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Roger Waters self indulgent twat / not self indulgent twat

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I'm sure Shaking Stevens was left-wing but the communist association came about because his first manager was the legendary Paul "Legs" Barrett. Barrett was a key figure in the '70s rock'n'roll revival scene and a communist. Here's his obituary in The New Worker
www.newworker.org - Farewell to Paul Barrett

While rock'n'roll was denounced by a lot of communists as commercial and American, Barrett saw it as working class music. A letter he wrote to the New Worker in September 1996 was copied to the old Marxism email list - archived here.

Dear Comrades,

Rock'n'roll was not invented in Tin Pan Alley or Wall Street. It grew gradually and took most of America by surprise.

It grew from the very roots of the American working class. It flourished in the ghettos and among the peasantry.

It was nurtured by the marginalised and minorities once a disc jockey named Alan Freed had given the new old name, rock'n'roll, to describe all emergent negro styles (rock'n'roll was a slang term used in the American negro jazz world of the 30s to describe sex. Freed used it around 1947). It had grown, been heard by, then performed by, and added to, by young whites both urban and rural.

When the rock'n'roll turned into a blazing inferno, it found the youth of the western world was warmed and eventually the youth of the entire world and, in the beginning, the working class youth almost without exception.

If original rock'n'roll was picked up and promoted by entrepreneurs and free enterprise in general, it was corporate capitalism that corrupted it, spoilt it and abused it, until it is today just another opiate of the masses.

During the early to mid-fifties, rock'n'roll was denounced by the Ku Klux Klan and the most bigoted reactionary sections of the American and British ruling classes.

It was also denounced by the communist parties of the world, taking their lead from the Soviet Union, who, not understanding what it was dealing with, dismissed it as just the product of a rotten and debased society, which it was, but it was also much more.

If only the Communist Party could have understood it and embraced it. Consider the reaction if American black rock'n'rollers had found acceptance in communist countries before they had civil rights at home.

Consider the 60s and the antiwar/establishment movements if there had been acceptance and encouragement in communist countries.

Communism didn't fall in eastern Europe (temporarily) because people rejected the system or that it was unjust or atheistic.

No, the mass of the young people who rejected Marxism-Leninism did so for 501 jeans, walkmans, Big macs, Coca Cola and rock 'n 'roll.

I really do maintain that if the Reds had not been square, then Red Square could still be Red.

And China is right -- if people want Big Macs and not a party approved sandwich, make sure they get their burgers, or they'll go to the source!

If only rock'n'roll had been made ours, half the world could still be too!

Paul Barrett, South Wales.

(There are some interesting parallels between the rock'n'roll revivalism Barrett was involved with and the folk revivalism that Ewan MacColl championed. And some of the criticisms of the folk revival - that in reality it was more about 'creating' or 'inventing' traditions than reviving them also apply to the various rock'n'roll revivals).

ETA: interview with Barrett the year before he died in Vintage Rock magazine

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Loads of folkies who seemed pretty sussed to me. Andy Irvine, Christy Moore for example
Christy Moore has always been sussed. It's been quite annoying/amusing recently, to see him being berated for his politics by randoms telling him to "stick to the music".

Probably the same "fans" who clearly never listened to the lyrics of PE and RATM and lambasted them for being "all political".
 
I think he was just an arsehole tbh.
Don't know much about him beyond the music and the basics of his career, but he always seemed like an arsehole in his interview persona. Even worse, accused of domestic violence by more than one woman.

 
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