Soul and selling

The treatment of Gordon Brown in the media and the public perception of him as a bumbling, out-of-touch, old-fashioned politician is the flipside of this, I guess; I personally don't want politicians to be into music or the kind of people I'd like to have a beer with - I want them to be good at running the country. But you can't do that now.

http://home.btconnect.com/rdi/frazer.jpg

yeah otm sick mouthy.

it's obviously pretty stupid.

is this just a really successful advertising technique? eg for food etc?

Shifting demographics/audiences means that playing the "Enigma" Variations over a PPB 30 years ago has a comparative use value to playing, say, "Move On Up" now?

Personally I don't give a shit about attempts to humanize politicians because a) I'm pretty sure humanity isn't part of the job and b) politics isn't about these shabby would-be fops and their personal vanity/desire to have imaginary friends. But this shit must have some perceived value to the pols themselves otherwise they wouldn't have paid so much attention to public statements on their cultural likes and dislikes over the last 10 years. My opinion counts for zip since I'm yr archetypal snobby semi-non-voting fringe looney toon anyway. Maybe this is about media saturation and hyperreality and the continuing morphing of parliamentary democracy into soap opera and spectator sport. Maybe it's also a sign that the current generation of politicians grew up in that 60s/post 60s democratisation or tyrrany of Pop culture. Bits of both, obv.

There's an easy, shallow chain of "soul" = authenticity = "you can trust us" here that wants more detourning than I can give it right now.

Guy in the Question Time audience last night who, as he was in the Question Time audience you might assume to be interested in some way in politics and the political process, said:

"Young people like me, how politicians look is important to us and Gordon Brown is just too old"

There's an easy, shallow chain of "soul" = authenticity = "you can trust us" here that wants more detourning than I can give it right now.

otm...but what happens when that becomes false? when soul=authenticity="they're talking bullshit again."

very weird but I think this is happening, or it's how I feel anyway.

x-post pretty tragic.

Guy in the Question Time audience last night who, as he was in the Question Time audience you might assume to be interested in some way in politics and the political process, said:

"Young people like me, how politicians look is important to us and Gordon Brown is just too old"

I remember watching documentaries on New Labour 10 years ago full of Oofy Wegg-Prossers spouting the same shite.

In fact I wrote a quote down at the time. Thrusting young Blairkid sniping to other thrusting young Blairkid re: comedy Northern working class Old Labour MP: "What sort of a modern young go-ahead person would vote for a moaning git like that?"

Audience was repulsive in Question Time last night, England is fucked.

xxpost Yeah Ronan that's why I said the whole soul=authentic trope needs far more detailed unravelling. Soul has been "fake" in a media sense since at least the 80s Levi adverts, but it continues to be this connotation of honourableness long after we all know that it's only a connotation? Or it's continually rediscovered as a touchstone of authenticity? Or both but also something else about the people who associate themselves with that connotation, independently of the source music altogether now?

Is it more bothering that the pols or marketeers are into (or highjacking) cultural reference points in general or more specifically ones you hold dear? Like it or not as we age pols are more and more becoming people liek us or at least of our generation so we are likely to share more similar reference points. I can totally see david cameron liking the Smiths (if only to miss the point entirely). Give it till the next election or so and we will have cabinet members referencing 'being there' when Fat Boy Slim trashed brighton with that free gig on brighton, then we'll really start to feel old.

Our cycnisism just means that anything we see co-opted by marketeers or pols is automatically sullied; which it is. But the dubious motives do not preclude genuine affection.

I guess this is broader too, when I think of a company like say "Innocent Smoothie" I sort of get this feeling too. Just a very vivid sense of capitalism easily co-opting populist ideas of "niceness" or social conscience.

Even if Innocent Smoothie is made by great people, the fact it's using this to sell just kind of annoys me.

Any new young businesses you see are full of this shit, you could list off a whole heap of them, who are probably referencing "soul" in the process. It's really vile.

x-post otm Ed, I'm sure times change. surely "we are your friends" will soundtrack Cameron's victory party!

