Biased BBC’s Alan notes;
“Whilst the BBC is able to hide its dirty washing under cover of the Freedom of Information Act’s get out clause….’for the purposes of art, journalism or literature’ it is not above using Art, Journalism or Literature to slip us some hokey leftwing propaganda under the radar. BBCR4 ran ‘Who’s Angry now?‘ checking out the protest song movement for signs of life now the Tories are back in power (well very nearly).
The Bard of Barking (Mad)Billy Bragg let the cat out of the bag by telling us that a Tory government being elected was like leaving lard balls out for the birds…the protesters all come flocking….so not really about policy…more just anti-Tory discrimination regardless of policy….and note… not a word about 13 years of one of the most incompetent, corrupt governments this country has been blessed with.
As usual the BBC programme ran true to form and began with the Satanic Handbag Swinger, Mrs Thatcher, but naturally went on to CND, the Iraq War, the recent riots, banking and ‘Occupy’….occasionally giving us a bit of music but not letting it get in the way of the various protesters given a platform to air their pet grievances that have been vexing and burdening them since the onset of a Tory lead government began to torture their consciousness.
Who’s Angry Now?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01fjx67
Broadcaster and journalist John Harris was in his teens at the height of the Thatcher years and protest-song obsessed. In this programme, he goes on a journey to meet some of today’s musicians who are sufficiently fired up to sing socially and politically conscious music.
A Lefties best friend is his dogma and you wouldn’t mind but the very righteous and multi-cultural BBC and fellow media leading lights, so concerned with diversity and equality, in the privacy of their own agendas don’t quite live up to the ideals that they espouse and force upon the rest of us:
The Independent reveals that all those media talking heads telling us that we must have a fairer society and social mobility have been caught out…the reality is somewhat different for them…..
‘The British film and television production industry is dominated by the middle-classes who “hoard” opportunities and benefit from family ties, new research has found.
A survey of professionals in the industry has found that working-class people are discriminated against because they do not have the “right accents, hairstyles, clothes or backgrounds.”’
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/film-and-television-industry-discriminates-against-women-ethnic-minorities-and-the-working-class-7630929.html
Whatever your politics, there are some great protest songs, Dylan of course, but what about Dick Gaughan. Bragg covered his cover of World turned upside down. His work of genius ‘Handful of Earth’ is from the early eighties. He’s well to the left of me, but the passion and beauty in his music sends shivers down your spine. I’m going to see him in September.
If the programme didn’t have him on, then it is indeed a bag of shite. Billy Bragg is a Dick Gaughan tribute band.
Dick Gaughan is the real deal-an unreconstituted Communist, grown tired and sour, but no sell out, thoroughly consistent and a great singer-songwriter.
Bragg is no tribute act-just a Mick Jones roadie who caught the Gucci Socialist disease from the Style Councils laundry hamper.
Not sure who is the biggest fake in pop-not Vanilla Ice at all…got to be Bragg or Tom Robinson…both well-beloved on the BBC of course.
Think Bragg just nicks it…any thoughts?
Syndicalism and socialism long ago became the exclusive preserve of elitist upper class rabble rousers who more often than not hadn’t any clear definition or concept of what they were meant to be protesting about. Their music, film and poetry often reflects this. I don’t mind Dylan but I always preferred Frank Zappa’s piss takes of the ‘I’m more right on than you’ lefty radicals who permeated the arts and who subsequently turned individualism, creativity and avante-garde into mediocracy as an art form.
Zappa I like. I think it was Zappa who said the greatest rock riff ever created was Black Sabbath’s Supernaut. I think the man has a point.
Only the BBC know how many variations on this tired old theme they can yet wring out on that Labour fiddle of theirs.
The same mediocrities now living in big houses-rebellion pays, especially if the State will sanction these safe rebellions from their chosen trusties…Weller, Marr, and -of course Bragg and Pauline Black types.
All had a very good war under Thatch…but you`d never know it…and the BBC continue to laud these “war veterans” as if Strummer and Viscious had recommended them for “futile gesture” medals.
Naturally interviewed by their wannabies like Jupitus, Harris, Vine and all the rest of `em.
This self-reinforcing mutual congratulatory version of events goes into the vaults marked “safe and edgy to your prep-school paying parents”…and it` becomes the version-cheap, repetitive and hopefully to be “the truth” if we tell those who weren`t there that it was so.
