BEATS OF LOVE  

110. Cascade by Niecy Blues

NOT THAT I made a resolution, but after watching her fawning interview with Mone and Barrowman, which barely scratched the surface of their scandals, I resolved not to watch Laura Kuenssberg again. 

That went well as I sat agog while she cosily chatted with the PM less than a fortnight later. This left me convinced I knew more about the junior doctor's dispute and the post office scandal than the pair of them. Obviously, I didn't, but their dumbing down of politics in the media has now meant dramatists have more credibility.

Whilst my mother's partner celebrated his daughter-in-law's  50th at the Ivy, all attention was on their table until Kuenssberg and Dominic Raab turned up and sat nearby. Suddenly, all attention diverted away from my mother's partner's table and towards theirs, giving him the chance to see just how much booze they consumed. Then, unsurprisingly, Raab, when interviewed the following day, became utterly confused by the meaning of misogyny and sounded truly horrible.

 

The political landscape is now characterised by a revolving door of public school ninnies like him being cosseted by the media when they behave appallingly. Many see that appalling behaviour as authenticity, which epitomises society's shortsightedness. The media never cossets ordinary folk. 

With this track evoking the headphone heaven of the finest trip-hop, but with a fresh and twisted soul sensibility, putting me in my happy place, I resolve never to mention the flaccid state of British politics ever again. 

BEATS OF LOVE

109. Abigail's Party  DVD

PUNK-ROCK started our generation gap, but before that explosion, the teenager was born and grew up. Teenagers who defined themselves by buying and not making stuff. Who mimicked what they watched on the telly to style themselves, serviced their own ego and distanced themselves from their parents. Teenagers, a lot like me then. 

In this fresh, new state of alienated consumerism, these teenagers would continue as adults, defining themselves as middle-class despite being born into houses with tin-baths, buying stuff, including 'brand new' homes and often parented punk-rockers who rightfully rebelled against them.  

No art captures this unconscious state of blind aspiration that is still prevalent in society better than Mike Leigh's brilliant play. I've only seen it on DVD about fifty times. It survives because all the social antagonisms that the tragi-comedy teases out persist today. Their complete lack of any emotional transparency makes his class-obsessed characters, who instead only express themselves by what they consume, appear truly preposterous. Until we recognise little bits of ourselves in them. 

His only proper middle-class character, Sue, looks as uncomfortable as we do watching it. However, whilst she's recognising something shockingly novel, we're instead recognising our own family's social shortcomings and the binge-drinking culture that was spawned in society at large. 

Tragically, the punk-rockers in their more pronounced state of alienation failed to grasp that making stuff was essential in resisting Thatcherism. Sadly, they're now conjoined with their parents in that same middle-class bunker mentality. 

Distanced from both the white-working-class community they should've belonged to and migrants who they should be sympathetic to.