We just think this is one of the truly strange things that someone could aspire to.
First, note that British popular music has indeed been wildly successful. Both as a business and in its primary function of annoying and being incomprehensible to anyone 5 years older than those currently making it. Secondly, note that this has come about through the chaos of entirely undirected personal and private effort. Markets that is, entirely free and bounded not just by no regulation but also no guidance nor even taste.
If British music has a soul, it resides in small venues. In hundreds of pub backrooms, grotty gig venues, DIY spaces and sweat-soaked basement clubs where lives are changed and, occasionally, history made. Alongside more established mid-sized venues, these places are talent incubators, providers of joy and a significant source of economic activity. More important, they also crystallise, if not trigger, profound cultural shifts – and have for almost 70 years.
From the Beatles at the Cavern or the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club, to dubstep focal point FWD at London’s Plastic People (RIP), or Optimo’s legendary Sunday nights at Glasgow’s Sub Club, we live atop a thriving, ever-mutating underground that shapes how the UK looks, sounds and is.
Anarchy in the UK being not just a number 38 chart pick by a popular beat combo but also an extremely successful business model. At which point, the bit we don’t understand in the slightest:
If government fails to intervene, far-sighted councils may water their own grassroots. The Local Government Association has objected to the taskforce’s lack of localism, and London mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged £2.3m to save, among others, music and LGBTQ+ venues. Could Preston or Sheffield steal a creative march on rivals such as Manchester? Will Manchester continue to fall behind cities such as Berlin, where public funds are supporting club culture?
True, all men kill the thing they love but who would be so enamoured with pop music to ask the government to get involved? Seriously, why the demand to destroy the model that has been so productive - in outrage even if not music - for the past 70 years?