How rock caused all the world's ills

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

I figured we all needed something a little more
lighthearted, so this comes in from The Guardian at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,876979,00.html

Rock in the dock 

To blame rap for the boom in urban gun violence is to
misunderstand why hip-hop strikes a chord with its
fans. You may just as well make Sting carry the can
for global warming, says Andrew Mueller 

Saturday January 18, 2003 
 
A few weeks ago, a nationwide leap in gun crime was
lent grim focus by the murder of two young women at a
party in Birmingham. It must have been a relief to
investigating police when, as the smoke was still
lifting, culture minister Kim Howells, possibly
imagining himself wearing some sort of cape,
identified the culprit. Charlene Ellis and Latisha
Shakespeare were, in Mr Howells' view, victims - at
barely one remove - of hip hop. 

"Idiots like So Solid Crew," thundered the minister,
"are glorifying gun culture and violence... it has
created a culture where killing is almost a fashion
accessory." Mr Howells was joined in this judgement by
David Blunkett, his faithful hound sensitive as ever
to the dust raised by passing bandwagons; he said he
would convene a "summit" with the music industry, at
which he would outline "what is and isn't acceptable"
(one winces to imagine the "wanker" gestures that will
be directed at the oblivious home secretary during
this meeting). 

Tarique Ghaffur, assistant commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, fretted that hip-hop was consumed
by "young men at an impressionable age, lacking
maturity and boundaries". The verdict was in: the
rapper(s) did it. 

This, of course, is common sense as stark as that
which held Marilyn Manson to be an accessory to the
1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado. Just as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would
unquestionably have grown into pillars of Littleton's
Rotary Club had they never heard Antichrist Superstar,
so the killers of Ms Ellis and Ms Shakespeare clearly
have nobody to blame for their dreadful crime but
Jay-Z. 

The idea that people are wholly responsible for their
own reaction to cultural influences is very last
century - or so this commentator intends to plead when
his admiration for the works of Johnny Cash compels
him, as it one day must, to commit random murder in
Reno. 

What is more concerning is that, in focusing on
hip-hop and gun crime, our great and good are
overlooking myriad other horrors caused by pop music.
Gun culture is only the tip of a vast iceberg of
malaises for which pop is responsible - an iceberg
upon which the ship of state might very well founder
beyond salvage. 

The Guide is sure that when the guardians of our
morality consider the following indictments against
pop in all its forms, this devilment will be scourged
from our lives forever, and everything will be
perfect, just like it was in the 1940s. 

Paedophilia 

The failure of our tabloids to blame popular music for
child abuse represents an inexplicable misfiring of
their otherwise unerring moral radar. So-called "rock"
singers have been slavering over budding bodies for
decades. There is little mistaking the subtexts of
Neil Diamond's Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon, Gary
Puckett & Union Gap's Young Girl, Big Star's 13 -
which could have served as the bridal march at Bill
Wyman's wedding - or, worst of all, the Police's Don't
Stand So Close To Me. 

The depiction of the schoolteacher's sexual torment by
so glamorous a figure as Sting was as dangerous as it
was irresponsible. Most appallingly, the song refers
to "that book by Nabokov"; while Sting at least
acknowledges that its title should not be spoken
aloud, he notably neglects to declare that it should
be burnt. Yes, burnt. 

Global warming

Bruce Springsteen has written dozens of hits
romanticising environmentally unsustainable forms of
transport like cars and motorcycles, yet has penned
nary a b-side about bicycles. His ballads about the
ordinary worker tend to focus on those who toil in
smog belching factories - and if you're not part of
the solution, you're part of the problem. 

Regrettably, Sting has not helped in this area,
either. Despite acquiring credentials as an
environmentalist with frequent - though not, some
argued, frequent enough - visits to remote
rainforests, he eulogised miners on We Work The Black
Seam, and allowed Desert Rose to soundtrack a Jaguar
commercial. 

It will be a small consolation when the rise in water
levels Sting has thus nourished drowns his Wiltshire
estate along with the rest of us. 

Islamic fundamentalism 

In 1979 in Britain, otherwise healthy young men began
wearing make-up and blouses and singing effete ballads
while affecting a style of dance reminiscent of
Fotherington-Thomas jumping rope. In 1979 in Iran,
hitherto civilised people established a rigid
theocracy in which all displays of western degeneracy
were punishable by flogging. The two phenomena cannot
be coincidental. 

Any student of Islamic fundamentalism will be aware
that it is as much a rebellion against western
cultural and moral decadence as it is against American
military imperialism. That being the case, Visage,
Culture Club and Spandau Ballet might just as well
have bombed the Twin Towers themselves. 

