There's no reason why there should be any "right" and "wrong" in rock music. Rock fans know what they like and basically it could stop at that. Critics, the professionals and amateurs alike, fall over themselves extrapolating theories to justify their tastes. To try to confer on their opinions, on their personal musical favourites, the value of truth. And that's fine too. I mean, just cos' your dealing with something that's ultimately indefinable, doesn't mean you shouldn't have a shot at it with any aesthetic theory of your choosing. It's part of the fan thing, disserting about popular culture, and rock and roll in particular. Constantly switching from the spontaneous, heartfelt, first hand experience that rock provides to aesthetic, sociological, artistic theories and considerations, all this is great fun.
Of course, this is only one side of the story. The other side is the consensus of criticism around certain artists and their work. A consensus that quantifies artistic merit. They're the people who've got more records than you who've traced the music in question back to its obscure origins, who make you think they've thought about it a lot more than you have.
Since rock has this ultimately indefinable quality about it critics are torn between the elated fan's pleasure of avidly describing what they feel and keeping an eye on that body of criticism that has been growing from year to year and mysteriously always seems to make sense.
Nowadays, it seems an acceptable thing to ramble on at your heart's content. It's a done thing to say "Fuck criticism, Fuck the rock theory intelligentsia, Fuck that conservative, academic body of losers who don't know anything about anything anyway". But you can't escape it (at least I can't). Lurking in the back of my mind is always the lingering fear that I'VE GOT IT WRONG.
All this is mixed with vague ideology about the "avant-garde" and "conservatism", about "art" and "marketing a product". You say to yourself that true rock has to have a rebelliousness about it, either in its social and personal statement or in its novel musical format that either negates what has gone before or puts across a whole different state of mind.
Dangerous stuff, cos' if you "get it wrong" you may be plugging something that is ultimately conservative and unoriginal condemning rock'n'roll to a market instead of an art of expression. You wouldn't want to do that now, would you?
Ok, I'll admit it, these concerns are basically a bit silly, and, as I have said before, if you can "get off to it", what more do you want?
Still, there's the lingering feeling that you've "got it wrong", and the embarrassment when you actually realise you've got it wrong.
This happened to me with the Leeds band called "The Wedding Present". I'd never actually listened to the band until I saw them live in 1992 or 1993. Actually I'd come into contact with the band before while I was working as a French language assistant in a school near Leeds. A kid was listening to a tape on his walkman. I asked him what it was, he answered "The Wedding Present" and he let me listen for about ten seconds. He must have been about fifteen or sixteen, I was twenty-one. This was in 1987 or 1988. So this kid had latched on to a good band, he could relate to the grungy, rebelliousness of it, the urgency of it, whereas it had passed me by. That's the kind of thing you tend to think when you recall episodes like that. That the kid was more spontaneous and could grasp it, whereas I had already constructed a rock'n'roll aesthetic and it didn't fit in. Basically, I'm not too worried at this point cos' after all, I didn't really get a proper listen, so how could I have had an opinion one way or the other? I'm just preparing the ground for the next part of the story. This was in 1992 or 1993 when I saw the band in concert and wrote a negative review in a student newspaper about it. I was employed in this newspaper, and I was in charge of the cultural pages. The newspaper was a strange business venture. It was given out freely and relied on subsidies and advertising money to pay its staff and its costs. Eventually, it capsized, but I had left at least a year before that. I'd learned what I had to learn, and besides, the finances had all but run dry.
All this to say that there was absolutely no budget for buying records or anything, so when I went to the concert, I hadn't been able to hear the band before (cos' I was too skint to buy the records myself, barely having enough to live on).
That's my excuse. I went to the concert and the noise level just pissed me off. Now I know Motörhead have that saying "If it's too loud, then it's that you're too old!". Maybe they're right. Then again, I don't fancy much becoming deaf. At this point in my life, I was getting in free to loads of concerts all over the town, several a week sometimes, and the noise level was beginning to take its toll. Temporary loss of hearing was a regular occurrence in those days for me. Coming home from a concert and then not being able to hear yourself piss properly. This was a normal thing, the next day or so, everything would be back to normal. A little while later, a concert would leave me worried. I had left the newspaper and was now living in the town of Nancy. The concert was The Buzzcocks and it left me with a hiss in the ears that lasted months. When everything was quiet, I'd hear this whooshing in my head. I went to see a doctor, hypochondriac that I am, and he explained to me all about the inner ear and cells being bumped off by loud noise and then either repairing themselves or not. It was a bit of a warning, "cool it with the concerts". That concentration of concerts during my student newspaper days had weakened my defences. When I talked about this with other people, loads of them, often amateur rock musicians, admitted to having the same auditory problems.
All this to say that when I wrote this negative review of "The Wedding Present" concert, that I had left before the end, I was suffering from ear stress, or whatever. I'm always a little embarrassed when I think about it. I thought of "repairing" the mistake by writing a review in a friends' fanzine called "OHM", but I never got round to it.
I was younger then, and didn't think twice about doing that sort of thing. I mean, negative reviews are one thing, but to write something without any evidence… I was more cocky in those days, ready to force forward my "opinions" shamelessly. Another class of the population tend to force forward their ideas shamelessly too, I'm talking about people in the teaching profession.
 

(The Wedding Present pictured left.
Would they ever live down Simon's scathing review?)
 

And that brings us to the point this ramble is supposed to be about.

