What other examples are there of liminal class disdain for uni-challenged tosspots? Must be some Oi! rants on this subject, surely.
This song by The Streets is typical-liminal in its twin contempt for both the student stoner Tim and the lumpen beer monster Terry. A tour de force of observational comedy / character sketch stereotypy / method acting by Mike Skinner playing both roles.
Hey! I never knew there was a video for it, with proper acting.
Hello, Hello. My names Terry and I'm a law abider
There's nothing I like more than getting fired up on beer
And when the weekends here I to exercise my right to get paralytic and fight
Good bloke fairly
But I get well leery when geezers look at me funny
Bounce 'em round like bunnies
I'm likely to cause mischief
Good clean grief you must believe and I ain't no thief.
Law abiding and all, all legal.
And who cares about my liver when it feels good
What you need is some real manhood.
Rasher Rasher Barney and Kasha putting peoples backs up.
Public disorder, I'll give you public disorder.
I down eight pints and run all over the place
Spit in the face of an officer
See if that bothers you cause I never broke a law in my life
Someday I'm gonna settle down with a wife
Come on lads lets have another fight
Eh hello. My names Tim and I'm a criminal,
In the eyes of society I need to be in jail
For the choice of herbs I inhale.
This ain't no wholesale operation
Just a few eighths and some Playstations my's vocation
I pose a threat to the nation
And down the station the police hold no patients
Let's talk space and time
I like to get deep sometimes and think about Einstein
And Carl Young And old Kung Fu movies I like to see
Pass the hydrator please
Yeah I'm floating on thin air.
Going to Amsterdam in the New Year - top gear there
'Cause I taker pride in my hobby
Home made bongs using my engineering degree
Dear Leaders, please legalize weed for these reasons.
(Terry)
Like I was saying to him.
I told him: "Top with me and you won't leave."
So I smacked him in the head and downed another Carling
Bada Bada Bing for the lad's night.
Mad fight, his face's a sad sight.
Vodka and Snake Bite.
Going on like a right geez, he's a twat,
Shouldn't have looked at me like that.
Anyway I'm an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I'd be on the front line with em.
Can't stand crime either them hooligans on heroin.
Drugs and criminals those thugs on the penny colored will be the downfall of society
I've got all the anger pent up inside of me.
(Tim)
You know I don't see why I should be the criminal
How can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal
And how many deaths are there per year from alcohol
I just completed Gran Tourismo on the hardest setting
We pose no threat on my settee
Ooh the pizza's here will someone let him in please
"We didn't order chicken, Not a problem we'll pick it out
I doubt they meant to mess us about
After all we're all adults not louts."
As I was saying, we're friendly peaceful people
We're not the ones out there causing trouble.
We just sit in this hazy bubble with our quarters
Discussing how beautiful Gail Porter is.
MTV, BBC Two, Channel Four is on until six in the morning.
Then at six in the morning the sun dawns and it's my bedtime.
(Terry)
Causing trouble, your stinking rabble
Boys saying I'm the lad who's spoiling it
You're on drugs it really bugs me when people try and tell me I'm a thug
Just for getting drunk
I like getting drunk
'Cause I'm an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I'd be on the front line with 'em.
(Tim)
Now Terry you're repeating yourself
But that's okay drunk people can't help that.
A chemical reaction inside your brain causes you to forget what you're saying.
(Terry)
What. I know exactly what I'm saying
I'm perfectly sane
You stinking student lameo
Go get a job and stop robbing us of our taxes.
(Tim)
Err, well actually according to research
Government funding for further education pales in insignificance
When compared to how much they spend on repairing
Leery drunk people at the weekend
In casualty wards all over the land.
(Terry)
Why you cheeky little swine come here
I'm gonna batter you. Come here.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Apropos of not-quite-nothing, the word "uni" - yukk! Sets my teeth on edge, whenever I hear it. Wasn't used in my day, of that I am sure. When did it take over?
In America, people talk confusingly of school, when they mean college. University is not a word in common parlance. Let alone "uni"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Late addition, suggested by Ed in comments - The Undertones's "My Perfect Cousin", which adds family romance to comprehensive versus grammar school intra-class tensions.
