Eurovision and politics

This past weekend saw one of my favourite annual cultural highlights rear its head once more. Saturday night was the night of the Eurovision Song Contest. Thankfully, for the first time in three years, it was not taking place on the same weekend of the Great Escape music festival, and so I was free to watch it live!

As I enjoyed the spectacle of show (as always), however, this year I found my heart conflicted. It wasn't because the UK's entry was so mediocre, I was very well prepared for that. No, my personal conflict came with one of the songs that I enjoyed the most.

Nadav Guedj's 'Golden Boy' was the first song of the night that really got me going. The lyrics were hilarious. And before I leave, let me show you Tel Aviv... Ah. There. There was the problem. Nadav Guedj was representing Israel.

Israel is a terror state, inflicting a new brand of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Even though 'Golden Boy' was a superb song, I couldn't really get behind it if it was being sung under the flag of Israel, could I?

Elsewhere, others were having similar political problems. The Russian entrant, Polina Gagarina, whose song 'A Million Voices' was a superb powerpop song, was receiving choruses of boos from the fans in attendance (and from me in my sitting room) whenever she was awarded points from the judges. These were most likely due to Russia's occupation of part of Ukraine and its treatment of the LGBT community, rather than the quality of Gagarina's singing.

As the boos rang out, the hosts of the show pleaded with the crowd, advising them to put political differences behind them and judge the contestants purely on the music. Heeding these words at the time, I shrugged and proceeded to give my vote to 'Golden Boy' (along with Belgium, Lithuania and Romania at the same time).

Thinking back on this, I regret my decision. The argument that performers - be they singers or sportspeople - should not be subject to boos on the basis that they come from a country with morally questionable politics is one that becomes flawed to me when the performer in question becomes a representative of that country.

During Eurovision, the contest is framed very much upon national lines. You are not voting for Polina Gagarina or Nadav Guedj, you are voting for Russia or Israel. Throughout the night, the commentators, hosts and judges repeatedly refer to the countries. The leaderboard shows which countries have which amounts of points. Every headline announcing the winner of this year's result will have contained the word Sweden. I will eat my hat if more than a small minority contained the name of the performer Måns Zelmerlöw.

The performers themselves are opting to represent these countries within competition, to walk out onto the stage behind the flag. I doubt this is something that any of them are forced into (indeed, the original winner of the German competition to represent the country pulled out). All are aware of what they are doing.

The other argument is that the actions of a government such as the Israeli or Russian ones are not representative of the people of that country, or of the country itself. The problem with this line of thinking is that, again, these actions occur under the flag of that country, under the concept/sign/myth of that country. It is this concept/sign/myth that equally is being represented in competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest.

One final note I think is worth making is that it is the country that goes on to exact the reward (or pay the price) of hosting the competition the following year. I have no idea what the average cost or profit is for hosting, but I would imagine many businesses in the hosting country will derive some benefit from an influx of tourists and fans when the Eurovision circus rolls into town.

I regret my decision to vote for Israel. I should have just stuck with Belgium. Next time I will be more discerning.

Alien Alien (draft)

I picked up a distress call
A distant voice coming through the wall
But I can't find what happened to the research team
Tiptoe through the quarantine
Through the charred wreckage of machines
In this place, no one listens to the screams

I don't know who these people are
Want higher speed limits for their cars
They must come out at night, mostly
Disconnecting all the phones
No fibreoptics for these homes
I hear scuttling, they must be quite close to me

<I am an alien, I am an alien, I am an alien, I am an alien>

I want to find myself a home (alien! alien!)
I want somewhere where I belong (alien! alien!)
This land, it feels so strange
I woke up and everything changed
Now I need to find myself a home (alien! alien!)

I sheltered in a greasy spoon
Read the latest news from the moon
Now I can't find where I parked the mothership
Egg chambers and food banks
Corrosive blood melts oxygen tanks
When they embrace your face it feels like smothering

<I am an alien, I am an alien, I am an alien, I am an alien>

I want to find myself a home (alien! alien!)
I want somewhere where I belong (alien! alien!)
This land, it feels so strange
I woke up and everything changed
Now I need to find myself a home (alien! alien!)

*    *    *    *    *    *

They'll take us back to the good old days
This fire smells like the good old days
Out from your stomach bursts a brand new day
But you'll have to pay to be stitched back up

Album review: The Smiths - Meat Is Murder

The Smiths - Meat Is Murder (1985)

When acquired: late December, 2012

There were a great many bands that I became acquainted with through regular patronage of the Cavern Club in Exeter when I was at uni. Saturday nights at the Cavern were a regular fixture in the social calendar due to the wonderful Indie Disco and Atomic Pop nights that were on most weeks. The Cavern offered an opportunity for me to become acquainted with a great many bands whom I should have already been familiar with, but for whatever reason had missed.

