Communism and did music bring the wall down

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Hello. I used to post on here until my visa ended. Now I am back living in London and I enjoy this website very much. I'd like to disturb you for a moment and ask the question-what part do you think music played in bringing down the anti fascist Berlin Wall? When I was growing up in Soviet Union, I was a happy socialist pioneer, in Komsomol, I knew very little about outside world. I played accordion, guitar, we played folk, tangos, polka,it was very merry music. But I was interested in English language so my friend and I used to visit her fathers dacha to listen to BBC world service. It wasn't so dngerous, but we were careful. It wasn't encouraged. But we were young and stubborn girls.And there we heard documentaries, debates and new music, strange music, otherworld music, it was fascinating to a young person in restricted society. Then one day, British Council asked for penfriends to British people-this was great opportunity, so we wrote off, and through the eighties we had interesting letters. But one boy, Matthew, sent me tapes too. And here I heard more great music, mostly English eighties music, The Felt, Pale Fountains, Passage, Lotus Eaters, even Momus, which I still like by the way(and i found this website from via his site). So many beautiful groups, but all so sad music.I'm sure it changed my ideals. And so I got the impression that all english gentlemen were sad (from letters) and music was sad too. I didn't feel these people could harm socialist world-they wanted friends. And I wonder how much other music crossed over to eastern block and how it affected attitudes and changed minds. Peoplole listened to German radio, or MTV satellite too. So the wall came down and now people are free but unsure of life. And I am in LOndon and find English boys not to be sad but loud!!!. This is shame. So its interesting to wonder, did music, new modern music, have any affect on changing the world in this way. Small acorns grow big trees by the way.Unfortuntely I never had a chance to thank Matthew-he died of brain tumour.his mother wrote to me. But I still enjoy this type of music, even if its ignored these days. Sorrry for troubling you it would be intersting for me to hear your views.

― Liliya Otchych, Sunday, 27 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Liliya, I'm so sorry to hear about your friend Matthew dying of a brain tumour.

I agree that the kind of tapes he used to make for you when you were still 'inside the iron curtain' wouldn't have presented much danger to any regime. We pale young men were too busy internalising Britain's hatred for us, turning it into self-hate. We were dissidents too, dissidents under Thatcher, and in our way just as oppressed as people living in the Soviet Bloc.

The reason you came to England and found the boys 'not sad but loud' is that the quiet, sensitive ones left, died, or shaved their heads in the 90s and were born again as 'new lads'.

But everything is cyclical. What is Belle and Sebastian but the return of the pale young things? The media may ignore them, but they're huge. And now everyone is listening to Nick Drake and forming an 'experimental folk group'. So maybe it's time once more to bash the brash -- figuratively speaking, of course.

― Momus, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry to be argumentative, but I refuse to believe that 80s Britain was full of pale nervy aesthetes.

― DG, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh but it was DG! Oh but it was! and back then children were well mannered too! there was no crime either! we could all learn a lesson.

― Ronan, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have a huge and specious theory, which I will one day write down, about some of this. But part of it is that, between The Jam and The Stone Roses, there wasn't really a Great Lads Rock Band (The Smiths had an aspect of this to their audience, but they don't really count). During this time, Lads turned to casual culture, which was more about such non-musical things as Fila, La Coste, dodgy haircuts, football and The Farm. Consquently, there was a higher than usual representation of nervy pale aesthetes in pop. The Roses were the return of this constituency to pop (Manc fashion + ecstasy made it OK for Lads to listen to music that was essentially Primal Scream c.1985). Once ecstasy was replaced with booze once more, via things like the Heavenly Social, Big Beat, etc, Lad rock returned to its lumpen Slade-like natural state with Oasis. And Paul Weller.

Paul Weller also contributed to the collapse of communism with the Style Council's timeless single 'Walls Come Tumbling Down'.

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm tempted to make a lame joke about the quality of DDR bands just to show off my knowledge of DDR bands. But I'm way above that.

― Colin Meeder, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The media may ignore them, but they're huge.

Didn't the band (*AT LONG LAST*) call time on its existence? And won't that mean that Stuart will pull a Morrissey and fill arenas in America?

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And now taking this question a touch more seriously -- Liliya, I like your description because in many ways it describes the now-long established Anglophilic tradition over here in America, where England is mythologized as a place where 'quality' rock music is made instead of the brutish slop of American commercial hoohah. The idea of the pale and trembling aesthetic English singer is just as deeply ingrained, and there can be as much of a culture shock as anything when realizing that such is not the case. Of course, likely most UK folks would be terribly amused to think that around 1986, say, the Pet Shop Boys, New Order, the Cult, Gene Loves Jezebel and Echo and the Bunnymen were all lumped together as 'cool new wave English stuff' over here, see. I think the king of the still going UK bands that has eternally been part of the 'Britpop' scene as redefined every few years has to be the Charlatans. They were marketed over here as Madchester in 1990, then in 1995 they were straight up Britpop, now they're, well, whatever. But they'll always be big enough to sell out theaters and never big enough to escape their musical ghetto here.

