This week the inaugural John Peel Lecture was broadcast on BBC 6 Music, with Pete Townshend speaking at the Radio Festival in Salford. Introduced by Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, the series states an aim to channel “the values of boundless curiosity, exploration and celebration of music,” correctly ascribed to John Peel. But when Townshend was introduced, The Who were called “one of Britain’s most successful and iconic bands,” in other words, already that simple task of focusing on ‘music’ was taking a back seat; linguistically subjugated by two un-musical things: popularity and iconography.

Yeah, before Townshend even spoke a word, his half century of work got Florence And The Machined; ‘fiscalated’ to a horrific, Hallowe’en-y extent.

Anyway, almost nothing Townshend said in the lecture made sense to me, after his initial truism of “All creative musicians want is the resources and the facilities to make music.” He openly decided to represent the entire Internet music distribution world solely with iTunes, as if Apple was still the only provider of legal downloads; in other words wrenching his argument pointlessly forwards in time from 2003, when that was briefly true.

Making almost deranged broad-stroke negative assumptions about DIY processes – for example arguing that bloggers are so collectively mean they somehow cannot tell the truth to artists in the way that old major label A&Rs could (ignoring that these two jobs are utterly perpendicular) – Townshend demanded iTunes install an in-house A&R team, start marketing and hyping their prefered artists like major record companies do (did), and asked Apple to donate computers to the 500 ‘best’ artists per year.

Honestly, this is just gibberish. His argument boiled down to the re-emergence of subjective (and money-led) third party quality control, built back into the mix, as was the norm in the bad old systems. Worse, Townshend thinks that iTunes should be licensing their ‘best’ music to physical distributors to make CDs, or books, or whatever packages they like. He spoke as though that isn’t already happening, in the hands of independent artists, who use iTunes as it should be used – one non exclusive distribution tool for their digital work. He spoke as if taking on the physical nonsense would somehow be a useful service for artists, rather than – in fact – a(nother) rights-stealing restriction on what we can do better for ourselves.

Townshend’s vision for imposing these old (dying) processes on the new world is a desperately regressive step towards giving even more control to a company he’d criticised only moments before for being exploitative. Anyone with experience in both old and new music worlds should see clearly, what Townshend called ‘creative nurturance’ has always been one of the most singularly evil aspects of the ‘old’ music (and entertainment) industries. There almost never was duty of care. There almost never was artistic development. It was always fundamentally and aggressively commercial development; workload pressure edging toward the impossible; often (not just sometimes but often) bullying and at worst the deliberate creation of life-threatening co-dependencies to increase control over artists’ lives.

I’m not being conspiratorial, that’s what happened, across every genre, forever. Squint honestly through smoke and mirrors and rose-tinted myth; the entire history of popular music is brimful of despicable acts of control over and abuse of talent by the exact types Townshend wishes to resurrect, from Colonel Tom Parker onwards.

Townshend knows this too. He knows that the ‘nurturing’ he described in the lecture is a fiction.

Apart from that unpleasant stuff, basically everything else he suggested is already in place on the Internet, independently of iTunes. And funnily enough, service providers that get nearest his vision are the most exploitative – the sneaky gits out there charging for gig promotion, or tricking bands into paying to be on ‘career-launching’ compilations, organising rip-off pay to play ‘battle of the bands’ contests, or building whole networks just to flog artists their clunky, unnecessary electronic press kits. Meanwhile the good online tools for artists are plethora and you pick and choose. If Apple turned around tomorrow and offered exactly what Townshend asked for, it wouldn’t add a single USP beyond what’s competing online already, built by small, highly competitive companies fighting to build their own roster or corner a bit of the market.

I’m not over-romanticising: I made a similar but more nuanced point in my own talk (much, much less heard!) at Brighton Digital Festival last month; I know we don’t live in the DIY paradise some musicians imagine. The majors are replaced by less pro-active, often automated systems that still take a cut and still get rich off our music. From Bandcamp to PledgeMusic to Facebook, there is always a profit motive behind the user-friendly ‘sharing’ vibe. But the solution isn’t to run backwards into the arms of the kinds of malignant fools who used to own the show unhindered.

