Yes, it has been a long time without a post, hasn’t it?

To believe the politicians, “we are all Middle Class” now, or rather, that we are mostly middle class, save for a small uncouth, workshy lumpenproleteriat.  Certainly, politics these days seems solely concerned with the middle class – witness Ed Miliband’s obsession with the “squeezed middle”, seemingly ignoring that the real brunt of the coalition’s economic policies will be, as they always are, on the working class. However, Labour has effectively abandoned much of the working class, meaning that they have lost, when combined with the waning influence of the trade unions (particularly as more and more jobs are handed over to the private sector) their main defences against the worst excesses of neoliberalism.

Despite this desperate situation, the victims find themselves blamed and ridiculed for their predicament. In the first chapter, Jones brilliant highlights the pernicious attitude of the media towards the working class by examining the press coverage of  the Shannon Matthews “abduction”.  Although we can have little sympathy with Karen Matthews or her accomplices, what was disturbing was how eager the media were to paint them as the products of a feckless and amoral culture amongst the working class, the epitome of everything wrong with “broken Britain”; an image which was then extended to the entire estate upon which they lived. The press, of course, chose to overlook the fact that the local residents actually came together in the search for Shannon, showing the kind of community spirit and action that politicians and the media all says often claim to be missing from today’s society (yet conveniently ignoring it when it doesn’t suit their narrative).

Jones examines the causes and the prejudices behind how “the working class has gone from ‘salt of the earth’ to ‘scum of the earth’” in great detail, and also, in the final chapter, sets out his suggestion of a return to class-conscious politics in order to reverse what is the worst scandal of 21st Century Britain – the abandonment and disenfranchisement of huge swathes of our population.  I hate to employ the cliche of “an important book”, but I believe we must heed what Owen Jones and his like have to say, because the alternative is far too depressing to contemplate.

If you’ve read other parts of this blog, then you’ll probably know that I am a huge fan of Owen Hatherley’s writing.  His new slimline volume “Uncommon” also has class as one of its central themes, but this time distilled through the music and lyrics of Pulp.

I am not a huge fan of Pulp, certainly not as much as Hatherley, but they were one of the few bands of the “Britpop” era that I liked and listened to. Much of this was to do with Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics – clever, erudite, charming, awkward, but most of all, intelligent and proudly working class.  Hatherley traces Pulp’s career from their mediocre post-punk days to their sudden and unexpected rise and even more sudden and unexpected fall.  This is no warts and all biography, however. Instead Hatherley looks at how Pulp’s working class consciousness and post-industrial surroundings shaped their music, lyrics and outlook.

Often somewhat derided as “retro”, Hatherley argues that rather than nostalgic for the past, Pulp were nostalgic for the future, the future promised to them,

“a Futurism that is dated to the 1970s as the last time that viable political, urban and stylistic alternatives really existed; and which have since been codified as ‘Hauntology’, via a landscape of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Pelican Books, public information films and Municipal Modernism bent awry through the gaps and aporias of memory … it is no coincidence whatsoever that Pulp were from Sheffield, the provincial city, perhaps more than any other in the UK, attempted to create a viable modernist landscape between the 1950s and the 1970s.”

In fact, of the Britpop scene that Pulp were (unfairly, but with some complicity) lumped in with, they were probably the least retro, the only band that didn’t simply lift 60s lad rock or 70s post-punk wholesale.  Whilst Pulp may have appeared as something very English and parochial, scratch a little and all manner of foreign influences can be detected, from Krautrock to Detroit techno to Slavic folk.

The best recommendation for this book I can give is that upon finishing “Uncommon”, I immediately had the urge to relisten to Pulp’s catalogue, and felt that, although familiar, there was still plenty new to discover. At a time where contemporary rock music seems to be both devoid of imagination and its traditional proleteriat representation, perhaps it is high time for a re-evaluation of one of Britain’s last truly original mainstream groups.

