Class War You Know The Score

When the latter is committed it's just irrelevant and sometimes baffling - I've never known where Basildon was and still have no idea why it somehow delegitimises them. And there's another factor at work here, which is that the UK music press can barely get a handle on music; expecting an even halfway decent understanding of politics or economics seems outrageously optimistic to me.

"If rich kids go to public schools, do working-class kids go to private ones ??"

No, in the UK public and private schools are, confusingly, the same thing, and what are referred to in the US as public schools are known as state schools. The anachronistic description of feepaying schools as "public" dates, I think, from their early days when there were no other schools at all to speak of, and several of them were founded to educate the sons of the "deserving poor" (but were rapidly diverted from that intent).

"Are public schools expensive"

Yes, though some more so than others.

"(and if they are, why the hell do they call 'em "public" ??) ?".

See the above brief history lesson :).

And, yes, I feel there is a certain sort of lyricism which can only come from the middle classes who have never had to work hard or fight to establish themselves against snobbery; Roger Waters's sneers on stuff like "Breathe" and "Money" at people who actually have to work to make a living, as though everyone else is below his level and as though he can't understand what drives them and why they do it, betrays his background and was a key factor in establishing the idea that prog is innately middle-class, and likewise the self-assurance (however fraught it may have sounded) of Thom Yorke's "when I am king you will be up against the wall / with your opinions that are of no consequence at all" would have me convinced that Yorke had been privately educated even if I didn't know he was.

The UK music press isn't so much overtly class-conscious as class- conscious in a terribly unsubtle and simplistic way. However, in earlier and better-informed days it could do that better; Simon Reynolds's dialectics with Chuck D and (gasp!) the Stone Roses come to mind. In the latter case, of course, the stimulation of the interview went well beyond the tedious chugging indie that lay behind it.

Likewise contempt for hip-hop and R&B, while thankfully drowned these days in the sheer success and vastness of those styles (even in the UK, though it has been a much slower process here than in the US) is often motivated by a base right-wing / conservative suspicion of its core constituency (the Times / Sun / Mail / Telegraph axis of the UK press has come to specialise in this, and I suspect that Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black's US papers might also have done, though I can't be sure). Another class-related difference in taste is the tendency of the more determinedly metropolitan hipsters to prefer what sounds "classy" and "aspirational" to any lumpen-prole scene (the UK style press only really taking any interest in jungle when it went "mature" and jazzy, Jurassic 5 getting tentative props from the arty-cosmopolitan set where Jay-Z never would, etc.)

I really can't believe class matters to most people in the U.S., in terms of how they experience particular musicians. One always assumes that the more abrasive hip-hop comes from people that grew up poor, but beyond that, I just don't know how musicians are identified by class. Are Destiny's Child upper, lower or middle class? How do you know? There are the perceived differences in sophistication among different STYLES and GENRES of music, which I can easily see. But individual musicians, I just don't see it. Do you really think of country as music made by people that grew up poor? I have no idea what environment Faith Hill, Dixie Chix or Allen Jackson grew up in.

Bottom line-It doesn't really move me towards one direction or antoher.

Robin - Ah, I wouldn't pay too much attention to DJ Martian's, uh, statements if I were you :). I agree with you on some people's inability to accept more "street" genres until someone comes along to make it sound "mature" and "classy" (the Lauryn Hill complex). Anyway, I hope I still belong on I Love Music ;).

That's all very well. My other suggestion is a rip-off of Hopkins' claim that a band can 'influence' its predecessors: I think that a band's 'background' can be a (back-)projection of its present. I mean, we may have an idea of the class meaning of the Sundays, or the Magnetic Fields, or Ride: but this idea may not actually correspond to their origins, but be a product of their *music*.

As for hip-hop, it probably depends on the audience. Suburban kids are buying Jay-Z by the boatloads, but I suspect urban audiences might not be as drawn to ghetto fabulousness if it didn't include the "ghetto" bit. Could Biggie Smalls have gotten away with saying he's living in "mansions and benzes" if he was living in the Hamptons instead of living in Brooklyn and "[feeling] stupendous" about "giving ends to [his] friends"?

Pop usually seeks to present itself as a parallel reality, apparently outside society and its class divisions.

Of course there are bands that are avowedly working class (either for rabble rousing reasons - Oasis - or ideological ones - The Who, Manic Street Preachers, Clash).

At the other extreme, an excessively privileged or genteel background is not really acceptable in Pop. Musicians from these backgrounds usually try to camouflage or play down the details (Richard Ashcroft, Damon Albarn, Joe Strummer).

Fine sentiments, David, and they inspired me in my youth (and inspired my overreaction to the Martian one's semi-flaming), but what fascinates me is when the harsh, socially divided reality outside - the world that pop presents itself as an antidote to - is suddenly thrust upon pop, and its influence has to be discussed, whether the pop idealists among us want to or not. That's why we needed a thread like this, and it's been an interesting discussion.

IIRC, Richard Ashcroft's social background wasn't particularly middle- class. However, with him coming from Wigan, the London music press would have found it hard to imagine that he *could* be from an affluent background, if you see what I mean.

Patrick - yes, you belong here, no question :).

Mark - yes, anti-hip-hop rhetoric is slowly dying and is irrelevant these days anyway. It's finally reached that status in the UK, though I think it would have been a quicker process in the US. I can remember Neil Kulkarni (I think) saying in 1995 that hip-hop seemed "so embedded in the entirety of popular culture"; I wouldn't have applied that in a UK context then, but I would now.

David - I like that Loudon Wainwright III has sung a song or two about growing up in a rich family. It'd be interesting to see other people try. It's pretty gutsy to forsake any "underdog" appeal.

Observer Music Monthly deciding that Kanye West is the "world's smartest pop star", based simply on the fact that he's from a middle class background, is a supreme act of bourgie self-aggrandisation, even compared to the usual standards of the Farringdon mob.

smart in the sense of "pretending he's not from a MCB to gain credence"?

"supreme" in the sense of "run-of-the-mill"?

plus, loads of 'stars' did this, from JStrum to PEnem, to oh mills...

It says a lot for all broadsheet music journalists that they can keep their visceral loathing of the working class at such a high level week-in, week-out. The Guardian is truly the 1994 AC Milan side of class hatred.

xp

rip prole man

to whom much is given, much is tested

Sub-Carlin at best.