The solution is to pick the right ones, use them in the right way and keep your eyes peeled for developments.

John Peel wasn’t a record business sales rep, he played music on the radio. Although obviously he had to survive a changing diaspora and therefore play the game, John Peel was remarkably disinterested in the ‘business’. He broke so many great artists without caring whether they’d go on to be superstars: he just played the songs he liked.

This was the real pity about the first John Peel Lecture – as with far too many officiated conversations about the arts today – it was all business, no creativity. Despite disagreeing so strongly with him and also being disappointed by his under-prepared sub TedX delivery, I still think Townshend was a good choice to speak under the banner.

They should pick outstanding individuals, not aim for constancy of content – and Pete Townshend was an uncomfortable, unique visionary in his day. But it would’ve been fabulous if he’d chosen an aspect of his music-making, rather than a discussion about the processes of commerce, to talk to us about. Anything from tinnitus to songwriting to guitar effects pedals would’ve been better.

So in future, hopefully the music industry lecture series in John Peel’s name will be about music, rather than industry.

I’m happy to announce my UK tour dates in November and December, mostly supporting brilliant NY punk rock vaudeville signer Franz Nicolay (Hold Steady / Against Me). The confirmed shows are now up on my LIVE page.

An irritable day, trying to put together a Pecha Kucha talk. It’s supposed to be on Underground Music, Post-Capitalism & Twitter but in my heart I just want to show people my photos of toilets. (it’s HERE by the way)

Anyway, THIS piece by Eleanor Margolis in the New Statesman grinds my gears so much I have to respond. I tried to write (via iPhone) in the NS comments section but it got eaten by a shit authentication process, so I’ll do it here:

Ms Margolis,

First, it’s unfair to pick on Grace Petrie. Petrie is a young, developing, as-yet unsigned artist (still works a day-job) who specifically sings in that classic sincere Bragg-esque acoustic protest style. That’s her schtick. It stinks to hit her simply because it’s a style (or hers a voice) you don’t dig, especially in such a high profile leftist space as NS.

Secondly, I think you’re dead wrong to extend that disdain out to make a universal point. It’s meaningless – for example even on the same bill, on the same night (Robin Ince’s beautiful Book Club night, 1000+ people in the woods), you’ve not mentioned (missed or ignored) two other music acts with political content, with markedly different style to Grace (me, and Jim Bob from Carter USM). For my part, I was fucking hilarious, even my miserable eco-song had talking trees and time travel.

Thirdly, the piece overlooks what’s happened to the entire music industry, regardless of politics, by assuming that ‘success’ equates to the old stuff, the ‘status’ of mainstream pop stardom. It doesn’t work like that anymore – there are a thousand new, different, better ways to build careers in music-making. So of course progressive or radical artists across all genres (just like all artists) are liberated from the hegemony of the ‘radio hit’. There are huge successes all over the shop that debunk your argument.

Fourthly, you missed the boat: where were you six weeks ago when we had this debate? NME editor Krissi Murison wrote a piece in The Guardian saying roughly what you’re arguing. Back then I wrote a rebuttal in the Morning Star (which you can read by scrolling down), there was a ton of comments across social networks and even Mr Bragg chimed in, in NME and on his blog. It concerns me that you feel able to make universal points about the modern music community, without having even been aware of the previous debate.

And yet again you focus on artists themselves, when clearly an argument along these lines needs to be framed as a critique of the establishment gatekeepers, who decide which artists will get mainstream TV and radio exposure.

Fifthly/finally, you’re simply wrong. Your readers would’ve benefitted far more from being pointed to: The Agitator, Sam Duckworth (Get Cape Wear Cape Fly), Scroobius Pip (solo or with Dan Le Sac), Rumour Cubes, Emmy The Great, LowKey, me, folkies such as Spiers & Boden, Chris Wood, Eliza Carthy, Frank Turner (a different political hue but still making powerful points), a whole bunch of successful heavy rock acts, plus huge amounts of UK grime, electro, dnb and hip hop stuff. And the rest. Especially if you include the Americans, there’s container-loads of the stuff.

