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- Maggoty Lamb goes behind the barricades in rock writers' class war
Journalists would have us believe it's public-school leavers v the salt of the earth in the battle of the charts. Is that really the case?
Baroness Warsi was right to speak out. Mumford-phobia really has passed the dinner-party test. The unanimous approval which greeted Jon Savage's recent pithy description of Mumford & Sons as "Tory rock-lite" was a measure of the antipathy which currently hangs over these waistcoat-wearing pseudo-troubadours. And that was before they'd inveigled Bob Dylan into their sinister entryist conspiracy at the Grammys.
In a month when anger about the shrinking social catchment area of British rock has found James Blunt's mum writing wounded emails to Radio 4's Today programme, the element of class tension in this debate has become increasingly clearly defined. But the more seemingly straightforward the parallels between the suffocating yoke of "Nu-folk" oppression and the nepotistic elitism of an expensively educated Conservative-led coalition, the easier it is for politics and aesthetics to get in a tangle.
The reason Savage's three-words-and-a-hyphen put-down works so well is because it begins and ends with the music. It's fine to rail against the poshness of the Mumfords (or James Blunt, or the Vaccines) if it incorporates an aspect of their music or political implications that you don't like. But if the link between their respective upbringings and your disapproval is directly causal, then you have to come up with a pretty good reason why that oft-cited litany of more critically favoured scions of the middle and upper classes – from Joe Strummer and the Strokes to privately educated Biggie Smalls – should somehow remain exempt.
Versions of just such a point have been made from both ends of the political spectrum in recent weeks. But what has tended to be left out of the impassioned ensuing debate is any analysis of the media and demographic contexts in which the current debate is unfolding. When it was first published – in The Word, way back in November – the piece which eventually bump-started the whole too-posh-to-rock bandwagon got no kind of push at all. The Word's editorial high-ups did take the trouble to come up with an elaborate Traffic-related pun for the headline ("The Low Spark of Well-Heeled Boys" clever wording, cheers), but once that job was done they were quite happy to hide away Simon Price's explosive – and, though subsequently quibbled over, essentially irrefutable – statistical analysis of the increasingly high proportion of UK chart acts to be either public or stage-school educated, in one of the magazine's many backwaters.
It would be overstating the case (well, slightly) to describe The Word as the house journal of the New Labour media establishment's cultural mid-life crisis. But in the light of the fact Mark Ellen was in a band with Tony Blair at Oxford University, it is easy to see why its editors might feel a little uneasy about giving too much prominence to Simon Price's impassioned call to arms. What was interesting was that the readership was similarly unmoved by talk of a "dispiriting toff takeover", The Word's message board being more exercised by such vital questions of the day as to whether it's OK for posters to mention things they've read in Mojo.
Price, formerly best known as combative south Wales Boswell to the Manic Street Preachers' collective Johnson, has since found a more appreciative audience for his new incarnation as the Andrew Neil of rock's meritocratic fightback. Oxford-educated erstwhile Select editor turned political commentator John Harris may come from the other side of the tracks to Price, but both are of the same journalistic generation. Their visions of popular music's political function were forged in the era of the Specials' Ghost Town and Eton Rifles by the Jam (themselves, lest we forget – and Jon Savage certainly wouldn't want us to – reformed Thatcherites), a time when British rock seemed to act as a counterbalance to social inequality, not a celebration of it.
To grasp how much has changed in the intervening three decades, consider NME's attempt to up the class-war ante by putting Strokes-esque posh boys the Vaccines and would-be working-class heroes Brother on alternate covers of their first issue of this year. Without delving as deeply into the actual circumstances of Brother's upbringing as one well-informed online respondent here, it was clear to anyone who saw them on Channel 4's brazen Popworld knock-off Freshly Squeezed that this band's salt-of-the-earth credentials are, at best, open to doubt. In short, Brother make their fellow Slough ambassadors Hard-Fi look like the Cockney Rejects: the whole "new Blur v Oasis" thing was all over the minute one of them used the word "ethos".
The historical trajectory of British pop's bourgeoisification can be traced most clearly in what Karl Marx sadly never got around to calling "the UK power-ballad nexus". Picture yourself in a series of large Glastonbury crowds over the 10 years from 1994 onwards, singing along to a wilfully vague lyric cunningly designed to promote sensations of mass emotional uplift. Now look at the stage and note the incremental increase in poshness from Oasis to Embrace to Travis to Coldplay to Keane. Uncanny, isn't it? And as if the transition from the rude simian vigour of Liam Gallagher to the ramrod-straight reticence of Tim Rice-Oxley didn't already carry a sufficiently inappropriate echo of the process of human evolutionary development, Take That – the only group you could put at both the beginning and the end of the above list (like those pre-digital pranksters who would run round from one end of old school photos to the other, taking advantage of lengthy exposure times to appear twice) – only went and made subliminal reference to it on the cover of Progress.