In fact...if I was in marketing, and no doubt this will happen, I'd be suggesting campaigns like "We don't save the planet, we won't call around to your house and collect the empty carton, we don't even stop to let old ladies cross the street, we just want to give you a glass of orange juice."

Just a very vivid sense of capitalism easily co-opting populist ideas of "niceness" or social conscience

Climate change

Being career politicians precludes a lot of genuine affection. Observing these people as students they were almost always too busy politicking to be much into anything else. Also we're distinguishing between statements that are made publically and private taste. I'd already allowed for the age thing, altho I do think it's a relatively recent phenomenon that Old Etonians be more conversant with sad-sack Indie acts than Classical music. But it stops being about private taste when a politician makes a point of telling the public what s/he's "into".

This interests me:

I can totally see david cameron liking the Smiths (if only to miss the point entirely)

Is there a point to entirely miss? Is music, for most people, the common-or-garden listener, actually ABOUT anything other than a beat to dance to and/or a tune to sing along to? Does Cameron genuinely enjoy the Smiths, say, on this kind of level, as catchy, vaguely intelligent guitar pop, or is he purely saying he likes it to curry demographic favour?

Being career politicians precludes a lot of genuine affection. Observing these people as students they were almost always too busy politicking to be much into anything else.

Nail on head

My Congressional representative in MN used Chemical Brothers' 'Galvanise' as his theme music throughout his campaign, but this is a guy who probably owns every Public Enemy record ever made, so may be outside the mean; also half of the audience would not have been out of place at one of their gigs.

Attendance at Windsor High School for Boys does not seem to preclude having a decent record collection (public schoolboys posting please take note). Now correct me if I'm wrong but Cameron was exact Oxford contemporary at exact college with noted ILX pal Simon Reynolds at a time when there was whole lotta indie going on and everyone revised to Peel (it struck me that his DID included the holy grail of the oldskool REM fan). His wife's best school friend appears to have been Martina Copley-Bird. Unfortunately however open these people are during what passes for their student/salad days they can easily make a return to the fold when it's time to inherit the house, the private club chairmanship and the views of their insufferable parents. Fuckin' tourists...

I want SR to dish the dirt on DC.

"He once asked me 'why does black people never want to rock'"

Proposed "This House Believes that All Reggae is Vile" motion at Oxford Union.

I want DC to dish the dirt on SR

I would be KILLED DEAD if I dished the dirt I do have :D. Don't go to Sinkah or Marcello trying to get it either.

That's Oxford dirt, mind. We could be ALL GO on Brizzle duuuuuurt through other spies.

"I've encountered Arena-reading Young Conservatives who get off on the The The Smiths and The Sex Pistols..." writ Grimey Sime in his interview with, erm, Pat Kane in 1987...

Not The The.

samantha cameron and martina topley-bird must be quite a few years apart...what bristol public school did martina go to again?

Yeah I thought MTB would be 30 tops

Nope, she's 33 *minimum* and probably a hair older (and am pretty sure she went to Red Maids or Clifton Coll).

Yeah, I think she's 35 this year. I'm pretty sure she went to Clifton College (just checked, she's listed in their alumni on Wikipedia).

I thought del Naja went to Clifton College as well but he's not listed. Maybe the accusations of the other year brought some deniability?

I'm not sure it matters whether there's a 'point' to 'miss' wrt DC listening to the Smiths but mostly because I know loads of fluffy lefties who make a point of liking Jay-Z or Wearing My Rolex or homophobic dancehall or whatever.

It's not the private taste that's the issue it's the flaunting of it to make a political point - The Smiths is a vague and airy shorthand way of saying 'Northern working class people, I understand your concerns' without actually saying anything at all.

Blair was very successful electorally for recognising/assuming that what the voters wanted was a Tory party with a more human face, amazing that it took the Tories so long to cotton onto getting a more human face for themselves. It's absolutely about vague unthreatening niceness and nothing says 'vague unthreatening niceness plus down-with-your-concerns' like a very comfy decades-old and unchallenging pipe and slippers definition of 'soul'.

xpost Aldo, are you a Brizzle? Friends I have from there said late '80s was very overlapping scenewise, which they proved by being from various points around town.