I've got a cousin called Kevin
He's sure to go to heaven
Always spotless, clean and neat
As smooth as you'll get 'em
He's got a fur lined sheepskin jacket
My ma said they cost a packet
But she won't even let me explain
That me and Kevin we're just not the same
He's got a degree in economics
Maths, physics and bionics
He thinks that I'm a cabbage
'Cause I hate University Challenge
Even at the age of ten Smart boy
Kevin was a smart boy then
He always beat me at Subbuteo
'Cause he 'flicked to kick'
And I didn't know
His mother bought him a synthesiser
Got the Human League in to advise her
Now he's making lots of noise
Playing along with the art school boys
Girls try to attract his attention
But what a shame, it's in vain, total rejection
He will never be left on the shelf
'Cause Kevin, he's in love with himself
Oh, my perfect cousin
What I like to do he doesn't
He's his family's pride and joy
His mother's little golden boy
Ed further points out that college is celebrated far more in America pop culture - and that groups are unashamedly collegiate. Certainly Vampire Weekend's first album had some songs whose mise en scene was dorms and quadrangles and Ivy League type stuff.
But then I thought of this - a song that is anti university (or at least ambivalent about it) by people who went to university.
Ed also mentions college radio which was once a huge thing (members of Animal Collective were involved in it and schooled in weirdo music through doing it) but isn't anymore. I mean, it still exists, people do it - but I don't think anyone's listening. Whereas once upon a time, in some regions, stumbling on the signal of the nearest college radio station was revelatory, an induction point into an entire realm of alternative music. Before the internet it was one of the only ways you found about this stuff, accessed it. (The other being music magazines and fanzines).
Indeed college radio / college rock was such a force there was a magazine in service to it: College Music Journal, or CMJ. It was industry-oriented, rather than critical: a indie-scene counterpart to Billboard. CMJ then became the name of an annual music festival, a showcase of new, rising, alt groups. I think it was called CMJ Seminar, in fact, because of the panel discussions and talks during the day (I was on a couple, over the years, back in the '90s). A sort of funkier, cooler version of the New Music Seminar, which was probably slanted to "modern rock" as opposed to indie-alt. But in both cases, there was a hustle-bustle of networking and talent-spotting and deal-signing.
But back to college radio - there wasn't an equivalent in the UK. My sense is that student operated radio was purely a training place for those who hoped for a career at the BBC or in commercial radio. No one would ever tune in as listener, surely? I mean, I never did, in part because I didn't know of any station's frequency or even of their existence. (Why would you bother when you had Peel and the early evening DJs on R1?). Someone playing records on a university radio station possibly reached fewer people than hospital radio. Maybe it's changed now that the university radio stations go out on the internet rather than through the air... I should imagine not, though.
What was enduringly important was the student union run college gig circuit. It was so vital to the Underground during the progressive rock heyday, that Melody Maker had a weekly column called Student Statement. Being a student union entertainments officer was a position of real power. They had NUS funding to burn - some concert promoters complained bitterly that student largesse had ratcheted up the cost of hiring a band like Stackridge or Hatfield and the North.
Well 'Common People' does begin in Central St Martin's College of Art.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about the inter-class tension in The Specials. I think most people assume Terry Hall wrote all the lyrics, when in fact Jerry Dammers wrote the majority.
'Uni' is definitely a New Labour-era phrase, reflecting its democratisation, for want of a better term. It's funny how much focus there is on '60s students, when they were a very small proportion of young people in Britain. The big impact of universities of British society is really from the late 90s onwards when student numbers really expanded.
Yeah but Jarvis is a fellow art student - his animus against the "She" is that she's a slumming rich kid.
ReplyDeleteYes I think Dammers wrote nearly everything - there's a couple of things by Roddy Radiation ("Concrete Jungle" is one of his, I think), and then on More Specials, Hall gets his first credit or co-credit. Then on the flipside of "Ghost Town", he gets a whole song's authorship ("Friday Night, Saturday Morning") and Lynval Golding gets one for "Why?". Actually before that Golding wrote all of the great 'Do Nothing" on More Specials. But yeah Dammers did rather jealously dominate the songwriting - which was a stupid thing to do, considering he could have all those Fun Boy Three songs as Specials. They might have managed to put out a third album hard on the heels of "Ghost Town" being number 1 for weeks.
