English essay - Monty Python, Tony Harrison, language and class

CONSIDER HOW AND TO WHAT EFFECT LANGUAGE IS USED AS A FORM OF POWER

Of all the socio-political issues in Britain today, very few carry the weight, the history or the popular fascination as does class. In a nation often associated with its royal family, and bearing a long history of feudalism, many people still believe they are fighting the class war, and despite Tony Blair’s declaration that “we are all middle-class now”, a 2007 poll by The Guardian found that a majority of respondents saw themselves as “working class”. What is most interesting here is that both Blair and The Guardian have identified a majority bloc of the British people, the difference is that the middle class that Blair speaks of identifies itself as working class – the disagreement is one of language. Perhaps unsurprisingly, class emerges as one of the most significant issues of concern in two of the finest manipulators and users of language in modern British culture – the poet Tony Harrison and the comedy troupe Monty Python. Harrison, the working class child who, via grammar school and university, became a celebrated poet, is always acutely aware of his own class, but also of the importance of language as a symbol of class struggle. His poem Them & [uz] is a scathing attack on those Harrison saw as hoarding poetry, reserving it for the upper, educated classes as thought the right to self-expression was a part of one’s M.C.C. membership. Similarly v., arguably Harrison’s best-known work contains examinations of language, expression and poetry, only this time it is Harrison representing the intelligensia against a skinhead vandal. While perhaps less immediately apparent, the comedy of Monty Python is similarly scathing of superiority, whether religious, social or military, and spent a significant proportion of their career portraying hopeless, incompetent “upper class twits” getting their comeuppance at the hands of the lower classes – both on screen and at the hands of the writers.

When considering the power of language, particularly in relation to class, it is impossible to ignore Harrison’s own biography, and the continued recurring power of language inherent in it. Harrison was a working class boy who received an education, both at grammar school and university, which removed him from his class. And he is a man who has spent his working life as a poet, playing with words and manipulating language. Clearly, nowhere is the power of language more apparent than in Harrison’s own life. It removed him from the innate, natural unit of identity, his family, and immediately set him apart from almost everything he had known pre-education. And his continued education only led to a continued distancing from his home, his hometown and his family. And if that weren’t enough, the power of Harrison’s own language has enabled him to make a living as a poet – something that many attempt but at which few succeed. No wonder, then, that Harrison’s poetry displays such a focus on class and on language: these two competing markers of identity are pulling him in opposite directions, and he is left, torn, in the middle, attempting to find his niche where he can coexist between the class he was born into, the class conferred upon him with his high school diploma, and the class he has chosen for himself, as a member of the literary elites in the most literary-elite country on earth, Britain. These are Harrison’s very own  ‘versuses of life’ that he details in v. – “Half versus half, the enemies within/the heart that can’t be whole until they unite.” This is the inner conflict displayed in Them & [uz], and the argument played out between Harrison and his skinhead alter-ego in v. – it’s the voice of Harrison, the “class migrant”,  unable to return to the land of his parents, but equally unable to find a sense of home in the land he has chosen for himself.
Nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in Harrison’s poem Them & [uz], in which Harrison recounts his schooling and of ‘receiving’ Received Pronunciation, in which all dialectic and regional accents are completely removed from any reading of the poetry. Harrison vehemently disputes this idea that there is only one correct accent with which to read poetry aloud, and announces his opposition to this idea of “leasehold poetry”  by using the military word “occupation”. Harrison declares that he saw this as “an aggressive occupation – I was going to usurp classical forms but fit them to what I wanted to say and the kind of language I wanted to use” . Indeed he succeeds at this from the opening line, juxtaposing the familiar (to academics) cry of the Greek tragic chorus with “the stand-up comedian’s popularly familiar “’ay, ‘ay”” , and continues in the same vein, alluring to the accents and regionalism of Keats and Wordsworth, and declaring gleefully his flouting of the accepted rules of grammar – “ended sentences with by, with, from”.  Of course, the problem with Harrison’s quest for an accessible, egalitarian poetry is that you not only have to be reading the poem in the first place, but also understand the allusions to Keats, Wordsworth and the conventions of grammar – things that, realistically, the working class for whom he is writing will not do. Indeed, Harrison himself seems to admit this very problem in his poem when he writes:

You can tell the receivers where to go
(and not aspirate it) once you know
Wordsworth’s matter/water are full of rhymes,

Harrison’s use of the phrase “once you know” makes it abundantly clear that the poet himself knows what we as the audience have already realised – that while Harrison is raging against the elites he sees as holding a monopoly on poetry, language and expression, he is doing so in a way that is completely impregnable to anyone outside that elite group.

