The Aardvark Blog

Cultural prejudices are no different from any other
28/08/2021

I am the youngest in my family - not just in our original nuclear unit but amongst my cousins as well. Being the youngest has given me a certain privileged position and one of the things that I have observed is that whatever you are perceived as being when you are young stays with you throughout your life. If you were good with your pocket money as a child you will still be perceived as being sensible with money, even if you have later become addicted to betting on the ponies. Similarly one youthful indiscretion with the cooking sherry will lead to the bottle being edged away from you at every subsequent Christmas lunch. That's just the way it is - as Bruce Hornsby once sang so memorably,

This being the case it is perhaps not surprising that the same myths attach to works of art. We have been brought up being told that 'Abbey Road' is a far better album than 'Let It Be' and so on all ratings of Beatles Albums it scores many places higher (usually just behind Sergeant Pepper and Rubber Soul or Revolver). And yet any comparison of the track listings shows that this is ridiculous. For all the problems in its conception 'Let it Be' is a bona fide masterpiece - with or without the strings added by Phil Spector. News of the forthcoming release of the Peter Jackson film of the documentary footage of the making of Let It Be caused me to put the CD into the car player on my way up this morning, and I was amazed again by how universally brilliant the songs are.'Let it Be' is truly wonderful as is 'The Long and Winding Road'. But in truth, unlike Abbey Road, there is not a single weak song on the album. Compare this with Abbey Road. Anybody really prepared to defend 'Polythene Pam'? We once employed a young man whose favourite song of all was 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'. Needless to say it did not go well.

It is far too easy to go along lazily with received opinion. With the exception of their last album, all the later Led Zepplin albums are absolutely wonderful. Recently customers have shared with me their abiding love of such unfashionable writers as C P Snow, and Mazo de la Roche whose real name was perhaps unsurprisingly really Maisie Louise Roche. There is no reason other than fashion that we have suddenly decided to fill our homes with industrial-style furniture (often made extremely poorly), rather than antique mahogany. A chest of drawers does very much the same thing whether made from beautiful seasoned wood or from painted metal or richly decorated chipboard.

We need to listen more, read more, look more, and not just take on our ideas secondhand from others.

This weekend the Presteigne Festival programme offers the opportunity to do just that. Tomorrow night's concert (Sunday) gives an opportunity to reassess pieces by MIchael Tippett and Malcolm Arnold; both are composers who have been subject to a degree of negative assessment since their passing. I have a feeling that Arnold in particular is due a reappraisal and will be hoping to start that process on Sunday.