My travels in Cuba (1/3): Havana, Trinidad & Cienfuegos

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By Daniel Margrain

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In my previous article, I discussed the egalitarian nature of politics and society on the Island of Cuba and its relationship to the authentic urban experience as played out within a sea of capitalism. In an attempt to contextualize the piece, I want to express some thoughts about my experiences after spending two months traveling independently throughout this beautiful Caribbean Island during late 2009 and early 2010.

I arrived in Havana from Madrid in the late evening on November 17, 2009 and settled in at the famous Plaza Hotel which had all of the grace and fading colonial splendour of similar hotels I had frequented in India many years previously. The wooden shutters in my room opened up to a small balcony that overlooked a dusty dimly lit street below whose initial appearance had a sense of serene calmness about it like I had stepped into a Edward Hopper painting. Except for the sound of the occasional taxi that passed in the street directly below me and the flickering echo of distant voices, the streets remained eerily quiet.

It wasn’t until the following morning from the rooftop of the hotel that the aromas of the city, bustling street life and clogged roads below – set against a backdrop of crumbling tenement buildings and colonial edifices – became evident in this unique metropolis. The vivaciousness, eclecticism and atmospheric energy of the Caribbean’s largest city has survived everything that has been thrown at it throughout its 500 year history and continues to stand as a beacon of resistance against U.S imperialism today.

For this writer, it was the visceral and abstract, as opposed to conventional notions of beauty, that was Havana’s main appeal. The overriding sense of a city that forms part of an Island of quasi-socialism within a sea of capitalism, and all of the contradictions and potential opportunities that this entails, is palpable for the first time visitor. Graham Greene was right when he said that Havana is a city where “anything is possible”.

The opportunity to be mesmerized by the hustle and bustle of all that surrounds you whilst constantly reminding yourself of the historical significance of the city in both time and place, opens up a potential space in which you can lose yourself in the melee and embrace the cities earthly authenticity. No other city in the world that I have visited has quite the aesthetic seductiveness for the flaneur as Havana has.

Traditional sites aside, at no time did I feel that the city was some kind of trussed-up tourist resort or cynically concocted amusement park, although some of the bars in the renovated parts of Habana Vieja did tend to be frequented by some tourists enamored with a Hemingway fetish. This is perhaps understandable. In a city like Havana, it’s difficult to fully set aside the vibrant and colourful cultural preconceptions associated with the city from a life-time of images ingrained in the consciousness of visitors. Some of these images have an objective basis in reality, while others are mainly subjective or fantasies and caricatures. The Havana experience in its totality, though, is never less than alluring.

To what extent you allow yourself to be immersed within either aspect is largely dependent on the individual. “Habana is very much like a rose”, said Fico Fellove, in the movie The Lost City, “it has petals and it has thorns….so it depends on how you grab it. But in the end it always grabs you.” If you fail to be grabbed by Havana’s eclectic charms, then just like somebody who tires of London, it’s perhaps your life that needs to be questioned.

As culturally stimulating as Havana is, I made the decision to journey further afield in order to broaden my Cuban experience. After eight days in Havana (to which I was to return at the end of my Cuban trip), I decided to take a bus to the old Spanish colonial town of Trinidad (pop. 50,000) 375km to the south side of the island.

After an eye-opening bus journey along near-deserted ‘highways’ interspersed with lush green paddy fields and remote villages, I was in the end relieved to arrive at my destination, particularly as the bus driver insisted on playing a music video of what seemed like the entire works of Boney M on repeat throughout the entire length of the journey.

I was met at the local bus station in Trinidad by my host Dr Carlos, a dermatology specialist who made me feel very welcome at his ‘Casa Particulare’ (Hermanos Albalat) on nearby Frank Pais Street. During the day, I would spend my time relaxing on Playa Ancon, 12km south of the town, and during the evening I would stroll aimlessly around this quaint old town, drinking copious amounts of dark rum and listening to live music or people-watching at the Casa de la Musica situated at the top of a wide stairway just off the central plaza.

It was on the steps of the Casa dela Musica on my last night in Trinidad that my overriding lingering memories of the town remain. Nearby, a musician played solo flute and a small child flew a kite overhead as a quarter moon emerged flickering on the palm-fringed horizon in the distance below. For one brief moment I had thought I had gone to heaven.

My next destination was the two hour bus journey to the French-influenced fortress port city of Cienfuegos in the province of the same name, home of the ‘The Barbarian of Rhythm’, Benny More.

The city sits on a beautiful bay surrounded by the lush-green and fertile Las Villas Plain that opens into the Caribbean Sea. The legacy of French migrations to the city is evident both in terms of its neoclassical architecture and the wide grid-like street layout. Cienfuegos is an industrial city that appears to rely less on tourism then either Havana or Trinidad, largely because much of the region is devoted to the cultivation of sugarcane and the growing of coffee in the mountains to the southeast of the city.

Upon my arrival, I was struck by how the city reminded me of Penang or Bangalore. Its billing as ‘The Pearl of the South’ is one that has not been over-hyped. In fact the city lives up to its tourist brochure description as consisting of a “world compromised of a multiplicity of shapes, colors and aromas that seduces the visitor….” This is a city where one can enjoy local ‘crooners’ belting it out at the Cafe Cantante More well into the early hours, or witness the sight of young Cuban’s reveling at the Club Costa Sur and walking arm in arm by the Malecon.

A typical afternoon involved strolling about town where I would regularly see local people queuing, ration stamps in hand, for essentials like sugar, butter, milk and rice, before I would return ‘home’ to my fully equipped CFC-free refrigerated and energy-saving light generated ‘Casa’ for a siesta. Such are the contradictions of Cuban society.

But then I am reminded that Fidel is in a state of effective war with his neighbour 90 miles away. Under these circumstances, the normal functioning of society is an impossibility and the suspension of ‘formal’ democracy the norm. The US trade embargo with Cuba has hit the country hard. The US-imposed 1992 Torricelli Act prevents foreign subsidiaries of US companies trading with Cuba and prohibits ships that had called at Cuban ports from docking at US ports for six months.

The end result of this draconian attack on the country, is the effective banning of virtually the entirety of the rest of the world trading with Cuba. This explains why ninety per cent of banned goods consist of food, medicine and medical equipment which naturally is causing terrible suffering, even death, in Cuba.

