"On Music, Style and the State of the Nation"

"'I've only been at festivals when they pay me,' he says, appalled. 'They wouldn't entice me otherwise. Stand in a field of mud and shit for hours, off my face? Doesn't appeal to me. Call me old-fashioned. I just like a roof on it.'"

Miranda Sawyer at The Observer talks with Paul Weller.

"Aestheticized the Pomp of Politics into Song"

"Its stars were gangly and unmuscled, but they could pass as debonair in the right suit, a good coif and a close-up. They adored soul music, high-hold mousse and shared the energy of yupped-up slicksters or corner office-contenders, but were too naturally pasty and left-leaning to be real proto-Patrick Bateman-types. Patently nouveau-riche, white-collared to the point of costume, and obsessed with the unctuous cream of a saxophone solo, this was a breed of artists of a new caliber, as conspicuous in their consumption as they were tethered to the contradictions of class. They shared some of the resentments and furies of punk, ska and hip-hop—politicized genres by nature—but in their cashmere sweaters and emphatically new-moneyed glamour, they broadcast mixed signals to a mass audience."

Mina Tavakoli at The Washington Post looks back to the Style Council and 1980s' sophisti-pop.

"Stay Cool, Clean and Hard"

"Noel Gallagher famously sang that listeners of Oasis should not put their life in the hands of a rock'n'roll band. I fundamentally disagree. Everything good in my life has been recommended to me by my musical heroes. My moral compass has been set almost entirely by pop stars. No teacher, no institution, no writer (OK, maybe some writers, actually) has had the same impact upon me as rock stars. Who forged your direction in life? Your parents? School? Your peers? Maybe it was a religious calling, or even a political party. If so, it's not too late to rethink your choice and invest in musicians instead." 

Ted Kessler at The Guardian introduces his book The Ten Commandments: The Rock Star's Guide to Life.

"As Long as the Melody Is Still There, That's All That Matters"

"'I don't think the 70s and the 80s were great days,' Paul Weller says. 'There were loads of things I hated about them, frankly, and I much prefer my life now. If you gave me a time machine to go back to those decades I wouldn't be bothered. What did I hate about the 70s? Black-and-white television. The way people were overtly racist and Neanderthal. Every gig I went to was violent, with crowds exploding in blood, fists, kicks. I'm pleased to say that we've improved, and I'm really glad we're far more cross-cultural now.'"


Tony Clayton-Lea in The Irish Times talks with Paul Weller on the eve of a new album release.

"Something Has Clearly Changed"

"But the most straightforward, prosaic theory is that, as with virtually every area of popular culture, it's been radically altered by the advent of the internet: that we now live in a world where teenagers are more interested in constructing an identity online than they are in making an outward show of their allegiances and interests.
"'It's not neccesarily happening on street corners any more, but it's certainly happening online,' says Adams. 'It's a lot easier to adopt personas online that cost you absolutely nothing apart from demonstrating certain types of arcane knowledge, what Sarah Thornton called subcultural capital. You don't have to invest in a teddy boy's drape suit or a T-shirt from Seditionaries.'"


Alexis Petridis in The Guardian looks at the decline in Britain of youth subcultures based on music.


Tom Hawking at Flavorwire presents "A Field Guide to the Musical Tribes of the 21st Century."

Shoes Too Small to Fit His Feet

"It didn't exactly spring Mandela from jail single-handed, but it raised awareness of his plight like nothing else and helped to make apartheid one of the defining causes of the 1980s, something the man himself acknowledged after his release in 1990. And Dammers went further by founding the lobby group Artists Against Apartheid. In its broad outline it is an uplifting tale, but the full story is a turbulent affair, involving mental illness, creative paralysis, crippling debt, and a damaging musical row during which Dammers found himself on the opposing side to two black South African musicians who had been fighting apartheid decades before he paid that life-changing visit to Alexandra Palace: Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba."

Spin runs an excerpt from Dorian Lynskey's 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day about the Special A.K.A.'s "Free Nelson Mandela."

TimePeace

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for philosopher Paul Kurtz, etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, psychologist Arthur Jensen, singer-songwriter Terry Callier, and historian Richard Nelson Current.

If Our Love Song Could Fly Over Mountains

"Temple was keen to cover all angles and so found himself with a musical that looked as though it had been produced during the fifties (big sets, plenty of performers) but with choreography from The Rocky Horror Picture Show's David Toguri and tunes from the past three decades of British musical talent. Among the composers and performers were Jerry Dammers, Nick Lowe, Sade, The Style Council, Working Week, Ray Davies, Tenpole Tudor, Smiley Culture, Eighth Wonder (with Patsy Kensit) and, of course, David Bowie, all with new material. For a bit of authentic US jazz flavour Slim Gaillard put in an appearance, while Gil Evans was brought in to oversee the whole affair and compose the incidental score. You may find fault with the quality in places, but there's no doubting just how eclectic it is. Indeed, was there ever a stranger sight in British cinema during the eighties than Smiley Culture toasting atop Miles Davis' 'So What' in the aftermath of a race riot?"

