Tag Archives: Tipping points

2010 ➤ Can Generation Y be bovvered to vote?

Posted on 3 May 2010 | 1 comment

❚ THE MOST EXCITING GENERAL ELECTION FOR 31 YEARS takes place in the UK this week. Since the Conservative landslide that put Margaret Thatcher into Downing Street on this day, May 3, 1979, British voters have seen only one change of political ideology, from right to left (to use the word generously), with the Labour party landslide of 1997. The Conservative government won four consecutive general elections, and Labour governments subsequently won three.

Boy wonder: “Vote for one party…” Old lags: “… and get one free!”

This points up unique new aspects of generation gaps. Half the adult population who are entitled to vote – and this embraces the UK’s delayed Generation X – have known only one political sea-change, while everybody younger than 31 – the 11m that include Generation Y who reached voting age since Labour came to power – have experienced only one flavour of government. Consider the tensions that should be reverberating within this nation’s breasts.

During the 1980s the Thatcher administration shifted for ever the tectonic plates underpinning society (though the concept of “society” was one she as prime minister famously denied). Parallels with today are spookily similar: an unprecedented recession has toppled many supporting pillars of the economy, while unemployment is passing 2.5m just as it did in 1979. Currently one-fifth of all people of working age are “economically inactive”. Among today’s 18-24-year-olds the unemployment rate is 17%, even for graduates. And a decade of austerity is set to declare itself just after the election.

UK population by age: 18-49 year-old clout (ONS)

By the dawn of the Swinging 80s, the young had grown very angry indeed with the grown-ups’ way of running things. Yet in the 20-tens, we find ourselves still unsure whether Generation Y are activists or slacktivists. Meanwhile those researchers at Pew already have a shrewd idea about the politics of online social networkers and whether they can be bovvered enough to stray offline and put an X on a ballot paper. Don’t hold your breath.

Would these songs change your vote? Newsnight invites rappers Nu Brand to create an anthem for the Conservative Party (BBC)

➢ VIEW VIDEOS ♫ BBC Newsnight’s Danny Robins commissioned fab, bangin’ political party anthems from Haduken!, Right Said Fred and Nu Brand
➢ Generation Jones stakes its claim between the Baby Boomers and Generation X in the UK

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Posted in Economics, Politics, Pop music, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged 20-tens, general election, Generation Y, music video, social networks, Tipping points, voting

1982 ➤ Lest we forget, on this day Britain sank the Belgrano

Posted on 2 May 2010 | Leave a comment

May 2, 1982: ARA General Belgrano lists heavily to port in the Atlantic Ocean, while its crew abandon ship. Sailor’s picture via Press Association

❚ THE BRITISH WAR CABINET headed by Margaret Thatcher, met at Chequers, the prime minister’s weekend retreat, on this Sunday in 1982 and unanimously agreed to a naval order to sink the Argentine warship, General Belgrano, in the South Atlantic. Subsequently, to its eternal shame, Britain’s biggest selling daily paper The Sun boasted in its most notorious headline: “GOTCHA”.

This rabid jingoism by middle-aged politicians and armchair media generals alike, as they relived memories of World War Two, drove a wedge into the generation gap that has never been equalled. Those of us under 40 — too young to remember WW2 — were appalled that a simmering 150-year-old squabble with Argentina over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands (population 1,800) should now warrant military action by Britain. We were even more appalled at the near-total, gung-ho media hype that blessed it. Neither nation formally declared war on the other, yet the 74-day conflict led to the deaths of 649 Argentine and 255 British servicemen. There were 1,188 Argentine non-fatal casualties and 777 British.

Britain initiated the first naval loss at 4pm that Sunday when the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror fired a pattern of torpedoes at the Belgrano which was patrolling south of the Falklands. Two struck the vintage light cruiser and within 20 minutes its captain ordered his men to abandon ship. It was more than a day before 770 were rescued from the open ocean. Meanwhile 323 crew had died.

In their superbly detailed chronicle The Battle for the Falklands (1983, republished 2010), journalists Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins report the reasoning of a senior British commander: “You have got to start something like this by showing that you’re bloody good and you’re determined to win.” After the sinking, a British destroyer captain said when he broke the news to his ship’s company: “There was a mixture of horror and disbelief. There certainly wasn’t any pride.” The legitimacy of this British action remains the subject of controversy today.

Retribution followed two days later, on May 4. An Argentine Exocet missile struck the British destroyer HMS Sheffield amidships, with devastating effect, ultimately killing 20 crew members and severely injuring 24 others. The ship sank six days later. In the Royal Navy, Hastings reported, officers and men were shocked at the ease with which a single enemy aircraft had destroyed a warship specifically designed for air defence.

