Everly Brothers wake up call and Lennon's just Jesus...

August 4^th – Two random notes today (and as usual more questions than answers) and a lot of guff to go with it to try and emphasise how the world’s changed, why it’s important to give breathing space to events and alterations in social behaviour that are thought so important, and why it’s important to recognise when to say;

‘You know, I think that’s enough. Let’s stop developing it anymore, let’s stop pushing the envelope, let’s stop kidding ourselves it’s to maintain guardianship of free speech recognise that, really, it’s all about the money and…just…stop it.’

I’m in the process of writing to Woman’s Hour, a show on Radio 4, about a feature they did last week giving some brief coverage of the continued sexualisation of women in the mainstream media. They’ll no doubt give it a cursory glance and file it under WPB but I do these things not only because one hopes that, good, bad or indifferent, it adds to the sum knowledge of the debate (any debate) but also because it helps me to formulate and rationalise my thinking, sort of consolidate my original knee-jerk response to what I perceive to be abject stupidity so that my arguments and the reasons for those arguments are founded on a factual, considered response rather than a, hang the bastards reaction… tempting, but just as wrong as the issue I’ve taken exception to. I’ll not develop the string I’ll be sending off, that’s redundancy, but rather just highlight a note concerning the level of voyeuristic soft porn that’s now generally available in all media as an opener to section 1 below.

1) The Everly Brothers. Two sensitive and talented songsters who had their fair share of Problems, Problems, Problems, what with both of them at one time addicted to speed (yes, The Everleys; those two clean-cut, wholesome, All-American boys…junkies) and also Don’s weakness for Ritalin (gets worse, dunnit?) which caused him to cancel a UK tour part-way through and return to the States which led to their eventual, acrimonious Bye, Bye Love parting; you could say they were ripe for attack by the U.S. righteous right, and how right you’d be. Long before all this kerfuffle they released a single, Wake Up Little Susie, an innocuous 3-minute pop song about an innocent young couple who go out on a date to watch a movie, fall asleep during the performance and, because they arrive home late, are assumed to have spent the night together…what an evil little quote that is. At one and the same time sleazy, titillating and holier-than-though in its connotations…tailor-made for the zealots amongst us. As part of the promotion events, they performed this ditty on the Ed Sullivan Show on this day in 1957: so, 56 years ago, not a generation away, in many people’s lifetime (certainly mine). The song caused a sensation amongst the good churchgoing people of America and was banned in many states. Page 3 tits anyone?

2) You’d have thought South Africa had enough problems back in 1966. Apartheid was in full swing, we were only six years past the Sharpeville massacre, still 24 years from the release of Nelson Mandela, that ‘grubby little terrorist’ (I quote Margaret Thatcher) and still 13 years from the Lancaster House Agreement; IMHO the last thing they needed was Jesus. John Lennon was a strange beast, sort of good cop/bad cop in much of what he did or purported to do. At the risk of becoming boring about this, these are the clothes we dress our heroes in; in the words of The Moody Blues, I’m Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band. Trouble is, when you’re suited up to be that famous everything you say and do is dissected and analysed by a prurient press and detail-eager mac-men like…well, like me, in some respects. I find the lives others live interesting; not in a creepy way, in a human way, it’s what helps me develop characters and such for my novels so…; sorry to disappoint…and no, I’m not comparing myself to Mr. Lennon… I was production manager on a great show done by Volcano Theatre Company (VTC) where they took a beautiful piece of prose writing and, in the way of our world, dissected it until it became a parody of itself, just like we do with Shakespeare, which is what the RSC have built their not immoderate fortune on. This dissection and explanation totally ruins the reading experience for anyone who comes after (VTC took this to the ‘nth’ degree by actually carrying out an autopsy on the book involving scalpels, intra-venous drip bags and cannulising procedures, bone-saws, clamps, swabs, a full theatre gown and lights set dressing and including claw hammers, six-inch nails and a cordless angle-grinder: great theatre performed by a great theatre company…) sorry, off on a tangent…

I’ve noted on several occasions how governments run scared of youth culture, particularly pop/rock music, then try to befriend it and so inoculate the populace against it by turning it from street to defeat before discrediting it altogether as it drops from favour to be replaced by the next musical event they feel the need to fuck over through their blinkered paranoia.

On this day in 1966, so just 37 years ago, after John Lennon came out with his;

‘We’re bigger than Jesus’

quote, the South African government banned all Beatles' music. Records were burned and those who continued to listen were imprisoned; did anyone else not get what Mr. Lennon was saying? You'd think the intellect of government would... Christ, did they read that quote wrong or what?

Oh, and the Elkie Brooks comment from 'Anonymous' : Yup, a top-drawer vocalist who's rendition of Gasoline Alley is required listening.