Let’s Kill Culture
Simon Cowell won’t find everything for you, you know?
It’s a sad day but one which I’ve thought was in the post for a while. The radio show that I contribute to with my Film Club is being axed. In fact, it has been already, we’re not even getting an opportunity for a swansong. It is the latest in a systematic diluting of everything that was good about the radio station I was involved with, Original 106FM. Over the last few months, the best DJs have left, the playlist has become more mainstream and bit by bit the little touches that made the station different have gone. As one of the DJs said to me a few months back, “This place should be done under the Trades Description Act. It is not Original. It is the same as all the other guff out there”.
But standing as a beacon of originality despite the station’s otherwise slide into mediocrity, was Andrew Learmonth’s Sunday Showcase. Playing new music, classic music and having live sessions and interviews from bands, singers, authors, actors, comedians, critics and a whole host of people with something to say about a broad spectrum of cultural happenings, it stood out from the mid-Atlantic sounding blandness that is local radio in my area. for four hours every week, the station was what it claimed to be; original.
It became a regular stop for touring bands, like Glasvegas to Oasis, both of whom gave interviews recently, as well as local bands who would have found it hard to get a look in any of the mainstream media.
People like the popular. Course they do. But how do things become popular? U2 were once a group of wee guys looking for a break playing pubs in Dublin they couldn’t afford (or weren’t the legal age) to drink in. Stephen King was once a struggling author writing in his spare time and trying to get a short story published in between day jobs. Duffy, as all the blurb said after her winning the Brits, was singing to elderly audiences in Old Folks’ homes this time last year trying to keep her dream alive. Kate Winslet was a wee lassie working in a delicatessen waiting for the phone to ring and tell her she’d got a part. Somebody took a chance on all these people and gave them exposure.
These days…especially these days, no one wants to take a gamble. Better to invest in the next book by Patricia Cornwell over the maverick new writer who has no credentials but a great first book. Far better to have radio stations playing exclusively artists that everyone can name and recognise instantly over the fresh new sound from a band that might just be the next big thing, with a little luck on their part, and a little faith and risk taking on someone else’s.
Popular culture needs the Sunday Showcases, the Friday Projects, the John Peels, the Rough Trades, and all the other ventures that celebrated the new, the exciting, the risky, the not yet popular. Without them popular culture dies.
So here’s to the raw, the undiscovered, the maverick, the exciting, the risky, the next big thing. You won’t find it here, though. Not in my neck of the woods.
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Grey Toon Hero
I am a great defender of Aberdeen. It is my adopted home town, and unlike many of the born and bred residents, I am aware of just how lucky I am to live here.
“The Guardian” has caught onto this fact and this week in their Weekend supplement, the “Let’s Move to” feature concentrates on my lovely, if cold, little city.
The article says, “..the city is spick and span with more parks and municipal borders than it knows what to do with”. Too true. The city doesn’t win “Britain in Bloom” every flipping year for no reason.
I could go on for hours about how great my town is, but I want to pay tribute to someone, who shall remain anonymous who risked all to make Aberdeen a perfect crime free place to live; my friend, the Community Warden Blogger. Unfortunately, you can no longer read their blog as, being critical of the new Council policy of stripping the successful and much respected Community Wardens of their links with Grampian Police, the blog ( A Community Warden’s Day) has been taken down. But not before the local papers wrote an excellent article about the blogger and their whistleblowing activities.
Community Wardens help make Aberdeen a safe place to live. As the on-the-street eyes and ears of law enforcement, the wardens worked together with the police, and together they were well on the way to having street crime nigh-on licked.
Now, sent out to face the troublemakers of Aberdeen without police back up and proper radios, these guys and girls are defenceless and under threat of attack, as they simultaneously have to gain the trust of the community whilst at the same time fining folk for dog fouling and parking violations.
Their bosses are no longer the police force, with all their databases, experience and communications systems, but the beleaguered and much criticised City Council, who have no such systems and who seem to think revenue from parking tickets is more important than crime prevention.
Community Warden blogger, I salute you and hope that your bravery in bringing this travesty to wider public attention, will get the ailing and inept City Cooncil to rethink their ridiculous strategy which strikes me as being akin to peeing in your own canoe.
Many at Grampian Police agree with the Community Warden Blogger, I believe. Some of them read this blog, as do a couple of councillors, so they may have comments to make.
But for me, this little quote from one of the teen residents of a choice area of toon, speaks volumes,
“Aye, they are alright. They gie ye intae trouble but they always find yer chory* bikes.”
The wardens do the jobs that the Police don’t have time to do and in so doing are a real part of the community.
Read the excellent article about the Community Warden’s Blog here.
Aaaah…. the power of blogging!
* (Chory = stolen)