This calls to attention Harrison’s usurpation (as he sees it) of classical forms in order to make his poetry more accessible. The issue of the power of language is clearly highlighted here, with a poet using recognisable, manageable and approachable forms of poetry – quatrains, ABAB rhyme patterns, even rhyming couplets – in order to achieve wider readership. By making his poetry more accessible, Harrison is also making it more powerful simply through striving to reach more people. Here is a double-sided consideration of the power of language – it can be powerful, influential and significant, but only if it is being read. There is scarce experimentation in Harrison’s work – rather he is content to allow the form to welcome readers, and the language to affect and engage them.
In this way, Harrison’s poem v. has been made available to a much wider audience as a result of its presentation on that most accessible of formats: British national television. v. is a simple poem in its structure, featuring 112 quatrains in an ABAB rhyme scheme, and thus is a simple, straightforward poem to hear or read. There are no wild shifts in metre, narrative voice or rhyme, and this allows the power and force of the language to be greater and more readily identifiable. v. is not a poem that makes witty jokes concerning grammar and the pronunciation of written poetry, but instead explodes into a tirade of harsh, violent expletives during a heated argument about class in Britain in the 1980s, the stark divisions in British society and the blunt, brutal power of words. Indeed, the setting of the poem itself can be seen as a metaphor representing Harrison’s view of Britain following the 1984 miner’s strike – a graveyard, littered with empty beer cans, desecrated by anger and violence, and sitting precariously on an empty, mined-out pit.
Perhaps one of the more interesting considerations of the power of language is quite separate from any real analysis of the poem itself or its themes. The most interesting examination of the power of language comes instead from looking at the heated reaction to the profanity in Harrison’s poem. Although certainly not intended as such, the greatest compliment ever paid to the poem was by a coalition of conservative MPs who proposed a motion titled ‘Television Obscenity’ into the British Parliament, allegedly concerned with the effect that Harrison’s use of obscenities would have on the youth of Britain. Although slightly hysterical, this apparent belief that rude words can somehow scar and mark a child for life clearly subscribes to a belief in the power of language.
This “furore in the right-wing press” caused v. to receive “more tabloid coverage than any other postwar poem” , and following its airing on Channel 4 in 1987, many youth and community groups staged popular performances and poetry workshops, which drew a large number of young people.  Indeed, in Bruce Woodcock’s experience, “young, unemployed people were unanimous about the power and general accessibility of the video version of v.”, but “at the same time, they asked some probing questions about Harrison’s presentation of the skinhead voice.”  Woodcock goes on to explain how these young people felt Harrison was not entirely correct in his portrayal of the skinhead, as many football-supporting skinheads had been banned from stadia, and thus had to hide their identity by changing their clothes and hairstyles. And while Woodcock uses this example to address the problem of Harrison’s speaking on behalf of a class he no longer belongs to, what is most fascinating about this account is that these young, unemployed people were arguing about and taking umbrage with a poem. What greater reinforcement could there be for Harrison’s use of traditional, non-radical poetic form to better convey his message than this anecdote of “ex-NF ex-skinhead”   objecting to the representation of skinheads in a poem?