To my mind, you’ve missed all this music because you’re not listening out for it, you only spotted an artist when she appeared to conform to your “cling for its life to another era” stereotype and then berated her for doing so.

Once again someone with a relatively high profile in the music world bemoans the lack of ‘political’ artists in pop music. Usually it is an artist who makes the claim, which is disheartening enough but at least they have good intentions.

But this time it was Krissi Murison, editor of NME, writing not in her own paper but in The Guardian. Now I admire Murison’s editorship of the paper; I think she’s the best chief NME has had in over a decade. She has brought structure and good – sometimes great – writing back to a magazine that lacked it for too long.

But what she wrote is problematic, simply because she herself is such a powerful gatekeeper; bemoaning the lack of people in a room, while choosing who is allowed in. I scarcely need tell you, it’s not remotely true: as ever, there is a great pile of high quality, openly political, socially radical and progressive UK artists of all genres, banging on the door. They’re also well marketed, with better tunes and more savvy than the generations before – they’re not crusty losers. Any creative across any art form will tell you, these are fecund times for radical, polarised art.

Ms Murison, it is the arts critics and their editors who suppress the political, radical, or truth-speak in modern culture, not a mysterious lack of people doing it. In your case, it is the writing of your critics and your own editorial decisions that have been unable to lift the post-Bragg exclusion zone around radical music in the UK. Not for party-political reasons, nor even for the often rolled out stuff about image being everything (plenty of sexy pop singers are socially conscious too). But simply because the relentlessly corporate energies that drive papers like NME (and many others, as well as review sections in tabloid and broadsheet), find sincerity, optimism, commitment and opinion so unattractive, unnerving, that they instinctively force to the periphery people who edge into those areas.

What these machines are comfortable with is schtick.

Modern pop cultural critics like style, form and rendering much more than they like content, intent or layers of meaning. They do so because it’s immediately apparent: you know what a show looks like long before you unpack what it’s trying to say. It’s quicker and easier, so you filled up your notebooks with vivid experiential fluff long before any actual meaning began to sink in.

Worse, meaning itself is always debatable – and there’s nothing critics fear worse than being made to take a position that might isolate them from their peers. The deepest, darkest fear in the arts critic’s heart is that he or she will get a review ‘wrong’; flying against everyone else’s deeper understanding of a piece.

So shrug off intent and write up the hats.

Meanwhile, the editors are so busy worrying about the business, they forgot what they wanted to say in the first place. Even as newspapers diminish and music splinters, even as blogs dominate, the NME remains a powerful voice in the music industry. If you get the NME vocally onside, you will likely break your band – or at least give them a workable shot. I don’t mean reviews per se; I mean a slightly grander sort of feature-led coverage, alongside regular referencing in the news and other sections, that places a band firmly at the heart of the reader’s perceived ‘scheme of things’. NME support also powerfully encourages Radio 1 to commit; which in turn is still perhaps the UK’s most powerful method of kicking an act into the mainstream.

These decision-makers are not the faceless business types that artists, especially struggling bands, might believe. They do love music and they work in the music world for that reason. However, at key moments their assessment inevitably has less to do with music and more to do with judging how much money is being invested and who is doing the investing. And here is a truth long established by such organisations as Media Lens: the nearer you get to the top of any profit-making heirachy, the more the views will be concentrated in pragmatic, non-confrontational centrism.

So the radicals sit where they are perceived to be best suited, where their meaning doesn’t need too much unpacking: outside the door.

Ms Murison, let them in, or shut the hell up moaning. Don’t go to a broadsheet and gripe; run a ‘new reds’ special and radicalise your own charge.

The Guardian has taped a session featuring two of my songs using A.A. Milne poems, for their Children’s Books website.

I just broke the back of my Edinburgh Fringe run; finished my 10^th lunchtime performance out of 19, made it past the halfway stage. I’m having some inspiring shows, seeing some great stuff as well (I’ll write about that later), and performing Disobedience is very different to my normal set (and lifestyle), so that’s a fresh feeling.