Cuba has been left adrift by what are widely considered to be the major players within what is often euphemistically referred to as the ‘international community’, but nevertheless is a ‘modern miracle’ which had, as I was about to discover, emerged defiant and strong.

Within Cuba a two-tier economy appears to have emerged. Professional and skilled workers like doctors and engineers, whose monthly state salaries are barely enough to pay for a pair of trainers, look elsewhere – usually the tourism sector – for a means to supplement their small incomes. It would appear that the tourist dollar and the hefty taxes and supplements the Cuban government generate from visitors, is an insufficient source with which to pay the Cuban people a decent salary.

It was clear to me, that many Cuban professionals, particularly many of the young, are hungry for change. It was also clear to me that some, but by no means all, want out of Cuba, while many more wait patiently for Fidel to pass away. From my experience though, the majority of Cuban’s adore their leader and would do anything to defend the revolution. But there also exists a kind of resigned pragmatism regarding the countries likely future transition to capitalism.

To be continued

 

Is authenticity possible under capitalism?

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By Daniel Margrain

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The anti-capitalist slogans ‘The World Is Not A Commodity’ and ‘Our World Is Not For Sale’ which emerged out of the great anti-capitalist demonstrations from Seattle and which many of us take for granted, are tremendously powerful statements about the world. One of Karl Marx’s most profound insights was his understanding of how the workings of the capitalist system is bound up with the process of turning ‘things’ from the ‘productive sphere’ to a ‘consumptive sphere’ realized as commodity value.

For Marx, the notion of turning ‘use values’ into ‘exchange values’ is an inherent feature of capitalism’s drive for the accumulation of capital. Capitalism does not create commodities or markets and, similarly, it does not create money. The problems, as Marx sees them, is not that capitalism brings these things into being, but brings them into being in a particular way that expands and extends the process of capital accumulation through the extraction of surplus value realized as profit.

Over a century and a half ago, Marx grasped the existence of an inherently competitive struggle between rival units of capital to turn increasing spheres of life over to private production and therefore to extend the sphere of commodities which have come to dominate the people that produce them. Formally, capitalists and workers are independent of each other, but in reality inextricably connected.

From the 19th century, production no longer took place in the home but in factories where new systems of discipline operated. For the first time in history, humans came to be defined by how and what they consumed. By turning society and production over to the production of ‘things’ that the direct producers have little or no control over, means that capitalism is an alienating system.

The devaluation of public life increases in direct relation to the increase in the value of the world of things. Real social relationships are governed by an external power which attains control over the individual. In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx asserts:

“The alienation of the worker means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently of him and alien to him, and begins to confront him as hostile and alien.”

Although we make and buy ‘things’, the antagonistic nature of the capitalist market means we are detached and alienated from them and each other. The system produces a world of isolated and egoistic individuals, bound together by calculation and crude monetary terms rather than the establishment of community life. The capitalist system of generalized commodity production is so pervasive that it seems an inevitable and natural condition of humanity.

Commodities acquire social characteristics because individuals enter the productive process only as the owners of commodities. As Marx succinctly put it, “the impact of society on the individual is carried out through the social form of things.” This adds another dimension to alienated relationships because “the characters who appear on the economic stage are merely personifications of economic relations. It is as the bearers of these economic relations that they come into contact with each other.”

The notion that human will is separated from the social organization that overrides it and where powers are conferred to inanimate objects, is what Marx meant by ‘commodity fetishism’. It is a process in which “the capitalist mode of production takes over the totality of the individual, family, social needs and, in subordinating them to the market, also reshapes them to serve the needs of capital.” In this way culture is packaged within what appears to be an era of all-pervasive globalization where:

“The local and exotic are torn out of place to be repackaged for the world bazaar. So-called world culture may reflect a new valuation of difference and particularity, but is also very much about making a profit from it.”

Commodities also take on a mystical character. As writer, Kitty S Jones has shown, under capitalism the world has become devalued and society debased. Under these conditions, rather than the state providing services directly, it’s role is to act as a purchaser of public services which are then farmed out to the private sector. Working conditions are unilaterally altered as a result, and the path of individual redress begins and often ends with automated answering services of the great bureaucracies.

The frustration has reached such epic proportions that in those services where staff have to confront the public, they either have to be physically protected by screens or notices have to be posted warning the public of the dire consequences of assaulting staff, as now happens on London buses and tubes. All this is compounded by market-inspired jargon that seems to promise the opposite of this frustration.

The dominance of the cash nexus and privatization within public life is such that trains now carry customers not passengers and nurses tend clients not patients. Bewildering consumer choice is offered by the same few large corporations. The near universal mechanisms supposedly designed to provide accountability and increase public trust through regulation, inspection, target-setting and audit are, in reality, making things worse.

Ira Katznelson outlines the all-pervasive and distorting power of capitalism in relation to cities:

“Capitalism creates the city; the city creates a consciousness that reflects its varied reality; yet that unconsciousness deflects attention away from the primal forces of the capitalist mode of production that underlie the production and functioning of cities. This is the great secret of the capitalist order. Not only does the city give the accumulation process the capacity to secure a spatial fix, it also misshapes class struggle by deflecting it into fetishistic dimensions.”

The result of the direct subordination of cultural production to the priorities of profitable accumulation can be witnessed daily on television. In Britain today – the European vanguard of neoliberalism – government ministers refer to the ‘cultural industries’ without any sense of paradox or discomfort, and the Financial Times has a regular supplement called ‘Creative Business’.

This understanding of culture as part of the profitable accumulation process, is very different from the understanding of cultural theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. When, for example, they coined the expression ‘the culture industry’, they intended it as an ironical and critical concept. Nothing seemed to them to be more absurd or contradictory than to reduce the creative process to an industry governed by the same logic of rationalization as any other.

Throughout the public realm, what appears to be the hegemonic subjugation to the market of communities and societies, means that many people are oblivious to alternative narratives which challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of neoliberalism. Postmodernism helps reinforce this consensus view because it seeks to prohibit a discourse of social criticism to the experience of neoliberalism. The high priest of the deconstruction of authenticity, Jean Baudrillard, for example, writes:

“All our problems today as civilized beings originate not in an excess of alienation, but a disappearance of alienation in favour of a maximum transparency between subjects.”

For Baudrillard, critical thought and political struggle have been rendered obsolete in society, not of the spectacle but of simulation where images no longer represent but now constitute reality. Marx’s concepts of alienation and commodity fetishism, however, infer a contrast between an authentic subject and existing social relations that deny it self-realization.