As with Take That's witty and provocative visual commentary, the most interesting responses to this ongoing debate have tended to come from unexpected quarters. I especially enjoyed NME writer James McMahon's well-thought-out change of heart following his initial fury at January 2009's controversial Observer Music Monthly These New Puritans and Foals cover story. And it's not often you'll read the words "The Daily Telegraph's Neil McCormick made a good point in his blog" in this column, but you just have. For those of you who are too proud to follow that link, the nub of McCormick's gist was that the perceived – and actual – edging out of non-middle-class voices only really applies in one quite specific musical area. Outside the narrow spectrum of Q-and-Brits-friendly mainstream pop/rock which stretches from Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons to Razorlight and the Vaccines via Florence Welch and Lily Allen, life goes on pretty much as it always has.
From the pristine shop floor of The X Factor's reality TV dream factory to the grimy mean streets of the music now-much-less-likely-to-be-euphemistically-termed "urban", British pop's promise of escape from the rigid constraints of the UK class system is heard as clearly as ever. Try to convince Leona Lewis or Professor Green or Dizzee Rascal or Cher Lloyd that the download charts are now – like quince jelly – the preserve solely of the upper classes and see how well you get on.
There's even good news for those who might otherwise feel themselves excluded from this uplifting narrative of social mobility. This month's two very best pieces of music writing – Julian Cope's hilarious explosion of rage at the memory of his wife's texted discussion of the football results with environmental agent provocateur Mark Kennedy and Interview magazine's hugely informative and entertaining encounter between Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and R Kelly – are both the work of musicians from unapologetically haut-bourgeois family backgrounds. If Julian and Will can shrug off the crushing burden of hereditary privilege to construct mythologies with something to offer listeners from every kind of class background, maybe a few of Britain's new breed of faux-indie aristocrats can one day manage to do the same.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Akira the Don and Chilly Gonzales – Don't Need a Weatherman
It's the Bobby D sample track we've all been waiting for (that's Bob Dylan to the rest of us)
Here are some "interesting" facts about rapper/producer Akira the Don, aka Adam Narkiewicz. Firstly, he was born in West Bromwich and now lives in Wales. Secondly, he's produced two top 40 singles for UK rapper Lethal Bizzle and claims Chris de Burgh as one of his many influences. Finally, his first foray into music was part of the underground rap collective Crack Village, alongside actress and daughter of Ray, Lois Winstone.Don't Need a Weatherman is taken from the Don's forthcoming 25th mixtape and features Canadian musician and fellow (slightly awkward) rapper Chilly Gonzales. It also includes a lot of Bob Dylan, in both the sample taken from 1965's Subterranean Homesick Blues (which Gonzales describes as "Bobby D on the intro") and a lyrical lift from 1963's Blowin' in the Wind. Together, these slightly odd bedfellows make the kind of laid back, acoustic-guitar-inflected hip hop not heard since Arrested Development circa '92.
Akira the Don's new mixtape is out next week.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Behind the scenes with the BBC 1Xtra playlist
The power of Radio 1's younger, cooler sister station is mirrored in the burgeoning success of UK urban talent. But how much of that is down to the democratic process behind their playlist?
"I thought we'd have KFC," someone murmurs. With Domino's pizzas and MacBooks at the ready, the makeup of the far-from-glam third-floor boardroom at 1Xtra's London HQ isn't necessarily what you'd expect from the UK's most influential urban playlist meeting taking place. "Anyone for a cup of tea?" asks MistaJam, a DJ who also has a slot over at Radio 1. With the milk and two sugars sorted, it's down to business, even if it feels like the relaxed kind of business you'd engage in at the student union.
With a weekly listenership of 816,000 and urban music frequently making up for near-on 50% of the UK singles chart, 1Xtra is the first port of call for anything R&B, hip-hop, grime, reggae or dubstep related. If you're a plugger with an urban offering looking to the holy grail (otherwise known as the Radio 1 playlist), the approval of sister station 1Xtra is crucial to you. More often than not, it's their hits of today that become Radio 1's hits of tomorrow. Jessie J, Wiz Khalifa, Tinchy Stryder, and Chipmunk are all trump cards that demonstrate 1Xtra's unwavering reputation for giving both major label and unsigned acts the platform they need.
