A Lark Ascending

No, it's hardly quantifiable. But imagine a society where all non-vocational courses were abolished in favour of those of proven economic or social service use. I know there are many who would like to see educational courses justified on just such grounds. Maybe society would be no different. I'm not sure what I would have done at 18 in such a system. I'm comfortable with my taxes being spent on allowing young people to pursue a discipline with some system and rigour in as wide a range of areas as possible. Following something that fires you makes really want to go at it and I'd hope you get a 21 year old with a range of transferable skills (which will almost certainly need more specific honing). In my view society always benefits from breadth and variety, a willingness to follow paths that might not lead anywhere. Rather than a narrower, more closely targeted approach which can only ever target what looks today like it might be important tomorrow. Idealistic and unaffordable in our credit crunch world? Perhaps. It's interesting that in the UK such utilitarianism has always been thought a good thing for 'the masses'; private education has always insisted that the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful embrace a much broader curriculum (where do most of the Ancient Greek and Latin scholars at university come from?). Which is why I'm all for giving kids a chance to study music, even if the jobs are not there in music at the end.

Not the way to become a target for one of their hot dates!

They did...Rothenberg went over my head but Angeli was astounding. A fourth Italian was due to play but he got lost at Dover and never made it!

Can't speak for the States, but when I hit the UK jazz festivals its usually the new, 20-something musicians that make my ears perk up. They strike me as just as inventive as the youngsters I was hearing thirty years ago. It's also worth remembering that the great individualists of the past that we can admire on CD are the wheat; the chaff got blown away long ago. Can create the illusion that it was all wheat. I bet there were plenty of big bands stuffed to the gills with identikit players. In fact I suspect most big bands wanted that. I take the point that the playing/social conditions were such to provide a much more intense live training. I'd echo the earlier point about limited employability being not just a music thing. Most people studying history or philosophy don't expect to make their living that way. In a totally utilitarian curriculum these subjects would all be pruned and replaced with ones of proven economic benefit. I'd like to think that having young people educated in music, history, philosophy etc and then becoming lawyers or accountants would have an overall enriching effect on society and rather than narrowing into pure, hard practicality. Just as long as music students are aware that after three years learning an instrument they might have to look for a different career path. They'll still have a set of skills that will enrich their lives and stand the chance of bringing pleasure to others in a social situation. Probably works better in a music like folk music. The opportunities for amateur jazz musicians to play together must be limited, except where you get these very outward looking collectives. In folk music the 'everybody-all-join-in' type session is much more common. Go to a folk festival and alongside the professional paying gigs you'll find pubs full of session players, often of great skill. Some never pay any attention to the commercial events.

You touched a nerve! It's like some people get worked up about flutes or soprano saxophones! (I love both in jazz and elsewhere). Don't worry...when I become world dictator I intend to be benevolent. I won't ban them (though I might have ownership severely restricted).

Even if they're analog??? I'm not sure I could tell! I just hold them guilty for all those records where the space gets filled in with an anodyne wash. Mellotrons could do it with some character (sounding all the time that they were about to break down). I'm not too fond of the monophonic synth either - growling away like at the end of the first ELP album was quite fun but the Jan Hammer-type soloing sets my teeth on edge (maybe I can just recall seeing him writhing around as if he had been electrocuted). The ARP thing King Crimson used in the early 70s sounds interesting - gives the impression you needed to be a muscle man to get anything out of it at all and even then what came out was not all that predictable. If you hear it on one of the live things that have come out from soundboard tapes it really does sound like an erratic beast. Sorry - synths have always been a blind spot for me. I've never heard a single recording where I'd not have preferred a different instrument...except perhaps the end of that ELP track and, maybe, the bizarre background whirrings on 'Abbey Road'. My loss entirely - apologies to synth lovers.

I know of Mount Hawke, though not Skinners Bottom - looked it up on the OS map - though I've passed by Blackwater I don't think I've been to your metropolis. Apologies for disruption of thread. Back to polyphonic synths (may they all rot in hell!).

Where would that be? A cousin of mine lives in Porthtowan, just as you go in off the Portreath to St Agnes Road. I spent last summer up at the campsite at Scorrier. I did my teaching practice at Redruth School back in 1977, staying with an aunt who lived in Portreath. My father's family, although they ended up in Tregony, come from round there - Illogan, Portreath, Towan Cross. Small world!