It's fun to dither about their private tastes in music (exhibit 1, Eric Clapton) but MDC essentially OTM.

Also it doesn't matter as much what the Northern Working Class strawman thinks. What counts is the fluffy small l liberal swing voter strawman who likes to think they care about the NWC strawman. The sort of person who likes the Smiths without thinking too much about it, but won't be too put off with old Etonians 'co-opting' them.

The fact that Morrissey's comments on immigration would probably have seen him swiftly thrown out of any nu-Tory shadow cabinet is beside the point.

what is "the current Real Soul mania"?

Did Morrissey go to Eton? Unlikely to be in any nu-Tory shadow cabinet then.

The fact that 'soul' and also 'blues' are all tied up with shorthand for 'struggle' (even when it's Adele or Duffy doing it) is urgent and key here as well. You are struggling and it's ALL GORDON BROWN'S FAULT.

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20080604/2008_06_03t230301_450x318_us_usa_politics.jpg?sig=FstHePMft_rzG5TU4cEShQ--

I am still waiting for nervous mom questions about whether that is a black power salute.

when you can't even pay attention to 'rolex' long enough to clock what it is quite plainly about - wiley all brash and intoxicated with his trinkets while it slowly dawns on him he's being led astray and slyly mugged off by someone way more cynical than he is - then maybe it's time to reassess your Surely people see through this by now??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! qualifications eh big men

Aldo, are you a Brizzle?

Been here for over 10 years, and yes, it's all very incestuous. You only need to know a couple of people (Grant Massive Attack lives on the same street as me, I probably know him the best of the big names - he went to school with the landlady at the time of our mutual local) to find odd things happening, like suddenly getting invited to secret Portishead shows or first nights of Sian's experimental post-Kosheen band. And certainly they're all into all sorts of music - Geoff Barrow's stoner label gets all the attention, but it's Grant that goes to see the bands to recommend he signs.

Too much champs dont know wear my phone is
Here's my number, she already knows it
This champs is alot, better close it
Just a look in her eye was so evil
Wiley's a party guy and she knows it

= hi dere thatcher

What would we do
Usually drink, usually dance, usually bubble
ALL I WANT TO DO IS TELL YOU I LOVE YOU

The whole "material goods = omg Toryism" is another big bundle of o_O, true. Especially since Robert Tressell was laughing at the same schtick 100 bleeding years ago.

Nope, she's 33 *minimum* and probably a hair older (and am pretty sure she went to Red Maids or Clifton Coll).

yeah but s cameron is closer to 40 surely? (just checked wikipedia - samantha c is 37, and also went to school in oxfordshire anyway - but went to college/university in bristol so that's where they might have overlapped)

SamCam = v. v. good friends with Tricky.

hah!

tricky's new album is predictably dire.

Noodle Vague - I think the point is that "material goods = OMG default state" rather than OMG Toryism.

Rolex fits into this debate in a really awkward place and it's a bit of a red herring really, if what we're talking about is the power of lazy associations and vague signifiers it's pretty much impossible to place grime on any sort of conventional left/right spectrum without looking equally glib and reductive and lazy.

SamCam's connection comes from her Arts Dept time at Bristol Poly and goes through Banksy, I think, to del Naja.

when you can't even pay attention to 'rolex' long enough to clock what it is quite plainly about - wiley all brash and intoxicated with his trinkets while it slowly dawns on him he's being led astray and slyly mugged off by someone way more cynical than he is - then maybe it's time to reassess your Surely people see through this by now??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! qualifications eh big men

well I didn't really comment on the Wiley track to be fair...I just thought the latter half of the post about "soul" raised a good point.

Think he meant RC's comment on it, which I still read as at least being informed by that weird "socialists don't be fucking with commodities" vibe.