Shoring up the narrative seems to be all that the BBC want these days-as someone said on this site…they ARE the Bias these days…not the reporters of same.
Maybe a show to rectify this outrage? Featuring Gary Numan, Phil Collins, Ted Nugent and Neil Peart. Louise Mensch could produce.
Who else?
Jim, Do some research, please: contrary to popular belief, Phil Collins has never endorsed the Tories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Collins
Check the section on “Activism”
‘Research’ for a quality post rather falls at the altar of clogging the airwaves with distracting, if mercifully short, volume.
No response to ‘Bragg let the cat out of the bag by telling us that a Tory government being elected was like leaving lard balls out for the birds…the protesters all come flocking….so not really about policy’.
That… would appear to be more facilitated by an editorial decision that would be interesting to probe, but unlikely by the BBC or those ‘very comfortable’ with how they conduct themselves, indeed often ‘entirely relaxed’ to the point of strident legal defences when actually being asked.
Ah, I see we have a music snob.
Phil Collins is, if anything, a Green Party man and he has long supported environmental causes; and he is a long-time supporter of that far-right group, PETA.
I suppose that, to a certain kind of sneering, supercilious and bien pensant student of modern music, the name ‘Phil Collins’ brings a snort of derision. To people who actually know him and appreciate his work, he is one of the most talented, successful and influential musicians of his generation. His life-story is actually fairly sad but he will forever be known as the bloke who moved to Switzerland ‘to avoid tax’ and that bloke who ‘dumped his wife by fax’. He is almost a cripple these days, you know? That’s what 40 years of recording and touring do to you. I suppose his disabilities are payback for Another Day in Paradise, eh?
Neil Peart read some Ayn Rand back in the 1970s and is somehow deemed to be ‘right-wing’ because he had this ‘free will’ thing going on in his lyrics. A cursory glance at any of his post-1978 writings or interviews will tell you he is a straight-down-the-line liberal.
He, too, is one of the finest and influential musicians of the modern era; his personal life, too, has also been dogged by tragedy, having lost his partner and only child within a year of one another. But he once read Ayn Rand so that makes him persona non grata to the ‘real’ music fan.
Ted Nugent likes shooting things. He was quite good, once.
Gary Numan was fairly pioneering in 1979 but I can’t admit to knowing much about his more recent work. I see he is still a working musician and still tours, so good luck to him.
I get your point, Jim. Right-wing rock-stars are, generally speaking, shit.
Well, I am no apologist for right-wing musicians or progressive rock but if you are looking for Tory- or Republican-voting rock-stars, there are plenty around and many of them get four-star reviews in Q. Woo hoo!
It is perfectly possible to admire Rush and The Maccabees, by the way. I like Genesis (I draw the line at Invisible Touch onwards), Yes, Zappa, King Crimson and Gentle Giant but Lana del Ray’s new record moves me to tears and my favourite album of all time is Jordan : The Comeback. I will never tire of listening to Sonic Youth, the Cocteaus, Bloc Party, early REM, XTC, Sarah McLachlan, Wilco and The Shins. Does this mean I am cool enough to listen to BBC 6 Music or does my admiration for Signals by Rush exclude me?
Sorry to labour the point and all that, James, but your comment, flippant or not, came across as just a little bit cuntish.
Too harsh!
I like Genesis. First album I had was Three Sides Live. Kid you not. And Neil Peart is a fine drummer.
You are well cooler than me. I like old folk and hard rock. Now there’s right wing music.
“You are well cooler than me.”
How dare you, Dandy. How very bloody dare you!
Have to admit, shamefully, that I have a blind-spot with English folk and I don’t know yer man Dick Gaughan. My knowledge really starts with Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention, with a short pit-stop for Seth Lakeman.
Recommendations – left- and right-wing – are always welcome.
Hard rock – just got the Jim Dandy monicker. Bit of a Black Oak Arkansas fan, then.
Quite right. Jimmy Page is (was) openly Tory, not suprising when you think how rich he is.
Damn fine musician from a damn fine band.
So you see the old Red Devil don’t have the best tunes ..
Oops-lest anyone think I was being nasty about BOB Harris…not a bit of it!
It`s John Harris who , is Owen Jones; years down the line.
