He woke me up last week as well (radio 4 again, not in person!), saying: "The fact is they are doing it because they disagree fundamentally with our way of life and they will carry on doing it unless they are met with the requisite determination and, if necessary, force," about Iran. It's funny, because I could so easily imagine Amadinejad saying exactly the same thing about western imperialism. Blair wasn't very good at clarifying exactly what it was Iran are doing this time, perhaps wary of litigation. The US and Britain have been posturing over Iran for years, I do hope it doesn't boil over.
Which leads me neatly onto my next topic. It's incredibly cold today and sitting on the front line in the housing office has given me freezing hands as the cold air rushes in with every new visitor. These cold hands prompted me to a rare activity, I went to the office kitchen to make myself a tea to warm said hands. Now I am an avid tea drinker, but not much of a tea maker, I remember my old house-mate Samara saying I was a tea junkie, but only because I said yes every time she offered to brew one, I wasn't filling in extra teas in-between. This tea habit developed when I was first renting and sharing a house, we used to have a lot of visitors so we derived a few house rules to stop us from having to bend over backwards to accommodate them; 1) the last person in has to answer the door and 2) whoever says 'tea' has to make it. I got very good at not saying 'tea'! In my recent trip to Dublin the complete opposite attitude is adopted to visitors, I don't think I've drank as many cups of tea in a weekend before in my life!
Back to today: when I got into the kitchen I noticed we had a rather nice, retro-styled, new kettle by silvercrest. I was, however, puzzled by an odd dial on the side of the kettle. I'd never seen one before, but it had a min-max dial, presumably to change the temperature the kettle reaches before switching off automatically. My immediate reaction was, 'what madness is this', until I considered it a little more carefully. Remembering my days in a coffee shop I recalled that the optimum temperature for tea brewing is as close to boiling as possible, whereas boiling water for coffee can burn the beans and impair the flavour, 88o is better, so suddenly the kettle makes sense and I want one!Now for my final topic for the days musings, the item that followed Blair on radio 4 before the walk to work: the present prevalence of posh kids in pop music. Nowadays, apparently, the charts are filled with kids who either went to private schools or illustrious stage schools, whereas in the 60's heyday pop was a place working class heroes could make their names. Comparing the charts now with the equivalent point in the 90's shows a massive reversal in the fortunes of the parents of the major players (presumably)!
Pete Waterman weighed in saying that there's a lot of snobbery in the music industry, I think he slightly missed the mark when he complained that they wouldn't look at anyone who didn't have O-Levels (which is what they used to call GCSE's in case you, dear reader, are very young) or go to University. The coalition government may seem determined to put class divide back into education, but, certainly when I was doing it was perfectly possible to get good grades and go to university without a rich mummy and daddy to pick up the bill. However I think he hit the nail on the head when he said, "I think that when all the A&R people wear Jack Wills clothes it tells you where they're going."
I don't even know what Jack Wills is, but I'm assuming it's an extremely expensive brand not to be pondered by the likes of me. If the music industry are populated by the rich and privileged they are most likely to continue what they've done for centuries in this country: preserve their wealth and class through thinly veiled nepotism. Now I'm not claiming to be extremely poor, I'd say I'm probably somewhere in the middle class, and I'm not claiming the poor aren't nepotistic; it's just more damaging to society when the rich are, as the gap between rich and poor has continued to grow, even through 10+ years of Labour. I've no doubt it will get even worse under the Condemnation government, so perhaps this new upper class music phenomenon is just a sign of the times. The music industry is a bit of a playground, the chances of actually making a decent wedge as a performer are pretty slim, so I guess it makes sense it's more and more a pursuit of the moneyed classes.
The sad thing, to my ears, is that the rich stars listed in the articles are making such bland music: we've got Florence Welch, Chris Martin who really make me cringe while others like Jamie T, Jack Penate and Noah and The Whale have just about managed to bore me. Charlie Fink(from Noah and the Whale)'s comment shows how little he understands the issue, "I don't think with our songs where we come from really comes into it, because it's rare that we write about it." Of course not, Charlie, no ones going to write a passionate song about their parents being comfortably well off enough to send them to a posh school, no ones going to write a song about not having to struggle to but your first instrument and not having to juggle three jobs to keep your head above water while you tried to break into your chosen profession.
Still, I'm sure I'm being unfair now and making tonnes of assumptions about Mr Fink, merely because a bbc article states he went to a private school. My Mum sent my little sister to private school, I still don't really understand why, but she's near bankrupted herself in the process. It's could take it as a kick in the teeth, that my brother and I had an education now deemed inadequate for my younger kin. Class is a tricky issue and it is good advice to tread lightly, indeed the grass is often not as green as you might expect. The fact remains though, the wealthiest are getting wealthier and wealthier all the time and that is incredibly unhealthy for society.
We're going to need some schemes to get instruments in the hands of the young and poor if we want a future for working class guitar based music... have you seen the price of a drum kit these days? Ben didn't have one of his own (that wasn't a battered, toneless assemblage of hand-me-downs) until well into his late 20's. One dot they didn't join in the BBC coverage is that this is not just the era of upper class bands it is also the era when bands have been selling really badly (compared to their more profitable, seemingly working class, urban hip-hop/r'n'b counterparts). So maybe money should be left to do the buying and poverty the selling? Nah:- I don't believe that for one second. Fact is diversity is key, keep a flow of people who are representative of the society they are selling to in music, because people need music they can relate to, whatever their background.