Strangely enough I did live in Swindon in 72-73 - it actually seemed might sophisticated after Cornwall! I read a bio of XTC a few years back and Andy Partridge mentioned how he worked at the record counter of one of the big Dept stores there. He may well have served me! Anywhere would seem sophisticated after Cornwall, even more so back then! It was suggested that they should put a sign up at the county boundary saying ' You are now entering Cornwall - put your watches back 25 years'. Cornwall - the land that Starbucks (almost) forgot! After spending the Easter weekend zooming between Truro, Sticker, St Ives, Porthcowan, Newquay and Padstow I have to say I'd move back there tomorrow, given the chance.

I went to university in October 1973 - the hall I was in had full heating all day, cleaners in on a daily basis, sheets changed once a week. My how that all changed by the end of the first academic year! I also recall my father commenting that, with the prospect of a Labour election victory (which materialised), if the Queen asked the military to step in and stop it he and everyone he worked with would have acted for her! The ramblings of a right-wing military policeman, but...

Yes, I've heard that from a number of sources. You certainly wouldn't have got the extremes of London in a Darlington Top Rank. Yet it's amazing how widely it spread. In 1967 I was at a RAF grammar school in Changi, Singapore - the hip young 11 year old girls were painting peace and love posters in art class and worshipped Sergeant Pepper (I was still more interested in Airfix planes and minature soldiers!). It got there. From 1968-72 I lived in Newquay, Cornwall and although I experienced little of the lifestyle of the 'Sixties' the full force of the musical changes were wide open to me. I don't think it was because Newquay had a slightly boho reputation (there's a great documentary from the early 60s of folky type pre-hippies hanging out there to the fury of local councillors!) because I never moved in those circles. That period was more 'On the Buses' and 'Dad's Army' than happenings for me! Strangely enough I did live in Swindon in 72-73 - it actually seemed might sophisticated after Cornwall! I read a bio of XTC a few years back and Andy Partridge mentioned how he worked at the record counter of one of the big Dept stores there. He may well have served me!

The radio news item mentioned the 305 independents in that BBC article but also contrasted it with well over 2 000 outlets in the 1980s. A real sign of the change. I know I live 30 miles in one direction and 16 in another from my nearest independent. Neither specialise in the main areas of music I enjoy. But I wish the survivors well - I always look forward to visiting Sounds Good in Cheltenham and Music Matters and the Bath Compact Disc Shop when I'm in those areas.

Kennedy might have been a trigger (sorry!) - the Profumo Scandal and the fall of the decayed Conservative government are often mooted as the triggers of the Swinging Sixties in the UK - but I'd say the causes are the same ones regularly touted for all the other social ferment of the period. In particular, a young generation with a higher level of education (and one spread across a wider social base) than any previously, money in their pockets, no war (in most cases) to go to and a general sense that a system based on authority and obedience had failed in the first half of the 20thC and had to be questioned. It's that willingness to question anything and look down alternative paths that marks the era. Throw in the technological innovations that made it so much easier to explore - cheap printing, TV, long playing records, cassettes, satellite connections that made news instant etc. And finally, a world watching the space race, especially the race to the moon - that really did give the feeling that human potential was limitless. When did that optimism end? 1968 or Altamont the following year? I don't think so - it was still going when I really clicked in from 1969 onwards. I'd place it around 1973 with the Yom Kippur War and the oil crisis, a time that (in the UK at least) was even more frightening than the present financial crisis. Suddenly the limitless expansion of affluence was put into question, paving the way for the conservatism of the Thatcher/Reagan years. Which is certainly why prog started to look so outmoded in the UK in the second half of the 70s. Long rock suites and spangly capes did not fit with the growing dole queues and the sense of political and social disintegration of those years. ************ On where prog started, I'd go with the Beatles too. A recent UK doc went for 'Whiter Shade of Pale'. I'm not sure when the term 'Progressive Rock' was first used but I recall reading about it c.1970 where it was very much a term to try to distinguish one sort of pop/rock (serious music played by skilled musicians) from another (bubblegum music played by paid-by-the-hour session musicians with pretty boy/girls up front). Of course the reality was much more mixed. But if anything distinguished Progressive rock it was a self-belief that what it was doing was not ephemeral and just might court consideration alongside more respectable musics like jazz or classical. In that sense you could trace it back to something like Dylan's 'Desolation Row'. Although I miss the speed of change and breadth of reference of that time, I don't miss the self-importance which probably proved the music's Achilles heel in the end - by 1975 the grandiosity was not being matched by musical development. With jazz-rock/fusion you are getting two quite different things colliding. Jazz musicians like Miles, Ian Carr, Coryell etc becoming attracted to rock rhythms and features as a way of keeping their music developing; and rock musicians like Chicago, B, S & T etc, Cream etc picking up on aspects of jazz like long solos to give their music more gravitas. Though, again, that is more complex as some had feet in both camps. I'd still argue for the likes of Graham Bond and John Mayall as one of the key sources.

