‘There is no living musician who has been more influential than Bob Dylan.’
So he must have something worthwhile to say….
“I realized at the time that the press, the media, they’re not the judge – God’s the judge,” says Dylan. “The only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to God. The press isn’t either of them. And I just figured they’re irrelevant.”
Yeah.
Kind of puts Billy Bragg in perspective….
Speaking of whom….The Picket Line Poet strikes again…As DV noticed, Billy Bragg has been putting in another appearance on R4.…anymore and he might as well be put on the payroll.
Now…there’s an idea…the BBC want an authentic working class tinge to their output….who better than Billy boy? Make sure there’s somewhere for his whippet and pigeons in the studio, a spittoon, and nurse on standby…these working class heroes have had such a hard life they might just keel over from the stress at any moment. Gor blimey guvn’r.
Isn’t it an incongruous paradox that it is a lefty boot boy who is the über middle class R4’s favourite pet….do they have him like some form of performing monkey wheeling him in for a bit of amusement…..ever seen Trading Places? Are they all laughing at him really whilst at the same time somehow horrified?
Looking for ‘bias’ on R4 on a Saturday morning is like shooting fish in a barrel…almost too easy to be worth the effort….but this morning had such a rich vein of worthy codswallop you’ve just gotta have a go….the Reverend Cole, Billy Bragg, Peter Oborne and FOOC…deep joy.
Bragg is just beyond parody, more Bob Hope than Bob Dylan….a living cartoon stereotype of a corny old act dragged in from the 70’s and 80’s. The simple trite leftwing tripe that he spouts, the soundbite slogans, the thoughtless makebelieve signifying nothing that trips off his tongue…..all no doubt just the right size to fit on a student placard….ironically it’s probably those very middle class students that he despises so much who paid Bragg’s mortgage.
Bragg thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to succeed however good you are, however popular…if you’re not working class…..ironic for this man who espouses equality he wants success handed on a plate to those from the council estate….hardly ‘authentic’.
Just wonder how many of these artists, groups and bands are from the 6percenters? Not many I’ll bet.
I don’t suppose Bob Dylan is working class, certainly not in attitude, and he went to university…..would Bragg allow him to be a success?…has he earned the right?
‘There is no living musician who has been more influential than Bob Dylan.’
I heard that said on the BBC recently as well…so it must be true.
What does Bob think about ‘authenticity’ and ‘roots’?……
“You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”
Ah….so no matter what your ‘birth’ you’ve still got a right to have a go?
So what made Dylan different? What pushed him out there?
“I listened to the radio a lot. I hung out in the record stores. And I slam-banged around on the guitar and played the piano and learned songs from a world which didn’t exist around me,” says Dylan.
He says that he knew even then that he was destined to become a music legend. “I was heading for the fantastic lights,” he writes. “Destiny was looking right at me and nobody else.”
So hard work and self belief and a bit of luck no doubt. The secret of success….not a Billy Bragg quota system.
What really amused me was Braggs assertion that what you get when you have ‘Markets’ is ‘horsemeat’. When you have ‘Bragg’ you get ‘hogwash’.
Horsemeat? Tell that to the Chinese, they‘d have killed for some horse meat…they know what State controlled enterprise really means…..and it didn’t mean a land of bread and honey…it meant being treated like horses, workhorses….and having to eat grass to survive…before turning to cannibalism, finally succumbing to starvation…just like the millions in the Socialist haven of Soviet Russia…never mind the marvels of the Socialist Republic of North Korea.
Yes, State control. Stuff that nightmares are made of. Never mind Billy you keep sweating away banging out the tunes for the Brothers and Sisters oppressed by Capitalism. I’m sure you’re making a difference. Meanwhile they’re off to Magaluf on cheap RyanAir flights, knocking back the booze and dancing to the beat of those middleclass minstrels you so love to hate. Stuff their grandparents could only dream of in austere, rationed 1950’s Britain before Capitalism was spread to the masses.
