How Channel Four did not change the world

Channel Four tried to be innovative and cutting edge this bank holiday weekend, offering up an eight hour spectacle of ‘house’ music and telling us how the whole thing had changed the world and then having six deejays play one hour sets [without advertisements – radical, I know] with ‘twisted visuals’ and a ‘clown’ shouting out shit and sexist remarks in between as deejays changed places, swapped position and sounds.  Whilst I wanted to admire the broadcaster’s spirit  - it all felt very flat. Well perhaps not completely flat – but there was a documentary before the DJ sets presented by ‘an actor, deejay and clubber’ that was lamentable in every sense. Another countdown of the arbitrary 40 ‘pivotal’ moments that typify and extend our understanding of how ‘clubbing’ changed the world. It ended with ecstasy. When that was where it should have started.

It was out of sync and out of place.

When you have a detailed, analytical [in places] and well researched book in ‘Altered States – The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House’ by Matthew Collin – it would seem a logical starting point to make a ‘documentary’ about the social and psychological impact of the 303 and 808 on our mindset, play and morals using that as a reference guide. But instead we got the usual fair – the talking heads and random sequences taking in Chicago and New York cityscapes, queues for Studio 54, a touch of travellers, swaying masses, The Hacienda, da police and The Sun, strobe lights, lasers and smiley faces. Yeah, just like I remember it. Okay – I didn’t watch it all – but I think I could fill in the gaps between number 37 up to number 5 – it was hardly rocket science was it? I guess my only thrill came from seeing DJ Pierre turn on the actually 303 used on Acid Trax and let it bubble and squelch in what seemed to be a record store – but was more likely his own collection in his house.

Funny that the documentary was the actual product of how ‘clubbing’ changed the world, a shortened attention span and lack of depth, anecdotal musings, devoid of politics and meta-narrative and pretty much vacant. Also this substitute of the word ‘clubbing’ as opposed to ‘House’ or ‘Rave’ or ‘dance’ – you know people where fairly wild before Atalantic Ocean released Waterfall [ironic ] I do believe my mum and dad went to clubs – they danced to Elvis and Eddie Cochran. The masses frightening the establishment –oooh scary maaan. Commodification and consolidation – take it under your wing my friend and exploit it for all it’s worth. Make a documentary about it and reduce it’s edge – package it up – put a logo on it [I don’t know – something ‘ministry’ like – sort of official] and sell it back for late nights in lounges and car rides, or nostalgia trips and fancy dress [School Disco – anyone?]

That’s what pop music is. It is a package of this and that – sold to us all.

It does what we want when we want it to. As Adorno said all those years ago popular music exists to fulfill the needs of the ‘emotional listener’ quickly – a hit for the moment.  This standardization of popular music means that we have already pre-accepted it even before we have heard it. Our ears are trained to hear the music in a standard form whether it is pop, rock, dance, drum and bass or death metal, we already have an expectation of the music, it is ‘pre-digested’ through the structure of the songs. Thatcher must have rubbed her hands together as we ‘put our hands together’ as the music which radiated defiance and difference was slowly reigned in and accepted. Rendering it redundant.

I was wondering round Hirst’s exhibition this week – with the kids – they wanted to see the shark and it was the same there. Empty, devoid of comment and all about the money. That should have been number one – in the C4 doc – how ‘clubbing’ changed the world – it made a lot of people rich at the expense of camaraderie and equality we all thought we were having in the queues and on dance floors as we embraced and gurned our way through the night and emerged ever ready to right the wrongs through euphoric songs and repetitive beats.

I remember when suddenly you weren’t welcome in clubs – you know ‘promoters’ wanted you to ‘dress up’ - pay twenty pound for a ticket – because ‘house music’ was only for a certain swathe of the masses. These ‘strictly’ sounds were strictly for certain kinds. Clubbing changed the world by ghettoizing the sounds and shutting the doors. By subsuming the boredom and frustrations of 1980s Britain it did the Tories a favour – it took us all off the streets and made us sleep through the day.

