Ska cheer
John Creedon played ska music on his programme tonight. It lightened the mood, as did his description of his own efforts at dancing to such music.
Having endured a difficult day, I laughed aloud at memories of someone who had once been a friend of sorts. “Pretentious rubbish”, he would say about music he didn’t like. His comment was chiefly reserved for a rock group called “Yes”, but was used about other bands as well. Only years later did the thought occur that his vocabulary with which to comment on music might not have extended much beyond those two words; however, when you have no words at all, having two words makes someone an expert. It was hard to know what “pretentious” meant, what did he think the music was pretending to be? Can rock music pretend to be something it’s not?
Going to university in London, there were people whose critical vocabulary extended far beyond two words. I would buy New Musical Express sometimes in the hope of finding the language to understand those who used the opportunity of being at a college just off the Strand to go to concerts in all the nearby venues. It never worked. Reading Private Eye’s “Pseuds’ Corner” column, I would wonder if the NME reviews bordered on the point of being “pretentious”, but would never have dared to say so. What would someone from the sticks know about such things?
There was music I loved, but would not have admitted. Tamla Motown tunes could lighten grimy London streets; but what undergraduate in a left-wing college in 1980 was going to admit to being fond of Diana Ross and the Supremes? It was bad enough being seen buying a Blondie album in the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street.
The other music that could always transform a situation was ska; for a brief period, the Two Tone bands filled the charts. My friend would undoubtedly have dismissed them as being just “pop” bands, he could hardly have called them “pretentious,” and the smart middle class students in their New Romantic outfits would probably have thought it was pub music. But there was an energy in the music that drove away the gloom of the outside world.
The lyrics were about the ordinary things of life and the beat was for dancing. You didn’t put on ska records to sit down and have intellectual conversations. Madness were the best. Their rhythms drove out the thoughts of recession Britain. They could articulate the thoughts for which a nineteen year old working class kid had no vocabulary. Creedon would have enjoyed dancing to them.
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