more, the old anthem is nolonger applicable, and that Duryâs tune will henceforth be used at all sporting events and state ceremonies. Just imagine: before each England international, David Beckham sings âSummer, Buddy Holly, the working folly, Good Golly Miss Molly and goatsâ, while the rest of the team chants âWhy donât you get back into bed?â The boost to national morale would be incalculable. And the beauty of it is that the song could evolve. If we decided as a nation that, say, Jarvis Cocker or Judi Dench or Michael Owen are reasons to be cheerful, then the Poet Laureate would be told to knock up a couplet for insertion. (An added bonus would be that we could dispense with military bands, none of whom possesses the requisite swing, let alone the requisite electric guitars.)
There hasnât been much, certainly since punk, to inspire pride in anyone who doesnât buy the John Major vision of Britain, a vision involving old ladies cycling to evensong and cricket; the re-energizing effects of Tony Blairâs election in 1997 are long gone now that he and his government have been exposed as a bunch of hollow, career-preserving hacks. I canât get excited about our foolish, phony gangster films, or most of our leaden, snobby authors, or much of our leaden, philistine pop music (and if you think all pop music is philistine, then compareLennonâs influences â the Goons, Chuck Berry, music hall, Surrealism, loads of things â with Noel Gallagherâs, which seem to consist entirely of The Beatles). But Duryâs song is a reminder that there is (was?) a different British heritage, something other than Cool Britannia and Merchant Ivory. âReasons To Be Cheerfulâ mentions Health Service glasses (we still have a Health Service), and the Bolshoi Ballet (we never had a Red Scare) and singing along to Smokey (we love, have always loved, our black American music â indeed, we have turned into its curators â and we never thought that Disco Sucked) . . . And when Ian Dury gives thanks, in that art-school Cockney voice, for âsomething nice to studyâ, it almost breaks your heart: self-teaching, too, is part of our twentieth-century history (think of the Left Book Club, Penguinâs original remit to provide cheap classics to the masses, the Open University) although one suspects that it isnât going to be a big part of our twenty-first. For a piece of funk whimsy, âReasons To Be Cheerfulâ is culturally very precise, if you listen to it closely enough; whether it refers to a vanished golden age, only time will tell.
In Richard Thompsonâs âThe Calvary Crossâ, itâs possible to hear an older England, the one that Blake and the Brontës write about, the old, scary place, full of darksatanic peasants and howling winds and pigsâ bladders and what have you. And though there is a lot of English folk music that can conjure up those dark days, when there were only three terrestrial TV channels and no decent takeaways, Thompson is the only one who does it using an electric guitar â heâs swallowed rock ânâ roll whole (heâs not averse to the odd Chuck Berry cover, and his version of The Byrdsâ âBallad of Easy Riderâ is a wonderful, folk-inflected hybrid of Here and There) and coughed up something that could only have been made in Britain. The first time I saw him and his ex-wife Linda perform, in 1977, they looked like a couple of Hardy characters: the gig was in an austere lecture theatre in Cambridge, and Thompsonâs gaunt, haunted, old-fashioned face made me think of poor Jude Fawley and his doomed attempts to study at Oxford. Linda, meanwhile, was wearing a smock and a headscarf, sat on a stool (she may have been pregnant) and looked miserable, as though Thompson were trying to sell her, just like Henchard sold his wife in The Mayor of Casterbridge . It was all very
There hasnât been much, certainly since punk, to inspire pride in anyone who doesnât buy the John Major vision of Britain, a vision involving old ladies cycling to evensong and cricket; the re-energizing effects of Tony Blairâs election in 1997 are long gone now that he and his government have been exposed as a bunch of hollow, career-preserving hacks. I canât get excited about our foolish, phony gangster films, or most of our leaden, snobby authors, or much of our leaden, philistine pop music (and if you think all pop music is philistine, then compareLennonâs influences â the Goons, Chuck Berry, music hall, Surrealism, loads of things â with Noel Gallagherâs, which seem to consist entirely of The Beatles). But Duryâs song is a reminder that there is (was?) a different British heritage, something other than Cool Britannia and Merchant Ivory. âReasons To Be Cheerfulâ mentions Health Service glasses (we still have a Health Service), and the Bolshoi Ballet (we never had a Red Scare) and singing along to Smokey (we love, have always loved, our black American music â indeed, we have turned into its curators â and we never thought that Disco Sucked) . . . And when Ian Dury gives thanks, in that art-school Cockney voice, for âsomething nice to studyâ, it almost breaks your heart: self-teaching, too, is part of our twentieth-century history (think of the Left Book Club, Penguinâs original remit to provide cheap classics to the masses, the Open University) although one suspects that it isnât going to be a big part of our twenty-first. For a piece of funk whimsy, âReasons To Be Cheerfulâ is culturally very precise, if you listen to it closely enough; whether it refers to a vanished golden age, only time will tell.
In Richard Thompsonâs âThe Calvary Crossâ, itâs possible to hear an older England, the one that Blake and the Brontës write about, the old, scary place, full of darksatanic peasants and howling winds and pigsâ bladders and what have you. And though there is a lot of English folk music that can conjure up those dark days, when there were only three terrestrial TV channels and no decent takeaways, Thompson is the only one who does it using an electric guitar â heâs swallowed rock ânâ roll whole (heâs not averse to the odd Chuck Berry cover, and his version of The Byrdsâ âBallad of Easy Riderâ is a wonderful, folk-inflected hybrid of Here and There) and coughed up something that could only have been made in Britain. The first time I saw him and his ex-wife Linda perform, in 1977, they looked like a couple of Hardy characters: the gig was in an austere lecture theatre in Cambridge, and Thompsonâs gaunt, haunted, old-fashioned face made me think of poor Jude Fawley and his doomed attempts to study at Oxford. Linda, meanwhile, was wearing a smock and a headscarf, sat on a stool (she may have been pregnant) and looked miserable, as though Thompson were trying to sell her, just like Henchard sold his wife in The Mayor of Casterbridge . It was all very
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