"Maybe It Was the Boring Left Which Made the Psychedelic Left Possible"

"How the musical countercultures fit in with concrete political actions is a contested issue that a number of the contributors wrestle with. A pointed distinction is made by underground press to NME stalwart Charles Shaar Murray between the 'psychedelic left' and the 'boring left'. The section on the Rock Against Racism movement and its allies in the inkies makes convincing links between pluralistic critical impulses, racially diverse acts sharing page and stage space and political struggle. Sinker makes a convincing argument that the remarkably un-psychedelic real-world realities of workplace relations in the publishing industry seem to have driven the decline of a pluralistic music press. Strikes and solidarity, those hallmarks of the 'boring left', were the key battlegrounds in the era's managerialist creep, and their defeat  eventually extinguished the radical potential of the inkies."

MT Page at Tribune reviews A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s-80s, in the Words of Those Who Were There.