Though he doesn't mention the BBC specifically, he does have a real go at the Arts Council with its emphasis on upholding 'artistic standards' (i.e. Covent Garden, the big galleries etc) rather than promoting active involvement in music, painting etc. Cultural elitism is very much his target - he seems to have it in for Jeanette Winterson big time! I first came across him in a TV documentary based on an earlier book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' where he charts how the cultural elite strove to distance itself from the growing literacy of the mass population by creating an increasingly obscure art world. Must read the book now. I haven't seen the TV prog, Bev - is his position that 'difficult' artistes like Picasso, Schoenberg, Beckett, Rothko, Corigliano, Bellow etc etc deliberately created their works in the hopes that virtually no one would get anything out of them? I don't think it's that simplistic. He doesn't challenge the right of anyone to enjoy any of those 'artists' - merely their right to be telling others that they ought to be enjoying those artists above other things because they are 'better'. He basically denies the existence of objective artistic truths in a non-religious world (he accepts that in a world with a God then you can have a supreme arbiter who will decide what is and is not worthy). Most of his argument in 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' is based on English literature with the Bloomsbury group as a major target. He basically argues that up to the mid 19thC culture - literature, art, music in the 'art' sense - was the exclusive preserve of the wealthy. But with the advances of literacy in the later 19thC the cultural elites, who assumed that their love of art was another way of proving their superiority over the masses, found their territory invaded. So their arts evolved to take them beyond the common herd, thereby retaining their sense of superiority. I'm half remembering this from a programme a few years back so can't comment on the detail of his argument - but in both that programme and the book I mention above he's able to quote limitless examples of the snobbery of the arts establishment. I'd be suprised if he was arguing that elitism was the only thing that drove 20thC arts into increasing abstraction; but he is arguing that this was a major part of the appeal of 'difficult' art. I don't know what it is like in the US but in the UK control of the arts still lies very much within the influence of a small social/political elite - the Oxbridge crowd. Thus the constant preference given to opera and classical music over jazz (and to jazz over even less 'respectable' musics). Edit: Nice synopsis of 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' here. And a balanced biographical article here. I can see why he appeals to me so...I'm from that same first-generation-university-educated lower middle class 'sort'.

I think you need to define pretentious - this is a frequently levelled assertion at the music (and lyrics) of the early 70s (much of which falls outside the label prog.) Would Fairport Convention singing traditional lyrics to rock beats (or in some cases, contemporary lyrics written like traditional lyrics) be pretentious? Is an ambiguous lyric like John Martyn's 'Solid Air' pretentious? Should rock musicians confine themselves to 'My baby done left me' ? I'd also question how important the sophistication in rhythm and rhyme is to most listeners who are not going to subject them to critical analysis. I'd imagine that the lyrics of Lorenz Hart are pretty unsophisticated when compared to T.S. Elliot or Wordsworth (I'm no expert there). Doesn't stop a listener accepting them on their own terms. While I'd agree completely that we can all enjoy music on many levels, I'd not accept the jazz lyrics = sophisticated; rock lyrics = riff-raff division. I think you'd find both in both musics. Perhaps the real difference between rock lyrics and American songbook lyrics lies in the fact that the latter had evolved over many decades, often written by professional lyricists; the former were a part of a culture that was barely ten years old and generally written by youths who were also writing and/or playing the music. That whole genre had more or less died before it got the chance to evolve. They were also being written in the wake of Bob Dylan! I wouldn't say UK "survived". They did one American tour when Bruford and Holdsworth were in the group. I don't know of any other American tours. I'll defer to you there - I don't think I ever heard Asia or UK. Oh... So you're one of those high brow artsy blue collar morons. I am too. I suspect I'm one of those nasty middlebrows!

I was out of the loop by the time they appeared. They were known and their records came out here but I don't think they had a big following. The only commentary I recall about them was negative - but the UK music press was generally very negative about US AOR. 'Supergroups' like Asia and UK had very little support here - I think they relied on the States to survive. It might also explain why King Crimson have played so rarely over here since the early 70s.

In the eyes of those who like to defer to a particular strand of 'expert' opinion, perhaps.

ELO were big in the late 70s in the UK - in some respects they were a bit like Genesis. Some of the colour and grandiosity of prog but in a more bite-size, song format. I had 'A New World Record' (which I liked) and, very briefly, the double LP follow up with the flying saucer (which I didn't - few of the songs imprinted themselves on my memory). Queen were huge, especially after Live Aid - they remain iconic to British teenagers even today. A strange success of that time were Dire Straits who seemed to belong to an earlier age - I had a record by them but found their songs all a bit samey. The rest of that list were known about here but not wildly popular. I don't think they got much radio play - pop radio (this was a time when local radio was really kicking into gear) was mainly mainstream pop with some programmes following the officially sanctioned leaner punk derived approach. John Peel - the great BBC DJ who had given so much air space to the alternative music of the 60s and 70s, embraced the punk ethos in total. I didn't care for his musical choices and gave up on his programme - but retained a huge respect for him.