This contrast is implicit in the critique developed during the 1960s by the Situationists of ‘the society of the spectacle’. Situationist Guy Debord writes of “the global social praxis that is split into reality and image” and says that “within a world really on its head, the true is a movement of the false.” The tradition in which the Situationists built on Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism is one, therefore, that’s committed to the idea of pursuing the critique of existing reality as part of the struggle of what Marx called ‘human emancipation’.

The re-emergence of Marx’s concepts of alienation and commodity fetishism in recent years marks the breakdown of the hegemony that postmodernism has exerted over much academic thinking during the last few decades. For Alex Callinicos, postmodernism is predicated on a neoliberal ideological discourse that dovetails in with urban corporate spatial strategies designed to extract value by dissolving the aspiration to authenticity and community through identity politics.

According to Rosalyn Deutsche, corporate planning strategies frequently cast homogeneity and unanimity in the shape of ‘community’ with the goals of consolidating communities and soothing conflicts. The aim is to dissociate democracy from conflict. Conflict is “simultaneously acknowledged and disavowed, a ‘fetishistic’ process whose repercussions generate certitudes about the meaning of public space.” Thus the struggle for authenticity through recognition of identity and differentiation, and the effort to disembody ownership from representation in urban spaces, is the struggle for community and democracy itself.

The community in this sense appear as negative images embroiled within a discursive economy that both masks and legitimizes socioeconomic domination by obliterating difference, inequality and oppression. The merging of ownership and representation as a tool of statement production only serves to extend these operations of power and to further undermine the possibility of resistance.

In this way, corporate structures are able to appropriate representative claims for authenticity and embody them within a framework of ownership that privilege an integrated concept of space distanced from a discourse of threat and conflict. Thus urban spaces can appear to be abstract and neutral allowing urban planners to divorce the urban fabric from class content. So, for instance, the dominant response to the English inner city riots of the 1980s was for better ‘design solutions’ to control social problems rather than on focusing attempts to challenge entrenched socioeconomic relations that gave rise to them.

An inclusive Marxist vision of democracy is one in which, the ‘subject’ as opposed to the ‘commodity’ becomes the universal category. Marx, therefore, is able to transcend the capitalist totality by providing a theoretical basis by which authenticity can be realized without the need to turn to market-based objectified concepts.

In my next article I will examine how misplaced notions of authenticity have influenced the way many of us perceive the Cuban experience

Black Friday & the Red Scare

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By Daniel Margrain

The decision last Friday (August 12) by three Appeal Court judges to overturn High Court judge Hickinbottom’s determination four days earlier, ostensibly to prevent the right of 130,000 members to vote in the forthcoming Labour leadership election, is arguably among the most strangest of decisions to have been made in an English court. The five Labour members – Christine Evangelou, Edward Leir, Hannah Fordham, Chris Granger and an unnamed minor – who initially brought the case and whose legal fees were crowdfunded, had claimed that Labour’s rulebook made no provision for treating them differently and none had ever been made in any of the party’s previous leadership elections.

They also argued that when they joined, the Labour website and other communications said they would be ‘a key part of the team’, and thus eligible to vote in any leadership election as the graphic below illustrates:

Mr Justice Hickinbottom agreed. In last Monday’s initial written judgment on the six-month cut-off point, Hickinbottom said:

“At the time each of the claimants joined the party, it was the common understanding as reflected in the rule book that, if they joined the party prior to the election process commencing, as new members they would be entitled to vote in any leadership contest. That was the basis upon which each claimant joined the party; and the basis upon which they entered into the contract between members. For those reasons, the claimants’ claim succeeds.”

Hickinbottom said that a refusal to allow the 130,000 a vote was an unlawful breach of contract, adding that any attempt to reverse the decision “would have no chance of success at appeal”. And yet four days later after Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol had used Labour members’ money to fund the appeal to challenge the right of members to vote, the anti-Corbyn plotters were celebrating the reinstatement of a six-month cut-off point.

The bizarre nature of the judgement that is widely acknowledged to disadvantage Corbyn and to vindicate McNicol – at least temporarily – effectively endorses ballot rigging and gerrymandering as well as setting a precedent in terms of allowing the retrospective altering of contracts. Announcing the appeal court’s decision last Friday, Lord Justice Beatson said:

“On the correct interpretation of the party rules, the national executive committee has the power to set the criteria for members to be eligible to vote in the leadership election in the way that it did.”

This announcement came on the back of revelations by Wikileaks that the second of the three Appeal Court judges, Sir Philip Sales QC, who overruled the previous High Court decision, had been a Blair insider for years, having been recruited as Junior Counsel to the Crown in 1997.

The literature cited by WikiLeaks  reveals that Sales used to be a practising barrister at law chambers 11KBW, of which Tony Blair was a founder member and, as a key part of Blair’s legal team, he defended the Government’s decision against holding a public inquiry into the Iraq War in the High Court in 2005.

The conflict of interest issue that is raised by Sales’ close connection to Blair is bound to raise eyebrows given the nature of what clearly amounted to a breach of contract which was nevertheless overruled in favour of the NEC of which the Blairite establishment is embedded.

It has since come to light that the Labour machine broke the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) code after having advertised that a promise to vote for a leader was a condition of membership. There are also serious questions to be answered in terms of the basis in which the appeal which was instigated by the ‘NEC Procedures Committee’ was brought. But, as Eoin has highlighted, no such Committee is mentioned on the official list of NEC Committees.

The wider context to all these shenanigans stems from the moment Corbyn was elected leader of the party. From the outset, the intention of the Labour Party establishment has been to depose Corbyn through a sustained strategy of subversion and attrition. The latest wave of attacks began following the failed attempt – instigated by multi-millionaire donor, Michael Foster – to keep Corbyn off the ballot paper.

This was followed by ballot rigging in which 130,000 members who joined the party after Corbyn’s election victory were prevented from voting. The Labour machine did this by invoking a back-dated retrospective six month rule. Members were then informed that there was a legal problem with that because these members were told when they joined they had a right to vote in leadership elections.

In order to get around this, the machine introduced a 48 hour window in which anybody at all could join if they paid £25. Then they discovered that an enormous amount of people had paid the £25 and so began to ‘weed out’ anybody who they discovered had used the word ‘Blairite’ on social media sites. This was regarded as sufficient enough reason to debar members from voting.