Also, while we're up this way, the Police's
supernaturally fatuous global mega-hit De Do Do Do De
Da Da Da must have caused at least a few previously
atheist eyes to roll heavenward. Nice one, Sting. 

The pensions crisis 

The case against pop opens and shuts in the time it
takes to hum The Who's My Generation ("Hope I die
before I get old") and Neil Young's My My Hey Hey
("It's better to burn out than fade away"). These are
hardly sentiments calculated to encourage responsible
saving for old age - the government should exact
reparations for the pensions shortfall from the
fortunes of the musicians who enriched themselves
peddling this outrageous devil-may-care insouciance. 

The chancellor's bailiffs could also have a word with
Sting. That dangerous nonsense about "Blessed are the
poor, for they shall inherit the Earth" in All This
Time is not the stuff of which prudent financial
planning is made. 

Asylum seekers 

Rock'n'roll has consistently lionised the lonely
drifter seeking the lucrative end of his rainbow. Can
it really be the case that Roger Miller's King Of The
Road and the Village People's Go West bear no
culpability for the hordes of marauders stealing our
jobs, ravishing our women and drinking our beer? Who -
probably - conduct singalongs, in their strange,
jabbering tongues, of Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer as
they huddle Britainward in the backs of lorries? 

Sting may claim that the subject of his Englishman In
New York is at pains to emphasise that he is "a legal
alien". However, as Sting sings it, the line damns him
as exactly the opposite. This is a trick often
favoured by corrupters of young minds. Just as no one
believed the Shamen when they claimed that Ebeneezer
Goode was wholly innocent, Sting needn't think he's
fooling anybody here. 

The depletion of cod stocks 

The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues was regarded by most
who heard it as an exuberant reinvention of Irish folk
music. In 1988, the only effect it appeared to have
was that pedestrian precincts suddenly thronged with
rosy-cheeked lads with guitars singing wholesome,
hearty songs about bonnie lasses and their ambitions
of going a-roving with same. 

Only now are the more serious consequences of this
deceptively malignant record manifesting themselves.
Who is to say that when Mike Scott opened the album by
whooping, "I wish I was a fisherman/Tumblin' on the
seas," he did not inspire just as many wide-eyed
youths to seek employment on the docks of Hull and
Grimsby as he did to busk at their local malls? 

And who knows how many despondently thrashing netfuls
were hauled from their watery havens by folk in thrall
to Sting's impenetrable twittering about fishermen and
goats and carrion coats in The Soul Cages? Fat-headed,
self-important windbags who should try thinking before
talking. It's all very well for musicians to claim
that it's no fault of theirs when some attention
seeking politician makes a bloody fool of himself
spouting rubbish about their videos causing gang
warfare in Birmingham. 

But the likes of So Solid Crew should remember that
many middle-aged white men are impressionable,
unsophisticated and have no minds of their own - they
lack, to coin a phrase, maturity and boundaries. Art
is a powerful influence, especially on the
feebleminded, and just as the Beatles all but
sharpened Charles Manson's knife, so So Solid Crew
must accept responsibility for the indiscriminate
assault on logic perpetrated by messrs Howells and
Blunkett. 

Credit where it's due, though: Sting's striking
observation that the Russians "share the same biology,
regardless of ideology" is now widely credited with
preventing nuclear apocalypse in the 1980s. 

Wanted 

Bruce Springsteen 
Aliases: The Boss 
Distinguishing feature: Ostentatious blue stains on
collar 
Remarks: Environmental menace; basically, the Exxon
Valdez with a guitar 

Steve Strange
Aliases: Master of disguise-known to favour
pirate/Pierrot clown getups in the 1980s. Notorious
founder of the "tea towel chic" brigade 
Remarks: Probably not much use in a scrap; public may
approach at will 

Neil Diamond 
Aliases: Noah Kaminsky to his family; The Jazz Singer
to his fans 
Distinguishing feature: Likely to be wearing blue
jeans 
Remarks: There are things writing I'm A Believer don't
atone for 

Pete Townshend 
Aliases: May now be considering one 
Distinguishing feature: Sheepish expression 
Remarks: Unquestionably guilty - of encouraging
reckless financial planning among his generation 

Jon Bon Jovi 
Aliases: Springsteen impersonator 
Distinguishing feature: Teeth like bathroom tiles 
Remarks: Once wrote a song called Wanted: Dead Or
Alive. Who's laughing now, eh? 

Mike Scott 
Aliases: Him out of the Waterboys 
Distinguishing feature: Looks like Laurence
Llewelyn-Bowen 
Remarks: The man to blame when your local Harry
Ramsden's becomes a pizza restaurant 

-- 
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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