A bunch of political lefties mentally stuck in Woodstock era, only hearing “Imagine” on Repeat for the past 44 years.
Political class of today are the hippies of yesterday. Anyone surprised by the results? (I know – rhetorical question).
ARTIST: Tom Lehrer
TITLE: The Folk Song Army
We are the Folk Song Army
Everyone of us cares
We all hate poverty, war and injustice
Unlike the rest of you squares
There are innocuous folk songs
Yeah, but we regard ’em with scorn
The folks who sing ’em have no social conscience
Why they don’t even care if Jimmy crack corn
If you feel dissatisfaction
Strum your frustrations away
Some people may prefer action
But give me a folk song any old day
The tune doesn’t have to be clever
And it don’t matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain’t good English
And it don’t even gotta rhyme – excuse me – rhyne
Remember the war against Franco
That’s the kind where each of us belongs
Though he may have won all the battles
We had all the good songs
So join in the Folk Song Army
Guitars are the weapons we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice
Ready, aim, sing
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygMhtNQJ9M&version=3&hl=en_US%5D
Big fan of Tom Lehrer!
All you need to know about Bragg is that when he shows up to Tolpuddle, a gang of us get on our bikes and have a picnic on “Billys Bollard”…the first place you can`t hear the bugger even with a hostile wind a blowin`!
As soon as I see him and his zoocrew pushing the old working-class agriculture workers out of the way-his bloody guitar case (“This guitar kills fascists” on a sticker-hope Woody Guthries estate knows…but of course they do, because he`s snooping round Woodys sock drawer for yet more songs to blag!). When I see that-I`m off on my bike! And I`m never alone-the exodus gets bigger by the year!..
Bragg personnifies the homeopathic dilution of Labour/Union activism in his gestures, his nice house, his Brixton kids choirs, his House of Lords sucking up, his tax vogueing…so clearly like Kaliber, he`s the Beebs “Safe rebellion” barker of choice. Communism for kids until Uni.
At least Phil Collins is a great drummer and a surprisingly charismatic front man in concert…Bragg is a terminal sign of Parkinsons in the Socialist body politic..so let the BBC Socialist Hospital Radio talk to itself for a while longer…but don`t put a penny in that flat cap of theirs!
‘Communism for kids until Uni.’
Chris a pure gem made me sides hurt and oh so true!
Standard BBC attitude to what it fondly terms ‘protest’ music, nicely tailored for an approving like-minded lefty audience.
Reminds me of the term Audio Feedback….
The reverberation of sound waves from a loudspeaker to a preceding part of an audio system, such as to the microphone. The sound passes from the loudspeaker to the microphone again, amplified further, and is passed out through the loudspeaker in such a manner as to reinforce, and distort, the original input.
You’d think they would’ve played this tune, you know, just for balance.
Perhaps they want to use the footage for their next report on the Saint Andrews University Young Conservatives Association.
Oh great the protest song the lefts politicos equivalent of sitting by the fire singing cum by yar me lud I have always been utterly opposed to Bragg and his like and their pale effecting of caring for the poor that they were never part of really and couldn’t wait to move away from when the ‘protest ‘cash started rolling in !
Now if we were talking about Thatcher on acid or conflict
maybe the sperm birds I would have had a interest as even a conservative liberal like me loves their anger and energy and they weren’t trying to get rich and move to the suburbs !
Could someone please explain why Bragg is forever on the bloody wireless, if it is not because he is the standard bearer of the BBC’s political Weltanschauung?
He sells few records, few concert tickets, so it can only be because the BBC thinks he matters. Clearly, music lovers don’t.
Very true Just like morearsey he has little music left in him so like Hardy/prigstoke with comedy they have to pad out the cash flow with social comment and bit parts on the one show !
He should step out of the barriers against the public the BBC and twotter afford him and truly fight the good fight in the real world if he means it !
he’s the musical–and i use the term very loosely indeed–of Mehdi Hassan
nothing sensible to say but never off the BBC saying it anyway
Remember ‘Red Wedge’ in the ’80’s and the BBCs delight in them?
Same old same old.
the BBC, like Hollywood, is full of bum bandits. There’s nothing worse than a left wing homosexual, or their sympathizers. As a gay man, Labour coming in to power in 1997 confirmed this.