Band Aid v PC Police
I'm old enough to have memories of 1984. It wasn't nearly as bad as George Orwell predicted, given recent events in America I think he may have been 20 years off.
Lots of things have changed since then. Back then I was a child for whom the torments of adolesence lay in the not-too-distant future. I was only vaguely aware how fucked-up Ireland was at the time and how many people born the decade before were forced to emigrate. Now I'm a world-weary adult who spends all his time ranting on the Internet.
Back then the Arab leader who was terrorising god-fearing westerners was Colonel Gadafi, while the yanks and brits were selling arms to Saddam Hussein, now it's the other way around. Back then only about 6 people had access to the Internet and the Commodore 64 was considered cutting edge.
Other things haven't changed that much. I had a big head of curly hair on me then, I still do now. I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Back then there was a Bush in the White House, though GP was VP. His administration were spending lots of money on foreign wars, but they were doing in covertly in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemela where both sets of antagonists were dark skinned so people didn't pay that much attention.
Back then people were starving in North-West Africa and western governments were doing shag-all about it, and a group of musicians called Band-Aid decided they needed to help. They put out a record and it topped the charts, with a popular boy band coming in at Number 2. The same thing is going to happen this Christmas.
The World that they're bringing the song into has changed a little, though. Back then people were thrilled that hedonistic popsters like Wham! and Duran Duran were doing something for the hungry people of the planet, and impressed by what seemed like the genuine passion in the Voice of Bono and others. Back then Britain was just emerging from a decade of strikes that had torn the country apart so a new generation were finding out for the first time that the rest of the world had far bigger problems than themselves.
Back then there were far fewer NGOs and developmental agencies and their influence over governments was minimal. Now, thousands of people from the west take a gap year to help with development in poorer countries. Of course, the question of 'development' is a wretched one as many people fairly legitamately equate the concept with westernisation. But that's another issue, the point is that many people in the West are trying to make the World a better place, today has the ear of Tony Blair (and what a big ear it is) and even George Bush's treasury secretary Paul O Neil spent 3 weeks in Africa with the u2 frontman before he got the Heave-Ho for being such a liberal pussy.
So NGOs arent going to be all that thrilled just because there's a new pop single making some money for starving people in Darfur.
What they've taken issue with is not the fact that Busted are included in the new version, it's that the lyrics are the same, even though they seem to argue that famine is not caused by unfair trade or privitisation, but is an act of God.
(I've never been happy about that phrase. When I read that my discman wasn't protected by Acts of God like fire, I had this image of God up in the clouds listening to JS Bach playing a harpischord parita thinking: Hmm what'll I do today? I know! I'll burn Seamus' discman!)
Which is a fair enough argument as far as it goes, except that a three minute pop song aimed at the mass market might not the best medium for conveying the complexities of African food distibrution. Try and imagine the boys from Busted singing "And the only water flowing is water which the locals are forced to pay for because the government were forced to privitise the supply as part of an IMF structural re-adjustment program and is probably contaminated because so much fertiliser is required to grow genetically modified crops which the goverment were also forced to accept" and you get the general idea.
Personally I don't think it's fair to pick on Band Aid, especially as Bob Geldof has done as much as anyone to highlight the problems of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Live Aid concerts did more than anything else to bring about a revolution in people's consciousness about the third world and raised a fair amount of money, though if you do the maths the average westerner only donated about 5p, which puts the €3 people were charging for some soggy crisps at Oxygen into perspective.
What's more the song is a minor classic of it's genre. People don't go changing the text of the Iliad because selling female slaves is now considered sexist. Why isn't the Band Aid song afforded similar respect?
Lots of things have changed since then. Back then I was a child for whom the torments of adolesence lay in the not-too-distant future. I was only vaguely aware how fucked-up Ireland was at the time and how many people born the decade before were forced to emigrate. Now I'm a world-weary adult who spends all his time ranting on the Internet.
Back then the Arab leader who was terrorising god-fearing westerners was Colonel Gadafi, while the yanks and brits were selling arms to Saddam Hussein, now it's the other way around. Back then only about 6 people had access to the Internet and the Commodore 64 was considered cutting edge.
Other things haven't changed that much. I had a big head of curly hair on me then, I still do now. I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Back then there was a Bush in the White House, though GP was VP. His administration were spending lots of money on foreign wars, but they were doing in covertly in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemela where both sets of antagonists were dark skinned so people didn't pay that much attention.
Back then people were starving in North-West Africa and western governments were doing shag-all about it, and a group of musicians called Band-Aid decided they needed to help. They put out a record and it topped the charts, with a popular boy band coming in at Number 2. The same thing is going to happen this Christmas.
The World that they're bringing the song into has changed a little, though. Back then people were thrilled that hedonistic popsters like Wham! and Duran Duran were doing something for the hungry people of the planet, and impressed by what seemed like the genuine passion in the Voice of Bono and others. Back then Britain was just emerging from a decade of strikes that had torn the country apart so a new generation were finding out for the first time that the rest of the world had far bigger problems than themselves.
Back then there were far fewer NGOs and developmental agencies and their influence over governments was minimal. Now, thousands of people from the west take a gap year to help with development in poorer countries. Of course, the question of 'development' is a wretched one as many people fairly legitamately equate the concept with westernisation. But that's another issue, the point is that many people in the West are trying to make the World a better place, today has the ear of Tony Blair (and what a big ear it is) and even George Bush's treasury secretary Paul O Neil spent 3 weeks in Africa with the u2 frontman before he got the Heave-Ho for being such a liberal pussy.
So NGOs arent going to be all that thrilled just because there's a new pop single making some money for starving people in Darfur.
What they've taken issue with is not the fact that Busted are included in the new version, it's that the lyrics are the same, even though they seem to argue that famine is not caused by unfair trade or privitisation, but is an act of God.
(I've never been happy about that phrase. When I read that my discman wasn't protected by Acts of God like fire, I had this image of God up in the clouds listening to JS Bach playing a harpischord parita thinking: Hmm what'll I do today? I know! I'll burn Seamus' discman!)
Which is a fair enough argument as far as it goes, except that a three minute pop song aimed at the mass market might not the best medium for conveying the complexities of African food distibrution. Try and imagine the boys from Busted singing "And the only water flowing is water which the locals are forced to pay for because the government were forced to privitise the supply as part of an IMF structural re-adjustment program and is probably contaminated because so much fertiliser is required to grow genetically modified crops which the goverment were also forced to accept" and you get the general idea.
Personally I don't think it's fair to pick on Band Aid, especially as Bob Geldof has done as much as anyone to highlight the problems of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Live Aid concerts did more than anything else to bring about a revolution in people's consciousness about the third world and raised a fair amount of money, though if you do the maths the average westerner only donated about 5p, which puts the €3 people were charging for some soggy crisps at Oxygen into perspective.
What's more the song is a minor classic of it's genre. People don't go changing the text of the Iliad because selling female slaves is now considered sexist. Why isn't the Band Aid song afforded similar respect?
posted by seamus @ 4:31 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home