Now don’t get me wrong. [or do – it doesn’t really matter]

I don’t want all my music challenging but I do want to be challenged. I’m only here once. I want to think. And ‘house music’ can make you think – it can ‘open up’ the mind [body and soul] Through hearing those manipulated beats and synthesized sounds in Orbital, Black Dog, Luke Slater, Beaumant Hannett, Mark Broom, Carl Craig, Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Marshall Jefferson, Todd Terry – you understand – the list goes on and on and on – brought me to ‘musique’ concrete, Cage, Glass, Ligetti, Satie and Stockhausen. To Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Eno and  other musical forms beyond the four on the floor. It made me listen to news reports about space, developments in science and technology. It made me question post modernism and the rethink Marx. It politicized and spoke with understanding.

It changed the world a little bit. 

From the Bronx to Scunthorpe: breakin' in back gardens

I attempted breakdancin’ in my garden – I was on my own – except I guess the neighbours could witness the spectacle of a skinny youth slowly slamming his body onto lino and cardboard in a hasty representation of the Bronx created in a Scunthorpe yard. When I say on my own – I mean I was not in a ‘crew’ – my parents, brother and sister were all home. They could look out and see me too – if they had  wanted.

Practicing the ‘caterpillar’ to show to nobody. Although I had perfected the ‘the robot’ and used it to good effect at school discos as Blue Monday was slipped on the decks. Those moments when a crowd gathers round – circular and sinister – watching. Invariably a teacher would join in and credibility would seep out and embarrassment creep in.

Thinking back to those faintly ridiculous times it pains me to say that I didn’t even have a ‘ghetto blaster’. I was simply lockin’, poppin’ and breakin’ to my own internal beats and scratches. Replaying Rock it and Bambataa’s electro groove. That’s not to say I didn’t hear those tunes on a regular basis – at staged shows, meets and battles– whilst we all had fun [family] weekends or watched by the clock or the leisure centre paved car parks. As crews from various parts of town came to get down – came to get down. And then up rolled the Hull crews, the Donny ones – it was a touch of the spray paint fuelled NY times – right here in the industrial landscape of northern Britain – it was a culture shift really – a separation and recognition of futures both scuppered and starting. Which I guess the whole NY scene was to. Futility, fury and freedom. Rock a funky beat and dance. We’ve always danced to forget.

There was even an all female crew – Break Three – geddit – ratcheting up the rights of women’s liberation through synchronized windmills and headspins [okay- so I probably made up the political angle – but it was liberating in a way] You could say the ‘elements’ were in place – hip hop had arrived in the North East. As I’ve said before – I kind of got lost in the mix – that indie blender of jangles and jeans and missed out on the hip hop scene to some extent – my education coming from Lou Reed not Marley Marl in 1984. But luckily I had school friends who did. And they would eventually play me those ‘lost gems’ on 1210s in smoke filled bedrooms as beats bounced off walls. You don’t lose your passion for those breaks – even if you do stop listening. There’s a wonderful book called Can’t Stop Won’t Stop that documents those breaking days of the breakin’ craze and the emergence of hip hop in New York. You should read it if you like hip hop – you probably have done.

I should read it again.

There is never enough time though. I just picked up Rotten again – a seminal book about a John – suddenly lost in ten pages as Lydon explains just how wrong everybody got it and Jones with his wonderful insight to those college students who at the time ‘were so fucking snobby’. You know the ones who became ‘ the upwardly mobile yuppies’ and as Jones’ puts it –‘they were so damned self-righteous at their hippy festivals, never connecting with the general population’. You can imagine their [the hippies not the Pistols] reaction to the birth of hip hop – class, race and poverty all rolled into one –ready to exploit - it’s a shame it fell for the glittering jewels of banal capitalist gifts – you need to be looking back at the ghetto to change it – not forgetting why it was made as you race off in tha Benz from your endz.

As I type in a London home.

Not that my attempts at breakin’ would free the North and therefore working class Britain from the tyranny of the greed and systematic erosion of any identity worth fighting for. But the ways we set about creating sub-cultures were full with politics. I was talking last night – between the Great Bake Off and Midsomer Murders about the depoliticised nature of popular culture – we do that in our house – it’s all highbrow you know. Now clearly I am most likely wrong about this – but as the independent ‘spirit’ crossed over to mainstream acceptance and all looks became up for grabs – the ideology behind the putting on was lost.

Again don’t misinterpret the naivety of youth and the willingness to belong. But as those scraps of sub-culture were amassed we discussed why we looked like we did – be it the appropriation of a Kangol hat or the wearing of a studded belt – things like this mattered. Didn’t they – and do they now? Maybe I was just more neurotic and uptight [everything is [not] alright] Which brings right back to the music.

