Review

Ten (More) Steps to Revolution

Cultural theoritician Snag Cleaver puts the schooner glass to the Eighties.

The '80s might be remembered for crap thin leather ties, eyeliner on blokes, and enormous self-congratulatory international hand-wringing rock festivals with three storey high pictures of starving third world kids as a backdrop (really Bob, the rider for Live Aid could still, be feeding most of Eritrea). But was the decade of Hip to Be Square, Money For Nothing and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun totally devoid of decent "shove-it-up-the-establishment-sideways" rock music... well almost.

Snag Cleaver - '80s hair disaster survivor and cultural advisor to the Mullet Creek Memorial Bowling Club Fundraising Auxiliary Sub-committee - trawled his limited memories of the decade that social relevance forgot and came up with...

Ten reasonably interesting moments in rock of the '80s

1 The Jam

Like most of the decent things about the '80s they started in the '70s, had a reverence for the '60s quickly broke up when Culture Club got into the charts. Certainly Paul Weller went on to produce drivel like Speak Like a Child and Long Hot Summer with the insipid Style Council ( Walls Come Tumblin' Down was just a Jam song with keyboards and female backing vocals) but the middle-late period of the Jam's career produced such poignant paeans to the working man as Mr Clean and Smithers-Jones (two different angles on the plight of the urban office worker).

Other worthy entries in the pop-protest lexicon include Pretty Green, Eton Rifles, Going Underground, Just Who is the 5 O'Clock Hero, Planners Dream Goes Wrong and the (still) brilliant Town Called Malice, still bristle with disgust for Thatcher's gameplan.

Weller's admirable work with Red Wedge in the late '80s slightly redeems his cred, but to think that the same bloke who wrote In the City penned You're The Best Thing (that ever happened to me) is a solid argument for striking the 80s from all cultural history.

2 The Clash

Again it began in the '70s didn't make it past the first half of the '80s. There was a commendably inarticulate frustration in both the style and substance of the Clash's first few years, but it wasn't until London Calling and Sandinista that the Clash became the greatest rock band ever.

Dispute rages over the authenticity and sincerity of their social conscience (Strummer's dad had been a mid-ranking foreign office bureaucrat and there is a deal of evidence that their working class pedigree may have been helped by some free and easy PR sperm substitution) and the revolutionary iconography did jar a bit when they were making squillions from their multi-album deal with CBS but on face value, songs like Four Horsemen, Spanish Bombs, Guns of Brixton, Clampdown, Washington Bullets, Magnificent 7, The Call-Up push all the right buttons.

Just imagine if the Class of '77 had graduated in '87, or ever '97 (are you listening Rancid, Green Day et al?) when things were really in the toilet... There's lots more punkesque stuff but most of really depends on the blueprint of the Clash.

3 The Oils

Literate and anthemic, sweaty and loud. Every otherwise politically apathetic waxhead stills knows the words to Power and the Passion and US Forces. Despite all the preaching, the unquestioned sincerity of Garrett's commitment to social issues combined with the sheer guts of the band's delivery commands respect.

4 Billy Bragg

The big-nosed bastard from Barking has a slew of workers' anthems, Power in a Union, Between The Wars, It Says Here etc. but many of his admirer cite his beautifully drawn and deeply personal catalogue of modern urban love songs as their reason for connecting personally the Bragger. Soft!

5 REM

The American south is not famous for very many socially responsible or progressive artistic initiatives. REM make the list based on the hope that Michael stipe was singing about something worthy on the early records before Orange Crush, Exhuming MaCarthy, World Leader Pretend and Finest Worksong confirmed that something vaguely sound was going on in the lyrical content behind Peter Bucks impulsive psychedelic country arpeggios. That's my justification for putting them on the list.

6 The Smiths

On the list mostly for not being Haircut 100. Not a huge political content at first glance but the work of Morrissey and Marr as a whole reveals a deep empathy with the plight of the unsung. Ask, The Queen is Dead, Shoplifters of the World Unite (check Marr's middle 8... exquisite!) and The Headmaster Ritual, betray that along with the Wildean indulgences Morrissey was still on about the shit we all put up with.

7 Camper van Beethoven

An amorphous group of Californians which featured Dave Lowery who went on to form Cracker (remember Teen Angst...what the world needs now?). This band were cruelly thrown into the novelty song basket after Take the Skinheads Bowling was a minor airplay curiosity in 1986. Their last 2 albums Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and Key Lime Pie are both outstanding. I'm proud to share a gene-pool with the people who made these records. The early stuff pokes fun at America's cultural imperialism in a most erudite fashion. Think They might be Giants and B-52s playing bluegrass reggae and your getting close.

8 The Saints

Australia's answer to punk before the poms knew what the question was. Impossible not to be brimming with political bile living under Joh, so they moved and started writing about other stuff. Their best albums were the '70s ones before Ed Kuepper split to play weird jazz with Laughing Clowns and Chris Bailey started thinking he was Lord Byron.

9 American "alternative" music...

While Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Johhny Cougar and Bon Jovi filled 80.000 seat football stadiums at $75 a ticket with anthems about closing steel mills under Reagan and Bush while Panama and Grenada burned, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets and Nirvana were playing music which David Geffen and his pals would later buy and sell to the moneyed wallies of America as grunge... but that's another story

10 The Uncanny X-Men

Not because they sang Everybody Wants to Work (no, no not me!)? No they make the list because they were the '80s and next to them it's almost possible to validate just about anything else that happened in the decade style wouldn't cross the road to shit on...

Mr Cleaver will be available for frank and open debate on the issues raised above in the lower deck of the Noble stand at the next Swans Home game, consultancy rates payable in beer

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  Issue 21 contents

»	Aussies To Go For Gold in Foreign Uniforms?
»	Howard Warned: Time Ticking On Entitlements
»	Hotels Charge Triple Time - Now for the Workers
»	Air Attack - Qantas Telesales Under Fire
»	The Hills Are Alive - With the Sound of Pay Cuts
»	National Trust Places Green(back) Bans on Unions
»	Body Hire Campaign Hots Up
»	Attack of the Killer Skips Rocks City
»	A Holiday With a Social Consience
»	East Timor: Emergency Public Meeting Called

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Conference to Heal Rifts in the Labour Movement
»	Fabians Scour Poll Ashes
»	Holiday Confusion

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