In the first half of the 20th century, British music was just a poor copy of American music. First ragtime, then dixieland jazz, then swing, then modern jazz, then folk music, then rock and roll.
It got so bad that by the early sixties all British acts even had made-up names to sound more American. Vince Eager, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Duffy Power. To give you an idea of just how bad it was, our two top rock stars were Cliff Richard and Tommy Steel. It was embarrassing.
Then The Beatles happened. Then The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Who, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Pink Floyd, you know the list. An entire explosion of people desperate not to be a bad copy of someone else.
They weren’t singing about high-school hops and drive-in movies. They were singing about Waterloo sunsets and semolina pilchards. They weren’t second-hand American, they were first-hand English.
By massively reacting against an existing convention, they created a whole new phenomena. Until that point, rock and roll had been about another country. But there’s a lot of power in rebellion. And there was a big feeling of “Give it back to the people”.
That’s how it always is in creative areas. When I started at art school, painting had become like an arts and craft movement. Muddy oil paints pushed around with a palette knife like Frank Auerbach. Or like Jackson Pollock, dribbling paint from a tin all over a canvas.
Pop Art was massive reaction against that. Slick, straight-edge designs in bright flat colours. Brillo boxes or soup cans like Andy Warhol. Jokey copies of comic books like Roy Lichtenstein. Huge fun rubber taps and egg-whisks like Claus Oldenberg. As far away as you could get from the tortured esoteric creations of blokes in beards and sandals.
Art had become too pompous, too intellectual. But there’s a lot of power in rebellion. And there was a big feeling of “Give it back to the people”.
That’s how it always is in creative areas. When I was at art school in New York, the advertising convention was slick salesmen in suits on Madison Avenue. Guys who created advertising that talked down to everyone. Selling a belief that we all aspired to being white, with 2.2 children, living in the suburbs, husband with a crew-cut wife with a pony-tail, and smiling all the time with perfect teeth. And our main problem in life should be what our neighbours thought about how white our clothes were.
Then Bernbach happened. The people in his ads were Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Irish, and Italian. He told you the truth about products instead of pretending things were perfect. Volkswagen was ugly but reliable. Avis was only number two, but they tried harder.
And an entire generation of young people wanted to do advertising that was honest and fun. Advertising had become patronising, manipulative, and dull. But there’s a lot of power in rebellion. And there was a big feeling of “Give it back to the people”.
That’s how it always is in creative areas. Maybe it’s that time again.
Mediocrity has been on the loose for too long and has generated tons of disturbing monotony. That’s why I think it really IS that time again, Dave. Global economy has been robbed of real innovation, advertising has been robbed of real creativity, art has been robbed of real talent, education has been robbed of real cultural values. The only thing that surprises me is that, as compared with previous “revolutions”, nowadays I see more enthusiasm for a change coming from 40+ people than from young people. And that’s abstract to me. I see people like Alex Bogusky writing books like this: www.socialfish.org/.../book-review-baked-in.html and young people making cosmic efforts to keep their heads down and go unnoticed, while pretending they’re actually doing the opposite. It’s unbelievable how fashionable cheating on yourself has become. This economic crisis is the indicator of saturation. It’s less visible in advertising and artistic domains, because the fall is not as painful as it is when we’re talking about survival-related matters, but it’s happening. And I’m glad I’m only 25.
Anca, Your observation is right. Young people today are risk averse. I have been around considerably longer than you. So forgive me if I sound like a revolutionary old fart. The young struggle to find causes. That's the fault of my generation. We fought for music, art, LIFE to be more accessible. Media seized upon that and bingo...you have it, the opium for the masses is sedating youth. Their hormones are raging but their senses all dulled by information overload. Future anthropologists will look back on this time and fathom at the lack of momentum in the face of so much opportunity. At what conclusions they arrive, we can only surmise. But right now, I doubt we will see our youth going to the window and yelling, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking anymore". Too risky.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Bob. Your generation had to deal with a shortage of options, mine has to deal with a shortage of selection principles.
The abundance of options is intimidating, because everything is accessible to everyone. So instead of trying to be best at what they enjoy doing, young people prefer to be mediocre at something they THINK the others are not very good at. To me it's simply scary. It's burying your own life and making sure your fail. In the silence of anonymity.
You can make sure you fail by never being wrong. That's also how you make sure you never learn. Before I got into advertising I was a dice dealer on a craps game in a casino. It was a tough job. They took no prisoners and carried no passengers. When I was a rookie dealer the biggest crime in a busy game was to slow it down. There were times when I was expected to calculate a payout on say, £78 at odds of 9.5 to 5 ...in about 5 seconds. If you didn't call it soon enough, your pitboss or boxman would being breathing down your neck saying, "Make a decision, make a decision". Call it right game goes on. Call it wrong, the boxman calls it right for you, game goes on. But, if you don't make a decision the game loses its momentum, the atmosphere drops, punters wander off. Game over. It's good to be wrong. As Dave said the other day, it's good to be uncomfortable. Screw up. Make mistakes. But above all, make a decision. You feel more alive. Because you are.
Now this is great stuff. It's the challenge. I've just had to renew my car insurance, and recieved a letter informing me my insurance had been cancelled for 5 days without being informed. The air was blue when I spoke to the person at the call centre. The reason? I drive my daughter to school. I hour later I was reinsured by Direct Line for less with more. I shall never go to that other company again. Ever.
On one occasion I made the whole office laugh when talking to a call centre.
Exacerbated at not being listened to because my question did not compute to their 6 choice answer sheet, I asked a simple question:
K: "Are you a Robot"
ANC: "No"
K: "Can you actually make a decision on your own?"
ANC: "Errr.................No"
K: "So you ARE a Robot then."