Finally, the 130,000 members got justice in the High Court last Monday only to be confounded four days later. The attempt by Labour members of parliament to overthrow their democratically elected leader using this kind of war of attrition strategy will start all over again the day after Corbyn is re-elected next month.

We know this because Blair apologist John Rentoul – who is himself heavily implicated in the propaganda offensive against Corbyn – conceded as much on George Galloway’s Talk Radio Show last Friday evening when he insisted that Corbyn will continue to be subjected to a war of attrition including yearly elections that “will result in his eventual defeat.”

Rentoul tripped up on his own propaganda after admitting to Galloway that there are no more than 4,000 Trotskyite entryists out of a total of 600,000 members who have joined the party under Corbyn. He then contradicted himself by claiming that the small minority of ‘dormant’ Trotskyist members had ‘flooded back’ into the party having “taken advantage of naive and idealistic new members.” This is classic ‘reds under the bed’ scare politics.

The notion that hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised, social media savvy members are having their arms twisted by a relatively tiny handful of ‘shady individuals’ influenced by a revolutionary political figure who died more than a century ago, is clearly ludicrous.

Nevertheless, this is all part and parcel of a far reaching ‘scorched earth’ media propaganda offensive against Corbyn and his supporters, the latest and arguably the most repugnant of which was the recent Mail on-line edition in which anti-Corbyn Labour donor, Michael Foster, was quoted as describing Corbyn’s team as ‘Nazi Stormtroopers’. Clearly the irony is lost on Foster that during the 1930s, the Daily Mail supported Hitler and campaigned against the admission of Jewish refugees into the UK.

The establishments demonization of the left is not new. It fits into a wider media narrative that depicts all those who oppose the neoliberal hegemony of the state as subversive, dangerous and an inherent threat to civilization  As Craig Murray argues:

“A key weapon of the neo-liberal establishment in delegitimising the emergence of popular organisation to the left, is to portray all thinkers outside the Overton window as dangerous; actively violent, misogynist and racist.”

Murray illustrates, by recourse to various evidence-based case studies, “the obvious and glaring disparity” between what the media purports are the kinds of violent actions activists supposedly engage in, and the actual peaceful protests they collectively involve themselves in.

George Galloway emphasized that the kind of biased anti-Corbyn propaganda, which he claims is an integral part of a coup that has been coordinated by Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandleson is:

“unremitting, it is Goebbelian; it is a shame and a disgrace on anyone who calls themselves a journalist or a broadcaster. All rules have been thrown to the wind; all journalistic norms have been abandoned. It is open season on a good and honest man. It fills me with disgust.”

The abandonment of journalistic rules outlined by Galloway is not restricted to what is considered by many to be the tabloid end of the spectrum. On the contrary, it often includes the ‘respectable’ and ‘liberal’ journalism of which Channel 4 News, for example, is part. The analysis of the Cathy Newman interview below is an excellent dissection and exposition of the propaganda system as it operates as part of the latter:

Whether, the media will wear Corbyn down leading to his eventual removal as Rentoul suggests, or whether the former wins the war is an open question. The fact that Corbyn has recently secured a majority of his supporters on the NEC is a massive boost to his leadership and would seem to indicate that Corbyn’s arch enemy, Iain McNicol’s days are numbered. Nevertheless, it’s clear to me that the time has now come for Corbyn to come down much harder than he has done thus far on the traitors who are unremitting in their determination to undermine his authority.

 

 

The British establishment corrupt? That’s not cricket, old bean

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By Daniel Margrain

A year ago last week (30 July) the then Prime Minister David Cameron met with Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia to talk about corruption in the wake of allegations that nearly US$700 million ended up in the latter’s personal accounts. This followed on the heels of Cameron’s stated commitment to clamp down on corrupt money in the UK.

But on the same day he was lecturing the Malaysian’s about corruption, British corporations claimed that the Bribery Act effectively made it difficult for them to bribe people as part of their ‘normal’ export business practices. Thus, business leaders subsequently appealed to Cameron to reverse legislation that is ostensibly intended to prevent corruption.

The then business secretary, Sajid Javid, invited companies’ to comment on whether the ‘tough anti-corruption measures’ are a ‘problem’. Letters sent by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills invited industry leaders to comment on whether the act has had an impact on their attempts to export. Does the government invite you to comment, dear reader, about regulations that prevent you from making more money? No, I thought not.

Widespread international criticism of the failure of the UK to reform its ineffective anti-bribery laws – which is regarded as one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed by the last government – soon followed. The coalition boasted that the Bribery Act was the world’s toughest piece of anti-corruption legislation. But the CBI led fierce criticisms of the bill arguing it would restrict business growth at a time of economic recovery.

The potential impact of the legislation is likely to be felt primarily, but not exclusively by, businesses. Why? Because bribery and corruption is an inherent part of big business deal-making.

On Wednesday’s (August 3) edition of the BBC HARDtalk programme, host Stephen Sackur interviewed Nigeria’s Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola. During the interview Sackur repeatedly alluded that the Nigerian government was systematically corrupt. At one point Sackur related an ‘off mic’ incident in which Cameron was said to have berated Nigeria, describing the country as one of the two most corrupt countries in the world.

Apparently it hadn’t occurred to Sackur and Cameron that big business in the UK lobbied against the Bribery Act which was intended to undermine corruption, the implication being that corporations would rather be scraping around in the sewer if there was some money to be made among the filth. For the likes of Sackur and Cameron, corrupt practices are something restricted to what African’s and Asian’s engage in. By contrast, the British establishment thinks of itself as occupying the moral high ground.

Three years ago, Cameron visited one of the most corrupt and authoritarian countries on the planet, Kazakhstan. The leader of that country showered him with gratitude and praise. Kazakhstan’s former police chief is linked to the ownership of £147m-worth of London properties which forms part of the UKs status as a safe haven for corrupt capital. Then there was the Straw and Rifkind affair, the ongoing MPs expenses scandal and the long-running PFI saga that’s crippling the NHS.

Simon Jenkins summarized the malaise and hypocrisy at the heart of the British establishment

“The truth is that hypocrisy is the occupational disease of British leaders. They lecture Africans and Asians on the venality of their politics, while blatantly selling seats in their own parliament for cash. I hope some insulted autocrat one day asks a British leader how much his party has garnered from auctioning honours. The government suppresses any inquiry into corrupt arms contracts to the Middle East. And when does lobbying stop and corruption start? The Cameron government is the most susceptible to lobbying of any in history.”