The teachers who survive in the french "éducation nationale" are the ones who are ready to push their "opinions" and conception of culture down students' throats. Things have to stay simple and directive. In my (short-lived) career as a teacher of English in France I came across quite a few of these characters. The actors in today's story are a Beach Boys song (Be True to your school) a Pink Floyd song (another Brick in the Wall, part II, sorry about that), myself and an inspector, let's call him "Mr.Jones", shall we?
Ok, I'll admit it, I basically want to bitch, but the issues at stake are nonetheless conceptions of culture and art. I'll even admit that the lesson I prepared was crap and ill-designed for the class I was dealing with. Whether it was or it wasn't. I'd prepared a "pedagogical project" (as they are called) around several songs that dealt with the subject of school. I've mentioned the first two, the third was a song by Madness, called "Baggy Trousers".
I'm not gonna talk about the teaching methods here, just about the song choice, and the issue of cultural assumptions.
To summarize the issue, Mr.Jones assumed, on the strength of the lyrics (click here for the lyrics), that the Beach Boys number was of poor quality, empty and artificial, whereas he judged the Pink Floyd number as having obvious merit. I remember him talking about it. He mentioned Parker's film, "The Wall". He was obviously moved by it, you could feel the emotion in his voice. All very understandable, the guy was approximately the same age as me and "The Wall" could well have been one of his favourites during adolescence which may tend to confer upon it artistic qualities it doesn't actually possess.

I'm sure most people who are Beach boys fans have had to face disbelief from their friends. "What? The Beach Boys? You mean you actually like them?". Again this is a problem of preconceptions, the importance of rock'n'roll clichés. The enduring image of the overdriven guitar associated with the "rebelliousness" that's considered to be "true rock'n'roll". "No mean guitar, no rock'n'roll", loads of folks still stop at that one, totally oblivious of any talent more harmonious pieces of work might possess. Do they realise these strict criteria contribute to a force that contains rock'n'roll in a dead format? Probably not. Then of course, there's the striped shirt phenomenon. The Beach boys will probably never shake off that preppy image, it caused them grief in the late sixties and it's continuing to cause them grief even today. Again, those worn-out rock clichés of rebelliousness associated with attitude and clothes sense. Ask people to conjure up an image of the Beach Boys and it'll be that: preppy kids in striped shirts. It won't be Brian Wilson directing the Pet Sounds sessions or working on Smile, no it'll be the striped shirts every time.

I don't quite recall how I tried to justify my choice to Mr Jones. I just remember not having convinced him. Then again, in those days I wanted to convince people. This went for the Beach Boys too. I'd only really started to listen to them two or three years previously and I was under that thing people who become big Beach Boys fans are under. The realisation that under an unsuspecting exterior, Brian Wilson made possibly the most beautiful pop music of the century and the need to tell everyone about it so they can appreciate it too. I've calmed down, now. I don't try and make people listen to music they don't want to listen to anymore, even if it is The Beach Boys. Even opportunities I'd have jumped at a few years ago. Lots of people know I'm a Beach Boys fan and it's a fact they don't understand. I've tried to explain in the past, but they've remained unconvinced. A few months back, a friend asked me to make her a compilation tape. Some time back, I would have done this gladly. Now I just went "Oh, yeah. Right" with the secret intention never to make such a tape. She asked for the tape as if she were doing me a big favour or something. But its no deal, if she wants Beach Boys albums she can go to the shops and buy them (which she never will, of course, but then that's her loss).
Back to Mr Jones, and a situation I'd have gladly tried to right if only I knew how. I met him several times after this inspection but was never capable of attempting to explain why I thought he was wrong about "Be True to Your School".
As you may know, Brian Wilson was really beginning to come into his own by the time of the "Little Deuce Coupe" album, and this track is the best example of this. It wouldn't be long now before, exhausted by the combined strain of endless touring and an increased emphasis on studio work, Brian would collapse nervously and retire from touring to be able to concentrate on composition.
It's possible to argue the case of the lyrics saying one thing and the music another. On the one hand, the frat-boy, conventional lyrics, on the other the complexity of the musical arrangements and their almost symphonic quality. The rising quality of the song is remarkable. A voice, some simple horns, a discreet drum roll then a vocal crescendo that rises and rises and rises.
The lyrics may be something of a fifties vignette but this doesn't sound like a "jock" singing. The voice is fragile, almost unsure or insecure. Although the song soars upward elatedly there are minor constructions in there, there is uncertainty, possible melancholy. This can't be brushed off as a triumphant sports song, a brash hymn to victory. No way. If the fragile voice pretends a set of clichés are its identity, it may be that this voice, and the music that surrounds it, reflects that adolescent age where identity is shaky and still has to be found.
This is a great Beach Boys theme, a great Brian Wilson theme: the fragility of passing from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to young adulthood.
Something of this is present here, as well as some of that fabulous, uplifting energy present in so many early Beach Boys hits (Fun, Fun, Fun, I get Around…) and that symbolises the liberation of adolescence blooming.
Back to my lesson plan, I'd claim that kids, and these ones were about fifteen, could relate to this music. And they did. They actually asked to hear The Beach Boys again.
As for Mr Jones, well, this was probably the first, and only, time that he'd heard "Be True to Your School". Nonetheless, he felt empowered to comment unfavourably on its musical value showing, for one, the serious limitations of his appreciation of art but also that he considered that his title conferred upon him both the ability and the right to discern the artistic merits of popular culture.
This man was no big shot in the educational hierarchy of the region in which I taught. He has since displeased those "above" him in the educational authorities and is no longer able to insult trainee teachers with his cultural prejudice, he probably just insults his pupils with it instead.
Be that as it is, I will quote Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin man" to air my sentiments on this particular inspector's vision of  music:
"something is happenin', but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?"

If you're amused by that, one day I'll tell you the tale of another inspection, my famous "Punk Project" which featured the Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen" and an extract from John Lydon's (Pistols' lead singer) autobiography. But that's another story.
 

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes. If you've got this far, why not read another gripping tale from my teaching days : The story of the dreaded "Punk Project".

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