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1980 ➤ Birth of The Face: magazine that launched a generation of stylists and style sections

Posted on 1 May 2010 | 5 comments

❚ WHEN NICK LOGAN, A FORMER EDITOR OF THE NME, launched The Face in May 1980 little did he realise it would become the decade’s “style bible” and one of the six great postwar magazines to change the course of British journalism. The Face married music, popular culture, politics and street style with radical art direction and new fonts by Neville Brody. It paid peanuts to a select bunch of savvy and passionate writers, photographers and “stylists” who gave the word a fresh meaning (almost entirely lost today) and inspired an avalanche of imitators in mainstream media, retail, advertising and beyond.

Itself dubbed “the world’s best-dressed magazine”, The Face broke with mainstream complacency by actively inventing or giving focus to entire movements that combined clothes, music and attitude. Many came to define the 80s – from The Cult With No Name which was eventually rechristened New Romantics, the Hard Times ripped Levi ensemble, the Burberry-loving Casuals, and the “bad boy” Buffalo silhouette created by Ray Petri and Jamie Morgan. This, if any, became the urban male uniform of the mid-80s, and was celebrated only last winter by an issue of Arena Homme + magazine, art directed by Brody who designed for the occasion two custom typefaces called Buffalo and Popaganda.

At its peak The Face sold 100,000 copies monthly. Brody moved on in 1986 and Logan in 1999, though the title endured until 2004. Logan launched Arena in 1986 as a men’s monthly, soon edited by Dylan Jones, who today edits GQ UK. The British edition of Arena endured until 2009.

➢➢ The birth of The Face — Read the first article introducing Nick Logan’s new magazine, in the Evening Standard on May 1, 1980

HOW THE TWO KEY SHAPERS BEHIND THE FACE SAW IT

❚ NICK LOGAN, publisher of The Face, was a working-class journalist from East London “People said you couldn’t then call a magazine anything as obscure as just The Face… I didn’t see why Tatler should have good paper and good photography and it should be denied to people like me.”

❚ NEVILLE BRODY on art-directing the early Face “It was a big laboratory. The New Order cover was a picture of the lead singer, and it wasn’t that great, a bright blue background. I said to Nick this picture was so shit and he said, Why don’t you crop it off the corner of the page? All you saw was the top left-hand corner of his face – immediately so commercial, and no other commercial magazine would have done anything like it. Great courage is what set his magazine apart.”

➢➢ Launching the style decade Lively social analysis in BBC Radio 4’s anniversary documentary starring all the usual suspects: on iPlayer until May 13

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Posted in Chronology, Culture, London, Media, Pop music, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged Arena, Evening Standard, Neville Brody, Nick Logan, The Face, Tipping points

2010 ➤ Rich List puts George Michael top of the popstars from the un-lucrative 80s

Posted on 25 Apr 2010 | Leave a comment

❚ ONLY THREE MUSICIANS FROM THE 1980s are included in the annual Rich List of Britain’s top 50 music millionaires, published today by The Sunday Times. The richest musician of the decade who holds his own amid the older gods of rock is singer-songwriter George Michael who is worth £90m ($138m) today. He sits at No 25 in the ST’s top 50. George is pictured above in Wham!’s Club Tropicana video (where “the drinks are free”). His group’s “pure pop” epitomised the sybaritic style which by 1983 was signalling the divide in British music between electronic earnestness and full-on hedonism.

The other two richest stars from the 80s are each estimated to be worth a relatively puny £35m ($54m). They are Lancastrian Mick Hucknall of Simply Red (their summer tour climaxes with a farewell concert on Dec 19 and is booking now), and pop diva Kylie Minogue who found fame in the UK through the Australian TV soap, Neighbours. The Sunday Times justifies Kylie’s presence in this UK list, as someone who often seems “more British than the British”. She herself has regarded the UK as “my adopted home” almost since 1988 when her debut single, I Should Be So Lucky, went to No 1 and set her on the path to becoming the most successful female artist in the UK charts. She was honoured by the Queen with an OBE in 2008.

Simply Red’s Hucknall: a December farewell

Since the 2009 Rich List, three 80s stars have dropped out from the top 50 musicians: Annie Lennox, Simple Minds vocalist Jim Kerr and Sade – though her sensational album comeback this year is likely to be reflected in next year’s list. Astonishingly the creative genius behind Kylie and the huge stable of Stock Aitken and Waterman acts – Pete Waterman – last appeared in the Rich List in 2007.

