PART I: DIAMONDS IN THE SKY, MISERY ON THE GROUND

Popular music on disc, up to the time of the sixties, was a form of popular entertainment related fundamentally to dance music and ballad song, which evolved directly from a line of musical taste stretching from the jazz and swing eras of the twenties and thirties through to the idealistic youth and dance culture of the sixties. The concept of the widely-selling single goes right back to the early days of the gramophone, and is nothing new. What is new in the post-World War Two era is the imposition upon the concept of the widely-selling single of a whole bandwagon of success around the big single or "hit" as it is known in popular language.

Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" was an enormous-selling song in its day the 1920s on 78 rpm. But the same circus of idolization did not follow successful artists around in the early days of the big-selling single. There were dances, there were fashions, but they were not youth-led to the same degree and the artists were not so extremely idolized. The hysteria around these early artists and their popularity were based on the enjoyment of their music by the fans.

Since World War Two, the charts have become a major feature of appreciation for all who listen to popular singles - which single is going up, and which is going down. And in recent years there has been a two tier system of playing popular singles on the popular media. There has grown up on radio the concept of the playlist of favoured singles, from which disc-jockeys of nearly all the programmes have to choose a certain number (usually a large number) of the records they feature.

In the sixties , the time when a song could succeed simply on its own merits came to an end. (Except perhaps for the novelty song, which is by its nature a permanent exception to the rule.) Personality cults already existed one only has to look at the early career of Frank Sinatra. But as the sixties moved in, many new ideas around popular singles and the personality cult of the singer came in with them especially the concept of the song with a message for the people.

With this massive change and expansion of the concept of the popular single, many new things came into the world of popular music alongside the idealistic youth culture of the sixties although ballads and dance songs were still there, for example Frank Sinatra was still in there along with the Engelbert Humperdinks, and in between Bill Haley's dance single "Rock Around the Clock" had already ushered in the rock-and roll era.

The new popular singles of the sixties were tied in with a whole idealistic culture of youth that was going to "change the world". Even in the early days of populist artists there were screaming teenage fans idolizing singers and bands the early days of Frank Sinatra show this, and even Benny Goodman had them in the swing era of the thirties. What was different in the sixties, however, was the appearance of a whole bandwagon of idealistic and cultural extensions of the song lyrics. The pop single began to incorporate the idea of sloganizing the visions of the young audience of the newly-idealistic pop music.

Since the days of the young Frank Sinatra, sexuality and glamour had been a major way in which the public image of popular artists had been promoted. And this concept of sexuality and glamour also got embedded in the massive promotion of the youth culture associated with the sixties popular music. In order to promote sex and glamour along with changing the world, the pop-idols of the sixties became increasingly promoted in a tinsel-like wrapping. The wrapping is an essential feature in the marketing of musical products. (If the visual effect of the product is not attractive to the eyes of the public, then it may be difficult to sell.) With so much idealism now involved in the lyrics of singles, they were becoming too distant from everyday life. And in order that the new ideas should not go above peoples heads, increasingly eye-catching and tinsel-like wrapping was necessary.

The bandwagon rolled on, and the era moved into psychedelia and highly escapist drug-related pop music. Sexuality and glamour wrapped in tinsel. But by now it became clear that with so much drug-related idealism, even the most colourful wrapping could not save the products from beginning to appear too distant from their audience, and the realities of their audiences lives. So it was necessary then to integrate into the promotion of the music a more street-level element.

But what was happening on the ground, while all this idealism and sex and glamour was promoted in peoples dreams? Lucy was in the sky with diamonds, but what was happening in Shaftesbury Avenue? Street musicians some traditional, others merely singing the songs of their pop idols on street corners were being increasingly persecuted by the police. The trouble with idealism, especially when it is wrapped in sex and glamour, is that it is itself rather like a drug more addictive than the other more well-known types. Addiction to it works in a hypnotic way, and tends both to stop people seeing clearly the life that is happening around them, and to cut them off from more irrational events that happen in life. There are irrational things which happen, which do not fit neatly into idealisms forms of religion, mysticism, sexuality and human behaviour, all of which make up the tapestry of life.