As BR entered their second decade, things were slowed down and the songs became less punk and more alternative rock.  This period saw a move to a major label, which gained them more airplay and promotion, and with that their biggest hit, “20th Century Digital Boy”, but lost them their founder guitarist and songwriter “Mr” Brett Gurewitz, and also some of their more ardent hardcore-punk fans. After this, I kind of lost interest due to the law of diminishing returns, as the band became (somewhat justifiably) comfortable in their role as the elder statesmen of punk, continuing to trade on past glories as their releases became stodgier. Every now and then they release an album which people rate as “a return to form”, but although they may be valiant attempts to recapture past magic, they always seem to badly pale in comparison to earlier efforts.

In fact, I see the career of Bad Religion as almost a punk mirror image of The Rolling Stones. Exhilirating in their first decade, reaching a high point as they entered the second, before the quality started to drop off, leaving them to tread water in their third.  However, this isn’t the whole story, because early in the 1980s there is a strange and surprising anomaly that goes by the name of “Into the Unknown”.

“Into the Unknown” is Bad Religion’s second album, released in 1983. Yet you won’t find it in your local record store. You might come across it on eBay, but if it’s on LP you may well have to pay up to three figures, and if it’s on CD it’s a bootleg. So why, when the rest of the band’s back catalogue is kept constantly available, has this album remained out of print almost since the day it was released? Well, as I’ve already said, it’s an anomaly. It doesn’t fit into that smooth and logical Bad Religion narrative I was talking about.

Simply put, “Into the Unknown” isn’t punk. It’s prog. That’s right, like your dad listened to. The music form that punk was supposed to do away with.

The album cover is a giveaway. It has “Bad Religion” and the album title in a futuristic font, over a spacey painting. It looks more Journey than anarchy. More Boston the band than Boston hardcore. And the album is more power rock than power chord.

When it came out, it dropped like a stone. The band’s rhythm section of Jay Bentley and Pete Finestone were so aghast at the BR’s new direction that they decided to quit the band rather than enter the recording studio. The one time the band attempted to perform songs from the album live, at legendary San Francisco punk venue The Mahubay Gardens, only twelve people attended, such was the reaction to it in the punk community. Gurewitz claims that all 10,000 albums released ended up being returned to the band (before being surreptitiously resold by his then girlfriend), never to be repressed. The band returned to punk rock for the knowingly entitled EP “Back to the Known” but soon split afterwards. When the line-up of singer Greg Graffin, Gurewitz, Bentley and Finestone, augmented by ex-Circle Jerk Greg Hetson, reformed in 1986 the whitewashing of “Into the Unknown” continued, so much so that when, in 1991, they released a compilation album of their work from 1980-85 none of the album’s eight songs were included.

So why, just a year after recording one of the seminal Socal punk debuts, did the band decide to change tack so radically? Recently Gurewitz has attempted to explain away the album:

“This record was a creative departure that was really a terrible misstep on our part, really nothing more than showing our youthful naivety and inexperience … Greg and I had fairly diverse musical roots and we were both into prog before we got into punk … I used to listen to a lot of Emerson Lake and Palmer, a lot of Genesis with (Peter) Gabriel, a lot of Yes. Anyway what I know now is none of this stuff has any bearing whatsoever on the creative direction of Bad Religion … Being a teenager in a successful band we just figured that “How Could Hell be Any Worse?” was a fluke, and that the band wouldn’t have a longevity and that basically anything that we did we could, you know, have this free form creative output and not much thought was put into it to be honest … There was sort of a bit of escalation. Greg would play me a song and I would write a song like that. I’d play him a song and before we knew it we had an album that sounded more like Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull.”

So a “terrible misstep” that had no “bearing whatsoever on the creative direction of Bad Religion.”  So “Into the Unknown” deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of punk rock history, right? Er, maybe not. When you take the album out of context it isn’t a bad album at all.  Although it is understandable how this album must have horrified the band’s hardcore (in both senses) fans upon release, listening to it today, the songwriting breaks through the obviously dated keyboards (which I personally like).  Despite Gurewitz’s claim that it sounds more like Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull than Bad Religion, I don’t believe this is accurate. Yes, it is prog-rock, or more correctly prog-punk, but it’s still obviously Bad Religion. Many of the songs, if rerecorded, could fit in with mid-nineties Bad Religion and hold their own very comfortably.

