what came afterwards. Although Space 1999 was designed by committee (and it shows), U.F.O. remains my favourite Anderson series.

He could be frustrating from time to time. I remember a few years ago when another company had the rights to Thunderbirds and based an awful cinema film on it. But rather than complain about how some of his best known characters had been made to look like spare pricks at a wedding, Gerry Anderson chose to complain that the cars were wrong.

Much British television - especially of the 1960s and 1970s - lacks visual flair, but the Anderson series do much to put that right. To hell with aerodynamics - for 50 minutes each week, Thunderbird 2 could actually fly, and I'll always be thankful for that.

"Asteroid" by Pete Moore

Dodging adverts on telly is childs’ play, and it has been fairly easy ever since video cassette recorders came in.  Every time someone asks me if I’ve seen the one with the meerkats, or the opera singer, or the gorilla playing Phil Collins’ drumkit, I can honestly answer “no”.  I’m of the belief that if I want something, I’d go out and buy it (budget permitting) – or, at least, that’s what I’ve convinced myself.

Of course, if you were brought up to think that ITV was a bit common then the job was already done for you by the BBC channels, and still is.

Radio’s even easier, especially since the mergers and takeovers in UK commercial radio have led to so many similar channels that I would never want to listen to anyway.  Capital (no prizes for guessing its comedy name) is a London station that is spreading itself over the Earth’s surface like a fungus from outer space.  Its rivals are much the same.

The one place where consumerism has me captive is at the pictures.  It’s rather tricky to blunder through a darkened cinema, looking for a free seat, when the adverts and trailers have nearly finished but the film has yet to start.  The timing isn’t easy either if in a multiplex, especially when my home town boasts Europe’s tallest cinema and I have to go up several floors from the box office to the screen.

I should have known we were in trouble when Pearl and Dean were sidelined from view.  It’s still a very important advertising carrier for many British cinemas, but in the 1970s, with a (Britpop-era) revival in the mid-1990s, it was a very visible presence on screen.

If you’re too young, or too foreign, or suffering from memory loss, this lot:

The jokes about the adverts they used to carry have gone way beyond observational comedy and into folklore.  The generic series of still photographs of people enjoying a meal that would lead to a clumsily inserted caption advertising a Chinese or Indian restaurant “just minutes from this cinema”.  The pornographic enjoyment of the sort of hotdogs that could only ever be bought in fairgrounds or, unsurprisingly, at the pictures during the interval.  (Yes, you read me correctly.  Films were often run with an INTERVAL.)

All this may sound daft, and like some logical extension of a Donald McGill seaside postcard, but it was pretty harmless and sufficiently clumsy and unconvincing to not really jar with the film itself.  Star Wars, or the latest Disney feature, was at a good arm’s length from it all.  And the Pearl and Dean brand itself was not obtrusive – the jingle above (all 18 seconds of it) was out of the way in a flash.

Now, regardless as to whichever film I see, I’m confronted with endless presence of these bastards:

So imagine the scene; I’m settling into my seat to watch some realist drama about a  Parisian child protection unit, or something, and two oversized sweeties come on to plug the latest Big Momma’s House sequel for what seems like an age.

They are like some CGI version of the Chuckle Brothers, there to shatter the illusion of any film that comes within their range (and it’s a very big range) and I really do wish they’d fuck off.

Strangely, I don’t mind the Orange film spoofs.  But despite the message behind them, people still don’t switch their bastard phones off.

The Hairy Cornflake

I've been meaning to post this for some time but this week's British visit by Aung San Suu Kyi has finally prompted me.

I'm going to say nice things about Dave Lee Travis.

Like any of the veteran presenters who still had programmes on Radio One when the BBC had its Night Of The Long Knives in the mid-1990s, he was painted as an anachronism, the very sort of creature that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse set out to mock with their Smashey'n'Nicey sketches.

The reality is rather grubbier. Workplaces aren't supposed to be run on a basis of whose face fits, and the BBC is no exception. Take a look at this. If I worked in a place like that, I'd think it ugly too.

The own goal in the remodelling of the station, regardless as to its musical intentions, is that the replacements were no better. Travis may have had a few gimmicks but he had a deep-rooted love of music that showed through - much of it period stuff, admittedly - whenever he was given a bit of freedom on air. I have never once thought this about Chris Moyles.

The other side to this is that I have come to have a bit of respect for old school entertainers. Dave Lee Travis, when he first heard that his old programme on the BBC World Service was a boon to Aung San Suu Kyi while she was under arrest, was quite public in his surprise. He doesn't "do" politics, and never has. My teenage self would have taken this as evidence that he was part of the establishment, a puppet of The Man. Thirty years of Bono later, I've come to admire any public figure whose beliefs are their own and who has the self control not to beat others over the head with them.

Going on at this rate, it'll be Terry Wogan next.

Mr Eurovision Song Contest Man

I've posted here before about Engelbert Humperdinck, of all people, and here we are again.

If you look at UK chart statistics over the last 30 years, there's a definite trend where mainstream pop music and the Eurovision Song Contest part company, until the point where Eurovision doesn't appear to matter at all.  Imagine a world where the X Factor winner is watched by millions on a Saturday night, but barely anyone buys their record - that's exactly the way that the Eurovision Song Contest worked for years in the UK.

 My memories of the Eurovision Song Contest, as a youngster, were Brotherhood Of Man onwards, where Britain's entry was a tailor-made act for the competition, rather than an established, popular act.  Although this sometimes won the competition, it could sometimes be seen as the British not taking the thing seriously, and the lack of points on the night was deserved.  There have been attempts to reverse the trend - involving Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jonathon King, for instance.  This year, a veteran UK singer with a wide appeal abroad has been entered.  I've listened to the song - it's the sort of slug-paced ballad I'd expect from the Spanish entry.  There are other, livelier entrants and I don't expect the British one to win.

Of course, the golden age of Eurovision for my parents' generation would have put Engelbert Humperdinck up for the contest when he was still having regular hit singles.  What I never realised about 60s and early 70s Eurovision is that the British entries - Lulu, Sandie Shaw, Cliff Richard, and so on - weren't just bankable pop stars, but they actually had their own television series at the time.  Eurovision is a deal between broadcasters, not record companies.  We're talking about the BBC here, not ITV in any shape or form - so other possibilities would have included Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield or even Scott Walker, but not, say,  Tom Jones.

By the mid 1970s, the idea of a popular musical act having their own television programme in the UK was on the wane.  The only ones I can remember having that sort of primetime slot as a kid were Shirley Bassey (who could have made sense in a Eurovision context, given the right song) and The Black and White Minstrels (the mind boggles), which might explain the switch to the tailor-made acts like Bucks Fizz.

Or there's always this bloke: