ON THE HOLLOWNESS OF CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY / ASHLEY BAITING

From the tough-love glibness of the title downwards, this Guardian piece of yesterday is truly reprehensible, not to mention sinister and worrying.

How such a blatant piece of corporate PR got to be published by a still-at-least-notionally-sort-of-left-wing-ish paper is beyond me. In the comments section, the Guardian's Andrew Dickson offers the following pathetic, arch-Liberal defence:

The point of running a piece by someone who works for a bank (as I think is reasonably obvious) is to put a point of view that doesn't often get heard in these circles. In all the articles we've fun on the funding debate over the last few months, we haven't heard from anyone who actually stumps up some corporate cash. Hence this. 

The naivety of this astonishes me. Does he think Rena De Sisto is solely responsible for "stumping up cash", Old World patron-style, and that this article offers any kind of subjective insight into her reasons for doing so? There seems to have been some confusion on the part of the Guardian about what constitutes "opinion" and "debate", and what is, quite obviously, meticulously oiled propaganda. Serious questions should be asked about how this article - a straightforward case of stealth marketing granted legitimacy by the Guardian name/blog format - managed to slip through the net.

A few risible low-lights from De Sisto's piece itself:

Companies have many people to answer to – shareholders among them – and must extract sound business benefits, such as access for employees, brand visibility and client outreach opportunities.

[If this sentence made sense, it might be easier to debunk. The suggestion seems to be that, because companies have to respond to shareholders, and increase "brand visibility", this will encourage them to fund edgy, worthwhile creative projects? As I say: difficult to respond to logic this perverse.]

Treat your funders like valued clients and, like all satisfied clients, they will become more loyal. Some organisations, such as the Old Vic and Tate, do this very effectively and make it easy for Bank of America Merrill Lynch to continue our support of them.

[The mask slips a bit here, as De Sisto's prose begins to sound truly shuddersome, nay devious.]

That said, companies have an obligation not to interfere in artistic matters.

[Just not true. Again, obligation to whom? Shareholders? Employees? "Client outreach opportunities"?]

... more companies need to learn what support for the arts can do for their company. These may include connecting to existing or potential customers; creating benefits for employees; providing arts education to tomorrow's workforce; being a good corporate citizen; creating a more culturally aware society; enriching the community it is doing business in. Or perhaps all of these things.

[Isn't this called something like "humaneness" or "being a good person"? It's not entirely clear how this might viewed as in any way related to "companies doing something for their company". "Corporate responsibility" is simply illogical, as well as hollow and untenable.]

Our company understands that the arts matter.

Following our merger with Merrill Lynch, our company now has nearly 300,000 employees, and millions of clients, in more than 40 nations around the world – and thus a vested interest in improved cultural understanding.
 
In fact, one of the most compelling reasons for corporations to invest in the arts is its power to create greater cultural understanding. Problems of economic stability, standards of living, the environment, peace and prosperity among nations and peoples all require a foundation of cultural understanding and tolerance to progress towards solutions.

And so on ad nauseum ...
  
---------------------------

Meanwhile, farcical/profoundly disturbing developments seem to be arriving so thickly and fastly in the footballing world, myself and assorted pals have decided to set up a separate football blog (news on this soon).

Top of the list at the moment are proposals to involve the Premier League in the Tories "free schools" policy. I think if I had to choose the organization I would least like to take responsibility for the education of the country's young, it would surely be either the FA or the Premier League.

Instead of allowing flagships and grammars to take over failing schools, how about letting Premier League chairmen run educational institutions? In which case, Mike "Local Hero" Ashley of Newcastle United, with his proven record of competence and organizational nous, could be an inspirational figurehead for the new policy.

