Red Wedge, The Death Of Music, And How They Tried To Murder The 80s

Back in the early eighties in Britain, a bunch of less important musicians got together and formed an umbrella group called 'Red Wedge'.
They tried to characterise the populist libertarian revolution of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party as some sort of old-fashioned reactionary backlash, and thus kill argument by defrauding people of the correct terms of reference.
What was honest about Red Wedge, however, was it's desire to adopt and promote the Soviet Union's cross-cultural samizdata techniques.
To these people, Maggy and her government were a threat which had sprung upon a hitherto defenceless society like some sort of unstoppable monster from the 'Unthinkable Zone'.

She really did cause dry throats among the reactionary clique to which these musicians belonged.
So they declared, openly, that they would politicise music by declaring it the fiefdom of communism.
The usual techniques were used; puff-jobs to create the illusion of fame and fortune; sheer bloody stubbornness to filibuster their tunes into the public awareness(how many songs were released and re-released until the public surrendered?)

The new twist was that when they saw their monolith disintegrate in the face and force of the gusting eighties optimism, confidence and material progress, they kept quiet about their roots but kept on preserving their commercial positions so that they would be in a position to 'mentor' those among the up and coming who might be open to influence; and ultimately navigate the culture away from those who weren't.

So people like Nik Kershaw, Kate Bush, Chris Isaacs and others were gradually left behind to become 'of a time' specifically of the eighties; bands like Duran Duran resisted heroically, but have now become a rather forlorn spectacle, bootlegging their undoubtedly accomplished pop into the modern day under cover of middle-aged attempts to appear youthful.

There are many, many people who still, rightly, cannot accept that the eighties were murdered by the virulent efforts of malfeisant demagogues, spluttering out in the early nineties(the last time that black and white people shared common popular culture within society as a whole), and finally fragmenting and destroying music itself to the stage where banality, mediocrity and a general absence of actual, unbridled talent are causing the industry to implode.

Still, if that's the price of halting progress, they're determined that we will pay it-and be grateful when these bastards deign to honour us with their previously second-rate abilities, now defaulted to apparent prodigy.

And commentators tell the young that the eighties were 'tacky' and 'brassy', while obscuring the culture of joy that existed and hiding the good stuff from the historically-minded public.


In other words, if everybody is faggotised, the real faggots look like he-men.