Anthony Nield at The Quietus takes another look at the notorious movie Absolute Beginners.

David Watts or Mr. Clean?

"These are some pretty primal emotions, and probably the kind of thing that drove George W. Bush and his handlers to take such great care making him out to be a redneck. Maybe these feelings won’t be stirred up by a profile in a newspaper that most Americans will never read, but you can bet the Romney campaign is spending a lot of time hoping that voters will see David Watts rather than Mr. Clean in the images of their candidate as unvoidably a charter member of the American ruling class." 

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly uses two songs by the Jam to explore the public's view of Mitt Romney.

Fast Car Slow Traffic

"Even Weller's political fury seems to have, if not exactly mellowed, then dimmed from rage to resignation. He's still angry about military misadventures in the Middle East–'I think it's shocking, really. Awful'–but when I observe that the Jam's biggest hits, Eton Rifles, Going Underground and A Town Called Malice, sound more apposite today than at any time since he wrote them more than 30 years ago, he seems surprised.
"'Well, for me personally, I don't know if it's ever been any different really. I dunno really. There's always been bullshit, corruption, suffering–the world's always been in chaos–so is it any different? I dunno. I'm just disillusioned now.'"

Decca Aitkenhead interviews Paul Weller in The Guardian.

Music for the Last Couple

"Even so, a more practical way of looking at the album would be rather to see it as a collection of post-punk takes on 60s beat group tunes; or, perhaps as a tug of war between where The Jam had been and where Weller wanted to push them. Either way Sound Affects is a record of fascinating and convoluted roots. Weller often toes the thin line between homage and theft, but manages to come out the other side of it virtually unscathed."

Val Siebert at The Quietus revisits the Jam's 1980 album, Sound Affects.

Respectable Streets

"It was all here: class, provincial frustration, teenage rage–and, most important, an underlying empathy with the rituals of non-metropolitan life that ensured everything came out sounding fascinatingly ambivalent. And when a combination of Weller's love of Orwell and the O-level English poetry syllabus sparked new literary appetites, I was suddenly alerted to something that hadn't even occurred to me: that my favourite songwriters and musicians were viewing the suburban expanse through the same lens once used by some of the titans of 20th-century literature. In other words, contrary to what I hitherto believed, my artistic year-zero wasn't 1966, but some time in the 1930s."

John Harris in The Guardian explores the heritage of English suburban pop.

"If We Ain't Getting Through to You, You Obviously Ain't Listening"

"He praises the Smiths for their 'brilliant' lyrics; while he was at Eton, he says the music of the Jam 'meant a lot'; his initial shortlist for Desert Island Discs included Kirsty MacColl's version of A New England, written by Billy Bragg. At one time or another, all of them were leaders of a subculture that pitted a good deal of British rock music against the party Cameron now leads, but he swats away that incongruity with the same blithe confidence he has used to remarket the Tories as zealous environmentalists and friends of the poor. 'I don't see why the left should be the only ones allowed to listen to protest songs,' he says, and that seems to be that."

John Harris in The Guardian wonders why Conservative Party head David Cameron has such a fondness for anti-Thatcher music from the 1980s.

Into Tomorrow

"'I've always got this vision of an older kid,' he says at one point, 'he was probably all of 16, and I was 12 or 13 - just seeing him walking down Walton Road, on a late summer's evening, dressed to the hilt. He looked so amazing. Beautiful. The washed-out Levi's with red socks, ox-blood brogues, a Tonik jacket, a Fred Perry shirt - looking so mint. He was off to meet his bird or whatever, and just speaking to him and being totally in awe of this geezer. Those things just stick with you really. If anyone ever said to me, what's the epitome of style, he was it for me.'
"Talking of this, Weller looks much as one imagines Bernadette of Lourdes must have looked recounting her first vision of the Virgin Mary. People think clothes are frivolous, he says, but they are not. 'It's a big part of English culture, I think; a statement of who we are, and where we're from.'"

In The Telegraph, Mick Brown interviews Paul Weller as the Modfather turns fifty.

And nearly a year later, The Times runs an obituary for John Weller, Paul's father and manager.

Confessions of a Pop Singer

"'If I did write anything political, they would probably be the same things I was writing 20 years ago, which is even more depressing really,' he mulls. 'A lot of things I did write at that time still stand up anyway, unfortunately, because I don’t think the world’s moved on, politically anyway.'"

In the LA Weekly, Paul Rogers interviews Paul Weller on the eve of an American showcase tour.

And Carl Rosen adds an assessment in New York.