"Babies follows a simple 'Teen Angst' story-song. The song's protagonist, a teenage boy, spends platonic afternoons in a female friend's room listening to her older sister and the boys she takes to her room and, presumably, has sex with but this isn't enough for him and he hides in the elder sister's wardrobe and watches her with David, who works in a local garage. Unable to tell the younger sister, who appears to be the real object of his affections, for fear she will tell her mother the song's narrator listens outside as she proposes sex to a boy named Neve (The song's chorus is a proposal of sex 'I wanna take you home, I wanna give you children...'). Finally he comes 'home' to the disappointment that the elder sister has moved out, presumably in an act of nostalgia he re-enters the wardrobe but falls asleep and is found by the elder sister and the two have sex only to be caught by the younger sister, culminating in the boy making the pathetic, but seemingly genuine, excuse "I only went with her cos she looks like you". Wikipedia, "Babies" (song).

THE LATEST RADIO DEPT ALBUM IS SUPERB, ESPECIALLY "HEAVEN'S ON FIRE"

"Subiza" (copyright Delorean 2010) is a timely portmanteau word. It offers a useful means of collecting together a variety of quasi-Balearic excursions from the past few years: from direct pastiche (Mountain of One); to looser approximations of late-eighties neo-psychedelic euphoria (jj, Beach House, Delorean); to historicist revivals within dance music itself (of which, regrettably, I don't have any examples to hand, though I feel sure they exist). On top of this, it seems like all my friends are heading to Ibiza this year, as if the noughties never happened (a nice thought, this. Just stop and think about it for a second).

Anyway, in "Heaven's On Fire", Radio Dept have written the Subizan anthem par excellence. Vocals dripping with understated, ambrosial cool, immaculate housey keyboard riffs, and a sample about destroying "the bogus capitalist process that destroys youth culture", which should sound naive and embarrassing, but is actually just poignantly, simply true. This is an absolutely phenomenal bit of songwriting.

Moreover, it underlines an aspect of "classic" or "high" indie that seems to have become pretty rare over the past decade. I'm thinking about a basic sense of ateleological hopelessness/hopefulness, the kind you get with a tune like New Order's "Ceremony". Like "Ceremony", "Heaven's on Fire" is an indie record in the purest, definitive sense. There is an anti-utilitarian, edge-of-the-world feeling about it, the feeling that everyone knows someone is about to die and there’s nothing to do but, well, lament. A feeling of imminent burial transfigured by blind optimism.

I don't mean to get too Gothic, and to be slightly more concrete, this is clearly a question of context and milieu. Radio Dept seem to embody the old-skool indie notion of the well-kept secret: a group of friends together since high school, releasing an album every few years, not bothered (even obviously nonplussed) about the big time. Strip away all the fashion, hype and nonsense; the provision of this sort of environment, the valorization of this sort of ideal, was indie music’s great gift to the world. Like the hippy-dippy anti-capitalist sample at the start of "Heaven's On Fire", this might sound naively obvious, but it's a truth that bears endless repetition. 

link to Oxford Left Review, Issue 2, featuring a version of my piece on the future of the music industry.

LABOUR LEADERSHIP HUSTINGS (OXFORD TOWN HALL): AD HOC NOTES

Generally, it's a little bit disillusioning. With the possible exception of Diane Abbott, all of the candidates seem pretty thoroughly New Labour, still caught in a very cautious "musn't alienate middle England too much" mindset. For example, Abbott was the only one to say she would take steps to get rid of Trident; the other four were very technocratically "realistic" on this issue, saying that they were committed to multilateral disarmament, and that unilateral disarmament wasn't practicable. I could see what they were saying, but surely a party with any kind of left-wing ethos - and with 5 guaranteed years of opposition ahead of it - can afford to offer a bold statement on an issue like this. This is a relatively minor issue (you would hope), but it's symbolic of a wider malaise: lingering Blairite/Brownite establishment pragmatism, combined with an inability to offer galvanizing left ideology for the traditional Labour grass roots.

To run down the candidates as individuals:

David Miliband. Must be avoided at all costs. Very intelligent and articulate. By far the most polished and confident of the five. Said some appealing stuff, but I don't think he believed a word of what he was saying. He is a robot, and his policy statements and past record speaks for itself. Pro-business, supports extension of private sector, "excellence" in schools, etc etc.