Given these corrupt practices, the fact that the UK is widely perceived to be the world’s 14th least corrupt country in the world would perhaps come as a surprise to many. The gap between perception and reality is clearly indicative of the distorted way in which the media under report the subtle forms of ‘hidden’ systematic corruption that is embedded in the very fabric of the British state, camouflaged by legislation and cushioned by ‘gentlemen’s agreements’.

In bringing together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, David Whyte shows that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business.

As Penny Green of Queen Mary University of London, contends, “the network of egregious state and corporate corruption in Britain rivals any in the developing world”. By observing our ‘impartial’ corporate-controlled mainstream media, it’s unlikely one would have arrived at the conclusion that one of the most advanced capitalist countries on the planet is also inherently corrupt.

 

50 classic albums to listen to before you die (5/5)

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By Daniel Margrain

 Dummy (1994) Portishead
Bristol’s Portishead skillfully create spectral soundscapes and desolate laments against a casual backdrop of electronic music that floats over a disorienting flow of syncopated beats – a style clearly inspired by “junk” culture, cocktail lounge and film noir. The atmosphere is disturbed by small dissonances, wailing electronics, turntable scratching and sampling.

 

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 Head Over Heels (1983) Cocteau Twins
This ‘Dream Pop’ masterpiece magically blends celestial singalongs, middle-eastern psalms, majestic spirituals, tingling guitars and neoclassical keyboards. What is created is a sound that is both elegant and lush. The songs exhibit the levity and grace of madrigals but also the gloom and pomp of requiems. Liz Fraser’s emotionally powerful vocals act as an original instrument.

 

 Fun House (1970) The Stooges
Iggy and The Stooges were the first to push rock and roll to the extremes and they are in a sense the ultimate antithesis of chic respectability. They are, in other words, the epitome of rock and roll in all of its grim degrading depravity and erotic delusions. Continuing on from where they left off with their seminal debut, Fun House takes their visceral rock dynamite to another level. With this album, the Stooges anticipate the wild voodoobilly ‘swamp’ rhythm as well as punk rock. This album flows at dizzying speeds of distortion without a moment’s pause.

 

 The Three EPs (1998)  The Beta Band
While The Beta Band had clearly listened to a back-catalogue of artists like The United States Of America, Kevin Ayers, Can and Pink Floyd for inspiration, The Three EPs is nevertheless an inventive work in its own right. A clever combination of electronica, hip-hop, piano-led ballads, Gregorian chanting, folk and musique concrete, have resulted in a modern psychedelic work of outstanding originality. The collection is mainly built around a succession of infectious shuffling beats, experimental sound collages, gentle whimsically-inflected ballads and languid-style grooves. This album is one of the most mesmerizing psychedelic trips ever produced.

 

I Could Live In Hope (1994) Low
Low create hypnotic psalm-like minimalist music that is way ahead of its time. The languid guitar sound, soft harmonies and radiant melodies are modernist variations of the themes first coined by Nick Drake that also hints at the neurosis and tone of Cowboy Junkies, Neil Young and Galaxie 500.

 

 Talking Heads: 77 (1977) Talking Heads
77 is the first of the Talking Heads opening trilogy of masterpieces. David Byrne’s eccentric songs and bizarre stories are underpinned by a brilliant rhythm section that is a hybrid of funk and rock and roll. Although the music on the album is ‘catchy’, it is only superficially so. Fundamentally, Byrne hints at an underlying anxiety that is offset by a cool detachment and alienation. 77 is arguably the most significant albums of the new wave and Talking Heads one of the most important bands of all-time.

 

 Daydream Nation (1988) Sonic Youth
Arguably the signature for post-punk, Sonic Youth finely balanced an experimental approach with subtle harmonies to produce a unity of style and arrangement that is detached and cold yet beautiful and hypnotic. The noise is stretched to the limit as the obsessive repetition of chords and insistent percussion create an atmosphere of suspense similar to Neu. The bands best work is contained in this album and, with Eric’s Trip, they produced one of rock music’s all-time classic cuts.

 

 The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (1968) The Incredible String Band
The Incredible String Band’s most imaginative and accomplished record, Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, is a psychedelic-folk classic that integrates a wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments and was one of the key recordings that helped nurture the development of world music.

 

 From Her To Eternity (1984) Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
Located at the intersection where art and life appear to coexist, Nick Cave’s psychotic neurosis expressed with this album is almost like an extension of his own funeral requiem. More to the point, Cave’s masterpiece is a highly original sounding expressionistic odyssey akin to a descent into the depths of hell. At the edge of dissonance, the albums pounding drums, sledgehammer noise and Cave’s grotesque fables are an awesome combination. The images of toiling labour, pirates aboard creaking ships and invocations of US ‘Deep South’ literary traditions, is illustrative of Cave at his visceral best. Sadly, though, many of his subsequent works lack the allegorical story-telling, dramatic brilliance and consistency of this album, and instead tended to slip into the realms of over-indulgence.

 

 Yerself Is Steam (1991) Mercury Rev
Yerself Is Steam is a pyrotechnical and extravagant synthesis of anarchic freakouts in the tradition of Red Crayola which collide with contemplative new age music. What emerges is an imaginative modern psychedelic take on the 1960s acid-rock of West coast America. The vision of the album is one of chaos, decadence and neurosis.

50 classic albums to listen to before you die (4/5)

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By Daniel Margrain

 Neu 2 (1973) Neu
Neu’s intuitive and innovative ‘motorik’ beat of surging rhythmic impulses, obsessive repetition and cosmic futuristic soundscapes, predicted the neurosis of the post-industrial era as exemplified in the work of artists like Pere Ubu, Joy Division and Public Image Limited. The repetitive tribal beats, particularly the melodic element of the music, also anticipated the post-rock of the early 1990s most notably in the work of Stereolab.

 

Naturally (1971) J.J Cale
J.J Cale’s melancholy ‘laid-back’ blues-rock style has become the template for this kind of musical genre.Highly influential and respected among a dedicated following of fans and fellow musicians alike, the independent Cale seemed to be more comfortable writing for other musicians than performing. Dire Straits were to become Cale’s biggest imitators.

