Sound of the suburbs
Interesting look at suburban pop and poetry by John Harris in the Guardian this weekend, examining the link between such sublime parochial delights as The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society, The Jam's Town Called Malice, Orwell's Coming Up For Air and Larkin's Going Going. I adore all these, though I've never got into XTC, and I agree with the first comenter underneath the article that Damon Albarn is greatly over-rated, not in fact worthy of inclusion in the firmament that includes Ray Davies and (early) Weller. Morrissey only gets a brief mention but is firmly in the tradition, despite coming from the big city lights of Manchester. He doesn't really in fact. He comes from Stretford, a working-class suburb not officially in Manchester at all (Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, local government fact fans.) Yet even if he did in fact live in the big city a mile to the north the romantic dislocation explored in the article would belong to him too. And, I would argue, to Birkenhead's Half Man Half Biscuit . Suburbia is a state of mind.