Ed Miliband. Very slightly more left-wing than his brother, but from the same stable, and similarly "establishment". He's just not that confident and can seem a bit ridiculous in his delivery. Classroom geek. Both Milibands are much too "head" over "heart", and they won't win back any disenfranchised working class voters. They just don't get it. Two shiny new Nick Cleggs in the making.

Ed Balls. Wasn't actually too bad. Seemed quite reasonable on some points. Quite obviously deputy leader or home secretary material though, in my eyes. And just so New Labour and right-wing.

Diane Abbott. By far the most attractive on the face of things. Palpably the most genuine by about a mile. Funny. Opposes tuition fees, Iraq, etc. Big stain in that she sent her kids to the £10,000-per-year City of London School. You have to be mature about things like this, but it seems bizarre that all the other - much more right-wing - candidates sent their kids to state schools. How can she speak authoritatively for Welfare State against elitism, private sector etc? On paper though, Abbott is definitely the closest thing to what the Labour Party needs, ie. someone to re-synthesise the middle-class intellectual/social liberal and the working class populist/communitarian strands of the traditional base. A great communicator though not overly sharp on finer details. But quite "London" - how will she go down in Welsh, Scottish and Northern English heartlands?

Andy Burnham. I was quite impressed, but my enthusiasm dissipated somewhat when I read up on him. His record is very Blairite and he stands squarely behind Iraq, private sector involvement in state sector etc. And yet ... He's young (40), and you feel that he might be able to grow into opposition in a way that the others cannot because of association with Blair/Brown and government (though Ed Miliband could also do this). And there is something of Jon Cruddas about him (why oh why didn't he stand?!). He's a Manc Catholic, and big on the idea of the family in a humane-communitarian way that I think is quite promising (like Cruddas, and US Democrats eg. Clinton, Obama). He'll do very well in the North (and probably Wales and Scotland too). Hit the nail on the head when he said in his peroration, "I think people are sick of politicians who sound like they're reading their speeches from a pager". Used to be part of the Football Taskforce - has backed football co-operatives and reopening the Hillsborough enquiry. This is exactly the sort of grass roots cultural territory that the Labour party should look to. Also encouragingly against London-centric elitism. Will run his campaign from Manchester and has interesting suggestions about equality of opportunity, most notably, forcing employers to advertise work experience placements as a check on nepotism. These are canny, innovative ideas, and if he can shake off his New Labour past he might just be able to pull it off. Needs to gain in confidence but has plenty of time.

NOT EXACTLY SURPRISING, BUT FUNNY ALL THE SAME

-
record company unpeople on The Kooks

News of an alliance between the more hopeful elements of post-Blair/Brown Labour, and a grassroots, anti-robber-baron football supporters organisation (NUST) is extremely encouraging.

Lots of potential in this.

KE$HA AND THE RISE OF THE "EVIL STRIPPER" PERSONA IN POP

-

This trend has been burgeoning for some time, beginning with the Pussycat Dolls, Fergie and other friends of humanity in the mid-late noughties.

It reaches an apotheosis though in the figure of Ke$ha. A sample lyric from her recent single "Blah Blah Blah" shows a combination of sexual libertarianism and ennui-bordering-on-total-hopelessness for which there can be few precedents in the history of western art:

Boy come on get your rocks off
Come put a little love in my glove box
I wanna dance with no pants on
Meet me in the back with the jack and the jukebox
So cut to the chase kid
'Cause I know you don't care what my middle name is
I wanna be naked
But you're wasted.

I would like to reiterate that what I find objectionable about this is, not the absence of morality and/or humaneness in the depiction of human sexuality, but the total lack of purpose therein. Contrast this with, say, "Sympathy for the Devil".  

These lyrics express a dystopia that is now very real.

See also below article on 3OH!3 + Katy Perry.

"the elevation of the freed subject always has as its shadow the debasement of the subject to a thing of the marketplace, to that which only exists for others - to the personality of which we ask, Well now, just what are you?" - Adorno