John Cleese once said that a good deal of the Monty Python comedy came from a reaction against the system.  In Britain, unavoidably, that system involved class. And while Python were certainly never class warriors like Tony Harrison, many sketches of theirs not only involved sending up the upper classes (“The Wacky Queen”) or lovingly mocking the lower classes (“Four Yorkshiremen”), but occasionally turning the entire class paradigm on its head to create something that was both recognisable and completely ridiculous all at once.
The perfect example of this is “The Working-Class Playwright”, where a recognisable father-son confrontation scene is entirely reversed. Indeed, this is perhaps a scene that Harrison himself would recognise: the son returning to the roots that he has outgrown only to be met with a father furious at what he sees as a complete rejection. However, just as the audience has identified the trope, the entire scene is subverted when it is revealed that the father, while outwardly working-class, is a playwright, and that the son with his suit, coiffed hair and Anglia accent is working in the mines in Yorkshire. In this instance, the language is where the joke is, as Graham Chapman echoes the working class Four Yorkshiremen, but now with a distinct culturally elite bent:

“Good! good? What do you know about it? What do you know about getting up at five o’clock in t’morning to fly to Paris… back at the Old Vic for drinks at twelve, sweating the day through press interviews, television interviews and getting back here at ten to wrestle with the problem of a homosexual nymphomaniac drug-addict involved in the ritual murder of a well known Scottish footballer! That’s a full working day, lad, and don’t you forget it!”

The power of the language is not only that it creates the humour, but that it creates the class as well. In a complete reversal of the norm, and indeed of Harrison’s poetry, it is language that controls class, rather than the upper classes controlling the language.

However, similar themes to Harrison emerge in “Romanes Eunt Domus” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Although it may be a comic scene, there is a parallel – Brian can only tell the buggers to get stuffed once he knows their language. Throughout, the Centurion has power over Brian because the Centurion knows the Latin, and Latin is the basis of the protest. As with Them & [uz], Brian has to master the language of his occupiers in order to fight back.
The difference though, lies in the accessibility of the scene compared to the accessibility of Harrison’s poem – the scene is in a popular film, screening in cinemas across the world, and even within the scene itself the Pythons explain why the joke is funny. All the audience members who have never done Latin can appreciate the joke because every step is translated for them. And even then Brian’s high-pitched squeals of “Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the… accusative! Accusative! Ah! ‘Domum’, sir! ‘Ad domum’! Ah! Oooh! Ah!” are funny on their own, whereas with Harrison, the audience cannot appreciate the wit or wordplay of the poem unless they know the conventions of grammar and of classical Greek theatre.

But perhaps nowhere do Python more explicitly show the power of language than in Dennis vs. King Arthur. This scene shows the opposite of “Romanes Eunt Domus” and of Harrison, as it is the peasant who has control over the dialectic that leads to the defeat of the class enemy. The king is attacked by language questioning his “divine right” to rule, and Arthur, like his less fictional descendants, has no answer as to the exploitation of the workers, or the fact that his “supreme executive power” does not derive from a mandate from the masses. In their own way, Python once again bring about the defeat of the upper classes. Only this time they are not defeated by the writer of the sketch (as in “The Upper Class Twit of the Year”) but rather are soundly beaten in a direct contest with the workers.

If, as The Guardian survey suggests, the majority of English people see themselves as working class, then perhaps this goes a long way to explain the enduring popularity of Monty Python. If most English people see themselves on the bottom rungs of the social ladder, then Python’s frustrated authority figures, triumphant peasants and ridiculous aristocrats not only serve as amusement and escapism, but appeal strongly to the majority of English people who feel judged by their social class, and thus enjoy a good skewering of those above them.

Both Monty Python and Tony Harrison clearly convey the power of language through their chosen medium. Harrison uses his poetry to rage against the literary hegemony of the educated elites, and even the reaction to his aggressive v. shows the force that words can have in the right context. Monty Python, meanwhile, play exceptionally clever games with the English language to satirise every aspect of British life. While Harrison forces his audience to examine issues of class and language by making his words impossible to ignore, Monty Python persuades their audience to laugh at themselves by making their words impossible to resist.

