the human mind can scarcely conceive. The result in punitive action; the most favoured at music anti doing very well thereby. This year, the word is underground. Journalists no longer have to reach for their Tom Thumb dictionaries and dutifully spell out phyza... no, psycho. no, whatever the word was.
Last year, we were told pop music was bringing in a mental revolution, but something went wrong, so this year sights are set a little lower (or is it higher?) and pop is bringing in a then you can have a machine gun, and if you sold two million, you can have a helicopter and a machine gun. Of course, if something goes wrong again, and the revolution doesn't come, socking orto the bourgeoise, like they've there don't worry, been socked before, and continually regirding its loins HOve on towards that final Armageddon when all the Superstars will come face to face with all the Superstraights, blow the smoke of certain substances in their faces. and all tune up TOT the Final Ultimate SuperSession.
Meanwhile, as the battered Ford Transits race endlessly up and down the MI, some curious things are happening. evidence is being brought forward to prove finally and conclusively that sex and money are Great Groupie Hoax has been sprung, with the result that the ballrooms of this country are full duly-authorized officers. of French journalists anxiously searching for a groupie who will reveal all; and Granada T.V are no doubt preparing a high-powered documentary on the subject of the sex-mad girls of pop.
At the same time, the business affairs of activities of Clore and Co. look well passé and The effect of this, it might reasonably be thought, would be to further intensify the efforts of all concerned to grab as much money and knicker as possible as quickly as possible while the mass media help by making it all seem in some curious way a forward-thinking and praiseworthy thing to do. If the system chooses to set up the pop business as a kind of Roman circus of unprecedented splendour and debauchery, 1E 1S safe to assume that the performers may at times get a little muddled as to whether they are merely acting or really living Sometimes, of course, the performers More and more just insist that it is the circus that is real and the public that is being watched, and one or two of them get away with this. But it does tend to available in the pop business in quantities which annoy the public, and if carried too far, may the moment being visit from the However, for the most part the mass media can congratulate both themselves and their public on the fact that even if the pop business doesn't really act and feel the way they describe it, there are many people doing their best to close the gap, and make it one non-stop but more insidious trend pop. Because pop has become so identified with the long-haired middle-classes, it has been necessary to make pop an art form; and if you have an art form, then you need, not artistes, but artists. So there is now an enormous emphasis on musicianship, and stars are increasingly being •made not by SUCH crude measures emphasising their sexual organs, but by emphasizing their musical ability and artistry.
Of course, in many cases, this means that managers etc. just tell a different set of lies about the same old faces; and it doesn't mean that good looks are unimportant either. But it does mean that many musicians who two years ago might have assumed that they would spend the rest of their days playing someone else's music for a good fee or their own for practically nothing, are now playing their own.
Even if one disregards the more painful obvious attempts at acheiving "integrity" repeating tired old jazz and blues licks ten yea too late, there's no denying that groups lik Pete Brown's Battered Ornaments are achievir a success that would have been unthinkable those far-off pre-pot days.
So, back in the sweat-soaked ring, Parallel with all this, there is another, less limousines and mutter of the revolution whi candy-striped superstars lie back tender young groupies feed them grapes an stroke •their whatsits. Put all that sex an money and all this artistic integrity togethe and you get the makings of a heart-warming psychotic situation. Maybe the anthem of tl revolution will after all be a million-sellir as smash hit. Meanwhile, things like the free concerts Hyde Park crop up. They are of course totall ignored by the press, since no money involved and last year at least there was not a orgy. In fact, they represent the first assertie by the pop business that they are concerne with music, like any art form, should be frei For the rest, its money and sex, or business: usual.
Laurie Lim
The Black Dwarf May 16 1969
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social revolution. There will be fighting in the streets, and if you sold a million LPs last year,
Apple and Northern Songs provide non-stop highly lucrative screw from beginning to end. copy for the financial columns, and make the