The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Watergate

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There have been a few pieces in the grownup papers recently (and the Guardian,hahaha) marking 50 years since the Watergate break-in. It’s a seminal event in modern history and one of the key figures involves now says that the spiritual crisis it engendered in the American psyche led directly to the ongoing clusterfuck that is the Trump presidency. It’s impossible to imagine the 70s, and perhaps the whole landscape of politics, without it – in the UK the Profumo and Jeremy Thorpe affairs were pretty insignificant in comparison.

I’m (genuinely) interested in memories of the events from those who were around at the time. I was born in the middle of it and it therefore arrived into a post-Watergate world where the whole thing had been digested and could be presented more or less in full for anybody who was interested. For those who lived through it it was clearly nigh-on two years of a long, strange, slow drip-drip effect during which everything seemed to be going mad.

It’s the apple-eating moment of the long 20th century, since when we’ve been banished from the garden and CALM DOWN MOOSE YOU’RE GETTING CARRIED AWAY NOW.

(Ahem)

Thoughts?

“F*** a pig, it’s Paul!!”

by 116 Comments

A list – what else? – of Macca’s top 20 post-Beatles songs. As always you can’t argue with at least half of them, and probably most folk will have a few obscure or semi-obscure favourites that are absent. I’m personally chuffed that Secret Friend made the cut, and that demo of My Brave Face is a good shout.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jun/16/paul-mccartneys-greatest-post-beatles-songs-ranked

Givin’ up food for funk

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Over on JayGee’s Moondance thread, HP (definitely not in a private email) writes: Back then the album was my base currency unit – every other commodity got converted into the number of records I could buy for the same price, and if it came down to either lunch or (say) a Medicine Head album, I went hungry.

I can relate. For the first two years of my secondary school career I got the cheapest school dinner possible – baked spud and beans – so I could spend the remainder of my dinner money on records. At the end of the school day I’d walk home about two miles, partly on a hard shoulder next to a bypass, in all weathers, to save the bus fare. For records.

The next three years were different.

I didn’t have any school dinner at all. So I could spend 100% of my dinner money. On records.

This is the ages of 12 to 16. I was a growing lad – or should have been.

Rock and roll stunts your growth.

You lyin’ get…. No, YOU lyin’ get!

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This is a government that lies. It lies because it knows liars can game a quaint system whose rules mandate that the Speaker of the House of Commons will allow a liar to lie but will expel MPs who point out that the liar is indeed lying.

Nick Cohen seems to be doing a tribute to his fellow Observer columnist Stewart Lee here. On the one hand I think that things like this write themselves, and on the other I think it’s extraordinary that we live in an age where pieces like this are perfectly normal. Has any government in living memory inspired such contempt?

…and so deserved it?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/12/lies-lies-and-more-lies-a-government-built-on-lies-is-incapable-of-anything-else

Conversion “therapy”

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I make no apology for publicising this.

Conversion “therapy” aims to, ahem, cure people of homosexuality in much the same way that the IRA cures people of having functioning kneecaps. Like the IRA, its backers have a lot of money. The government is consulting on whether to ban it. It should be banned – if you can’t say “faggot” on the radio you certainly shouldn’t be able to do vile shit like this to people.

I doubt any such ban would get past the likes of William Rees Mogg or Nadine Dorries (or, in the interests of balance, Tim Farron), which is another reason to support it.

Thank you.

https://www.banconversiontherapy.com/guidance-individuals

John Lewising

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…. a splendid term invented (or at any rate used) by one of our number for the deadly process whereby a jolly and/or raucous pop song gets turned into an oh-so-earnest cover version, usually with authentic acoustic instruments and miserable white-person vocals.

So perhaps this story was always going to happen and has maybe even happened before. I personally don’t feel The Portraits have got a leg to stand on – Electric Dreams is a very well-known song and giving it this kind of treatment and using it in this kind of ad is hardly a game-changing idea.

“You copied my cover version”…. really? This is like John Cale suing Alexandra Burke over Hallelujah.

Thoughts?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59246892