Bibliography

1.    Tony Harrison, v. in Joseph Black et. al., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature volume 6: Directions in Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century Poetry, (Broadview Press: Ontario), 2006
2.    Tony Harrison, Them & [uz], in Joseph Black et. al., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature volume 6: Directions in Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century Poetry, (Broadview Press: Ontario), 2006
3.    Graham Chapman et al., Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Just The Words vol. 1 & 2,  (Methuen: London), 1989

4.    Joseph Black et. al., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature volume 6: Directions in Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century Poetry, (Broadview Press: Ontario), 2006
5.    Sandie Byrne, H, v., and O: The Poetry of Tony Harrison (Manchester University Press: Manchester), 1998
6.    Peter Childs, The Twentieth Century In Poetry: A Critical Survey (Routledge: London), 1999
7.    Gary Day and Brian Ockerty (eds.), British Poetry from the 1950s to the 1990s: Politics and Art (Macmillan: Basingstoke), 1997
8.    Joe Kelleher, Tony Harrison, (Northcote House in association with the British Council: Plymouth), 1996.
9.    John O. Thompson (ed.), Monty Python: Complete and Utter Theory of the Grotesque, (BFI Publishing: London), 1982, p.9
10.    Stephen Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell A Joke Or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference, (Routledge: London), 1998
11.    Bruce Woodcock, Classical vandalism: Tony Harrison’s invective, “Critical Quarterly” vol. 32, no. 2

Thoughts Upon First Hearing Usher’s ‘Love In This Club’

(with apologies to Passion of the Weiss, who is much better than me at this sort of thing.

1. Dude can sing. I mean, really, he is good.
2. Dude can dance.
3. I heard it 20 minutes ago, and it’s still stuck in my head. This I hate Usher for because…
4. The lyrics suck.
5. If Usher did, in fact, fulfill his desire, he’d probably get arrested for it.
6. Referring, as the song does, to the successful sexual conquest of a woman as bagging groceries (as Young Jeezy does in his terrible, insipid 16 bars), is probably not the best way to get into anyone’s pants.
7. A thought. Usher is married. Usher has a son, also called Usher. What does Mrs. Usher think of this making love in clubs? Is the song directed at a woman other than Mrs. Usher? If so, this is a problem. If not, can’t he just wait until he gets home and save himself the legal rigamarole?
8. Young Jeezy is possibly the least talented rapper alive. As opposed to Weezy Baby, Lil’ Wayne, who is terrific.

UPDATE

Have just heard Part II of this opus. Thoughts?

1. It’s not Part II of anything. It’s a completely different song with the same chorus. Come on O’ World of Rap/Hip-Hop/whatever - let’s not be too lazy about this sort of thing, hmm?
2. Beyonce can really sing.
3. Lil’ Wayne sounds like he is suffering from advanced emphysema.
4. Even so, he if much more interesting than Young Jeezy, who just sounds like a dick.
5. Lyrics like “come a little closer, let daddy put it on ya” really don’t do Usher any favours, especially when Justin Timberlake has spent the last couple of years redefining this sound, and this genre, and taking it to ridiculously sophisticated heights. LoveStoned it ain’t.

prelude to Foo Fighters

The usual strike against the Foo Fighters seems to be one of two things…

1 - people hate them because they aren’t Nirvana

2 - people hate Dave Grohl because he used his fame from Nirvana to launch his own career of the back of Kurt Cobain’s still-warm corpse.

Both of these are, quite frankly, complete crap.

Firstly, the Foo Fighters have never once tried to be Nirvana, making their sound completely different from the outset.

Secondly, the first Foo Fighters album was uncredited, and no one knew that it was Dave Grohl making the music until much later. In fact, much of the first album’s material was written while Nirvana was still going, and they were just sitting around as demos that Grohl had recorded on his own.

So as you might be able to tell by now, I’m a huge fan.

There are very few bands who have been so consistently terrific in the last 15 years.

The Colour and The Shape is undeniably brilliant, There Is Nothing Left To Lose equally so, and while One By One, In Your Honor and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace are perhaps not quite so seminal, they are still jam-packed with terrific songs - Home, Let It Dies, Erase/Replace, But Honestly, Best Of You, The Deepest Blues Are Back, Razor, All My Life, Times Like These and Come Back. (I’m sure you will have your favourites, but these are mine).