The Smiths were the best of these groups, and I was hooked after the first times of hearing ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again.' Before uni, most of my musical discoveries were made through music television: MTV2, Q, Kerrang et al. The only Smiths song that regularly popped up on these was ‘How Soon Is Now?’ Although this is a classic, it is by no means my favourite and it has taken me a long time to truly value it for what it is.

I fell out of favor with Best Of… albums at some point, and made a conscious decision to look into bands’ discographies fully. With The Smiths I first went for The Queen Is Dead, due to its renown and it containing some of my favourite Smiths tracks. Then, a year or two later, when perusing HMV for last-minute Xmas presents, I stumbled into one of their classic 5 for £20 deals. I was feeling very frivolous that day and made an investment, despite it being very close to Xmas indeed.

Meat Is Murder was the safest of the options that I went for but probably the one I played the least.  On the first couple of listens it just didn’t have the immediacy of The Queen Is Dead, and it felt as though it was lacking one of The Smiths’ incisive and direct poppy rushes. The lead single taken from this record, ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,’ was one of my least favourite tracks on the Best of… I had acquired many years ago.

The only song that grabbed me at the time was the title track, so hauntingly different from the rest of the songs on there. But, positioned at the end of the album, it was so far away from the beginning of the listening experience that I quickly grew tired of the album until revisiting it now, inadvertently marking the 30th anniversary of the band’s only number 1 record in the UK.

This has been the first time I’ve really sat down and gotten to grips with the album and it has definitely rewarded my perseverance. Meat Is Murder needs to be mulled over and pondered to be fully appreciated, being a much more engrossing and cohesive work than any of their other albums I’ve listened to.

The title and cover art should have served as a clue or warning of this cohesiveness, of how strong themes of violence and weakness run throughout. Even when the subject matter for the songs changes, these tropes continue on, grounding the album and giving it a tremendous focus.

Stylistically, this album sees The Smiths growing in confidence from the self-titled debut released the previous year. At this point they have expanded their sound by degrees, mixing up tempos and adding elements of rockabilly, skiffle, disco funk to the jangling poppy post-punk that dominated their first album.

While ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ would not have been out of place on The Smiths, the penultimate song, ‘Barbarism Begins At Home,’ exemplifies this new found confidence; a hefty slab of new wave disco funk that would fit comfortably on a Talking Heads record. The extended outro breakdown allows Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce to have a joyous time, a world away from the barbarism described in the lyrics.

Morrissey too is notably more comfortable with his voice, and as such his vocal delivery is on point throughout. Lyrically, for most of the album he finds himself siding with the innocent, weak and downtrodden, while railing against their vulgar oppressors.

At times it feels as though he is painting himself as Gulliver, returned home from his travels. Finding himself disgusted with his contemporaries, he longs to live with the wise horse-people, the houyhnhnms. In ‘Barbarism…’ the paradox that “a crack on the head is what you get for not asking, and a crack on the head is what you get for asking” is reminiscent of the satire that runs throughout Swift’s work.

Both the young and the animal are exalted throughout the album, possessors of a vitality, knowledge and understanding that is lacking amongst adult society. In ‘Nowhere Fast’, when Morrissey proclaims that “I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen, every sensible child will know what this means,” he is suggesting not only that the Establishment should be the targets of our vitriol but that the kids know something about it that the adults don’t.

Adults and the Establishment are portrayed as the vulgar militaristic aggressors throughout, beginning with album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, a tale of oppressive school master that grabs, devours, kicks our protagonist in the showers and “does the military two-step down the back of my neck.” At once, the album begins with urgent arpeggios, a wild contrast from the previous album opener, ‘Reel Around The Fountain,’ which plodded along nicely but did not opt to draw battle lines musically in the same way as ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ does.

Songs such as ‘Well I Wonder’ and ‘That Joke…’ exhibit some of the pondering introspection that are rife throughout The Smiths’ catalogue, but on this album they are balanced with fast-paced numbers such as ‘What She Said’ - a wild rocket that does not let up - or complete changes in direction such as the closing title track.

After really engaging with the album, I've found that ‘Meat Is Murder’ could only work as the final track. It is a complete sea-change for the band, and musically they deliver a real sense of gravity which was lacking from their earlier ballad to the Moors murders victims, ‘Suffer Little Children.’ The song is heralded by the mournful lowing of cattle and an electric buzzing that suggests what is to come, both for the listener and the unfortunate cows. Lyrically, the song swings from hard-hitting and visceral ("it's sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder") to the ridiculous ("kitchen aromas aren't very homely"), but the relentless and ominous marching of the backing prevents this from becoming ludicrous.

Meat Is Murder certainly marks a step up from the band's debut, and although it does not hit the heights that subsequent show-stealer The Queen Is Dead does, it is a wonderfully cohesive yet varied album that warrants and rewards careful listening. Even if you don't normally hear when animals cry, it is worth having a listen here.


Check out: 'Barbarism Begins At Home,' 'What She Said,' 'Meat Is Murder'