Music has and always will matter – I now accept it doesn’t change the world. But it can offer alternatives and through those clumsy attempts at b-popping and crazy legs rockin’ I have amassed a knowledge of the political infrastructure of New York during the 70s and how Bambataa and his Zulu Nation tried to fix a corrupt system amidst the Reaganomics of the 1980s - that shaped choices about purchases and listens in northern towns and Scunthorpe record shops – why KRS One mattered more than MC Hammer or 2 Live Crew. Don’t get me wrong KRS One was a misogynist too – but Sound of da Police could soundtrack last Summer and the next one. That relentless beat and as cars with sirens pull you up and stop and search you – it’s always about the wider power struggle with the state. I wasn’t expecting to arrive at the ways the brutality of the police can ultimately empower the masses from attempting a headspin in my garden – but somehow I have arrived here – questioning modern police methods.

Hip hop can do that – well it used to.

And it’s all trapped in the anger and hostility of this tune.

a message for the masses

I wake up sometimes unable to muster the energy or excitement for work. And fall quickly back into the realms of dole age infinity and endless time on ‘our’ hands. Of guitar tuning and twiddling and recording and listening. And walks through parades of 1970s shops where discoveries happened and moments were had. I don’t miss it. I just remember it.

This is not a longing for that northern town. This is not a call to arms to return to youthful ways – it’s recognition of what shapes you and how you end up here. I was called to jury service at 18 years of age – it was in Grimsby – they do that sort of stuff there. It was all low level violence and malevolence – youth armed with steel poles disputing the honour of someone’s dog or car and sometimes other humans. We’d dissect incidents and altercations in Cleethorpes back seats and pushing and shoving in Grimbsy club hall ways – it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t fascinating. It was the anger of the underclasses turned on itself – the seeds of destruction under the last throes of the Tory dice and the imminent arrival of a more powerful wrecking system from the Britpop politicians who would descend upon us.

I used to go out for lunch. Through the court halls, past the security guards with a nod and wander around the precinct and high street. I can’t picture it as vividly now – but it was all sallow concrete and shop fronts. There was a small independent record shop – it sold the usual and the unusual. I wasn’t on the lookout for vinyl – my tape player was in the bag for the train ride back and forth to the inns of justice – early starts with the Beach Boys 20/20 or the Paul’s Boutique by the Beasties – it all depended on the mood I awoke.

So it was tape digging – and there on the bottom shelf was a tape by Linton Kwesi Johnston. It looked interesting. Reggae fi Rodni, Fit them back and Bass Culture – title awash with low end theory and history. It had an oil painting cover – all heavy daubs and muted palette. And hearing LKJ for the first time was revelatory – it was chattin’ and bass – about politics and race. It represented Britain then, now and beyond – with its timeless clutch of reggae beats and reverbs.

So sitting in the courts – of Grimbsy with the air permeated with industry and fish – we listened to judges make judgements on youth. And LKJ toasted the ills of da police and the insurrectshun of the masses – as I and I considered the evidence from police officers in da dock. It was good to have LKJ by my side – because it noh funny when you sitting in the jury making decisions that affect lives and you know that the daily mailers want to take charge and you think the kids with iron bars just might have been right.

And so I return to LKJ as the EDL spews its shit on the streets [no rock in the clubs] and I watch the 70s hate seep back into the cracks and crevices of our daily routines and it reminds me about the fighting spirit – the real collective responsibilities that we have. To take on ideologies that need challenging ‘in these difficult times’. The ill informed can make you ill – but it’s the will of the people that matters.

Fit Them Back

It’s as simple as that. We need to fight them back. Living within a stone’s throw of Stephen Lawrence’s bus stop, the New Cross’ burnt house and walking the Welling roads. Things are bubbling and bubbling again – rising right to the top and given credence by the ‘red tops’ that hating will result in a ‘new England’ when I’m just looking for a better world. LKJ takes matters into his own hands – a rolling snare and falling guitar as the bass keeps it all rocksteady – smash their brains in – coz they ain’t got nuthin in ‘em – it’s a simple command. A straightforward ask, as the tempo keeps it uptown and we dance our moonstomp over the heads of the ignorant.

It’s a message for the masses.

It is music.