This could get quite random: I've started writing and I have no idea what I'm going to be writing about. I've currently got a playlist going on Apple Music. It started as Songs From The Cosmos, the pre-show 'tape' that I set up for the first performance of A Brief Conversation About The Inevitability Of Love last July.
As ever, I wanted some mood music round the show. And, as ever, I wanted to hint at the themes of the show within the playlist. Nobody knew what the story was about before entering, nobody would know what the story was 'actually about' until about 50 minutes in. But I wanted to put everything that mattered into the playlist. Some Springsteen, some Tom Waits, Paul Buchanan, Nick Drake, Bowie, Professor Yaffle, Chrissie Hynde. I'm listening to this playlist because I'm having a conversation with a theatre company in London about it later this week. Getting ready for the conversation, needed the mood music to be just right.
And when the playlist itself ended, Apple Music (as it does) continued with songs that it thought I might like, that felt connected in some way. Road To Nowhere by Talking Heads? Not really the mood I'm looking for lads. Michael Head's Lucinda Byres? On the day he announces the new album and the accompanying tour? Good work Apple. Happy with that. But it was the track between that made me realise what I needed to talk about today. Specifically today. Tell you why in a second.
After we have the inevitable aside.
The inevitable aside: I considered playing this on CD. God knows I can reach the CD simply by standing and reaching to my left. Photo to prove the point, taken from my chair at my desk:
That's the CD wall. That's about a third of the CD wall in total. (Plus the heads of a few guitars and a bass) I could have got the CD down but I went up to the loft and got the vinyl. Two reasons:
1. I had this on vinyl first. Didn't buy it when it came out, got it as a bargain from what we used to call 'the SP&S van' (as that was the name of the company) back in the late eighties. Bought the CD later.
2. It's a record of bareness and immediacy, it's resolutely lo-fi by an artist who could have been as hi-fi as he felt. It's a record that was simply a set of demos for his band. A set of songs attempted by that band but not to his satisfaction so the version he had recorded in his kitchen was released instead.
Worked out who it is yet?
It's an album about places enduring hard times, about people living small lives being ignored by those supposedly governing them, it's about work becoming scarce, industry suffering through ridiculous political ideas, the economy suffering at the hands of government and the desperation that engenders.
And here's the why I had to listen to it today:
Today's the day that it was announced that the Metropolitan Police are to investigate 10 Downing Street over possible criminal behaviour in terms of their, 'The rules? Nah mate, they're for you plebs' approach to the lockdown. To any of the lockdowns that the rest of us have managed to observe.
That first moment when you hear that the investigation is becoming a criminal matter? Wonderful. It looks like Cressida Dick has finally decided to do her job properly. (I'd worry about the legality of that sentence if it weren't for her previous statements that it wasn't down to the Met to investigate things that had happened in the past. Like the usual police approach is to stare constantly into the future just in case. And far more seriously, her force's disgraceful behaviour in breaking up the vigils after Sarah Everard's murder by one of the Met's serving officers. Violence used against women protesting against violence against women. An appalling low.)
But then we get the second piece of news: publication of the Sue Gray report will be suspended while the police investigation is ongoing. That investigation will start from scratch and take weeks rather than days. Far be it for me to suggest that someone somewhere thinks that they can drag this out for a few weeks and hope we don't notice it go away. But let's face it, when it comes to political cover ups aided and abetted by a police force, I have opinions. Four words: South Yorkshire, West Midlands.
So there were two choices for tonight's music. The Clash: Know Your Rights. (This is a public Service Announcement. With Guitars.)
Or this...
Atlantic City came on. Springsteen from the Nebraska album. Bruce, his guitar, a harmonica, sat at the kitchen table. Songs he thought were unfinished but had actually already said everything they needed to in their purest form.
He's already done big. He's done Born To Run and become huge. Done Darkness On The Edge Of Town and raised his political consciousness. Made The River and put an entire life on record, examining his soul and his standing as he edged to thirty. This could have been big, could have become Born In The USA level anthems but the songs refused, the songs demanded.
It's a hushed thing. Restrained fury, bleak despair, lives fraying at the edges, people making bad choices because they're the only ones left. While above them commerce makes its way across their world without consideration or care.
1982. They have Reagan, we have Thatcher. Now, we have this lot. These charlatans, these liars, these crooks, these criminals whose greed and venality, whose eye for a profit for their friends in the eye of a pandemic, whose leader would rather open up the country at the same level that it had previously been closed than have to face up to the consequences of his own actions and inactions.
we have the worst version of the Conservative party there has ever been. And there has never been a good version. It's a party that exists purely for self advancement and thinks nothing of those it leaves behind.
Springsteen. Nebraska. The sound of restrained fury, bleak despair and impotent rage at people who control our lives but don't consider them. It's forty years old, refuses to date and exactly what I need to hear today.
Comments
Post a Comment