It has rained almost constantly, pouring down hard for hours on the city. Edinburgh is full of sudden heights, deep cellars and cobbles that feel properly ancient, rather than historical in the ‘behind a rope pointed out by a tour guide’ sense. When I get back to the building in Morningside where I’m staying and walk up the stone stairwell to the apartment, the stone steps are so old, the middle of each one has been worn away by peoples’ footsteps. Even the schmaltzy burning torches around the castle, blurred by dimming light and more rain in the evening, make the castle itself feel old in a true way. Only one sunny day in two weeks, I think.

Then once every few days a jet fighter plane buzzes the city, passing overhead so low and loud it roars like a close crashing jumbo and I think of 9/11 every time. The first time I was waiting at a bus-stop and almost fell over. I have no idea why the Scots put up with it, don’t shoot the bugger out of the sky.

Morningside, just south of the centre, is possibly the best place in the world I’ve ever stayed for any length of time. Out the door, within 50 metres there are four different independent coffee shops or tearooms. Every single possible amenity, posh or simple, within a five minute walk, plus the buildings are gorgeous.

I’m still overwhelmed by how many thousands of shows are on: narrowed it down to 15 paid shows (keeping to budget) and a longer list of free things. Each day I tick a few off. But each day I discover more to add than I’ve ticked off, so my list is longer than on day one. Even running around town like a drenched idiot, I’m missing loads.

Ryan’s Cellar Bar is a plush little jazz room underneath a sports bar and restaurant. I have 40-50 seats in theatre style, a beautiful, slightly heavy-keyed baby grand piano that’s seen much jazz club use and a small backstage area they’ve roped off out of their restaurant. The venue staff are gorgeous; they’ve been totally helpful. After me (I’m on first), they’ve got varied fringe shows to deal with all day – so it’s carnage. After two performances I abandoned the PA system because it constantly got unplugged and cables got switched around all day. I’d show up, only to spend a panicked 20 minutes trying to get microphones to work before I was supposed to start. Then realised (obviously!) that I didn’t need to mic anything, rolling unplugged was much better.

I think I would’ve been lost without MJ Hibbett and Carsmile Steve, who shared a flyer with me and showed me just enough of the ropes to get me going, without patronising or making me feel like a dick. Last night, sitting with them in the Pleasance after Josie Long’s show was the first time I felt properly immersed in this weird comedy/performance scene that floats to the surface at Edinburgh like an enormous trade fair of entertaining humans. They know everyone, without being remotely showbiz.

I’m very proud of Disobedience; I reckon by show three it was doing what I wanted it to do. Early in the run I dropped a song (‘Pinkle Purr’) after only one or two performances, because it was too downbeat and gothy, too near the start of the set. Replaced it with something sweeter. There’s also still one poem I’d love to add, maybe for the final week, although it pushes the length a bit. In the middle I do two T-T songs, partly to tell a little story about them and partly because it shows how big an influence over me A.A. Milne has been, without me even realising til recently.

It is a very isolating experience though, being away from home for so long, yet not touring different cities and getting that regular fix of new surroundings. Not being in any of the cliques of comedians or theatre groups, I have found myself alone (which I’m fine with) but surrounded by people who are fiercely, loudly not alone. I think this is exacerbated by the tone of Disobedience, which ends in a very melancholy way, so each day at 2.15pm when I finish and say thank-you, I’m feeling rather sad. It goes, obviously, as soon as you have a drink with someone or go watch some comedy. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, I’ll do proper thank-yous at the end but must mention, as well as Mark and Steve, I’ve been totally amazed by the hospitality of Scott (from Frightened Rabbit), in whose room I am lodging while he’s on tour across the USA with Death Cab. He’s got possibly the finest book collection I’ve ever seen outside my Mum & Dad’s house. Singer Davey Byrne organised that, and (no surprise in terms of helping people out) Dave Hughes introduced me to Byrne and fixed me up when I was desperate, after my original accommodation fell through. My lovely friend Gwen in Dunfermline also immediately offered a room.