Playlist meetings are usually shrouded in mystery because they are the place where new tracks can be made or broken before they've even hit the airwaves. Once the panel has sat down to decide the list for that week, no plugger, manager, record label exec or payola (I kid, I kid) is going to make a difference. But that's the power 1Xtra – and their playlist meeting – now has. MistaJam, Ronnie Herel, Cameo
The station began broadcasting in August 2002 and is home to world-class DJs and genre leaders including Tim Westwood, Trevor Nelson, MistaJam and Semtex, many of whom have grown hand in hand with the UK's urban industries.
"Gyptian's Hold Yuh would be a great example of that," explains Ryan Newman, 1Xtra's music systems assistant, otherwise known as the "information wizard" of the team who comes armed with stats. "One of our specialist DJs had been playing it for a few weeks then raised it up the list when he saw its potential as a hit … seven months later it charted at No 16 and it was on the 1Xtra playlist for a record 30 weeks."
That's not to say they don't make mistakes though. "You can't get it right every time," Austin Daboh, 1Xtra's music manager (and a rising star of the radio industry in his own right) says, laughing. "I'd like to add," chips in MistaJam, "that I bought Kid Cudi's Day & Nite and the Skream remix of La Roux to the table but they didn't make the list at first."
Taking charge of the weekly Tuesday meeting, it's Daboh and his small team (Newman and Anna Nathanson, music producer) who make the ultimate decisions. "We have a pre-meeting with our longlist and filter out music that might be too new or we know just isn't right, then at midday it becomes like a steering committee. After that we re-group and decide."
What makes the 1Xtra playlist meetings unique is the inclusion of DJs; other stations opt solely for production staff. While you will find the odd producer present, it's currently the turn of MistaJam, Twin B, Sarah Jane Crawford, Seani B, Cameo and Ronnie Herel to settle the scores. "We switch up the DJs every six months or so," says Daboh. "We like to keep it fresh and we let them put forward a track each week that may have come to their attention – they're specialists after all."
And it turns out the process itself isn't all that different to hanging out in the student union either, albeit far more democratic. Loading up the first track, Mavado's Star Boy, the group is quick to conclude that it's too early for the playlist. Next in line it's Jodie Connor feat Tinchy Stryder and the track Bring It. Despite vying for interest with pizza, Brit awards gossip and Twitter, Jodie Connor looks a likely addition to this week's playlist. Flo Rida isn't so lucky. Despite the stats proving past success, no one's sold on the need to playlist the track. Allow five minutes for Flo Rida jokes. With Wretch 32's Unorthodox up for discussion, it's time for Twin B to leave the room. As a stakeholder in Levels Entertainment, Wretch's record label home, the BBC rules come into play. But even with Twin B at a safe distance it's clear this is going to be another hit for the latest MC to break the charts. As a homegrown artist, Wretch isn't in the minority he used to be either – currently over 45% of all music played on 1Xtra is from the UK.
As the two-hour session draws to a close, equally promising is the revelation that the word "bollocks" was only deemed necessary on one occasion: "You have to be honest though," concludes MistaJam, "and sometimes only that word really fits."
The debate behind the records that made the 1Xtra playlist
What they REALLY said – the 1Xtra DJs on some of the tracks fighting for the playlist this week:
Jodie Connor feat Tinchy Stryder – Bring It
"She's got a strong fan base and they're going to want to hear it."
"Jodie's had a 1Xtra journey so we'd be stupid not to support it."
Mavado – Star Boy
"I went to see him at Amsterdam last weekend and he didn't perform it so I think we can afford to wait."
Giggs feat Example – Look Over Your Shoulder
"With a clever edit it's a go … we need stuff like this alongside Jodie Connor."
"We're the only station who can reflect mixtape culture on daytime radio so definitely."
Flo Rida – Who Dat Girl
"That's a milder brand of cheese than some cheese on the playlist. I'd put it on over Jodie Connor."
"It's like popcorn; you can eat it all night and it just won't make you full …"
Wretch feat Example – Unorthodox
"We should just A-list this no doubt."
"There's no debate. Hit. Hit. Hit. Move on."
TI feat Eminem – That's All She Wrote
"Just another generic TI track."
"It sounds like an Eminem record. We shouldn't waste that space, just sprinkle it about."
Katy B – Broken Record
"It's not my fave but we should go with it ... We've supported her since the funky house days in 2007, we've built the story up ..."
"It's just annoying that Radio 1 are leading on it … politics of plugging!"
BBC Radio 1Xtra is available on DAB digital radio, TV and online.
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