So New Labour democratised higher education? I thought they brought in tuition fees - which you'd think would have the opposite effect. Maybe that was later on, in the late 2000s. My sense of UK political chronology is hazy, having lived in America since end of '94.
It's really the Conservatives in the late 1980s (possibly under education secretary Kenneth Baker - ?) who wanted to democratise higher education in the UK, with the express aim of ensuring future generations had the necessary skills for the coming tech-infused economy. It's the reason why losers like me eventually got to university in the early 90s after flat-out failing my A Levels in the mid 80s. I managed to parlay 2 F grades into a First Class Media Studies (Hons) from Sussex Uni. ;-). Things started to get a bit tougher for students at the end of the 90s, and now we have generations who are being set up to fail. There's a thesis about the underemployed graduate class as being key to a variety of current problems, isn't there?
DeleteI remember "uni" as an Australian import to the UK, via Neighbours. Which I guess puts it a little before New Labour, but in the same general era. I can distinctly remember hearing it for the first time on TV and thinking how funny it sounded.
ReplyDeleteIn my memory it is bracketed with other Australian abbreviations that didn't catch on in Britain in the same way. In the cult hit show Prisoner Cell Block H, people used to talk about "crims" and being sent to "pris".
I had a friend who talked about crims and desps (meaning unsavory or annoying types you might find at certain clubs). I doubt very much she got "crims" from Prisoner Cell Block H though. It almost sounds like a debutante, Sloane Ranger type word.
DeleteCharacters in the Australian soaps would often talk about attending a "barbie, this affo " (translation - an informal outdoor gathering where grilled meats will be prepared, due to commence between the hours of 12 and 6pm). Guests would also partake of a few "tinnies" (canned lager beer).
DeleteI remember one writer offering the theory that the use of the term "uni", as it crept into British discourse, was an early sign that university education was being taken less seriously. Uni making a college sound like a casual destination rather than an elite institution.
Surely the greatest of all anti-student songs, or at least anti-graduate songs: My Perfect Cousin
ReplyDeleteOh, and a quick hat-tip to Mike Skinner. "Good bloke fairly" is such a wonderful example of lyrical economy. An instantly recognisable character captured in just three words.
DeleteSteve Coogan's oddly forgotten breakthrough character, Paul Calf, was almost entirely focused on disdain for students.
ReplyDeleteSource of my all-time favourite TV dialogue.
DeletePaul's mum: "Clean up your room, Paul!"
Paul: "I'll do it tomorrow!"
Paul's mum: "Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes, our Paul."
Paul: "It fookin' did yesterday"
I just remember Pauline's "Tits first, I'm not a slag".
DeleteLove the Paul Calf character and that town versus gown thing is totally integral to his typology as you say.
DeleteI was listening to an interview with Steve Coogan on Radio 4 the other night, in which he discussed class. He more correctly comes from a lower-middle class rather than working-class background (and says as such). His dad maintained computers or something. His trump card in the milieu in which he found himself was that he did at least understand working-class mores. His comedy compadres - the Oxbridge lot - didn't have a fucking clue.
DeleteIn terms of poshos not grasping working-class attitudes, as a counterexample there was Peter Cook, with Pete and Dud and Derek and Clive.
DeleteI read a biography of Christopher Morris, a few years back, where in the chapters about On The Hour/The Day Today, Steve Coogan was rather condescendingly referred to, by someone as " the kind of guy who reads a lot of car magazines ", suggesting he was not only out of place with Footlights types, but also kept in his place, to a certain extent.
DeleteHa ha. In the Coogan interview, he said - when he came into some decent money - that he bought a sports car before he bought a fridge!
DeleteSuspicion and resentment towards college students are coming from the left in most of these songs (or at least not from the right.) This seems a world away from contemporary American life, where a song attacking college students would probably be pop country or butt rock about the evils of "wokeness".