Enough, this is long. Next week I’ll write about shows, plus audience numbers stuff, plus all the skeptics and rationalists here and my insane weekend lurches down to play shows in southern England on my days off.

Loads of love. xx 🙂

If you want to see Disobedience in your town, talk to a venue or promoter of family-friendly events, or organise an event yourself: I’m not doing a full tour, just accepting a small run of shows in November. There are some hard and fast rules: there must be a playable piano (or professional standard piano keyboard), the venue must be seated, with all ages access. Although it’s not a ‘kids show’ per se – probably appeals most to adults who remember the poems –children are welcome and there are no swear-words (occasional dark ideas / mild gore).

In January 2010, I began taking a photo each time I went in a loo; posting them to Twitter with the hashtag #loo2010. At the end of the year I wanted to stop but hadn’t done enough trips overseas, so felt I had to keep going (new hashtag #loo2011) until I’d at least captured some European and North American loos. I caught 180 loos in 2010.

The original inspiration was the loo of my friends Gypo and Jo, in Port St Mary on the Isle Of Man. They decorated the walls and ceiling with countless little plastic trolls and also made a musical toilet roll dispenser. It’s a fantastic room, in fact their entire home has been so stunningly beautifully decorated in a mash-up of psychedelia, folk-art and kitsch, it’s like no other. Frustratingly I haven’t been back since I started, so it’s not been captured yet – but I will.

The vague rules are:
(1) Photos are usually the toilet itself or the cistern but (2) if there’s something more interesting, I’ll snap that instead. (3) There’s no connection to what I’ve been doing in the loo: often I’ll go in a loo not to use it, for example changing clothes in venues without dressing rooms, or washing hands. (4) I only capture a loo once; the first time I visit it, (5) unless it receives a major overhaul.

I can’t tell you why I started, or why I have to keep going, hopefully I’ll be able to stop at the end of 2011. I made a limited edition A3 card print – A Year In Loo – of 72 loos from 2010. It was an edition of 253 and there are a few left HERE. Partly this is to raise money to fulfil my dream of a loo photo book. I’ve taken a lot of ‘support’ photos nobody’s seen as well, of different details in the loos, so there is a lot of material.

50 protest songs from the history of pop. Of course it’s not a definitive list, there are some ‘classics’ in there but some curveballs too: for me the idea is that each song/track can open the door to a story, adding a key element to the history of protest rock’n’roll. If I wrote a lecture series about protest song, this is the soundtrack. It’s inspired by Rick Rogers, who runs a popular music course down in Falmouth (and in fact used to manage one of the acts who made the list) – he sent me a fascinating questionnaire about protest songwriting and my own political songs.

A protest song is a song that’s so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit.
Phil Ochs

50 PROTEST SONGS (full spotify playlist link)

Here’s the complete tracklisting, with individual Spotify track links, if you just want to listen to one track.

01 Pete Seeger – What Did You Learn In School Today?
02 Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
03 Josh White – Trouble
04 Paul Robeson – Joe Hill
05 Woody Guthrie – This Land is Your Land
06 Eddie Cochran – Summertime Blues
07 The Plastic Ono Band – Give Peace A Chance
08 Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
09 Bob Marley & The Wailers – Redemption Song
10 Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
11 Scott Walker – Next
12 Country Joe McDonald – I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag [Live]
13 Stevie Wonder – You Haven’t Done Nothin’
14 Bob Dylan – Hurricane
15 Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen
16 Tom Robinson Band – Glad To Be Gay
17 The Specials – Ghost Town
18 Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Message
19 Ian Dury – Spasticus Autisticus
20 Randy Newman – Short People
21 Merle Haggard – Okie From Muskogee
22 U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday
23 Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding – Remastered in 1998
24 Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Born In The U.S.A.
25 Paul Hardcastle – 19
26 Sting – They Dance Alone
27 Dick Gaughan – The World Turned Upside Down
28 The Proclaimers – Cap In Hand
29 Billy Bragg – Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
30 Midnight Oil – Beds Are Burning
31 Boogie Down Productions – Stop The Violence
32 Public Enemy – Fight The Power
33 The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – Television The Drug Of The Nation
34 Sonic Youth – Swimsuit Issue
35 June Tabor – All Our Trades Are Gone
36 Rage Against The Machine – Bullet In The Head
37 Ani Difranco – Lost Woman Song
38 Sinead O’Connor – Famine
39 Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – Bloodsport For All
40 Pulp – Common People – Full Length Version / Album Version
41 Radiohead – Electioneering
42 Black Eyed Peas – Where Is The Love?
43 Steve Earle – John Walker’s Blues
44 Toby Keith – Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)
45 Morrissey – Irish Blood, English Heart
46 Bright Eyes – When The President Talks To God
47 Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band – How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live
48 Dixie Chicks – Not Ready To Make Nice
49 M.I.A. – Paper Planes
50 John Trudell – Look At Us/Peltier Aim Song

