6music cassette amnesty

februarycallendar antoniaforestforever@...
Sat Nov 24 05:23:54 CET 2012


--- In peel@yahoogroups.com, "Humphrey" <thebarguest@...> wrote:
>
> Do they really prefer pop/rock to classical ?

*Some* of your other comments are reasonably accurate (though Thatcherism represented a profound change from the post-war establishment in all sorts of ways), but why is it so hard for you to accept that Blair and Cameron really are, culturally, pretty much like most people of their own generations?  Why, more to the point, can you not see how tightly bound-up neoliberalism and the general policies you so rightly abhor are with pop and rock music?

Iraq was invaded, both from the US and UK sides, at least partially in the name of rock'n'roll (Blair has never been "secret" about liking the early 70s stuff that invented all those cock-rock metal cliches - his hero in rock terms is Paul Rodgers, for fuck's sake!) and most of the old Foreign Office and Tory-wet grandees - the sort of people who *do* unequivocally prefer classical music - opposed the invasion.  You seem to equate classical music with the most right-wing policies imaginable, but Labour or Tory governments in the last 15 years led by people who preferred classical music would almost certainly have brought about far greater economic equality, allowed far less tax evasion and deregulated banking, and been far more socialist or, on the Tory side, at least accepting of socialism.  It's amazing how little so many people seem to know about modern British history.

Even when they were new, Floyd and the later Beatles were both loved by huge numbers of people who didn't "get" them and just liked the idea of something new that their parents didn't get.  In fact, they were so huge that that was probably always the bulk of their audience.  Same as young kids in the shires today, who'll probably grow up to be petty-minded Tory councillors, love the instant pop thrill of Wiley's "Heatwave" and "Can You Hear Me?" without understanding their full meaning as an oppressed class taking a share of mass consciousness and saying "nothing's too good for us".

Of course I know *why* people like you refuse to accept that the likes of Blair and Cameron can like pop and rock music unironically and unambiguously - you don't want to admit that you might have anything in common with the ruling class, and that you yourself are almost certainly prejudiced against the one form of music our rulers *are* still viciously prejudiced against.  Far better to pretend.  Happily, as a Scrufizzer and Lady Leshurr fan, that's not a problem for me.  *Let* the bastards like mainstream rock music; it's as irrelevant to me as Strauss waltzes (to whose context in the Heath era Ian Penman recently, with rare perspective, compared what 6Music is under Cameron).

Robin Carmody
-----
"Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."





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