Guardianに、（music sceneを通じて）U.K.らしさ（State of the union）を再考する特集が。興味深いので消失に備え抜粋させていただきました。申し訳ありませんが、曲を知らない方は何のことやらさっぱりわからないと思います。でも、この記事が普通に1面の特集であるところがEnglishなのではないでしょうか。fromcguardian.co.uk
The Smiths: Panic
The Beatles: A Day in the Life
The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset
The Small Faces: Lazy Sunday
＊
Tom Sanders of Pete and the Pirates
The Smiths: Panic
The Smiths are such an English band. The lyrics to the song are very English, as is the video, which is bleak and dismal. But then, England is a dismal country. And Morrissey is a pretty dismal person. This song captures something that's been there since the 60s or 70s, the grimness of our towns. "Hang the blessed DJ" and "burn down the disco" - he's sick of seeing what's around him. It's funny that the eternal outsider should see his music become popular with communal drinkers in pubs. This song - not just the words and the way he sings them, but the music - has an Englishness about it. It's jaunty but sad. The England that Morrissey sings about is still relevant. In fact, the country's worse than ever. He reels off places that are grim - Birmingham, Dundee, Humberside, Carlisle - but I'm pretty disillusioned with all of England, the homogeneity of the high streets and the music. It's a bleak place. In fact, I'd rather live anywhere else.
↓
＊
Claire Teal
The Beatles: A Day in the Life
I was a geeky anorak who only listened to jazz and big bands, but I had a great clarinet teacher who played me stuff to shock me. When I was 10 he played me this and I hated it, but I couldn't really process the emotions. So he gave me a tape of it for my holiday to Mallorca and I grew to absolutely love it. I was born in 1973, but the song makes me think of 1967, of colourful costumes and Carnaby Street, and a time when things were so cool. The 50s had been a grim time of rationing and greyness, and then suddenly there was colour. It's incredible that only four years separate From Me to You and this. You can tell from the song that it's the time of Vietnam, drugs, freedom, sex and heightened political awareness. An extraordinary time to be a young person. And awful if you were old.
＊
Dan Gillespie Sells of the Feeling
The Kinks: Waterloo Sunset
This is more about London than England, but London is all I know of England because that's where I grew up. When I was young, my dad took me to see Ray Davies at the Kentish Town Forum, and for the first time I realised these songs were written by a living human being. Because to me, Waterloo Sunset sat alongside Kumbaya and We Wish You a Merry Christmas as one of those songs that just existed. Davies was a Muswell Hill boy, and I was from Bounds Green, the suburb next door, so I feel a connection there. I've always found that sense of suburbanness interesting in his writing. The song romanticises the mundane. The English are so reserved, and there's a kind of shyness that can be quite charming, that beating-around-the-bush way of expressing emotions that makes the songwriting more realistic. Waterloo Sunset isn't about the hip city, it's about suburban kids coming to London. But it's tinged with melancholy: Davies conveys the sense of missing a moment almost as it's happening. This is a less DayGlo, more black-and-white and grainy version of Swinging London. It's a long way from Carnaby Street to Waterloo Station.
＊
Chris Difford of Squeeze
The Small Faces: Lazy Sunday
I bought this when it came out. I was about 11. At the time, we were living on a council estate and we'd play along with our tennis rackets while all my friends' older brothers turned up on their Lambrettas. Sunday afternoon was a very English time: the family would get together and everyone would be outside on sunny days. There aren't that many shared events now. You go out to eat with one or two people, but that sort of community stuff happens less and less. So my memory of this song is tinged with sorrow and nostalgia for those were days when we'd stay up as late as possible because there was school the next day, and we'd play football in the garden. Sundays have never been the same since the licensing laws changed; only Christmas Day feels like a Sunday now. For it to feel like Sunday, the shops have got to be shut and the ice cream van's got to come round.