Interesting. 1976-7 was definitely 'Year Zero' over here. I recall reading an interview with one of the members of Caravan how virtually overnight they lost a livelihood on the college circuit. Something similar happened to many jazz musicians who could get gigs in colleges in the 70s but were suddenly out in the cold. I certainly had to look elsewhere for musical interest - fortunately seeds had already been laid in jazz, classical, folk music. The big bands of that era either folded, shifted their field of operations elsewhere (Yes had little profile here during those years when their line-up changed weekly...I lost complete touch with them) or adapted (Genesis being the best example turning into a more conventional synth-based love-song band). A handful of behemoths - Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd kept going for a while. It wasn't all punk or electro-New Romantic bands. I gave up on rock around that time but I shared a house with a young chap for a while who was heavily into heavy metal - Rainbow, AC/DC, Iron Maiden etc. Seemed to have a big following in the working class North but did not get the approval of the taste-makers at the NME. The irony was that within a decade many of the punk or New Wave bands were filling the new stadiums with a style of rock that, to my ears, was as ponderous as what the critics of the 70s had claimed prog to be...U2, The Police being the most famous examples.

That's very much what I remember - the catholicity. Not everyone liked everything but there was a sense that you could follow any one of a large number of paths. A question. I've mentioned the way that the 70s have been demonised by the punk/new wave biases of rock journalism, asserting that rock music must confine itself to narrow limits or it will slip into pretension. Is this a strictly British phenomena? I'm actually amazed how often I read comment in magazines and on bulletin boards by people who were too young to be around in the 70s yet who accept the idea that it was all bloated self-indulgence as gospel.

Though he doesn't mention the BBC specifically, he does have a real go at the Arts Council with its emphasis on upholding 'artistic standards' (i.e. Covent Garden, the big galleries etc) rather than promoting active involvement in music, painting etc. Cultural elitism is very much his target - he seems to have it in for Jeanette Winterson big time! I first came across him in a TV documentary based on an earlier book 'The Intellectuals and the Masses' where he charts how the cultural elite strove to distance itself from the growing literacy of the mass population by creating an increasingly obscure art world. Must read the book now.

Just read this very quickly. Had me punching the air again and again. An ultra-relativist stance that takes many of the claims of the world of 'the arts' - that they are good for you, elevate you, make you morally better, help you reach spiritual perfection - and skewers them. Carey has no beef with the products of artists of any type (and is very much in favour of practical engagement in 'the arts')- merely with the grandiose claims made by those who set themselves up as the arts establishment. He doesn't mention jazz at all - but it isn't hard to relate his questioning of the arts establishment in general with the jazz critical establishment. In the end it's a plea to accept that people are going to navigate their own way through what are termed the arts, rather than directing towards particularly hierarchies of importance. Will delight anyone who gets irritated by the certainties of musical (or other) criticism; an interesting challenge to anyone who believes that there are absolute values in art by which it can be evaluated.

Good to hear you came through OK, Victor.

History tends to smooth things out into easy to summarise periods, eras, genres. So the early 70s was the prog/fusion era, the late 70s punk/new wave (in the UK at least!), the early 80s the Young Lions etc etc. What you see in this discussion is how many varied strands were going on simultaneously - sometimes attaining a wide reach, sometimes affecting only part of the audience. My perception of the 70s (a very UK based perception) is clearly very different from that of a black college kid in the States at that time. Why it's even different to the perceptions of my sister for whom the first half of the 70s mean T. Rex, The Carpenters and Gilbert o'Sullivan! The only generalisations I'd make is that: a) It was an exciting time to discover music if you were coming of age at that time. b) It's unusual in that that whole era, after undergoing the inevitable critical backlash, has never been properly rehabilitated. The 70s - not just in music but in general fashion, politics (this was the time when the post war economic boom hit the skids) etc - generally get portrayed as the overindulgent tag end of the much more worthy 60s. That's not how I remember it.

You might want to go completely geekish on her and tell her 'Something' came off their last recorded album (though penultimate released!). So they were already weird! I recall that Sinatra version in the charts over here along with a version by, I think, Shirley Bassey! My dad hated pop music but he had time for the Beatles. Much of their music had an immediate melodic hook that linked with non-soul/r'n'b music. Whereas the Stones never made any sense to him.