 

Disappeared (2000) Spring Heel Jack
The first track on this thrilling ride of a recording, Rachel Point, sets the scene for what is to come. Pounding drums, Miles Davis-style trumpet licks and looping keyboard wails are only the starting point for the mind-blowing Galina, a piece characterized by tribal pow-pow beats, heavy bass lines, organ drones and minimalist piano patterns set against a symphonic backdrop. This is contrasted with the epic trumpet crescendo of Trouble And Luck and the Bacharach-tinged orchestral aria of the dub tinged To Die A Little..

 

Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977) Joni Mitchell
Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is an album that works on every emotional and intellectual level. The synergy between music and poetry is virtually unsurpassed. The strident symphonic overtones that embellish Paprika Plains is a work of eloquence and restraint – a majestic piece that evokes a place lost in the mists of time. Dream-like abstractions and mysticism is a running theme throughout the album. The Tenth World and Dreamland predicted the ‘world music’ coined by Paul Simon’s Graceland by a decade.

 


 The Days of Wine And Roses (1982) The Dream Syndicate
This album is an exceptionally played slice of neurotic postmodern psychedelic rock – a kind of bridge between Television and The Gun Club. The Dream Syndicate were among the most accomplished of the Paisley Underground bands of the early 1980s.

 

 Da Capo (1966)  Love
I last saw Love play live at the Benicassim Festival in Spain shortly before the creative force of the band, Arthur Lee, died. It’s now 10 years to the week that the music world suffered one of its greatest losses. The music of Love embraced psychedelic pop melody with baroque arrangements. Da Capo was the album that best showcased one of the most eccentric styles of music from the mid-to-late 1960s which alternated between manic epileptic assaults of garage-rock and soft and melodic songs with flutes and harpsichord. The epic Revelation showcased Arthur Lee’s powerful vocals and brilliant guitar playing that is similar in style to early Neil Young.

 

Carrion Crawler/The Dream (2011)  Thee Oh Sees
This album is a refreshing and vibrant contemporary take on the psyche-garage traditions of the 1960s. The band effortlessly merge a multitude of reference points from the past without sounding derivative. Songs reminiscent of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd combine with 70s new wave, jazz, soul rockabilly and punk. In the age of cynicism, austerity and conformity, this recording sounds like a breath of fresh air.

 

 Gris-Gris (1968) Dr. John
What defines the work of Dr John, is the eclecticism of his Jazz and rhythm and blues-based music. Heir to the New Orleans tradition, Dr John’s unique interpretation of the exuberance of Creole folklore that characterizes his work, was formally embraced by the hippie counter-cultural and freak movement of the 1960s. The combination of funky tribal Middle Eastern and African jams, swamp voodoo blues and Mardi Gras-style fanfares, gave a new expression to the soul-funk-rock of the period.

 

Miss America (1988) Mary Margaret O’Hara
Mary Margaret O’Hara is one of the most original and creative artists of all-time. Her quirky voice is an instrument in itself, a super-human fusion of avant garde techniques and gospel/soul styling. Coupled with her sophisticated blues and jazz arrangements, the atmosphere of Miss America is memorably intense. As a performer, O’Hara is like a force of nature.

 


 Double Time (1977) Leon Rathbone
Leon Redbone’s eclectic and original take on the ragtime traditions of the past have a kind of postmodern resonance. The trick to Redbone’s art is the brilliant way he injects a satirical freshness into the blues, jazz, folk and vaudeville traditions by the use of a baritone yodeling croon and his use of nostalgic orchestral arrangements. Redbone’s skill is his knack of revealing the precious underbelly of a lost old-style genre and then updating it to a contemporary audience.

50 classic albums to listen to before you die (3/5)

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By Daniel Margrain

Scott 4 (1969) Scott Walker
Scott 4, by far Scott Walker’s best album, maintained the Brel influence of his previous three, but now the themes of prostitutes, gangsters and misfits, as well as his operatic vocal style, was all his own. With arrangements that are closer to Morricone than Bacharach or Spector, Walker transcends the up-dated but essentially old fashioned easy-listening sound of the ballad, to something altogether deeper and philosophical.

 

 Telepathic Surgery (1989) The Flaming Lips
The art of the Flaming Lips bridge the punk ethos and the hippie burlesque. Their exaggerated guitar surges and maniacal drumming patterns allied with stylistic collages, create an absolutely phenomenal soundscape. Abrasive crescendos crash amid roaring motorcycle engines, tingling piano motifs and thrashing cymbals. The tempo takes Neil Young’s guitar neurosis to a new level of unorthodox psychosis. This sound is taken to its extreme on Hell’s Angel’s Cracker Factory, probably rocks most extraordinary and monumental pieces of all-time.

 

 Gallowsbird’s Bark (2003) The Fiery Furnaces
A cross between a deconstructed Rolling Stones, the ramshackle anarchy of The Holy Modal Rounders, The twisted delta blues of the Magic Band and the cabaret of Frank Zappa, The Fiery Furnaces create a multi-faceted style that has few precedents. The lead vocals of Eleonor Friedberger is from the Janis Joplin/Patti Smith shaman-preacher tradition. This album is bursting with chaotic creativity and fresh ideas.

 

Ys (2006) Joanna Newsom
This groundbreaking piece of work merges the stream of consciousness-style of Astral Weeks with the narrative melodrama of Blonde On Blonde-era Dylan. Arguably, the highlights of this extraordinary moving album are Emily, a 12 minute tour de force of brilliant free-form vocals set against a sparse orchestral soundscape, and the spellbinding finale Cosmia. This is an exceptional work of art and one of the key pieces of the new millennium.

 

 May I Sing With Me (1992)  Yo La Tengo
This album is a triumph of folk-rock melody and garage-rock guitar noise which skillfully navigates a maniacal violence and a delicate contemplation. The bass that drives Mushroom Cloud Of Hiss is one of rock’s greatest moments. Yo La Tengo are one of the most important groups of the 1990s. May I Sing With Me is their best and most complete album.

 

 Our Mother The Mountain (1969) Townes Van Zandt
Borrowing elements from folk, country, blues and tex-mex, Van Zandt’s music is emotionally intense. His gentle acoustic style has a unique desolate quality to it and his stories are simultaneously intimate, tender and universal. Alongside Dylan and Cohen, Townes Van Zandt is one of rocks greatest ever poets. Critical recognition of his work is long overdue. Our Mother The Mountain is a masterpiece.