I had seen them before, back in 2005 when they were touring in support of In Your Honor. It was at a free concert put on by Channel [V], an Australian music channel, and it was absolute bedlam. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people there, not only standing in the open plaza where the gig was taking place, but standing on the roof of the parking station 200 metres away. People were moshing, jumping, swaying and crying as this powerhouse just let fly.

A perfect example of the day: as the crowd was gathering, the roadies came out to check all the equipment and set everything up for the Foo Fighters. And the drum tech comes out, does a few drum rolls, and looks satisfied. Then the bass tech comes out, plays a chord or three, and looks satisfied. Then this 6 foot 2, overweight, dread-locked guitar tech with big, black-rimmed glasses comes out, plays a riff on the ol’ guitar, and looks satisfied.

Then, with a nod, the three of them rip into The Offspring’s classic hit, Come Out and Play - the whole crowd swaying and jumping, and singing along to the riff.

It was pretty rad.

The death of record labels?

Coldplay have released their new single.

It’s called Violet Hill, which is a much better title than their album, Viva La Vida.

…

…

I know.

I know.

The album art is pretty cool though.

Anyway, Coldplay are offering the single for free download at their website, leading many commentators to compare it to Radiohead’s In Rainbows strategy.

The general pattern of writing seems to go something like this…

“Blah blah blah free music blah blah blah. Death of record labels blah blah blah put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye blah blah blah it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

But no one seems to be thinking much about the next step.

If this truly is the end of record labels, then what happens next?

What the hell else is there?

Will music just be left at the mercy of the internet?

There is no doubting that the internet has changed the way we get our music.

It has allowed for a democratisation of music, where anyone with access to a computer can choose what music they want to listen to, whether it’s the biggest bands in the world or someone sitting in their bedroom fiddling around with GarageBand.

This has had a profound effect, not just on the industry but on bands themselves. And while the internet has already changed the way we consume music, it’s entirely possible that soon, the internet will begin to affect the music we are able to consume.

RECORD LABELS

Many have been forecasting the death of the record label for years, and that call reached fever pitch last year with the online release of Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows. And certainly, many major acts have been abandoning their labels (Radiohead) or coming into direct conflict with them (Prince) over the best way to distribute, promote and create music. And while the focus has been on the havoc this will wreak on record labels, very little thought has been given to the effect it will have on the music industry as a whole.

What could quite conceivably happen, is that record labels will be forced to stick with their major acts – the ones that bring in the money – and will have less and less available funds for the discovery, development and promotion of new up and coming bands. This might not sound like such a major issue, since sites like MySpace have stepped in to this void, but what MySpace and others cannot provide is any form of development, nor any mass marketing. Simply put, no one will be able to afford to promote their music in a way that reaches the wider community.

And while music blogs will report on the next big thing, and MySpace will create some sort of fanbase, very few of these bands will ever command a place in the zeitgeist. And so no one will go to their gigs. And no one will buy their albums. There will be a small band of dedicated followers, but even if some bands receive wider media coverage, there is no way that they can make themselves known to the sort of audience that bands need in order to make a living from their music. It may well be that an unwanted by-product of major artists leaving their labels is that the diversity, quality and quantity of a label’s smaller acts is hugely diminished.

SIZE

This prospect has hugely significant ramifications for music venues. If there are no bands that can command huge popular support, then the days of stadium tours are over. Hell, the days of arena tours are over. And while some may say that this is a good thing, and that gigs should always be smaller, more intimate affairs, to lose the experience of seeing bands as huge as U2 and Daft Punk will be tragic. Music’s power as a social force, as something that brings people together, will be completely destroyed when the international scene is dominated by acts that can only fill a 1500-capacity inner-city venue.

If this is the case, then it also has serious consequences for live music outside of the US and Britain. If there are no record labels to foot the bill, how is the lastest MySpace phenomenon going to tour places like mainland Europe, let alone Australia?

BANDS

But perhaps the greatest effect will be on bands and artists themselves.
Already we are beginning to see that blog sensations and MySpace heroes are struggling to maintain their career beyond their breakthrough album. Whether it is because the hype has moved on, or because of modern society’s apparent Attention-Deficit Disorder, more and more bands are crashing back to anonymity as fast as they rose to fame.

