It was with considerable trepidation that I travelled to London a few weeks back for a gig during Philip King’s Freedom Highway weekend at the Barbican.
The intention was that I’d interview Ani DiFranco on stage. My nervousness arose from the fact that Ms. DiFranco is at once the most gorgeous and the most talented woman in the world. I wasn’t certain whether to whoop with relief or weep with regret when word came she couldn’t show.
Re-jigging the programme, the organisers reckoned there’d be an audience for Observer cultural commenator Sean O’Hagan interviewing me. Dead right, too, although the pair of us, skulking back-stage, couldn’t help noticing a certain bustling among official-seeming folk as the moment of our grand entrance approached. About half a dozen of the officials slipped round and joined the audience as we strode into the limelight, swelling the numbers to close on 20.
It was quickly apparent there were some in the compact audience who knew more about the subject – ”The role of popular music in political struggle” – than either of us. More than I did, anyway. Red Saunders, the man who invented Rock Against Racism in the 1970s, arguably the most successful politico-musical movement ever, emerged as the star of the evening from his seat in the front row.
But by far the most telling revelation, the nugget of knowledge which made it all worthwhile – this was on the weekend after the Mercury Prize – came from O’Hagan, who revealed that he’d spent the previous night at an Observer lig for advertising executives at which the entertainment had been provided by Dizzee Rascal.
It used to be you had to peak and commence downslide before you became vulnerable to colonisation by the wallahs of corporate entertainment. Now it’s instant. Pop up all of a sudden as the boy in da corner and, in a flash, in a twinkling, automatically, before you know, you’re zapped into an ambience of sweet talk and soft edges, back-lighting and glitter and rouge. No time for wickedness or love any more. Which reinforces how desperately we need Ani DiFranco.