Gnome Thoughts ... 32 (That Was Fifties Britain That Was)

You can find out more about the the Britain in which John Lennon, Alan Klein and so many others grew up in Humphrey Carpenter's book That Was Satire That Was.  It's actually about the satire boom which began with Beyond the Fringe in 1960, but there's a prologue describing the decade which led to that moment of release.

Staid as fifties Britain may have been, Carpenter dates the impulse for social change back to the forties. The need for everyone to pull together during wartime temporarily created a "comparatively classless" society, he says, and the mantra of Other Ranks (ie the non-officer class) was that "things are going to be different after the war."

Sure enough, a Labour government was elected in 1945, despite outgoing prime minister Winston Churchill's warnings about incipient Communism. But when this led to an era of austerity - the country had been "virtually bankrupted" by the war - the electorate got cold feet, voted the Conservatives back into power in 1951, and British society reverted to its "pre-war heirarchichal norm."

So what eventually caused that structure to buckle?

Gnome Thoughts ... 26 (Private Hopper, public Craddock)

Below is one of the few clips from Lipstick On Your Collar currently available on youtube, though I don't know how long for, so hurry.

It's a fantasy of Hopper's some time before the unfortunate business in the 2i's Coffee Bar: he has been briefly introduced to the one he thinks is The One, though they haven't yet talked or gone out together, let alone discussed The Seagull.

But that first fleeting encounter is enough for him to fashion her into a key worshipper at the shrine of Hopper-as-Craddock: "Maybe you should take a cold shower," as the girl's uncle, interrupting this ill-advised workplace reverie, suggests.

Gnome Thoughts ... 25 (1957 charts, Lipstick, Macca plays The Fool)

The main point of looking at those 1950s CDs was to see what was in the charts before rock'n'roll, but I'm going to reproduce the tracklistings and my brief prewritten notes for the last three volumes anyway. 

 This is the first volume to have a subtitle - "Over Easy" - which suggests there may be a companion volume reflecting the increasing popularity of rock'n'roll in the charts but I haven't come across it yet. Compare the 1956 volume which has at least four rock'n'roll classics; it didn't all stop the following year, y'know.

I do, however, note that among these big names of easy listening there are only about four I'd be surprised to find in the US charts at the same time; some earlier volumes have been more evenly balanced.

Gnome Thoughts ... 19 (Reasons to be Cheerful, Lipstick on Your Collar, Joe Brown)

Further musical connections, presented in more fragmentary a form than usual; an explanation will be furnished for the above image in due course.

Engaged in the happy task of buying books for work for work on Thursday, I chanced upon a tome entitled Desert Island Lists. Yup, it did what it said on the tin: several decades' worth of the choices made by Plomley's guests.

On the offchance, I skimmed the index for Alan Klein: nope.

But Lionel Bart was there, and one of his choices was ... Peter Seller's Lonnie Donegan-style rendition of Any Old Iron.

Did that collision of things American and English - skiffle and music hall - help inspire Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be? Listening to it again (post 15, here), it rocks, however comical the intent. Which brings to mind Dave Marsh's summary of the Diamonds' cover of Little Darling (quoted way back in the Doowop Dialog[ue] here): a recording "as exciting as it is insincere."

On Friday I saw Reasons to Be Cheerful (above), a new musical featuring the songs of Ian Dury, at Theatre Royal, Stratford East - yes, the very same stage where the Fings ... mob and Alan Klein's characters in What a Crazy World first strutted their stuff. I'm not going to give a detailed review of it here except to say that it was a joyous occasion: the theatre is the right size to make musicals seem intimate, not overpowering.