Whatever Happened To Protest Songs?

From Summertime Blues to Holidays In The Sun. Strange Fruit to Get Up Stand Up. Maggies Farm to Free Nelson Mandela . Motown to Ghost Town . Remote Control to Complete Control . . .the list is endless and the causes many.
So, am I missing something?

"Fist". Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - 

Are we awash in the endless 24 / 7 of always online everything anywhere leading to aimless distraction ?

 "It's not easy to think of a reason to protest because it's hard enough just to earn a crust these days besides did you know Eastenders is live now ?"

As I pondered the current whereabouts of the Protest Song, I thought of the familiar, ubiquitous image of 'the fist'. Associated with almost any protest everywhere, it is a powerful image, often representing 'the struggle' in all its forms.

Bringing it down to a personal level, I first became aware of the image as a badge worn by 'soul - bowlers' and the like , and later as a record cover by The Tom Robinson Band in 1977 -

which I think was their first hit record (and had a confused nation singing a gay anthem loudly) Virgin Records reggae imprint Front Line (now defunct) also used a similar image (with added barbed wire and blood for grittiness).

Most recently, the clenched fist featured in coverage of the infamous Pussy Riot 3, specifically as worn by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
Unfortunately, this would - be resurgence of the symbolic little guy protesting in the face of innumerable odds was overshadowed by the media frenzy in which the 'ringleaders' were happy to assume vacuous poses and were feted by Madonna et al.
Performance art, maybe, but 'Punk Protest' ?
I think not.


Okay, so whither the Protest Song ?
Perhaps, as is the way of things in the 21st Century, texting and images are more potent than song - the last mainstream rabble-rousing  song in the U.K. which I  recall was 'Tubthumping' by Chumbawamba, which was aimed directly at the 'lager - lout' rabble I think... unfortunately, this one - hit wonder for the political agitprop group soared up the U.K. charts and over the heads of the masses, being chanted by drunken gangs up and down the nation, entirely free of any intended irony.

STOP PRESS
The Chumbawamba collective have revealed the true source of Tubthumping, after all these years !

'Irony' doesn't really work in the pop world, anyways...what of D. Ream and 'Things Can Only Get Better ?'* - that certainly gained a level of irony when commandeered by former Prime Minister Tony Blair for his political ends...



Through the 50's and Sixties, the Protest Song became a staple, as the Post WWII world changed ,' 'teenagers' were invented and people found their voices as individuals or as dissenting movements.
The (three - chord) song of protest was almost the entire reason for punk rock in the Seventies U.K., a movement spawned by frustration at inequalities, vacuous suburban values and faceless bureaucracy. It became a rallying cry for the individual struggling against dull conformity.
Unfortunately, it coalesced into its own brand of conformity, the uniform being spikey hair , bondage strides and safety pins.
It then splintered into 'Indie, Goth, New Romantic,' etc...
This thread could easily become an historical assessment of counter culture (in the u.k.), but that's a whole 'nother thing.

In the Eighties** there was the drop dead cool funk of Gil Scott Heron who gave us the seminal 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' , which certainly pressed the right buttons, but was more of a spoken word piece than a 'protest song' and Grandmaster Flash gave us 'The Message', which was less a protest, and more of a plea to stay away from Colombian Marching Powder.

Neither Blur nor Oasis nor any of the Nineties groups gave us anything resembling a rallying cry***, and whilst House music had its Anthems, they were mostly of the 'one love / unity' vibe -  besides, we were too loved up to be upset, surely?

So where are the protest songs?

all images creative commons except Tom Robinson Band cover art by Source.

*Former band member Brian Cox recently penned an article despairing of this sort of personal conjecture masquerading as hard fact , so my apologies !

** The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - was originally released 1970

*** there was 'Sit Down' by James, but seriously - 

Of Po and Particles

Apparently, now that the Large Hadron Collider has been upgraded, it can  search for a particle ( the gluon) which is allegedly even more exciting than the Higgs - Boson .

(pause to allow for excitement)

Being a supersymmetry particle (don't ask) , it can point us to the elusive 'Dark Matter' of the universe (as opposed to the 'Dark Web' of the online universe,).
Anyway, whilst trying to contain my own excitement , and the trembling of my hands which rattled the porcelain cup from which I was drinking my tea, I espied another article in which Anne Woods, creator of 'The Teletubbies' bemoaned the proposed remake as evidence of the dearth of originality and creativity in media (a point which I mentioned in a previous post ).
Following my own logic which adheres to the quantum idea of entanglement , I decided to make a little collage combining the two, with our illustrious  ( anti - ) heroes searching for the elusive 'gluon' particle

This collage is purely for information purposes, thank you

As a parent whose eyeballs were scoured and senses assaulted by the above scamps and a certain purple dinosaur , I am ambivalent - part of me thinks how sad that the creative urge is being  neglected, and part of me thinks thank goodness, no more...again again! - except, if they are being re - made then they do exist.
Time for a lie down...