Hilariously Labour’s Frank Dobson turned up on ‘Week in Westminster’ interviewed by Peter Oborne (22 mins 30 sec) chatting about ‘Capitalism in Crisis’…no not banking…but horsemeat in your burger following on from Bragg.
Strange how this bloke who also spoke of the whistleblowers in the NHS and boasted here of having put in legislation to allow ‘whilstleblowing’ didn’t seem too keen to boast about Labour’s record running the Stafford Hospital.
If a few traces of horse meat in a burger is a crisis in capitalism…what’s a few thousand deaths in state run hospitals Franky baby?
I can’t understand why you don’t want to talk about it…not want to blow the whistle Frank old son?
The BBC have made no effort at all to take to task the Labour politicians at the heart of that genuine crisis….they do however seem keen to lay some blame at the Tory led Coalition’s feet…despite them coming to power long after these events.
Oborne interviewing Dobson raises the subject of politicians dodging the Stafford scandal but allows Dobson to sidestep it as he put the blame on the Media and then told a joke about the horsemeat scandal.
Ironic that when given the chance to tackle Dobson, a former Labour Health Secretary, Oborne ducks out of the fight as he seems pretty keen to nail them in this Telegraph column:
‘At any given moment, there exists at least one delicate subject that all mainstream political parties would much rather not discuss.
Now the subject which nobody wants to talk about is the National Health Service. It is just over a week since the publication of the Francis report into Stafford hospital, where some 1,200 patients died in appalling circumstances. Had any other institution been involved in a scandal on this scale, the consequences would have been momentous: sackings, arrests and prosecutions.‘
Guess Dobson might be right…the Media seem to lack the will or the backbone to target the real culprits…the politicians who like to take the credit but dodge the blame when things go wrong on their watch….and it’s not as if Oborne doesn’t know that Dobson was dodging the bullet and diverting attention with his joke as he finished his article with this:
‘Psychologists would call the events of the last week “transference”. And if British politicians (of all parties) carry on changing the subject, the more certain it is that there will be fresh Staffords to come.’
Pretty clear and damning…and yet….
NHS boss Gary Walker was ‘gagged’ by the NHS from talking about the circumstances of his dismissal from his job….but the BBC are on the trail of the Department of Health and the responsible Minister as they may have known about the ‘gagging order’ in 2010.
The BBC are not bothered about the mass deaths of patients under Labour…but are about the horrible unfairness of a man paid £500,000 to keep schtumm….
Walker made this statement:
“I don’t think it’s simply about the Lincolnshire Trust,” he added, calling for Mr Hunt to investigate the “chain of command” that led to the gagging, which he said included the Department of Health, the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and the Lincolnshire Trust.
“I don’t think Mr Hunt can investigate his own department so I think he should be looking for someone exceptionally independent from all of this.”
And the BBC have latched on to the part about investigating the Department of Health….as you listened during the day that part of the story was highlighted increasingly by the BBC. It is certain to be a major line in any interviews to come…much like the new line that is growing like topsy about horsemeat in burgers….that it is yet another attack on the poorest in society by an uncaring Capitalism. Another soundbite that Labour politicians and their fellow travellers are increasingly splashing vigorously around like Holy Water on a vampire.
So how ironic…BBC gear up for attack on Tories for a supposed ‘cover up’ after the event but fail entirely to tackle the real villains…Labour who for years ignored the scandalous and deadly lack of care.
BBC Bias…maybe I should write a song about that!
I don’t regard Dylan as working class. He’s dreary middle class, like Pink Floyd.
This is what working class music looks like:
I’m going to be brave and see if I can embed that:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOJSM46nWwo&w=480&h=360%5D
Nope. Didn’t work.
Worked for me!
Ah Madness. They were a like a breath of fresh air.
Bragg appeals to BBC types and the middle class audience they come from and broadcast to for the following reasons.
Because he is intelligent, articulate, entertaining, quick witted and artistic he gives them a good excuse to –
1. romanticise the working class
2. revile the working class who are not like Billy.