ANC: "No I'm not???"
then we hd a hilarious run of Pantomime
"Yes you are"
"No I'm not"
It's great to see Anca feel so strongly about things.
And Bob's decisiveness story is really interesting.
Yes we are living in a GIVE IT BACK TO THE PEOPLE time.
Some of the stories I'm hearing at the moment make my toes curl.
Error No.1
Automated call centres with phoney British operators with naff local accents.
Error No.2
Politicians going on Facebook. It reminds me of Dad looking at The Beatles ariving back from America on UK TV. My sister was only 14, screaming her head off.
Dad: "Loook at those layabouts, not one of them with a decent haircut!"
Then we had the Lennon "greater than God" speech, and it was the death penalty
just to say the name "Beatles" in the house. Total put-down.
The greatest thrill I ever had was being totally powerless watching a shark come straight towards me and dive under my feet and seconds later know I still had both legs intact! It was just so great to be alive.
Great ideas do not happen by compliance to the rules.
They happen by breaking the rules against the status quo.
It's a pendulum.
Give to Take to Give to Take
Labour to Conservative to Labour to Conservative
Crime to Punishment to Crime to Punishment
The true rebellion is when we cut the pendulum string altogether
rather than change the weight.
That is what happened with the birth of the worldwide web.
The umbilical chord was broken.
Hi Anca,
Just looked at Baked-in link.
Very good idea.
Create the market and sell to it.
Makes you wonder...
How did Bill Bernbach do it?
Hi Dave,
Regarding power and rebellion and giving it back to the people.
Here's a little food for thought:
www.youtube.com/watch
If there's something you know you can do ... and your mind keeps throwing up roadblocks, just drive right through.
Bob, Anca, I related a lot to your initial posts. They echo the sentiments of something I've just written here: www.thnktnk.co.uk
It feels like we don't take risks because we are, essentially, pretty comfortable.
The system has gotten us. We're stuck in Huxley's view of the future and we can't get out. It's too nice for most people.
Check out this cartoon that puts Orwell's version of the future against Huxley's. Depressing.
I'm sorry, posting that murdered the links I put in it for some reason.
My post: www.thnktnk.co.uk
Huxley: www.recombinantrecords.net/.../2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html
Stu, I'm not despairing of the world or the future of youth. But as a species, we experience less natural day-to-day threats than our Cro-Magnon forebears. It's easy to lose your edge! Risk is no longer an acceptable part of everyday life (unless you're a banker!). We even legislate against it. Some acts are better than others. In the absence of having to stalk and kill our food before it stalks and kills us, we build theme parks and rides to experience controlled risk. We watch horror movies and play virtual games that take us to the edge of virtual annihilation, we press 'save' and turn over and go to sleep. Safe and risk free. In my earlier post I quoted from Paddy Chyevsky's 'Network'. Prior to the 'mad as hell' call to action his off-the-rails prime time presenter pleads on national TV for everyone to "turn off this programme, switch off your tv sets now! Stop listening to the s**t we peddle as truth". Make your own decisions. If there are people who write stuff like that, there's hope. We all play our part in the paradygm shift. If you want it.
Hi Stu,
I thought that was a brilliant link.
Thanks a lot for posting it.
It really resonates for a long while after watching it.
Bob, interesting point - I wasn't suggest you were despairing, but I think you had a point.
The problem is that brandrepublic ate my link again for the second time, it was a post on my blog here: http://www.thnktnk.co.uk/ called 'Bluesday Tues' - Head on there, Rooney Carruthers has also had his say in the comments field (thank you Roon).
I've repeated it below as I've tried to post it three times to no avail.
So, we’re completely fucked. What do we do about it? Hide out in dark rooms listening to psy-trance and wanking into our socks? Make a TV ad about mad African people being chased by a disembodied voodoo head? Talk through a powerpoint at a really 'interesting' conference of people who’s egos are too big for their hemp cardigans? All three?
Who knows, I certainly don’t. In trying to think of something to actually say about this picture other than ‘we’re fucked’, I realised two things:
1) I have an overwhelming sense of impotence regarding the state of the world which I believe to be shared by a lot of people my age
2) I think this is different to how things were even 30 years ago. In the 60’s, the 70’s and even into the 80’s with Live Aid etc I think that people believed, perhaps naively, perhaps not, that they could make a difference. Rebelling, protesting, challenging the status-quo were all interesting and fairly productive things to do. Once people started self-organising to fight for civil, gay or womens’ rights, they managed to affect change rather promptly (in the scheme of things).
The question I ask and also propose an answer to is why? Why do we not think we can change things now? Why could they be changed before? Why did these things seem productive then and why do they seem useless now?
The thing that springs to mind immediately is the presence of information in our lives from the global media. I think, the main reason we don’t feel able to change things is that because of the ceaseless flow of information into our brains from everything that happens around the globe.
In other words. The change we can affect is the same, the problem being that we hear of so much fuckery from around the world that any possible positive impact of what we’re doing is drowned out by the unending sensationalised negativity. We never reach a critical mass, a tipping point, that makes it look like we’re winning.
So, we’re too aware. We’re paralysed by information because our impact is always drowned out, but there’s another reason. We’re paralysed by taking our own causes passionately, because we’re all too aware of the other, much more severe ***, happening elsewhere. Right now, I’m pretty concerned about the political and economic situation in this country – but I know the people in Darfur have got it a lot worse, and the dudes in the Congo are having a quite awful time of it. There are much bigger issues out there than mine, right? I am paralysed by perspective, and maybe, to top it all off, I’m paralysed by the fact that the status-quo has become too comfortable to destroy. Help.
Suggested listening: Beck – Modern Guilt
Dave Trott
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