The People's Music

Just finished Ian MacDonald’s book The People’s Music, a series of articles/essays/chapters? on popular music – focussing on that of the sixties and seventies, largely through discrete discussions of individual artists and groups. This focus and discretion, however, is really a launch pad for a wider commentary on popular music in general and by extension popular culture in general and the contemporary mindset.

Sadly I wasn’t paying enough attention to MacDonald’s writing before his death in 2003 to have picked up on his name as one to follow in the music press. And this despite having read and greatly enjoyed his earlier book Revolution in the Head; The Beatles Records and the Sixties. This book then has done a great service in compiling some of his best work from magazines such as Arena, Mojo and Uncut and giving it more exposure. MacDonald’s deep appreciation of music and its place in culture is everywhere evident and his astute reading of some of the most written about pop artists manages to provide many new and strikingly precise analyses. His work on The Beatles is, as ever, right on the money – and his commentary on Dylan has so much truth in it you want to throw away most else written about the man.

The stand out work has to be the last two chapters though. The penultimate piece - “The People’s Music” – is an attempt to comprehend the period specificity of great pop music and a challenging defence of the argument that it has pretty much all been downhill for the last thirty years or so. The final chapter is the real killer – “Exiled from Heaven: The Unheard Message of Nick Drake”, a millenarian stand for difference, poetic consciousness and Magic. A call for the re-enchantment of everyday life.

That MacDonald’s own suicide shortly after the book’s publication might be considered prima facie evidence in the case for disabusing oneself of his conclusions regarding Drake and the world as he presents it – is an awful irony, as this exactly parallels the readings of Drake’s work that MacDonald challenges in this piece.

I suggest that you read the whole book, here’s how it ends:

“Nick Drake’s work reminds us that life is a predicament and that the world is an insoluble mystery. It can tell us that a ‘magical’, contemplative way of seeing can keep us aware of this, preventing us from destroying the world through the arrogant assumption that we know what it is. We do not. We’re all exiled from heaven, though some of us don’t realise it. But when magic reveals heaven to us in a wild flower, we remember. And then we hear the chime.”

Nuclear

The 20th anniversary of Chernobyl is a useful warning against nuclear power in these days of increasingly gung ho attitudes towards the atomic(both energy and weapons).

To focus on the disaster as a reason to avoid nuclear power is a trap however that will just draw us into endless discussion about their reactors and our reactors, and lax Soviet safety measures - and generally just keep the debate in the quagmire.

The reasoning against nuclear power stand even without Chernobyl of Three Mile Island. All the energy and carbon release involved in mining and processing the fuel, building the power station, decomissioning the power station and looking after the waste for centuries.

In the UK there is currently estimated to be 470,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste for which at present no clear option exists (including 2,000 cubic metres of "high level waste", 4,300 cubic metres of Plutonium and 75,000 cubic metres of Uranium). It seems that "deep burial" is still the favoured waste solution, and obviously not everyone is convinced.

Gas

George Monbiot was back on the energy case in a piece in yesterday's Guardian (see the same piece with footnotes at his own site). I still feel pretty uncertain about the "hydrogen economy", but Monbiot is coming at it from a more informed position than most.

This section of his piece is, I feel, the most important one to consider:

"The problem comes down to this: that our homes, whose consumption has grown by 19% since 1990, now account for almost one-third of the energy the United Kingdom uses(8). Of this, only 18% is used for lights and fridges and TVs and the other electronic gadgets with which we now fill them. All the rest is used for space and water heating(9). In the domestic sector, the big issue is not electricity but heat.

I’ve looked into every source of sustainable heat I can find, and while there are plenty that could supply some of our houses – wood and straw, solar hot water panels, district heating systems and heat pumps for example – all of them are constrained by one factor or another, such as a shortage of agricultural land, our feeble sun and the disruption involved in fitting them to existing homes. It seems that there is only one low-carbon source of heat which could (with a massive investment in new infrastructure) be supplied to most of the homes in the United Kingdom between now and 2030. It is hydrogen."

As I say, while I'm still not totally convinced by the Hyrdogen angle, I think that Monbiot is doing good service to the realpolitik of the energy situation by asking these questions about our future heating needs.

Monbiot's question marks about the UK's gas future should usefully be read alongside Rob Hopkin's in a recent post at Transition Culture.

Oil

Oil, energy is there really any other story these days..? Not that the mainstream media is giving it it's due. Stories are out there if you want to find them, mainly in the financial/business pages. The rising price of oil is always explained by a few local difficulties here and there - Iran/USA squaring off, Nigeria this, refinery that - never a question that some kind of peak in supply has been reached.

That said, you're increasingly hearing some brief aside on supply and demand tagged on the end of the thises and thats, not dwelt on - just left hanging, like its of no real consequence. Today BP chief Lord Browne said soaring crude oil prices "may well create petrol prices above a pound a litre".

The BBC reports:

'BP chief executive Lord Browne said that oil prices "are expected to remain strong".
World economic growth appeared "robust", Lord Browne said, while "ample" stocks and increased output from the Opec oil producers' cartel have failed to stem price rises. '

That's pretty typical - Demand is "strong", supply is "ample". Its a few years now since my Economics A-Level, and maybe things have moved on, and are more complicated etc. But I remember pretty clearly nice simple graphs for price - supply across the bottom, demand up the side - where the two meet - Price.

But the story always seem to be these days that the price is a false signal, so what factor on the graph is wrong - Demand? everyone seems to agree this is growing, China, India etc. - or Supply?