Good morning!
Music played a big part is getting me through my teenage years and 7+ years in the military. This piece on the inherent contradictions of the mid-80s really spoke to me.
Stylish, homoerotic, mannered, yet proudly working class, The Smiths complicate the concept of ‘sophistication’. Whether sophistication is the possession of the aristocracy and their bourgeois courtiers — something to which ordinary people can only aspire — or a democratic potentiality goes to the heart of class mobility and ‘authenticity’. While the snappiest-dressed subcultures hitherto had retained a rough end-grain — from mods (The Who, The Kinks) to hippie dandies (the Stones, Traffic) to glam rockers (Bowie, Roxy) — these proletarian upstarts didn’t just emulate high society style, they parodied and symbolically repossessed it.
— How To Sell A Contradiction: Sade’s Diamond Life & Sophisti-Pop 40 Years On at The Quietus
Meanwhile, Black Belt Brain has some bad news about sleeping in on weekends.