Notes

The list isn’t completely chronological, though it does start with early 20th century American folk-protest and then moves forward in bursts. There are two separate traditions going on, which makes things a bit complicated: there is a musical tradition of folk-protest. Then there is the simple lyrical act of commenting on current affairs – which has nothing to do with any instrumental, melodic or arrangement tradition. There’s no way Radiohead‘s ‘Electioneering’ owes any musical debt to the folk-protest movement, yet the words are potent and could be re-worked into that tradition with no problem.

There are a few ‘non-left’ songs included, although it’s tricky to find decent right-wing protest songs that don’t just bolster the powers-that-be (which by definition means they’re not protest). I’ve droppped in Merle Haggard‘s anti-hippie, anti-progressive classic ‘Okie…’ and personally I think Morrissey‘s ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ is a right-of-centre, rather than true outsider, rant.

Steve Earle‘s ‘John Walker’s Blues’, which empathises with American Taliban John Walker, is placed beside arguably the best-known fiercely right-wing protest song of recent years, Toby Keith‘s furious pro-Bush response to 9/11.

What’s missing? There are some things unavailable on Spotify that could’ve been useful; The Beatles‘ right-wing ‘Taxman’, some early 60s Dylan for example. I’ve left out Neil Young for now because his idiosyncratic journey through various issues and shifting positions is worth a playlist to itself, which I’ll do later. If I really did a lecture series on protest song, I’d probably do a whole lecture on Neil Young Making Up His Mind.

I also missed out a few for space that are still worth checking separately: Against Me!‘s sardonic ‘White People For Peace’ for example. I wish Ian Hunter‘s 90s album Rant was on Spotify – it’s as political a British right-winger has got I think. Underground leftist heroes (David Rovics, Evan Greer, Utah Phillips, Anne Feeney) write great songs, deeply embedded in the counter-culture. My friend Frank Turner has written easily the finest libertarian (anti-state, so I do think of it as ‘right-wing’) anthem of recent years; ‘Sons Of Liberty’ and its anthemic Levellers / NMA style fools many UK lefties, who think he’s one of theirs, partly because of his earlier tune ‘Thatcher Fucked The Kids’.

We deliberately end ‘out of period’ with John Trudell‘s extraordinary poem of American Indian despair because it is uniquely powerful – a voice from an earlier time and yet an unresolved horror. It is an emotional impact, rather than an intellectual end.

My (poet and drummer) friend Ben makes an interesting inclusion to the ‘protest’ genre, which I decided not to include here but is worth mentioning: that is music where the content is not political but the artist’s behaviour – or the context in which the music was performed – makes it political. His example is Benny Goodman‘s multi-racial band, performing jazz to an audience for whom this was completely shocking.

My punk/folk rising star friend Frank Turner just released his fourth album England Keep My Bones. It’s a great record but more importantly, I sang on it. Buy it from iTunes HERE.

To mark the occasion, journalist Brad Barrett has re-published his 2008 joint interview with me and Frank from 2008, where he got us to question each-other. Read it on his blog HERE.