A mass of contradictions

The girl from the west

She appeared from the west, met her man long ago,
but he’d gone too far, and she moved too slow.
Reaching for an apple, she took a huge bite,
flicked her long hair, and said upon sight:


‘The sun is deep blue and the moon is bright green,
and what has been seen cannot be unseen.
I looked at you and you looked at me,
and freedom’s not worth the price to be free.
My apple’s now gone, and my teeth are now clean,
and the sun has turned blue and the moon has turned green.’


The tide was streaming in, and she had no shoes,
so I motioned to her to pick up her balloons,
and I took her around places that she hadn’t seen,
since the sun turned deep blue and the moon turned bright green.


‘What a cat you are.’ said the girl from the west,
and I didn’t want to become a pest,
so I just nodded, convinced of a dream,
because the sun had turned blue and the moon was bright green.


By the time I’d looked down, beneath the wood floor,
it was all I could do to point and point more,
because the sea was now red and her hair had a sheen,
and the sun shone rich blue and the moon sparkled green.


‘How much more do we walk?’ said the girl from ago,
and I looked and smiled and said ‘I don’t know,
because I don’t know where we’re going or where we’ve now been,
because the sun shimmers blue and the moon appears green.’


‘Do you see that young boy, sat on that goat?’,
said the girl from the west as she undid her coat,
and I squinted to look for the child she could see,
but all I saw was a field buzzing with bees.


They buzzed up and flew above all the trees,
and soon they merged together with the moon that shone green,
and from inside her coat the boy popped out his head,
shook out his hair and smiled and then said:


‘You’ll not get too far trying to follow those bees,
because the sun has turned blue and the moon has turned green.’


And I had more to do than run and chase bees,
so I looked for more places that I hadn’t seen,
but if I had to choose, it’s doubtless I’d be,
where the sun still glares blue and the moon is bright green.

If There Is Hell Below - An ode to bath salts

Mumford and Sons and the Jon Bon Jovi Principle

                                

Stumbled across this review of the latest Mumford and Sons one, ‘Babel’.

It’s not really a review in fact, more an ad hominem attack on the background and sartorial choices of the band in question. While it is clear that each music/popular culture/whatever website is absolutely free and within its rights to espouse whichever view it likes on whomever it likes, it sort of left me wondering what exactly it’s contributing to the discourse on music.

It left me feeling a little uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. One is that we’re currently in an era where we can and do know more than we should about the people behind the music that is made and released. This then colours our opinion on the art they create and influences how we listen to it. We’re then left with a situation where something is judged based on the background that spawned it. Mumford and Sons’ music is generally not judged on its merits, rather the social and financial backgrounds of its members. This makes me sad, and while you probably don’t care much about how sad/happy I am, you should care that it lowers the tone of the discussion.

The second is that in this age of boundless, social media-led interaction with each other on an unprecedented scale, it becomes ‘fashionable’ to like/dislike certain artists or publicly known figures. It enables us to belong to a sort of online club. We fit in and identify with others we’ve never met through our mutual dislike of albums, artists. Disliking something becomes more than an opinion, it becomes a movement. This is also dangerous because people then cease to think for themselves.

This isn’t a paean to the lost or overlooked genius of Mumford and Sons. I find them at best competent musicians making music important to them, and at worst bland and inoffensive (probably the worst crime for a musician to commit). The fact that others like/dislike them is of no odds to me. The fact that they went to public school is of no regard. They didn’t choose the family they were born into. They grew up wanting to make music at the behest of most, if not all, other things. That’s good enough for me.

There is a secondary argument here that it is not in fact anything to do with a group of musicians’ financial or social background but that they somehow make music that is anathema to their upbringing, experiences and sensibilities. Let’s call this the ‘Jon Bon Jovi Principle’. Bon Jovi famously spent a decent proportion of his recorded career wanting and claiming to be a cowboy when in fact he was the son of US Marines from New Jersey.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that this argument doesn’t stand up to much either. The Jon Bon Jovi Principle can be unpicked with alarming ease at almost every turn in recorded music history. Mick Jagger and (more importantly) Keith Richards aren’t from the Mississippi Delta. Peter Green is from Bethnal Green. The Beastie Boys are sons of wealthy Jewish families. It only takes a cursory glance across John Lydon’s biography to establish that the man doth protest far too much.

The point is that people have a musical upbringing that is unique to them. For a lot of artists it depends wholly on the music they were introduced to or latched on to in their formative years and when they made the steps into becoming a young adult.  A lot of this is then woven with things that everyone can relate to; themes of love, loss and happiness/sadness all feature quite highly, obviously. 

Of course different people articulate themselves in different ways, but what’s wrong with that? And it’s below even the witless ramblings of this humble writer to remark on how a band is dressed. I mean, some of the most creative, interesting bands of all time have dressed appallingly. So what?

In short, if you continue to lower the tone by effectively stating that these people can’t make music that is true to them because they dress like farmers, went to public school or have names like Toby, Hattie or whatever (I don’t know the names of the members of Mumford and Sons, other than the lead singer is called Marcus. I have a friend called Marcus. He’s a decent chap) then to my mind you’re no better than those pseudo-politically aware idiots that use David Cameron’s Eton-schooled background as a stick to beat him with rather than his policies. You know, the ones that threaten the NHS, vulnerable people and the education of children from poverty-stricken homes.

Listen to the actual songs. See if you like them. If you do, great. If you don’t, that’s ok too. But like or dislike it for a reason that’s real, and fair. Not because of some vague prejudice you hold because some other people have richer parents than you or dress in a way that you personally find distasteful. Whatever you think of it, they worked hard to make it and we, as music fans and writers owe it to ourselves to not be lazy when we listen, write about or discuss it.