Rhian E. Jones, editor of Red Pepper and writer and editor of several books including two about music and one on popular culture, joins us to talk about social class as it pertains to UK popular music and its major influences. 

 

The conversation starts roughly in the Twentieth Century with brass bands, Joe Hill, and music hall, then wends its way inexorably to the Thatcher years, the revolutionary truth about lemons, a song about a motorcycle, and eventually to the present day, Grime, and working class access to music. 

 

We have put together a playlist to accompany this episode, available on Spotify and Apple Music.

 

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Clampdown - Pop-cultural wars on class and gender by Rhian E Jones (2013) 

 

Triptych : Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible by Larissa Wodtke, Rhian E Jones, Daniel Lukes (2017) 

 

Under My Thumb: Songs that hate women and the women who love them by Rhian E Jones, Eli Davis (2017) 

 

Paint Your Town Red : How Preston Took Back Control and Your Town Can Too by Matthew Brown, Rhian E Jones (2021)

 

Music playlist - Spotify 

 

Music playlist - Apple Music  

 

Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" 

 

Citations Needed | Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music 

 

The Elvic Oracle: Did Anyone Invent Rock N Roll? - Louis Menand in The New Yorker (2015) 

 

Trashfuture - Britainology 9: UK Rave Culture 

 

History of Factory Records 

 

One leaf that David Cameron should take out of Thatcher's book - Barbara Gunnell in The Guardian (2011) 

 

Cover of the first Stone Roses album 

 

James of Manic Street Preachers wears a balaclava on TOTP 

 

Richey Edwards: The mysterious disappearance of the Manic Street Preachers star, 25 years on - Ed Power in The Independent (2020) 

 

‘McDonalds’ Music’ Versus ‘Serious Music’: How Production and Consumption Practices Help to Reproduce Class Inequality in the Classical Music Profession - Anna Bull and Christina Scharff (2017) 

 

Trashfuture - A Functioning State? Never Seen One of Those feat. Sanjana Varghese. (inc "Housekeeping") 

 

Resonate. The Community Owned Music Service  

 

Metropolitan Police apply for court order to stop gang members making drill music, in unprecedented move - Chris Baynes for The Independent (2018) 

 

How UK Ravers Raged Against the Ban - Frankie Mullins in Vice (2014)