So what ends up happening is that bands ride the hype machine for their breakthrough release, but then the follow-up falls on deaf ears because people are off with the next big thing. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that they will never have their big breakthrough album in the first place, because unless major labels are prepared to take a gamble on internet sensations and invest heavily in them, their only audiences are going to be their Top 8 Friends. Artists like Lily Allen, The View, Artic Monkeys, Kate Nash, The Cool Kids, Klaxons, MGMT, Vampire Weekend – all these bands had huge online following, but it wasn’t until major labels invested time and money in them that they became well known outside the most keen observers of the scene. Indeed, only a couple of these bands (Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons) have made any impression at all in the general public’s consciousness. All the rest have huge hype and popularity, but no one (comparatively speaking) has heard of them.

Despite what has been said, record labels are not going quietly to their death. They will adopt better, more inventive modes of advertising, of promotion, and will have to figure out someway to deal with downloading. It’s not going anywhere, so the labels will have to change. But they will.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we are in for a profound change in the way music is advertised, created and consumed. But we had a profound change with the invention of the radio. Another with the invention of the 33 and the 45. Another with tapes. Another with CDs. Another with MTV. Another with downloads. And not only has music survived, but it has made music more interesting, more diverse, and has opened music up to larger and larger audiences.

It IS the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.

The Wonderful World of Electro

I know none of this will come as a revelation, but there is electronic music out there in the world.

In fact, it is fast becoming one of the more dominant genres or styles. In Australia this week, the new album by The Presets is the highest selling album in the country while Cut Copy squeaks into the Top Ten at number 9.

What is even more interesting is the gradual encroachment of electro into the world of pop - Rihanna’s Umbrella was just about the highest selling single in the universe last year, pushed along by one of the phattest synth-lines ever heard on commercial radio.

Sadly, the inevitable problem arises - when genres become more and more popular, then less and less talented musicians jump on the bandwagon in order to make a cheap buck. As a result it is getting harder and harder to find really intelligent, interesting and creative electro music. It most certainly still exists - The Presets’ My People comes to mind as the most outstanding recent release - but you do have to sift through a lot of shit to find what sparkles.

So what I thought I would do is help you in the sifting of the shit.

Obviously, Diplo and MSTRKRFT are two of the biggest names going around at the moment, not only in electro but in popular music. But these two tracks show them both at the top of their game.

Betty is Diplo’s take on the classic Betty Davis Eyes, originally by Kim Carnes but famously covered by Gwyneth Paltrow in the film Duets (2000) (which isn’t nearly as bad as you might think, and is a secret favourite of mine. Paul Giamatti is excellent).

Diplo - Betty

Leavin’ is MSTRKRFT’s remix of Jesse McCartney’s latest song.
I don’t want to editorialise much, but the original has to be one of the most hopeless, saccharine pieces of shit I have ever heard in my life. Despite the mountains of money it makes him, and the millions of 14 year-old girls who have his picture on their wall, I hope itMcCartney is embarrassed to put his name to this piece of tepid, boring crap.
Despite the unmitigated shite-ness of the original, the MSTKRFT remix is exceptional, even by their standards. If you have ever wondered what people mean when they say they can hear the sex in a song, THIS is what they mean.

Jesse McCartney - Leavin’ (MSTRKRFT remix)

My third offering for you is by a British band from Brisol, called Fuck Buttons. (Great name, isn’t it?) They are starting to generate some serious press from all angles, and are certainly worth your time.

Fuck Buttons - Bright Tomorrow

Enjoy.

___________________________________

Exciting electro news in the last couple of days, with word that MSTRKRFT will be coming back out to Australia for Splendour in the Grass in August. Now, there are a lot of people who have differing opinions, but I think these guys are the best going around. I saw them at Parklife in 2007, and I have rarely enjoyed myself as much as I did during their set. If you get a chance, put your dancing shoes on and get along to one of their shows.