 

 After Bathing At Baxter’s (1967) Jefferson Airplane
Arguably one of the greatest artistic achievement of the psychedelic era, Bathing was one of the first albums to break free from the conventions of the song format and the pop arrangement. The harmonies are convoluted and the melodies complex – both of which are underscored by superb all-round musicianship. The highlights are the instrumental Spare Chaynge which takes you on an embryonic journey, and the ambitious ‘Ulysses’-inspired Rejoyce in which Grace Slick’s majestic vocals overlay a quite brilliant haunting musicality. This album is an example of a group of exceptional individual talents at the peak of their creative powers working in unison. Baxters is a music for the mind of the mind.

 

 Suicide (1977) Suicide
This masterpiece conjures up a sonic intensity of stark minimalism that is breathtakingly original and highly influential. With this seminal album, Alan Vega and Martin Rev perfected a sinister rockabilly. The centrepiece of the album is Frankie Teardrop, the ultimate nightmare, a kind of hyper-sinister Sister Ray for the punk generation. This is arguably the most daring and maniacal ten minutes of sustained drama and tension ever translated to rock music. Vega’s final refrain, “We are all Frankie’s lying in hell” is genuinely disturbing.

 

 Rickie Lee Jones (1979) Rickie Lee Jones
Arguably the greatest female singer-songwriter album of all-time, Rickie Lee Jones’ erudite depictions of moral decay and alienation within the US urban metropolis resonates with the work of Tom Waits. This is an album that fluctuates between the physical and spiritual as Jones intelligently and emotionally navigates a space which seems to bridge the visionary with the romantic in a way that has probably only ever been matched within the singer-songwriter genre by Joni Mitchell.

 

 Paris, Texas (1985) Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder’s slide-guitar work that’s the foundation for the soundscape Paris, Texas is based on Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground). Cooder’s brilliantly arranged and composed theme that formed the soundtrack to the film of the same name, is a haunting and atmospheric piece that reconstitutes definitive eras and styles. The result is a work of profound metaphysical and existential beauty. In the words of one critic, “Cooder has a unique talent to internalize the ethnic traditions of other peoples, to turn them into a universal voice discharged through sophisticated arrangements but, to synthesize nostalgic regret and scientific philology. The stamp is his job.”

50 classic albums to listen to before you die (2/5)

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By Daniel Margrain

 In The Court of The Crimson King (1969) King Crimson
King Crimson’s seminal debut heralded the progressive-rock movement. What set King Crimson apart from many of their contemporaries were the psychedelic overtones, the medieval visions, the Gothic atmosphere and the romantic pathos in their music, particularly in both the title-track and Epitaph. One of the best tracks, if slightly out of place, is 21st Century Schizoid Man’– a brilliant, neurosis-charged distorted jam.

 

Underwater Moonlight (1980) The Soft Boys
The sound of Underwater Moonlight is similar to the work of U.S New Wave band, Television and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. The band manage to merge the influences of the former and the psychedelic whimsy of the latter with the discordant fragmented blues of Captain Beefheart and the catchy power-pop of the Kinks and the Who. The end result is a distinctive and accomplished post-modern psychedelia that set in motion the psychedelic revival of the 1980s. Robyn Hitchcock is one of the most important British artists in rock history.

 

 Exile On Main Street (1972) The Rolling Stones
Exile On Main Street is the Stones masterpiece – representing their coming of age, musically and artistically. The playing is absolutely top notch throughout – at times restrained and understated, whilst at others forceful and aggressive. This album represents the sound of the era’s greatest rock and roll band at the top of its game. Beggar’s Banquet is a close second, but Exile is the Stones at their brilliant all-round decadent best.

 

If Only I Could Remember My Name (1971) David Crosby
This beautifully crafted classic is a spiritual meditation that evokes a memory of a place lost in the mists of time. The atmosphere conveyed is one of sadness – a kind of dreamy lament which is overlayed by a philosophical resignation and existentialism. This is a work that is a tonal and harmonic baroque masterpiece that defines the post-hippie era of disenchantment in which it emerged.

 

 The Band (1969) The Band
The Band is the groups masterpiece. It is a superbly arranged and exquisitely played piece of music – a mature and beautifully varied, dense and understated work that chugs to a syncopated rhythm. In many ways, Whispering Pines, the albums centrepiece, is a work of immense beauty.

 

 Faust (1971) Faust
Faust is vaguely reminiscent of aspects of Zappa-style collage allied to the psychedelia of Red Crayola and prog-rock. Nevertheless, the album has a unique musical language and atmosphere. It is an audacious attempt at fusing expressionism, surrealism, theatre of the absurd, Brecht/Weill’s cabaret, Wagner melodrama and musique concrete to rock music. On the surface, the sound appears incoherent and ‘ugly’. It’s only upon repeated listens that the recording starts to make sense in its totality, akin to the solving of a cryptic puzzle. It’s not an easily accessible listen for the untrained ear. However, its appeal is one that tends to grow over time. Faust is a beautifully demented, fun and ultimately moving creation.

 

 The United States of America (1968) The United States of America
United States Of America is one of the most audacious and inventive albums in the history of rock. It manages to successfully straddle the fine line between parody, cabaret, electronic and psychedelic experimentation. The musical montages are brilliant. The album sounds like it’s from the future while paradoxically remaining an atypical expression of both time and place.

 

 

 Spirit To Eden (1988) Talk Talk
Spirit Of Eden is a stunning piece of advanced electronic and celestial free-jazz and rock in the tradition of Canterbury. This astounding achievement is the reference point for the far inferior and overrated ‘slo-core’ band, Radiohead.

 

Highway 61 Revisited (1965) Bob Dylan
For a contemporary audience approaching Dylan for the first time, it is perhaps easy to underestimate the dramatic impact this album made on the cultural landscape of the period. Although Dylan’s phrasing and vocal inflections are very much an acquired taste, the solemness he expresses and his bohemian cynical humour was the template that was adopted by a succession of future generations of musicians. In this regard, Dylan was arguably the first to bring a ‘punk’ persona and attitude to the fore. Moreover, with the epic Desolation Row, he was the first to use rich poetic imagery within the song format. And, with Like A Rolling Stone, he set the template for folk-rock.

