| Description | Raymond Durgnat talks about pop music and the mass media. The interviewer is probably Geoffrey Reeves:
Track 1: Test tone, 0.36 mins
Track 2: Raymond Durgnat discusses ideas about the public's relationship with the mass media; he criticises the 'hypochondriac concentration on what people may be learning through the mass media' and suggests that people learn as much about sex through ordinary life as they do through pop songs, 2.41 mins
Track 3: He discusses whether people are passive consumers of popular art, he says that the question is what comes after rock and roll, and discusses why calypso did not become popular, he talks about the history of the heavy metric beat in music, 3.45 mins
Track 4: He talks about the modern timetabling of people's lives, which chops their minds up, and relates this to modern music and ideas about movement in modern society, 2.55 mins
Track 5: He says that pop music soothes 'everybody's slightly frustrated physical possibilities', he sees pop music as muzak, part of the push-button world, 1.45 mins
Track 6: The interviewer asks why he thinks rhythm predominates in pop music, 'rhythm which goes back to West Africa or primitive society', he talks about the religious role of rhythm and dance in 'primitive' societies and contrasts this with the lack of religion in modern society; the interviewer asks him if he thinks revolt in pop has disappeared, he suggests that revolt has disappeared because it has succeeded and talks about the popularity of protest songs, 3.02 mins
Track 7: He discusses social protest today, and talks about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and changes in the protest movement since the 1950s, the interviewer asks what he thinks about the connection between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez's songs and 'negro' protest songs, he talks about 'waves of influence' in popular music, 3.02 mins
Track 8: He discusses Bob Dylan's music, and how protest songs might develop in England, he says that it isn't appropriate for English teenagers to imitate the great 'negro' protest songs, 3.16 mins
Track 9: The interviewer says he does not see the value of Bob Dylan's protest, they discuss where the positives are in Bob Dylan's songs, he talks about personal integrity in Bob Dylan's songs, and in the Beatles' behaviour, the Rolling Stones, 3.38 mins
Track 10: The interviewer asks what is the quality of the Beatles solution to the problems of life; he says they solve a problem of behaviour, the interviewer talks about the mid-Atlantic quality of 'Help' and 'Hard Day's Night' and asks where their Liverpool roots appear in their music, 3.04 mins
Track 11: He says that 'mid-Atlantic is inevitable' and that America has been a liberating influence on the cultural scene in some ways, he says that British films in the past were dominated by middle and upper-class attitudes and patronized the working classes, whereas American films dealt with the working class, he says that the rise of folk music in Britain is due to America, 2.37 mins
Track 12: Clip from a piece of orchestral music, 0.38 mins
Total: 31.01 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0574880 |