From Little Things Big Things Grow

GetUp! is an Australian political advocacy group, modeled on MoveOn! in the USA, but not nearly so reviled by those on the opposite side of the political spectrum

GetUp! has released its first record, a re-working of Paul Kelly’s classic anthem “From Little Things Big Things Grow”. But it is not merely a case of a simple cover version.

The song features famous Australian musicians (John Butler, Kev Carmody, Paul Kelly, Urthboy, Missy Higgins, Mia Dyson, & Ozi Batla) singing not only the original song, but also singing select quotes from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generation as well as former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s historic Redfern Address from 1992.

Their ambition is to reach the very top of the Australian singles charts, thereby achieving high rotation on radio and TV, reaching millions of people who may never even have heard of GetUp and who have never given any thought to issues of reconciliation.

Their website says, “From little things, big things grow. This song can fill every home, cafe, pub and workplace in the country with a message of hope that we will achieve reconciliation and equality for all Australian citizens - a resounding message from the 2020 Summit.”

Lofty aims, certainly. But is the song good enough to achieve this?

As far as the music goes, this truly is an extraordinarily compelling piece. Kelly’s original melody and lyrics have always possessed a certain simplicity and beauty, and that is not lost. Indeed, if anything, it is enhanced by the different voices singing and rapping.

The instrumentation has been revamped from the original acoustic tune to include guitar, drums and even a small string section that swells in the chorus. It’s a beautiful treatment of a strikingly simple song, and it manages to both highlight the beauty of the original and to subtly tug at the heartstrings without ever seeming overbearing and preachy.

But the most remarkable bit of this song is the inclusion of sections from these two famous speeches.

We live in a time of instants.
Instant coffee.
Instant meals.
Instant news.
And what we are losing is our capacity to be overwhelmed.

Every aspect of our lives go by so quickly, and are replaced so quickly, that we are losing patience.

And when you lose patience, you don’t allow anything to grow, and everything becomes quick, immediate and empty.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of oratory.

No one gives speeches anymore. Oh, sure, people speak for a long time, but there is no imagery, no poetry, no sense of performance. Instead, politicians simply try not to offend anyone; to appeal to everyone by playing it completely safe and never actually saying anything of substance.

But humans are, by their nature, hungry beings.

We long for something to inspire us, to stimulate our minds, to force us to sit back and marvel.

Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations was such an event.

True, Rudd is not an orator. His language is almost always bureaucratic, complex and dense, and his delivery leaves much to be desired.

But in this case, the substance of Rudd’s Apology was so extraordinary, and so overdue, that it opened the floodgates on emotions that Australians had been blocking and ignoring for years.

Yes. Aboriginal children were removed (often forcibly) from their families.
Yes. In many cases it was a part of a broader plan to eradicate the Aboriginal race for good.
Yes. This deserves, at the very least, an acknowledgement of past wrongs, and an apology from the government on behalf of those who went before them.

And as the song begins, and the strings swell underneath Rudd’s voice, the song manages to capture the way the Apology made us feel.

Excited.
Elated.

Inspired.

“As Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the government of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the parliament of Australia, I am sorry.

And I offer you this apology without qualification.”

_____________________

All profits raised by this song will go to GetUp!’s Reconciliation Fund and Aboriginal organisations on the ground. Help take their message to a new audience who they need to join us on this national journey, by clicking here to view and buy the song:

www.getup.org.au/campaign/MakeThisAHit

2020 Summit

 

For those of you not in the know, the 2020 Summit was a weekend in our national capital when the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, invited 1000 people to share their ideas on the future of Australia, specifically with regards to where we would like to be in the year 2020.

10 groups were set up: Communities & Families, Productivity, Governance, Creative Australia, Indigenous, Health, Rural, Security and Environment.

 

Much has been written about the 2020 Summit, most of it by far better writers than I. And, admittedly, by far more knowledgeable writers than I.

And I’m sure that in the coming weeks the event will be dissected, analysed and assessed from every angle. Many of the high-profile ideas will be critiqued and discussed, and maybe the same can be said for some of the lower-profile ones.

But what this event has achieved, more than anything, is to get people talking again.

