Joe Cocker...never saw that one coming

December 13^th – I've had a soft spot for Dick Van Dyke (born this day in 1925) since first seeing his US TV show The Dick Van Dyke Show (there’s an original title; the PR department must have sweated embryos over that one) back in the ‘60’s. His humour, a hang-on from the days of vaudeville, always appealed but, then, I have a real penchant for visual humour. The simple things like an episode where he was forced by his screen wife (Mary Tyler Moore) to get rid of his motorbike, went into the garage the day before it was due to go, sat on it then held the helmet in his hand and sort of moved along the street to see what it looked like all the time knowing it would never be seen again was a moment of both comedy and pathos; lovely. However, I, like you (?) will never forgive him for the appalling cockney accent he affected as the chimney sweep in the film, Mary Poppins.

N.b. Mary Tyler Moore went on to great things becoming one of the first (and very few…I think Lucille Ball ran Desilu Productions with her then husband Desi Arnez) female film and TV producers with her company MTM Productions (they had a kitten in a horseshoe as their logo, a sop to the Hollywood giant MGM which had a lion) and you only have to understand a little about the Hollywood/Film industry to know what level of courage and determination she had to espouse to thrive in that cut-throat, testosterone-soaked business.

Anyhow, all that’s beside the point. Apart from many social mores, what the sit-coms such as The Dick Van Dyke Show and such others opened the door on were just how determinedly older folk tried to hang on to their youth and keep their relevance to modern life extant and hep, as if to be seen to be no longer rebellious and at one with the youth of the day meant you were a dinosaur bound for rapid extinction when the meteors of anarchy hit the streets. This sometime undignified scramble to espouse a connection with youth is supposedly no better illustrated, sometimes cringingly, in the realms of modern music; that’s the façade. The reality was and is somewhat different.

For all the chunter that goes on about how the rock industry is anti-establishment and right on widda kidz it has at its heart, as do all the sectors of the entertainment business, the desire to be loved, wanted, cherished and revered but wearing an outer skin that transcends all; to be profitable.

Listening to the bluster that goes with much of the promotion of each new band or artist one can be forgiven for thinking that here, at last, is someone who'll do some good in the world, will be able to avoid the distractions thrown in their way by the leeches and really have something to contribute to the human condition and its betterment; to dispense with the hype and know themselves, their worth and the worth of what it is they are involved in. In a few cases the said artist/s really do have a level of self-understanding and humility but in many, many...many cases, particularly at the upper end of the star-spectrum, many others lose all sense of propriety. To the point where taking money under false pretences and treating their fan base with a level of contempt unseen since Attila the Hun forgot to knock when he entered a village to tell the inhabitants that this shit just got real. Is this fair of us? To dress these figures of rebellion in garments unfitting for their use then bemoan it when these models of our yearned-for destiny refuse to wear them? Would we? Would we be able to square the circle of our desires with a line drawn through the original, now altered text because the perceived ending has changed? When you’re surrounded by sycophants and servile yes people all wallowing in a sea of their own superlatives it’s gonna be hard, you gotta be summat special to keep your head above it.

Very much in the news now, though well known by those in the business for years, is the lip-synching by artists at live concerts to punters who've paid £200 for the ticket to their show. Should it matter? That question was asked the other day, in all seriousness, by a guy in the biz who ought to know better. So, to save any further misunderstandings on how I see it I should like to say, YES IT FUCKIN’ DOES. 
There. 
That clear enough for you? 
Good.

For more years than I can remember, I and many of the people I've gigged with have banged on about how, at the glamorous end of its incarnations, the music business, like politics, is based around the use of smoke and mirrors and a level of self-opinionated greed seldom tolerated in polite society. The rise (and rise) of the televised talent show (their words not mine) has allowed this sort of behaviour to become respectable, to become the accepted norm and it’s dulled our critical faculties and sense of perspective all done, not because it makes things better but because our laziness means they can and do get away with it. And, no, it’s not because I want to be like them as someone once suggested but because I resent being assumed to be a chump by some money-grubbing arsehole that just wants to own another yacht in Cannes and becomes the fount of all knowledge because of his or her celebrity.

