Friday, May 8, 2026

Andy does the singles!

 RIP Mr Kershaw... I didn't much care for his taste (and the underlying ideology) -  as least as evidenced by his influential radio show - but here he reveals a solid talent for record reviewing. 




























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6 comments:

  1. StyloMay 11, 2026 at 10:50 AM

    What exactly constitutes the ideology of Kershawism?

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    1. Phil KnightMay 11, 2026 at 2:13 PM

      An almost insane commitment to authenticity.

      I tried to listen to his radio show a couple of times - just lots of music that sounded like someone rummaging around in the attic. Like John Peel at his worthy worst.

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    2. ZachMay 12, 2026 at 10:03 PM

      Speaking as a Yank who discovered the BBC DJs through Simon Reynolds' "Rip it Up and Start Again," I have to say that Andy Kershaw's musical tastes are rather sonically conservative and dull compared to John Peel's, Janice Long's, Kid Jensen's, and Richard Skinner's (the four best BBC DJs, based on who recorded sessions for their shows and reading their playlists) tastes. Andy's endorsement of Los Lobos (surely the stodgiest, most boring of the '80s Americuhn roots rock bands that comprised a huge chunk of the Bad Music Era) is a huge red flag as to his loyalties and musical worldview. That, and he managed the equally bland bastard, Billy Bragg. From looking at lists of the artists who recorded sessions for Andy's show, he partially redeemed himself for spotlighting reggae groups and Ivor Cutler, although you could already enjoy them on John Peel's show.

      Andy's take on Prince is so wrong and misinformed, it's mind-numbing.

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  2. Simon ReynoldsMay 13, 2026 at 1:26 PM

    Well, let's not speak ill of the recently dead.

    I think the ideology, as I faintly recall from an interview I read way back in the day, was something like the idea that there had been all these people who liked pub rock and the more "ordinary people onstage" side of punk, and that then were adrift in the early Eighties with the return of "plastic pop" and a showbizzy return to ideas of stardom, artifice, and theatricality.... and that for this cohort, the emergence of roots music and world music in the mid-Eighties, with the Pogues and all the Afro-beat stuff and so forth, was a restoration of their faith in music. This music was often seen as "rhythms of resistance" so this further aligned with the left-wing, anti-colonial politics of the cohort.

    It's not unlike the pitch Malcolm McLaren made for Duck Rock - the reign of the pop producer can be challenged by the earthy and ethnic, folk dances, the hobo, scratching (he saw hip hop as a folk culture), square dancing, etc. Of course the irony is that Duck Rock involved a super-producer (Trevor Horn). And then of course Malcolm, being a gadfly, jumps off to something completely opposite next: opera, the music of the European ruling class.

    There are further glitches in the ideology - a lot of African music, certainly the Nigerian stuff, is quite showbizzy, or at least, slick, professional, musicians wearing robes. And far from being "rhythms of resistance", songs from the global underclass, much of the material involved praise songs to dignitaries, political leaders, and other high ranking personages.

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    1. Phil KnightMay 14, 2026 at 4:02 AM

      There's also the fact that when Africans and Latin Americans discovered synths, samplers, autotune etc. they took to them like ducks to water.

      AI music is particularly popular in those places nowadays. The "roots" worldview was classic projection.

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    2. Simon ReynoldsMay 15, 2026 at 6:24 PM

      Really - they're into AI music?! Blimey.

      Good point re Auto-Tune - West African pop and even more so North African pop, ie Arabic, is totally extreme in its use of pitch-correction.

      And there's lot of great Ethiopian pop from the 1980s that uses synths and all the other hi-tech American R&B equipment of the time.

      It's just so funny to see how wrong-headed the Western fantasies about Africa as realer and more rooted are. Most of the stuff that reached Western ears was not rural music at all, and the traditional elements were adulterated with all kinds of non-African instrumentation and such. It's gloriously impure music. King Sunny Ade was listening to country, I think that's where he got the idea of using pedal steel.

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