 

Shooting At The Moon (1970) Kevin Ayers
Kevin Ayers produced two quirky and eccentric masterpieces  – Joy Of A Toy’ his debut, and the follow-up Shooting At The Moon. Although both albums were in the innocent and playful tradition of Syd Barrett, it was the latter that stamped his claim as one of the greatest and most original British artists of all-time. Themes of existential melancholy, humour and nostalgia that emphasize Parisian decadence and eastern exotica, overlay an enchanting and often unsettling psychedelic underbelly emphasized by Ayer’s use of accordian, clarinet, strings and percussion.

50 classic albums to listen to before you die (1/5)

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By Daniel Margrain

TNT (1998)  Tortoise
Musically and technically as clinically executed as anything produced by the German masters, Can, Tortoise add a modern twist to the classical minimalist/jazz & prog-Canterbury genres. Despite the albums fusing of a multitude of influences – Miles Davis, Soft Machine, Steve Reich, Ennio Morricone – there is enough rhythmic experimentation by way of funk, dub and even Caribbean timbres that give the music on this record a wonderfully flowing and distinct richness.

 

We’re Only In It For The Money (1968) The Mother’s Of Invention
This visionary work (alongside Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground), virtually invented what was to become the punk aesthetic. Frank Zappa’s cynicism and cutting wit is evident throughout the album. This, the third masterpiece of his psychedelic trilogy, is similar in structure to his first two, but this is possibly his most accomplished. Here he uses the collage of parody with added brilliant technical expertise. The album is the musical equivalent of a Burroughs novel – each cut-and paste piece while seemingly fragmented, are in fact welded into a seamless narrative continuity.

 

Have A Marijuana (1969) David Peel
David Peel’s contribution to the counter-culture of the 1960s is a significant but under-recognized one. The punk aesthetics of the late 1970s can probably be traced back to the ramshackle street busking-style approach of Peel and his fellow travelling minstrels who utilize folk agit-prop and Fugs-style satire to comment on the social issues of their day. There is a wonderful organic sense of authenticity, albeit simplicity, in Peel’s art. His lyrics are deceptively clever, the spartan hillbilly hoedown nature of the music, story-telling and comedy skits fresh, and his the use of the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, an innovation. Politically and socially, the contemporary occupy movement can arguably be traced back to Peel’s street “happenings”.

 

Incunabula (1993) Autechre
With Incunabula, the Manchester duo Autechre created a distinctive form of postmodern electronic music that was a far more organically sophisticated and carefully calibrated version of the standard techno/chill-out music of the period. The duos rhythms are akin to an intricate and meticulous ‘design in sound’ that skilfully bridge a number of related genres. These include synth-pop, Indian classical music, minimalism, ambient music, the electronic pop sensibilities of Kraftwerk and the transcendental psychedelic explorations of Tangerine Dream.

 

Pink Moon (1972) Nick Drake
Unlike Drake’s previous two releases, the style of Pink Moon is stark, minimal and radical. The album appears to be the result of an increased existential anguish. Drake’s stories are desolate and anchored in refrains of solitude and obsession. The album – a sleight collection of deeply personal songs – consists of a chilling but deeply moving combination of surreal rhymes and apocalyptic ballads. Drake’s songwriting is highly influential and his supreme soft and melancholic style of delivery has a universal and timeless quality to it. Pink Moon is Drake’s masterpiece.

 

The Marble Index (1968)  Nico
This masterpiece was the album that introduced Nico’s unique art to the world. There is no precedent for the chanteuse’s icy gothic, medieval and neo-classical aesthetics – eerie and doom-laden but no less beautiful for that. This is a stunningly original, timeless and erudite work of art that surpasses commercial considerations. As John Cale put it in the liner notes to the record: “The Marble Index is an artefact, not a commodity.”

 

Bufo Alvarius, Amen (1995) Bardo Pond
One of the most musically accomplished bands of their time (and of any time), Bardo Pond produced this brilliant album that comprises a maelstrom of guitar distortions and manic drumming underscored by repetitively brutal, cosmic and supersonic drones. The overall soundscape is one that merges the experimental post-rock of say, Sonic Youth, the acid jam of Grateful Dead, the electrifying powerhouse blues of the Stooges and the serene shoegazing of My Bloody Valentine. This is one of the key albums of the 1990s – it’s reputation grows with the passage of time.

 

Mirror Man (1971) Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Mirror Man showcases The Magic Band at it’s most deliberately shambolic and free. Long ‘live’ primordial rambling jams extend the notion of the Blues standard to its limits. Structurally, Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) and his band game-play in the Delta-Blues tradition adding satirical and infantile elements over a creative carpet of complex rhythms and free Blues arrangements. The result is an extraordinary work of pyrotechnical brilliance. With its combination of a bedlam of guitars and tribal percussion, Mirror Man was the first rock album to shape an aesthetic of ‘anti-music’. Beefheart’s revolutionary artistic vision transcends the superficiality of the acid trip by servicing it to the musical theatre of the absurd. As one critic put it:“This music is the most faithful expression of the Freak culture, of its marginalization more than its rebellion, of its inexhaustible creativity, of its academic disgust, of its infantile ferocity of its desecrating vision of the world”

 

Tonight’s The Night (1975) Neil Young
Tonight’s The Night is a solemn meditation on the pessimism of the 1970s that emerged from the idealism of the 1960s. This is a record of immense, but at the same time, subtle beauty borne out of loss and redemption. The warmth, humour and overriding sense of raw humanity and vulnerability depicted by Young’s rich lyricism, quirky vocals and the all-round brilliant but understated musicianship, touches the deep recesses of the psyche in a very profound way. This is arguably Neil Young’s most solidly consistent work from his most creatively fertile ‘Ditch trilogy’ period. This is a recording that will refuse to date because both the themes, raw poetic beauty of the lyrics and the quality of the musicianship are timeless.

 

Astral Weeks (1968) Van Morrison
Recorded over the space of 12 hours, Astral Weeks is a beautifully unifying and ultimately brave work of art that merges jazz-rock elements, poetry and Morrison’s unique stream of consciousness vocal delivery. This, more than any other, is the album that I have been most drawn to over the last 37 years, having first listened to it as a 15 year old in 1977 when most of my friends were obsessing over the contemporary bands of the new wave. The sheer beauty of the music, and the timeless vivid imagery conjured up by the lyrics, are unmatched in the history of rock music. This album, probably more than any other, has been the soundtrack to my life.