Dear Readers

I hope you are well.
How was your Valentines Day, by the way ?
Good, bad, meh ?
Mine was spent in a hospital where a close relative was in the final stages of a long, tough battle with cancer, so forgive me if this post seems a little more downbeat than usual.

The world is in a state of flux at the moment and it's both terrifying and rewarding to be here at this time. With political upheavals and the recession chomping at our heels, it would be impossible to ignore the future direction of things.

There is a growing resentment at the increasing monopolisation of the markets - certainly online, (Facebook is bigger than Coca - Cola now) and the failure of the new internet model (not so new now, after 25 years) to make us all idle rich.
Short term profit = long term loss, I often say in my simplification of the politics of greed that still haunt us.
Of course the emerging new model is to engage with online society, perhaps open an Etsy page, make a killing on e-bay or sell music or book downloads ; and I love to see people creating and hawking their wares in this global marketplace-
I'd love to buy more and show support - but, hey - I don't participate in WoW or MMOs where real money is exchanged for virtual goods, so how about virtual money for real goods?
Or is that the Bitcoin world ?
Or do we need a whole new system of barter ?
Or just answers to these endless questions ?

 Is it the 1% who are hoovering up more and more of the Earths finite resources and wealth ?
Or is the renewed vigour of the space race merely a distraction from the death rattle of a society based on selfishness and greed ?

... hey, guys! At least there's always Mars! We can start again! Come on !
...guys ?
A lone explorer, standing atop a sea of skulls bleached white by a boiling hot sun and stretching as far as the eye can see.

It's a horrific vision, but the scariest thing is the sense of inevitability and shoulder - shrugging that seems to go on.
And so, in the spirit of cynicism of this blog, I present a link to a free pdf download of poetry allegedly written by the head of one of the biggest interweb ventures :  Relentless by Jeff Bezos

An example: "After Vito Conchita"
 BUY THIS WORD THEN BUY THIS WORD NEXT BUY THIS WORD

NOW ONE-CLICK ONE BUY ONE-CLICK ONE BUY NEXT ONE-CLICK

ONE BUY NOW AND THEN ONE-CLICK ONE BUY AGAIN REVIEW

THREE WORDS NOW REVIEW THREE WORDS NOW TOO

CUSTOMERS INTERESTED IN FIVE WORDS WERE ALSO

INTERESTED IN SIX WORDS NOW BUY IT NOW REVIEW THESE

Kindergarten Konspiracy

I am pleased to see regular readers here on my humble blog. It's a constant source of fascination to watch the statistics change on a daily basis - that may sound facetious but I mean it - I find it amazing that people across the globe (well, Tooting ), can tune into my aimless rambling.
I humbly thank you all- both !
Now back to the business of undermining the inhumane regime ...
Just joking! I just wanted to throw in a couple of buzzwords to enhance my readership with government watchdogs!

Attribute unknown (perpetrator chose not to be identified)

(Removes  tin - foil helmet, combs hair, adjusts tie, adopts 'serious' expression and faces camera 1.)

In news just in, we wonder why people insist :

"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear".

That is a knee - jerk response to the continued, ongoing, unjustified erosion of personal rights.
What began as a 'security measure' conveniently hiding behind a threat labelled 'Terrorism' and 'National Security', is now a corporate smörgasbord, with our personal likes and wants offered for sale to the lowest bidder, and on a darker level, certain words and phrases in our online searches bringing us to the attention of agencies of government.
So far so good, we're being monitored for security reasons.
Except it doesn't stop there.

Here in the UK the tabloid media is constantly crying 'wolf ' - the dangers of online chatrooms , the nasty men on Pirate Bay - and don't even mention the foul perverts and junkies using Tor.
Remove the sense of righteous indignation however, and what would the next target be ?
After all, the scaremongering tabloids must have an enemy in their midst - otherwise no-one would believe their deceptions and lies - God forbid, people might educate themselves and then where would we be ?
The noise reaches the ears of the lawmakers who promptly legislate new 'safety measures' into online interactions -
'think of the children' is a popular cry, guaranteed to result in wholesale agreement to most new measures.

So hurrah for those fighting for Net Neutrality* and online freedoms.
And yes, that includes those who work to improve open source software that stands free of commercial influence.