The lyrical themes are perhaps more introspective than the political diatribes of their other work, but that suits the music and in some way comes as a welcome relief; often the wordiness of  Bad Religion lyrics can feel a little bit like being lectured at by a college professor, which, as Graffin has a PhD in zoology, is somewhat the case.

So, in the cold light of day, maybe the album is ripe for reevaluation? Well, partially to my surprise, when I researched on the internet before writing this post, I discovered that the album had already undergone something of a reappraisement.  In his review for Allmusic, John Dougan gave the album four-and-a-half out of five, calling it “a terrific record that was perhaps more daring than anyone realized at the time of its release. An extremely influential and interesting record, one that any fan of hard rock should enjoy.”  Aesop Dekker, drummer with metal bands Agalloch and Ludicra, curator of the Cosmic Hearse blog and a man who clearly knows his 80s hardcore onions, calls it “their single greatest recording.”  Elsewhere across the internet, the album gets a consistently high write-up.

Even the band’s previously frosty opinion of the album may be thawing.  ”Into the Unknown” has finally been repressed, albeit as part of their complete discography vinyl boxset, whilst they have started to drop one of the album’s tracks, “Billy Gnosis”, into recent setlists.  Maybe they will finally give the album a proper rerelease. I hope so, as it deserves to take its place on the record store racks alongside the other BR albums, their weird yet endearing brother.  Until that happens though, if you want a copy, you’ll either have to fork out the bucks on eBay, or illegally download it.  I couldn’t possibly condone that, but if you feel you have to, perhaps you’ll find it at the aforementioned  Cosmic Hearse blog. But if the Record Industry Association of America comes knocking, you didn’t hear it from me, capiche?

A comparative sampling of the first three Bad Religion albums. First “The Voice of God is Government” (“How Could Hell be Any Worse?”, 1982):

That tricky prog-rock second album. “It’s Only Over When…” (“Into the Unknown”, 1983):

And finally, the return to the script. “Give You Nothing” (Suffer, 1988):

The Memorial to George Lansbury on the corner of Bow Road and Harley Grove, Tower Hamlets.  The inscription reads:

“GEORGE LANSBURY

1859-1940

Member of the Poplar Borough Council 1903-1940

Mayor 1919-20 & 1936-37

Member of Parliament

Member of the Crown

Privy Councillor

A GREAT SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE

The house which stood here was his home for 23 years and this garden was created in his memory by public subscription 1955.”

“Poplar, with a long history of municipal initiative and radicalism, was among the first London authorities to build public baths, wash-houses and free public libraries, and in 1921 it made the national news when councillors voted to give more poor relief to the local unemployed rather than hand over their levy to the London County Council (LCC). The government took Poplar to court and on 29 July 1921 council leaded George Lansbury, accompanied by a mace bearer, brass band and 2,000 supporters, march from the town hall on Newby Place to the High Court to reiterate the authority’s refusal to levy the precept.  Twenty-five male councillors were arrested and sent to Brixton prison, where they continued to hold council meetings in George Lansbury’s cell, while the five woman councillors were sent to Holloway. When other councils expressed their support the jailed Poplar councillors were asked to negotiate but refused to do so from prison. They were released (after six weeks inside) and the government relented, agreeing to apportion the precept according to each borough’s means. Lansbury later became the leader of the parliamentary Labour Party, and in 1939, when mayor of Poplar*, journeyed to Berlin to meet Hitler and Mussolini in an ambitious, but fruitless, attempt to seek peace. He died on 7 May 1940, disillusioned by the outbreak of the Second World War. His home at 39 Bow Road, was, ironically, one of the first East End houses to be destroyed by wartime bombing.” – Ed Glinert, The London Compendium, 2003.

As well as the Memorial on Bow Road, Lansbury’s name lives on through several street names, the lido he founded in Hyde Park, and most notably in the name of the pioneering Lansbury Estate near East India Dock Road.

For more information on George Lansbury, visit this excellent biography.

*I realise this is contradicted by the memorial inscription. According to this site, these meetings took place during 1936-37 rather than 1939.