A Three Minute Education

[nikki akinjinmi]

Hello,

I have already posted this within the links to other radio, etc....but think on reflection it should have been posted here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/olki1/?focuswin

[judith]

Thank you Nikki. This link went through (occasionally they don't) and I was able to access the program through the "listen again."

[howard male]

Yes, thanks Nikki - an interesting program and definitely a strand worth starting. This program has already mentioned a number of my alternative teachers - those respectable glam rockers (Bryan, Bowie and Bolan) who first informed me that the line between music and art is an artificial line. And also that words can just be evocative rather than mean something specific - something a handfull of English teachers at school had failed to get through to me.

Bolan led to Bradbury, led to my short stories getting graded B+ when previously they'd been getting D minus.

And Pop music as an entity in itself was important simply because it was there, and it was mine rather than my parents. It actually helped with something absolutely fundamental: growing up, and growing away from my parents in important ways. I don't think teenagers today can quite have that same experience of it, as their music isn't so radically different from what their parents listen to.

So what did you learnt from pop music when you were younger? Did a song lead you to a book, or a painter, or even just a radical idea? Did you have any apocryphal moments?

[Gordon Neill]

Howard asked:

So what did you learnt from pop music when you were younger?

Mostly bad grammer.

[Gordon Moore]

Howard asked:

So what did you learnt from pop music when you were younger?

Mostly bad grammer.

Don't you mean, ahem: "Mostly, I learnt bad grammar and spelling when I was younger".

or: "I learnt bad grammar, mostly, when I was younger".

or: "When I was at Grammar School, I learnt bad grammar, mostly".

Or when I was a pedant...

[Adam Blake]

So what did you learnt from pop music when you were younger?

God, just about everything! I was obsessed 24/7. From 1970 onwards. I gave up on pop in the 80s but even that was instructive as it led me to jazz and blues.

[Gordon Moore]

or When I listened to pop music in my youth I learned how to construct grammatically inept lyrics, mostly!

(shall I shut up?)


(Actually, I'm feeling very smug, because of all the times that the Real Gordon caught me out with my lack of mathematical ability and now I score a point back, hahahahhaha, urrggghhhhh, get off my neck... urghhhh)

[Con Murphy]

So what did you learn from pop music when you were younger?

The four cornerstones of life:-

Never trust a hippy.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it.
If you want a do right all day woman, you've got to be a do right all night man.

[Con Murphy]

(Actually, I'm feeling very smug, because of all the times that the Real Gordon caught me out with my lack of mathematical ability and now I score a point back, hahahahhaha, urrggghhhhh, get off my neck... urghhhh)

I see pop music never taught you irony, Gordon.

:-)

[Gordon Moore]

Guess not. :)

[Adam Blake]

It used to make me ponder things like why "bop bop soopy doo wah" was sexier than "bop bop shooby doo wah" in The Velvelettes "Really Sayin' Somethin'". Actually I still ponder things like this...

[nikki akinjinmi]

This link went through...."

Judith, I am glad you got to hear the programme.

In reference to Howard's question about what was learned from pop music when younger, I do recall hearing a song called "The Boston Tea Party", (I can't think of the name of the group/ person) and wondering if it was an actual event, and later finding out a bit about it. (Imperialism, the effects of the so called free market economy, taxation and representation, and how those in power suffer from selective memory syndrome...and this now would probably be called Communism, a subversive act and attempts would be made to crush it in the so called War on Terror...I could go on...)

I remember the chorus

Are you going to the party?
Are you going to the Boston tea party?

Whether the song was making a point about any of the above is not something I recall

On the subject of poor grammar, I recall writing out some lyrics from a music magazine called "Disco 45"; one of the songs contained the word "gonna". I remember getting in serious trouble for writing it.

Who knows what would have happened had I written "Coulda Woulda Shoulda".

[Gordon Moore]

F-

[Con Murphy]

F-

Not for Nikki's post, surely? I'd give it an A* - she's managed to simultaneously stir up memories of a long-forgotten pop song*, an excruciatingly embarrassing episode where I too copied a lyric at school and got in trouble for it (one of Paul Weller's typically clunky metaphors, over which my teacher scrawled their disdain in LARGE RED LETTERS), and brought us bang up to date with a contemporary culture reference. More of this stuff please, Nikki!



*I'm desperately trying not Google it. I'm trying to remember the details more 'naturally'. I do vaguely recall my sister telling me what it was about, and me thinking she was winding me up. It was such a pleasant song, it couldn't possibly be about the dry old subject of political history.

[Adam Blake]

Anyone quoting Paul Weller lyrics at my school would have been subjected to the most abominably withering sarcasm from the evil old "coulda bin contenders" that comprised the English Dept.

My sister went to a tough comprehensive (being older, I went to a state Grammar) and drove her teacher into the ground by writing "The problem is Presman" (the teacher's name was Mrs Presman) on the blackboard every morning. This was, of course, a reference to the Sex Pistols "the problem is YOU!"

She also repeatedly wrote "Room 101" on the headmaster's study door. I was very proud of her.