For far too long, Australia was a country were nobody really asked anything of anyone, much less our leaders. We all just plodded along, looking after ourselves and ignoring everything else. The 11 long years of the Howard government led to many things, but by far the most obvious consequence was that we became a nation of ostriches - all 20 million of us had our heads buried deep in the sand.

But now…

There is a reawakening.

People are talking about things, debating ideas and becoming passionate about subjects and issues that no one has spoken about for years.

 

When Kevin Rudd went to meet the Queen in London he was asked whether he would broach the topic of an Australian Republic - an idea that has been neither seen nor heard since its death by referendum in 1999 - and in response said something along the lines of “I think it will happen eventually, but I don’t think that time is now.” 

This line was repeated in every newspaper, every TV news, every radio news broadcast in the country. And then the Day Two stories began - people being interviewed about whether they thought now was the right time to reappraise the Republic debate.

And then, only a matter of days after the PM declared the Republic was an idea for another time, everyone was talking about it. Talkback radio, letters to the editor, taxi drivers, people at bars, people in the streets - everyone was talking about the idea of an Australian Republic.

 

And now, the main recommendation to come out of the 2020 Summit is that Australia needs a complete overhaul of its system of government - with a Republic at the top of that new system.

 

If nothing else, people are talking…

Executions to resume in USA

The US Supreme Court has voted to end a de-facto moratorium on federal executions that had prevailed since September, when a challenge to lethal injections was brought to the Court.

The case was brought to the court by two prisoners on death row in Kentucky, arguing that the effects of the lethal three-drug cocktail constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The lethal injection, which replaced hanging, the electric chair and firing squad in 1978 consists of an anesthetic, then a paralysing agent and finally a heart-stopping drug.

The movement against this practice is gaining momentum, especially after recent mis-handled executions in Florida and California, where the prisoners took 30 minutes to die.
What is perhaps most disconcerting about this decision is that 7 of the (supposedly) brightest legal minds in the US thought that the evidence presented by these two inmates failed to show that the lethal injection was unconstitutional. As if killing a human being wasn’t unconstitutional enough.

The US is now the fifth-highest killer of criminals in the world, behind China (470), Iran (317), Saudi Arabia (143) and Pakistan (135). How the US can preach to these nations about democracy and human rights, only to turn around and kill their own citizens is beyond me. It is hypocrisy of the highest degree.

I know all the arguments in favour of the death penalty, but the simple fact is that no society can legislate against murder if they perform it themselves.

Atmosphere - new album, single and mixtape

Atmosphere are working damn hard to prove that the whole “white rapper” thing didn’t disappear with Eminem. Of course, there’s a few others around making some great stuff (like Aesop Rock), but perhaps none quite as prolific as the Minnesota duo.

Due out in just a couple of days is their 5th album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. Their last album was a whole 3 years ago, but since then they have also released 4 EPs and a mixtape, Strictly Leakage.

The first single off the new album, Shoulda Known, is a funk-tastic addition to their discography. At times reminiscent of Snoop D-O-Double G, Slug snarls and drawls all over the lyrics, while the music gurgles like there’s a party in 15 feet of mud.

It’s a great song from a terrific group.

I saw Atmosphere in 2006, when ?uestlove from The Roots was playing drums in their touring band, and it was probably the best live hip-hop/rap I’ve ever seen.

Check out the new single and download the Strictly Leakage mixtape here

And, just for you guys, here is a couple of classic tunes from the guys.

Trying To Find A Balance
Sunshine

NEW WEEZER!

News just in that Weezer are releasing a new album very soon. Like two of their previous efforts this will also be known eponymously, already officially nicknamed ‘The Red Album’, following on from Green and Blue.

Rivers Cuomo (frontman), known for bringing the crazy, has always been a curious figure. Prior to the recording of the last Weezer effort, Make Believe, completely gave up sex.

Don’t remember the reason for it.

It’s just one of those things you do if you are Rivers Cuomo.

Anyway, the exciting thing is that there is a radio rip of the new single, Pork and Beans already doing the rounds. I’ve only listened to it once so far, so I’ll reserve judgment for now.

But I dig it.

Here it is!

Weezer - Pork and Beans