On the other hand, I'm writing this blog on Google, right in the belly of the beast.
Best place really.
Nothing to hide, you see.

So there you go - in one fell swoop I've defused my own argument.
The reason is that I don't want to cry 'wolf ' myself.
I could paste links to surveillance news and oppressive governments all over this piece, but that's not my reason for doing this.

I just want to perhaps stimulate the odd thought, and re-ignite the realisation that the internet is controlled by and open to all people.

That's why I'm here, doing this.
Because I can.

The internet is not , and never should be driven by commercial interests. 


* Update : Feb 26 2015, the FCC approves Net Neutrality, so well done to friends in the U.S.A.!
(and bad luck to the greedy corporates )

Meet The New Gods, Same As The Old Gods

With news breaking of Iceland building a temple to old Nordic gods and Hollywoods current love of all things Superhero, the question is surely what is happening?
If God did / does not exist would it be necessary to invent one ?

People are embracing a semi - mythological pantheon of Gods and Goddesses in what appears to be a resurgence of pre - Christianity.
This is generally a sign of a spiritual longing.

Mjolnir: Thor's hammer

It's a good thing - especially in a world where everyone seeks rationalisation - after all, what kind of a world is it where nothing but science and cold functional mechanisms hold sway?
 No more magic, no more mists rolling through mysterious valleys and standing stone circles from time immemorial to puzzle and intrigue so many ?
What a sad world it would be... and what a dull race of intelligent but heartless beings we would be.

I don't want to re - ignite the debate on faith which has raged in the wake of the Religion driven massacres around the world.
But I do want to plead the case for mysticism
At least the sort of magic that works hand in hand with science - for instance - Toy Story, a great leap of imagination experienced and loved by many people of all ages -as well as the magical animation Spirited Away and similar fare from Studio Ghibli. These are recent examples of timeless stories, flights of imagination which are wed to incredible technical knowledge (the skills of CG animation).

Japanese poster for Spirited Away

These seemingly modern tales have their roots in the old spoken word tradition , and contain powerful, eternal moral subtexts.
It appears that these lessons remain to be learned, and are loved every time they are told.
Perhaps there is a great collective unconscious (getting into Carl Jung territory here) or a  primal species memory that is triggered when these tales come around.
Heck, even Captain America and the Avengers have a place in this pantheon - as does The Dark Knight himself.
I'm not a huge fan of this current resurgence, but I can see the attraction for many (even if it is just Scarlett Johansson in tight - fitting latex). Cue gratuitous image:

Any excuse...

Of course I'm guilty of preaching to the converted here.
It's all too easy to sit around feeling sophisticated and knowledgeable in the first world, where these films  - .along with pretty much anything you want to see or learn about , are at our finger tips (or at least a quick tap of the remote and there they are on Netflix / You Tube).
I don't know about anyone else reading this, but I find it incredibly easy to forget that not everyone is patched into the internet.
First World Perception Gap right there.

But that's another story...

A Very English Problem

So, war has been declared. 
Murmurings have become outright angry venting of spleens.
The battle lines are being drawn - Class War is news again;
albeit in a slightly different form - it seems that the world of music and media are being swamped by 'poor little rich kids' and their ilk. The current view is that they are the only ones who can ride out the stormy sea of unpaid internships which have arisen as a result of austerity.
I wouldn't be surprised - although film has a long tradition of actors (and crew) working for just a cut of  royalties based on a possible box office smash.
This theoretically allows bright new stars to shine and hopefully breakthrough into the unforgiving, endless hustle of media.

Kes

In a recent article in the New Statesman , Stuart Maconie bemoans the resultant lack of 'grit' in the music world - and it's true to a degree, but then was it not always thus ?
That Joe Strummer downplayed his middle class roots - as did many 'punk rockers' and going back in time  - the Rolling Stones ?

Those examples aside, the Class War in England is very much a media construct.
So why is it coming out of the woodwork now ?
Election time is drawing near - perhaps the old 'divide and rule' angle ?
A new scapegoat for national tensions, deflecting public view from the real issues ?

It could be an attempt to remind us that there is a system in which we all have a role to play, and we should know our place in the scheme of things - it's true that Downton Abbey etc hark back to a rose tinted view of an England that (certainly for most people) never was - but is it any moreso than say Brideshead Revisited , Upstairs Downstairs, or, cinematically, anything by Merchant Ivory ?