Did music change the world? It sounds like it changed yours, which is just as good as anything. :-)

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

what I find interesting as an idea is that the Party could have imported records by '80s UK miserabilists and played them to people to say "see how unhappy they are in the capitalist world. that's because they are alienated from their labour, thanks to their having their surplus labour expropriated by rentier capitalists". Then no one would have wanted Communism to end.

more seriously, I think rock music is meant to have actually played a part in the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. I might be mixing lots of different things up or just imagining them, but I have the vague idea some reunion concert by the Plastic People of the Universe was catalytic in everything happening.

― DV, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, it wasn't pale young Englishmen who brought down the Wall... it was the Scorpions. The Scorpions singularly crushed a belief system and ended the Revolution! But Rage Against The Machine almost got it going again (Che stickers still cling tattered to skateboards everywhere), but collapsed in bitter Kremlinesque infighting and Gang of Four-like party cannibalism.

― Andy, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sounds about right.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Conversely, I've long wondered what relationship (if any) there was between hair gel, makeup on men, spartan androgyny, etc. and the Reagans. And has anyone noticed that early eighties graphics were inspired by constructivist forms, albeit rendered in primary colors and, later, pastels? WTF?

― Kerry, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation (though I'm interested in hearing your theory).

― Kris, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

momus said 'and in our own ways as oppressed as those in the soviet bloc'

complete absurdity, this is identical to people saying susan sontag is brave for being a 'dissident' against the current wave of patriotism in the us, what are the consequences she faces or better which did you face in the 80s that compare to the brutal treatment in eastern bloc countries or to be more current the current chinese crackdown on dissidents? the romance of being a dissident in a free country is all related to puffery and ego.

― keith, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the romance of being a dissident in a free country is all related to puffery and ego.

Hmm...Ms. Sontag may not be on the verge of immediate imprisonment, and yet it is good to have some form of voice against the consensus. Free speech may be enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but sometimes the reminder is needed that said freedom exists.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Does anyone know where I can get records by International Glass House?

― dave q, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Thanks for your comments. Now, I have to write an essay. I think maybe I try to make my theory fit the facts. Maybe its easy to think of a country in terms of its beauty of art. If you read Russian poetry you may think all Russians have deep soul. But still this music to me makes me think of green fields and sad boys, like England should be. But of course this is self obseession and its true that Scorpions type music was popular and probably what people wanted at that time. Today, only few groups make melancholy acoustic music, which is a shame. Belle and Sevastian I know. Can anyone recommend any to me?

― Liliya, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Party could have imported records by '80s UK miserabilists". melodiya (russian state record company) DID license a weird bunch of stuf in the eighties, for release in russia. dont know if peter gabriel is a 80's miserablist, but he was among the odd bunch of stuff i found in a box of records in st petrsburg, along with count basie (ed now has this), madonna, 'like a virgin;...seditious or what? ("kak devo"...) and stevie wonder....very odd. all in russian, with russian sleve notes

― ambrose, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, Scritti's "Perfect Way" exploding across MTV in 1985 certainly played its part ...

Props to Keyth for his attack on Momus's absurd comparison.

One of Liliya's comments seems rather curious to me, though:

"green fields and sad boys, like England should be"

... which just shows the downside of her admitted self-obsession and holding a particular "artistic" idea of another place in your head. Weird how the cultural territory of the committed romantic aesthete so often ends up defining nationality in essentially the same terms of those *within* this country who would have seen no problem with restricting cultural hybridisation and influences from outside as much as happened in the Eastern Bloc itself. It's a weirdly moving line, though. Substitute the word "brave" for "sad" and I could imagine it in one of those euologies in Hollywood films about WW2 (arch example: Joan Fontaine's "if anyone asks me what England is ..." speech in "This Above All") or even in "The Lion Has Wings", that extraordinarily naive but also inexplicably affecting 1939 piece of propaganda against Nazism, which talks of Hitler as though he was merely a bounder who didn't understand fair play and gentlemanly values. A strange balance of emotional power and total lack of knowledge of the real certainties at stake.

Sorry, I'm rambling. Generally I like what Liliya has to say. Eastern Europe is the classic example of "be careful what you wish for ... you might get it"! None of us like all the things that come with freedom. But when freedom is the thing you're forbidden, I'm absolutely sure that none of those concerns would matter. I can see why the old left found Communism romantic, but then they didn't know everything that went on ... for all the historical poignancy, I'd rather hold my lighter for "Wind Of Change".

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 29 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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