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about that. American music seems to celebrate school / college instead of despising it. The first three Kanye albums. Beyonce's Homecoming. I Love College. Be True to Your School. College radio stations were, at times, considered cool. And "college rock" was a neutral descriptor, rather than - as it would have been in Britain - an insult.
DeleteThere's a theory there about how American society in general values education more, as part of its ethos of self-improvement. Whereas in Britain the educational divide is seen as unbridgeable.
The most recent songs on this list are from the mid 2000s. Have Brits' attitude towards college changed after that point? Has the British college experience come closer to the obligatory debt and insecure career prospects of the American one?
DeleteThe animus in the UK towards students in the 90's/00's was generally because they were seen as government-funded wasters. Viz comic's Student Grant was symptomatic of this - frittering away his money on drugs then taking his washing home to his mum at the end of term. The perceived sanctimoniousness of students was seen as their convoluted way of justifying their general indolence.
DeleteNowadays its almost the complete opposite. The hostile attitude to "woke" students isn't just because of their hyper-egalitarianism. There is a general suspicion of the puritanical impulses of Millenials/Gen Z's - their seeming indifference to booze, sex and fighting. The nightmare of Mary Whitehouse fronting The Raincoats.
It doesn't seem to take much to get UK people hating/resenting their children (as I said, that's more of an upper-class tradition here), but I am amused that the Gen Z puritan angle is being accepted at face value both there and here, since from what I've seen, they're not so much genuinely indifferent to such matters as much as they've simply compartmentalized/repressed them outside of their daily lives and are desperate to keep it that way, like a secular evangelist (and which is made much easier by the nature of the Internet)
DeleteWell I used the words "perceived" and "seeming" because I don't really know how true any of this is, or whether it's just a media creation. Certainly the kids who go to my local secondary school smoke like infantrymen on the first day of the Somme, so I'm far from on board with general perception.
DeleteOh, understood - I was using 'there and here' to refer to the media perception
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe attacks are from the left, yes, but the mood they're channeling seems to have been more broadly shared - a sort of full-frontal attack on the 'new cosmopolitanism' that emerged from the post-counterculture 70s, and which was channeled fare more directly (and effectively) by Thatcher and co.
ReplyDelete(A year or so ago, I read a bunch of Mrs Weber's Diary collections, which was Posy Simmonds's 70s/80s Guardian comic strip depicting a family of stereotypical Guardian readers (post-hippie, middle-class, PC liberal, fussily homebody), and they were fascinating - liberal satire of other self-satisfied liberals is a proud tradition, but these almost completely lacked the sort of political anger that motivated, say, Jules Feiffer's strips for the Village Voice, replaced by a sort of profound resigned doom on the part of both characters and creator as their world gets demolished - the strip apparently ended right after the 87 election, like Simmonds was taking them out back and putting them out of ther misery. The father of the clan was a professor at a polytechnic, which is why I was reminded now)
The view of colleges in the US is...complicated to say the least. The GI Bill in the mid-late 40s and the broader funding reform it inspired effectively let the majority of the population into post-secondary education, which was unprecedented, and as the effects of that became apparent by the mid-late 60s, it was steadily reversed back to the elite norm by people in power (as an advisor for Governor Reagan said in a 1970 meeting, 'we are on the verge of creating an educated proletariat - that's dynamite!')
The Beynce and early Kanye albums refer to HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), which is a particular issue of its own
One other note - as has already been said, today's student baiting tends to come from centrist liberals and the right, but there's an element to that in America that might not be readily apparent to those outside it.
DeleteWhen those people (who are nearly always established media pundits) complain about censoriously woke campuses, they're really talking about liberal arts colleges and Ivy League universities, which are a pretty small subset (modern state and public universities are more likely to be glorified trade schools with marginal-at-best humanities departments). Add to that the significantly higher financial barrier to attending these institutions, and you quickly realize that attacking 'woke campuses' are really just a way to complain about their own privileged children while pretending it applies to the nation's youth as a whole.