Should we assume creativity does not equate to profitability? From a musician’s perspective the 80s have been the least lucrative decade in pop history, apart from the Noughties from which only TV impresario Simon Cowell emerges as a multi-millionaire (£165m). Inevitably, older musicians have had longer in which to sell records and accrue proceeds, so the 1960s yield 20 musicians in the Rich List who are still millionaires today, led by Sir Paul (£475m, $731m), Sir Mick (£190m) and Sir Elton (£185m). From the 1970s there are ten in the top 50, with Sting way out in front (£180m).

Among the richest artists from the 90s is Victoria (“Posh Spice”) Beckham (£145m whose fortune the ST oddly entwines with her footballing husband’s). Robbie Williams is now worth £85m and Gary Barlow £35m – both started out in boyband Take That. The Gallagher brothers of Oasis are worth £55m, and Jay Kay of Jamiroquai £35m.

The Rich List names 13 moguls ruling the UK biz, led by former songwriter and Warner Music Group chairman, the American Edgar Bronfman who has made his home in London, and is worth £1,640m ($2,522m). The ST reports him as being “well placed to snap up the beleagured EMI”, effectively Britain’s last homegrown record company, founded in 1931.

Leaders among the younger British businessmen are Simon Fuller (£350m, $540m), the former Spice Girls manager who struck gold as creator of TV’s Idol franchise which has been sold worldwide during the past decade, and Jamie Palumbo (£150m, $231m) who founded the Ministry of Sound clubbing empire.

➢➢ Summary of The Sunday Times Rich List Musicians 2010

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2010 ➤ OMM goes out celebrating all our heritages

Posted on 28 Jan 2010 | Leave a comment

So farewell, then, OMM: editor Caspar Llewellyn Smith with Neil Spencer, iconic ex-editor of the NME, at the wake for the “anything goes” music mag (right). Main photograph © by Shapersofthe80s

❚ “AN ERROR,” said Neil Spencer, who edited the NME during the 1980s, passing verdict on this week’s closure of the Observer Music Monthly as part of a cost-cutting revamp of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, The Observer. “It broke the rules and went where other music magazines do not.”

Caspar Llewellyn Smith edited OMM from its launch in September 2003, since when OMM has patrolled the whole musical waterfront, excelling in its considered reportage of the indigenous musics of the third world, while also applying intelligent ears to chart fodder. Its respect for heritage was signalled the minute Spandau Ballet reformed last year. Caspar said: “We need to know the real story of the New Romantics – to overturn the view that it was a silly pop fad.” Unsurprisingly he quickly assembled a mélange of veteran contributors who included Spencer, Peter Culshaw and world-music guru Charlie (The Sound of the City) Gillett.

“A lot of Caspar’s peers haven’t got the same breadth of taste,” said freelance writer Sophie Heawood at last night’s farewell bash at the Albert and Pearl in Islington. “He’s someone who knows where the culture’s beautiful stuff is going on. Where eyes and ears are concerned, his can be trusted.”

Out of 76 issues Caspar said he was over-ruled from above on only two cover images, which is pretty nigh miraculous on a national newspaper. One of his favourite covers announced an unexpectedly revealing 2005 interview with Noel Gallagher, conducted with total irreverence by comedian and total Noel fan, David Walliams. Gallagher admitted to knowing “everything there is to know” about country and western music, and gave an appreciative nod to the 80s: “What struck me was that the boy bands of the day such as Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran could all play their instruments. It’s so far removed from the bands of today like Westlife and Boyzone, who are utter shit.”

Ambrose Campbell: bandleader who died in 2006

Caspar is also chuffed to have championed British rapper Dizzee Rascal since the first OMM. Later, he brought the rapper Roots Manuva together in conversation about black Britain with octogenarian Ambrose Campbell, who led Britain’s first African band The West African Rhythm Brothers in 1945.

Last Sunday’s final issue of OMM features a superb portfolio profiling 21 founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll, blues, jazz and country – from Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, Smokey Robinson and Chuck Berry, to Wanda Jackson and Dave Brubeck – and Observer readers sprinted online to start mewling dissent.

Lewis was photographed last year by Jamie-James Medina for the final cover (above). Inside, Ray Davies of the Kinks recalls his first sight of the hellfire pianist on British TV in 1957: “I’d literally never seen anything like it. He had that long curly hair and he was playing with one leg up on the piano. He looked like a complete punk, but really cool at the same time.”

❏ If you missed Caspar Llewellyn Smith’s savvy defence of his own musical odyssey, Pop Life: A Journey by Sofa, you’ll find it still in print here.)

➢➢ Click here to visit Observer Music Monthly

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