I have personal issues with the new Sherlock , mainly due to its pop video style flash, which to me does a great disservice to the original stories.
It's not that I'm a purist - I just think it shows a sense of superiority which is creeping into things - the sense that the original was somehow flawed, and now that we have superior technical toys in the 21st century, we can improve on it.
This dull, unoriginal mindset first became apparent in the endless parade of sequels and now remakes of films in Hollywood.
Far from celebrating the new, creativity has been stifled across the board, in favour of dumbing down and playing safe.
This may be a result of the Global Recession (hence the fear of taking risks), but there seems to be a lack of originality in media .

Does this stem from a fear of the unknown, or the new ? It is generally true that familiarity has a strong allure in times of recession.



Did we shoot our collective bolts in the Twentieth Century when all this stuff  came to the fore ?
Or are we just jaded by the glut of everything available online?
The debate is endless - and I didn't even mention reality t.v...

From The Safety Of The Sofa

Today I saw an ad on my blogosphere extolling the virtues of 'improving your personal  brand '.
So I'm a fcking brand apparently. I mean, we all are. How nice.
 I suppose that's the price we pay for maintaining an online presence courtesy of our paymasters Google & Co.
I think I ranted on Farcebook sometime back about the fact that by taking part, we become a part of the business model itself - we are the product, effectively.
Of course, this manifests in annoying little ways, whereby algorithms tell us what we might like to buy (and are thankfully, often wrong ).
On the subject of algorithms don't they realise that I may take a perverse pleasure in reading / listening to occasional nonsense, and it doesn't mean I live or die by that thing ?
Or I might buy a relative a crochet set, but I don't want to see endless ads for knitting patterns.

-Rant over -

Last night , following the collapse of a bookshelf and its contents being strewn around, I came across an article which I completely forgot I'd written back in 1993.
 It was a piece about the cartoonist Robert Crumb, and whilst not being an especially memorable piece, it really made me aware how much times have changed.
I mean really - 1993 wasn't that long ago - (for an old git like me), but in real terms there was no Google, Faceblog, Tweeter - infact the WWW as we know it was just making its first foray out of Cern and the mind of Tim Berners - Lee.
It was a different world.
I remember buying floppy disks (from the old computer fairs ) containing a wealth of strange and wonderful esoterica, and how I was overwhelmed and amazed by how much information was available on this new fangled media - floppy disks could hold an amazing 1 megabyte of stuff !


Anyway, back to the article on Robert Crumb* - I remember being flattered to provide a two page article on a cartoonist I considered important and vastly talented, only to feel embarassed with the final piece in print : the illustrations used had been chosen by someone else on the editorial team, possibly to create controversy and boost sales, but I was unhappy and it was too late , so for a long time, I sulked ( believing myself sabotaged by the Film people).  Still -

In the manner of today , I shall scan it and post here as a curio. It's still a bit 'edgy', I suppose.
I'm not defending Mr Crumb - he admits that he is sexist, and I suspect, was more than happy to invoke the ire of feminists of the time (all publicity is good publicity, and all that ).

I think that part of the problem is that everyone is so afraid to offend now - it's gone beyond the
' Politically Correct ' issue - anyone now offending the mass sensibility can become the target of sizable online crowds of angry pitchfork wielding lynch - mobs.
Twitter is notorious for its mob mentality , but in this always - on world, most forms of social media have the potential to become flash mobs championing a cause, whether right or wrong.

The peculiar thing is that these same voices often preach tolerance and equality.
It's just that if you say something they don't like, then woe betide you.

The recent Charlie Hebdo massacre / situation brought many of these types to the fore - whilst encouraging debate about the problems of 'secular' life, it transpired that many felt that religion generally was the crux of the problem , and has perverted our reality down through the ages : the logical answer was to ban religion in all its forms...

The irony I find is that those who rant most vehemently against it are as guilty of  proselytising as those they seek to condemn.

image from L'etre Lieu

Ipso Facto :
Richard Dawkins Is Not God.

And therein lies the rub, to coin a vaguely Shakespearan phrase.
After all, if everyone in the world thought the same way, then wouldn't we all be guilty of intolerance ?
Worse still - we'd be guilty of demanding conformity.
And down that road lies the master race...

Footnote:

I just re - read what I wrote : 'The recent Charlie Hebdo massacre / situation brought many of these types to the fore'

'these types'

You see - I'm guilty of generalising, too ! I'm as judgemental as the rest of 'em !
Get my pitchfork, Matilda - we're gonna hang us a noob.
But Honey, that's you!
Dayum ! Gotta lynch mah damn self!




* Robert Crumb left the U.S.A. for France in 1991 and his most recent cartoon was in sympathy with Charlie Hebdo.