Just like Billy, the BBC’s core audience of home counties drones wants nothing to do with the real working class and doesn’t want to live anywhere near them.
Capitalism is caring: It rewards people with profits if they serve people with products and services that they want, and punishes people with losses if they do not.
Socialism is evil: It forces people through taxation to buy products and services they may not want, it creates state monopolies, rewards failure with subsidies and punishes success due to the natural envy of the socialist mindset.
As far as rewarding failure goes, the BBC is a paragon lately.
I wonder if he thinks ‘the market’ that he claims gave us horsemeat, is different to the one that built his Dorset villa.
Now listen here Comrade!
Billy’s mansion was built with the honest sweat of of the labouring proletariat. They toiled day and night to build this glorious edifice, a monument to the class struggle.
How dare you suggest that ‘the market’ had anything to do with it!
Did Willy really say that, The Market gave us Horsemeat? No wonder he’s a Socialist – he can’t think straight and doesn’t understand The Market that afforded him his Dorset Mansion. Criminals cheat the Market. It’s called fraud. That is why criminals including the meat cheats go to jail, and not Willy. What a Pillock. Why do the bBC give airtime to a Pillock? Could it be because too many of thebBC’s commissioning editors and journos speak fluent Pillock too?
Whatever happened to Billy Braggs refusal to pay his taxes as long as the likes of Stephen Hester were getting vast pay outs from RBS/Bank of Scotland a couple of years back.
Do tell us Billy-what distinguishes you then, from Starbucks and Amazon(apart from the fact that they are successful inthe marketplace, whereas you live by the Guardian and BBC these days?)
How do we get to protest your tax avoidance…or did the county set accountant tell you to pay up, but keep your protest active as if you`re actually doing what you threatened to do.
All wind and waiters…presume his country pile is being fuelled by his own self regard and pomposity….idiot wind indeed!
oh gawd,,,spare me the rantings of this middle class ultra left mockney billy bragg who believes in multi culturism that much that accusses anybody(working class non racist people) who does not conform to that kinda belief as some kinda of flag waving neo nazi from the third reich,,,funny that billy boy,,why do you of all people who loves multi culturism that much chose to live in the most all white leafy tory posh rural village in east somerset,,,see billy boy..your a bloody mockney wannabe working class fake strumming ye guitar..practise what you preach billy boy and set up home in tower hamlets or hackney you gross far left hypocrite…innit lol.
And…and Braggy brought a load of Brixton kids dahn from Brixton to sing ” One Love” by Bob Marley with him up on stage at Tolpuddle a few years back.
Now-I for one DID have a CRB check, and was the one scooting off on my bike being chased away by lager-swilling thugs like Bob Crows goons( sunburn doesn`t do it justice!)…but I do wonder-how many of those at the event DID have one…had Billy OKed it with the Police Federation?…and-now with Savile foremost in all our hearts and minds-surely we can`t have Bragg doing his pied piper crap ever again on a stage in this country. History will judge us …sadly too!
If it saves just one kid from affecting a cockney accent, or going private from a large “Country House” (listen and lean Billy!) that I myself for making no apology for raising awareness on this key issue.
We`re talking about nothing else here on the streets of Weybridge!
‘NHS boss Gary Walker was ‘gagged’ by the NHS from talking’ to whom?
The Radio4 Today programme.
And its kind of relevant that while thousands of patients were dying, no one in the NHS blew the whistle, and when they were gagged.
Did you hear him on the Today show then bandy?
He is now unemployable within the service that he led at the higher levels for 20 years or so.
He warns others not to dare speak out against the NHS as he did, for fear of punitive reprisals against them.
And you quibble about his not speaking out about it earlier?
I think you`d rather crucify a few Walkers along the Third Way, than bring one miserable Shipman in a suit or scrubs to any kind of justice!
Only the likes of you and Naughtie don`t see just how Stalinist your beloved NHS has become.
Typical of the lefties like yourself to burn the bed to catch a flea…I hope Nicholsons head is on a salver before too long…and Bower would be a bonus, if she can found from under a rock somewhere….