Are Bad Pub Bands Already In Dismaland?

Have you ever been in a bar, where there is a band, a not very good band, possibly playing covers, not very good covers? Of course you have. Did you complain? Did you tell them they were not very good? No. Of course you didn't. Maybe you thought that everybody has to start somewhere, give them some encouragement, maybe they are nice people – even friends, cheers for keeping live music alive...and then you enjoyed your pint and moved on...but the band played on...and on....

Was it right to accept the average or the mundane and ordinary as reasonable – in the hope, like continuing to watch a rubbish tv programme – that it will eventually get better if you watch long enough? Dismal eh?

Perversely, there is a lot to cheer about with the arrival of Banksy's Dismaland.

To begin at the beginning, I'd like to think that it is very cheering to acknowledge that the patient, queuing, stoical, gritty, down-trodden, rain-sodden British GET irony. Other lesser mortals wouldn't understand, would they...but we know how smart it is and we can laugh at our own daily crises as simply SNAFU and certainly not something to moan about....er, I think so...?

When the website crashed under the weight of inquisitive fatalists and highly paid arts correspondents and you couldn't get tickets – it was only a matter of milliseconds before this was turned into an 'ironic deliberation' concocted by the Master Puppeteer. Next, prepare yourself for a lot of suits picking up appearance fees on late night television vigorously debating the intentions of an Invisible Artist with (for balance of course) several people sporting mohicans, naughty T-shirts and nose rings. It will be lottsa knockabout fun and maybe Banksy will be watching somewhere lapping up the irony of it all. He may even have quite a large television given that last month his painting 'Silent Majority' sold for £450,000 and this time last year he saved a desperate youth club by donating his £400,000 fee for the sale of another piece of graffiti. Nothing ironic about that. Straight forward, good spirited and – above all, as far as I am concerned, utilising a huge talent in an intelligent and street smart way.

We all like to think that Banksy is on our side. He understands. He is, by and large, a force for good.

He may tinker with the by-laws, make us laugh and point his talented technicolour finger at some of our absurdities but while we are applauding the ironic humour and the covert philanthropy are we perhaps missing something far more important?

It seems to me that one of the buried backbones of Banksy's public statements is a sustained and deliberate attack on many of those things that have been largely docilely accepted as normal and unremarkable. We shrug our shoulders at the behaviour of national institutions; the exponential decline of the NHS; more and more children in need; the way money gets spent on white elephants; the acceptance of a political class that is, at best, amateur, at worst corrupt and money-grabbing and frequently, the sad casual acceptance that there is now an ever-growing me-me, pointless near-celebrity, social media headline-grabbing greasy glob of useless individuals who seem to carry the media along in their scented wake. Yep. Shrugs shoulders. That's Life. Not a lot we can do about it.....

Why do we, more and more, accept the mundane, the average, the boring and the indifferent as part of our everyday normality? Can't be arsed? Maybe. But, I understand that for many, it is not indifference but simply a desire not to rock the boat, not to be the one who doesn't see the Emperor's clothes. Anything for a quiet life. We have found Banksy to hold our banner. Banksy is the guy who rocks the boat. Banksy hates the mundane and, Listen Up In Case You Missed It, Banksy clearly also reminds us how not rocking the boat puts us all in the same boat.

Take a look at some of the music that will be playing at Dismaland... Run The Jewels, Pussy Riot, Massive Attack....none of them quiet, comfortable and easy listening. Jimmy Cauty, that bloke from the disturbing group KLF has created a model village with a full-on police riot in action. The mere thought that any of these guys would accept the mundane and average is pretty ironic in itself. This has nothing to do with taste. They may not touch your taste buds, but they sure as hell wouldn't play crap covers in the corner of your local pub.

Don't misunderstand my sentiments here as coming from some weeping Jeremiah casually dissing those hundreds of musicians crafting their art and talent in the corner of some bar near you. - or those many pubs and clubs that forever encourage, promote and support talent where they find it. Indeed The Hat has done his share of that and I know well the rocks that are scattered in your path on the road to betterment. Yes, everyone has the right to try and to fail. What gives me pause for thought is how important it has now become not to lose or submerge our critical faculties in our pursuit of entertainment. Talent, given some encouragement, will bubble to the top and you and I could fill another blog with a list of those on the blues circuit in particular who are doing or have done just that. On the other hand, you could build a major amusement park out of not very good albums that should not have been released and, like millions of other Don't Rock The Boat fans you can soon watch X-factor Dismaland on wall-to-wall television. Nobody is going to tell me that is a Good Thing.

As Captain Boyle says frequently in O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock...”the whole world's in a terrible state of chassis”. True maybe. But that doesn't mean to say we have to casually accept mediocrity and mundane as the norm. Take a look at Kanye West, the Glastonbury mime artist, and imagine Banksy standing in the corner of a bar and watching him....nah, it wouldn't work, would it? A bad band playing badly in the corner of a bar and being applauded? Very Ironic.

Pip Pip!
The Blues Man in The Hat
(No cover bands were hurt in the making of this blog...)