In the case of the ruling classes this is how they see us from the smoke-filled clubs and dining rooms they inhabit. I remember (oh fuck, here he goes again) I remember being in London on a demonstration and we  were all trouping past the hotels in Mayfair on the prescribed route...(that’s how you tame your populace, you say;

Yes, you can exorcise your right as a citizen to disagree with such-and-such a policy, but only here, along this route and in this manner.

And we all tug our forelock and say;

Yes Sir, thank you Sir, thank you for allowing me to do this, Sir.

Like some modern-day Oliver Twist knowing all along they have absolutely no intention of doing anything other than what they want. 
I will use my over-quoted phrase once again; nothing in politics happens by accident. Just as in the best organised theatre where you’re planning events a year before they happen, everything that happens in the political world has been planned well in advance and what they’re working on now is stuff four and five in the future and they can do that because they access to all the facts, all the information, all the tools and all the secrecy (which gives them all the answers ready to hand when the shit hits the fan) whilst we, we bumble along in the semi-dark with no torch of knowledge nor map of questions. They have and hold close all the knowledge, both good and bad (do you really think those in power had no idea about the torture of prisoners recently making the headlines; do you really believe Tony Bliar and his cohorts had no idea it was happening? No, didn't think so) and they know that the more official inquiries they can have about it (so creating the illusion they're actually concerned and doing something about it) the greater will be the distance between the actual event and their possible eventual, mouse-like contrition. The ability of the general population to maintain effrontery concerning some slight or other is oftentimes short-lived; the need to fill the belly and pay the gas bill takes precedence over something that happened to someone you don’t know years ago; why do you think the 30-year rule is in place? With any luck it’ll probably mean not having to admit to it at all (sinking of the Belgrano - murder of Mr. Litvinenko - murder of Mr. Calvi - the Iraq WoMD 45-minute threat) and the problem will just go away, particularly if we allow the people to vent off some steam, march about the streets a couple of times (well over one million of us marched in London against the Iraq war - made such a difference didn't it?) then send them home with promises that the problem will be looked into. What’s that if not the control of an emasculated populace…you know, we really, really did miss the point of the so-called pleb-gate incident; sheep under the control of a shepherd who has no idea of what a sheep is.

Well, in an effort to get back on topic, I remember being in London on a demonstration and we were all trouping past the hotels in Mayfair on the prescribed route when I espied groups of toffs on the various balconies swigging gin and smiling at the quaint antics of the proletariat and thinking;
Why not come down, join in and lose a couple of chins; this is your country we're trying to put right.
Then it hit me. It wasn't. It wasn't their country. Not at all. Their country had a totally different landscape. It was a land of privilege and comfort, a vista of right that stretched on forever and we were just perpetuating that status quo by being given the false idea that we were actually making a change that would lead to the betterment of all. We weren't. The last thing they wanted was change; the last thing.
As with my social and political beliefs I was (rightly, I think, when rock music was in its infancy) under the impression we should expect more from our musical-protest leaders than this gradual loss of roots. Taking the monarch’s purse of gold doubloons’ for selling out their earlier lyric statements and lifestyle is something we've seen many times as our heroes fell from grace, bending over to pick up the honour. The only light in this sometime endless tunnel of establishment-rogering emanated from those rock and pop performers who've refused an honour from Buck Pal. Not that popsters and slebs figure heavily in the list, you understand, they seem to be the most underrepresented when it comes to a scan of the list of refusniks. That list is dominated by either those who've already got too much by way of honour (Lords, Earls, the great and good) flowing through their veins and have no need for further acronyms after their name or academics/intellectuals, and of course by writers. It does occur that in the case of the last two, maybe it’s precisely their level of intellect that recognises the system for what it is, a way of neutering the opposition, just like the bread-and-circuses of Roman times; give the grubby public and their equally grubby erstwhile leaders entrance to the marbled halls (outer not inner) and all hostile thoughts can be emasculated, the status quo can resume on its merry, wasteful way and life returns to normal. A case in point.

I've written before about the Mad Dogs and Englishmen that Joe Cocker undertook and of its parallel society built on the beliefs of the peace movement with its lifestyle and ethic. Of the births and car-crash relationships all fuelled by a level of drug intake that would threaten the manufacturing muscle of Hoffman LaRoche. Well, on this day at Buckingham Palace, Joe Cocker received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II which he graciously accepted and I thought;

That’s it. If he can roll over then we’re all bound for Hell in a handcart.