The sixties era had brought in a new type of "ubermensch" a long-haired ideal of human life, whose battle-cries were "love and peace", "changing the world" and many others. But the irrational spirit existing in everyday life was slowly being stolen by the greedy appetite of the new ubermensch. Popular culture was hijacked into the sky, with Lucy who was draped in diamonds.

PART II: BRINGING LUCY DOWN TO EARTH

In the early seventies, various groups of isolated individuals were desperately trying to find a more street-level popular culture. Various forms of street theatre, an increasing fashion of putting paintings and murals on inner-city walls, were more arty manifestations of this idea. Bongo Mike, and later his colleague Extremely Frank Jeremy, began a venture called "street poetry", in which they distributed poems in streets, stations and other public places. There were a number of other street poets, but these two became the most well-known publicly. Even the music press took up on street poetry, and in fact the first piece of publicity in a newspaper that Bongo Mike's street poems had was in the music magazine "Sounds", in a short piece written by Steve Peacock. Bongo Mike also expanded his street poems into visual poems, and a number of exhibitions of these were held in various places.

Towards the end of the seventies, however, the music business itself suffered a reaction against the idealism and escapism of the sixties pop-culture. The punk era brought in a more existentialist and street-culture concept of a pop single. Alongside this there evolved the concept of an independent record label, which was supposed to support artists who wanted to make their own success, and not be "discovered" by the big impresario. There were two ideas, one to make the popular single and pop song more street credible, the other to get a more socially democratic concept of success pushed through the popular media. But the vast network of big business and chart orientated razzmatazz which this success had to be wrapped in, made these aims very difficult to achieve.

These early attempts to break free from what some people now saw as a tyranny that had begun in the sixties, seemed ultimately to fail. Although the punk lyrics were more street-orientated an attempt to bring lyrics back to everyday life they seemed to contain elements of an Oedipus complex, in which they had the sixties groups as their father figures. After a brief period of rebellion, the punks returned under the umbrella of the sixties groups idealism. There had been a change, an attempt to break away from a culture that was over-hierarchical. But the attempt had failed because there was not enough of a conscious understanding of what such a break from the sixties bandwagon would mean. And there was some doubt as to just how independent the punk labels could be, in such an overbearing hierarchy.

The music charts and the playlists have rolled along all through this. Even Paul McCartney in his film "Give My Regards to Broad Street" posed as a busker outside Leicester Square tube station. Yet there are no references, in the massive publicity around the early days of the Beatles, to any of them having been buskers. Pop music videos put out by the music industry frequently show visual images of street performing and Situation Art: Bon Jovi showed a vision of one member of their group playing his guitar in a tram as part of one of their videos, and Joe Cocker appeared to be inspired in one of his videos by the image of a street tap dancer, complete with a cassette player (two random examples of a phenomenon which will be discussed again later).

You cannot say that to be really successful as a performer in public places is easier than to be a pop artist on a platform in front of an audience. Indeed, you could say that performing in public places is actually more difficult. That does not mean that it is impossible to be a busker (or situation artist) first, and a pop star later as many publicity hand-outs of these pop-artists would suggest to be the normal way. It is merely that it is a cultural misunderstanding that creates the false idea that one is a development of the other. The two possibilities are interchangeable, and of equal artistic force. The one is not superior to the other, simply because it brings in infinitely more cash.

Pop singles remained glamorous and distant and tinselly, but with more social-awareness additions as part of the wrapping, to give the pop singers and pop singles sufficient street-credibility.

But social conditions got worse and worse, especially inner-city life. The police raided black and other marginal clubs, using drugs as their reason. (Reggae music had been one of the few genuinely street-level forms of expression which had already been incorporated by the music industry.) This sparked off the Brixton riots, and others in various parts of the British Isles. But the philosophical and social motive for the police policy is very paradoxical. It comes from the same attitudes that cause the police to persecute street artists where the idealistic pop-culture of the sixties had pushed the culture of everyday life into a dream world in the sky, and the art and the life of the streets and the carnival of the lower levels of life in general began to look dull and uninteresting, not seeming to possess the irrational spirit that it actually has, and in danger of cultural genocide and an increasing ageism.

