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