PART III: BUILDING A NEW CULTURE FROM STREET LEVEL

Newspaper Records was born as Situation Art was evolving. Later Bongo Mike and Extremely Frank made interactive sales of their CD's as part of their situation art performances on trains. But public place performances, as already stated, live in the shadow of the commercial pop world, and have been criminalized and rejected, and thus made vulnerable to government repression, and also made to look in need of organizing and licensing.

As we have said, most street life has progressively been made to look drab and even dangerous, through the eyes of the generation drugged with the sixties idealism. Even a street-trader has been accused by some council official of turning the streets of the west-end into a "Casbah", by selling toys for children. Yesterday's sixties rebels have begun to fear the youth, not merely despise their fashions as previous generations did. And all the interesting down-market clubs etc, so much a part of the collage of cultural existence, have been closed down, styled up and re-opened as continental-style bistros with door policies.

The music "business" is like a monastery or castle which the promoters of popular music inhabit on their own, independent from the actual news and life that is going on at street level, except for their "changing the world" type stunts, generally aimed at far-distant parts of the world, when it might be more something inside themselves that needs changing. Only publicity generated by the music business's own advertising and propaganda outlets seem to be allowed to be used as valid publicity to enter the castle as if the rest of the publicity of what is going on genuinely in street-life is only to be used as background, to give street-credibility to the favoured commercial products.

Many interviews which Bongo Mike and Extremely Frank had about their campaign resulted in the BBC programs involved playing recordings of already established glamour-pop idols, rather than Bongo and Extremely's own songs. For example, an interview about their street poetry on Radio 1 Newsbeat ended with Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row"; and a program on BBC World Service about a compilation album called "Buskers of London" began and ended with Leo Sayer's song "I'm a One Man Band" rather than any of the authentic buskers who were on the album.

In Autumn 1987 Bongo Mike and Extremely Frank had a particularly large amount of court action over their campaign. And even one feature article about them appeared on the front page of the Independent, together with a leading article supporting their view as well as a photo on the front page. Not so long after, the folk group the Pogues took out a full-page advert in the Independent for their new album, at a time when advertising of popular music in broadsheet newspapers was extremely rare. And the group Fairground Attraction publicised their new single with a poster campaign featuring a photo of themselves apparently busking in the street.

In July 1988 Bongo and Extremely had a very famous court case in which they sued two British Transport Police officers for interrupting their music while they were performing on a train. This was in all the national and much international media. At the time they were promoting the first vinyl version of their popular busking song "If You Cant Have a Shave in a Toilet, Where Can You Have a Shave?" b/w "So You Think You Can Make It To The Station Alone", which was played during the reporting of the case on BBC Radio London, and at the suggestion of the DJ on that station they approached Radio 1. Radio 1 refused to play it, but simultaneously gave massive plugging to the second release of Fairground Attraction, the earlier photo of whom - apparently busking in the street - was being plastered over Melody Maker, the most important pop-music newspaper at that time.

When Bongo and Extremely complained to the BBC about this, in a long letter in which they discussed the issue of authenticity in images of street music, Johnny Beerling - at that time the controller of Radio 1 - wrote back saying that their "attendant publicity was not believed to be a valid consideration when determining the Network's music policy". Yet it seemed that Fairground Attraction's music company obviously scored with artificial busking publicity.

However, authentic natural form - as in recordings of acoustic versions of songs - creates misunderstandings.
Bongo and Extremely were not saying that the only honest busker record would have to be an acoustic rendition.
And Newspaper Records have used bass and drums and urban influences in a lot of their recordings.
Put briefly, they were not saying that authentic form equals authentic spirit.
So the first vinyl single NP1 is deleted because of all these misunderstandings.

As already mentioned in the previous section, large numbers of conventional rock groups and pop artists have used posed visions of themselves, in their videos and PR material, apparently busking or performing Situation Art of one form or another. There is a very long list of these incidences from Paul McCartney to Oasis in England, and likewise in many other countries as well.