Package Tours In The Sun

(Note: This post was kindly submitted by regular reader Mr. Carl Morris, who blogs here at Quixotic Quisling)

Public Image Ltd.'s seminal 1979 album Metal Box is a landmark record for all kinds of reasons. Obviously there’s the music itself. It puts the disco into discontent. Like anything described as “ahead of its time” it is, in truth, a direct influence for later artists. It’s the source of a throb and pulse which goes through a surprising amount of music which follows it. (For instance, listen to the tune Death Disco with bands such as LCD Soundsystem in mind, or for that matter certain other bands on DFA Records.) I’d hesitate to call it “experimental”, as that might put you off. Let’s just say that, unlike most things which carry that word, it’s in no way an artistic dead-end.

Metal Box dates from a time when ALL recorded music had tangible packaging. And wow, what packaging. Even though these were the days when physical media had a hope of being sustainable, this was a brave move. Virgin Records (at that time a maverick independent label) released it in the UK as three separate vinyl records in a metal film canister, hence the title. The whole thing has a heightened sound quality. Six sides in total playing at 45rpm certainly did justice to Jah Wobble’s cavernous basslines, as well as each scraping guitar sound and every shriek and wail from Lydon.

Once you managed to prise the thing open, that is. Metal Box, in its original form, celebrates the awkwardness and clumsiness of the vinyl format. You can’t listen to it on your morning jog, nor your daily commute on the train. Listening to it is a fully engaged activity. You can’t even do things around the house because the need to flip it over or change the record will keep interrupting you. Although not too difficult to track down, it’s a cherished item for record collectors. (Overheard: “I just scored an original Metal Box on eBay!”, “Cool. How oxidised is yours?”)

Since the original, there have been several ways to listen to Metal Box. For the USA version, the track list was rearranged and remastered it on to just two records in a cardboard sleeve. This made it look like any other album. Sound quality also suffered. Then in the compact disc era, we were treated to a single CD housed in a little version of the metal box. Cute. But that’s not really a word you use when discussing anything associated with John Lydon.

At some point in recent years it made an appearance on iTunes. (And DRM was probably not the kind of contempt-for-audience the band originally had in mind.) Now we can dip into it on Spotify, the licensed free music streaming service, adverts and all. Often the music formats debate can come down to which is the more convenient. CD or vinyl? Or digital files? No question, digital is ALWAYS more convenient. But so is looking at the Wikipedia page for any given work of art, when compared to actually visiting a gallery. The original version of Metal Box is a perfect marriage of content and packaging. And who said content and packaging were even separate things?

Back To The Future 2

"The essence of Tao is reversal"
- the Tao Te Ching

As Western civilisation begins its long, slow powering-down (or at least let’s hope it’s long and slow rather than short and fast), then we will more and more experience the uncanny feeling of time moving backwards, of technologies and habits that we had thought long consigned to the past mysteriously reappearing through a gradual process of osmosis. It might even be the case that those under the age of 30 experience some of these re-appearances as examples of genuinely new phenomena, and like the Romans, whose 400-year decline could barely be detected in normal daily life, mistake them as evidence of yet more progress.

The recent upsurge in oil prices, caused by the political turmoil in the Middle East, has provoked amongst the British public and its government that occasional and somewhat incoherent recognition of the reality that our technologically advanced, dynamic, globalised economy is pathetically reliant on a single resource, fed by a fragile infrastructure from a volatile region of the world that is made volatile by the very exploitation of that resource. If oil prices maintain or exceed their current high level, these are some of the technologies and habits of the 1970’s I expect to see gradually returning:


Scooters



Contrary to popular myth, most of two-wheeled motorised transport of the 1970’s didn’t consist of chic Italian Vespas or muscular Triumph superbikes, but this kind of deeply unsexy machine - the Honda CL90. Usually used as transports to and from the workplace, and rarely ever cleaned or serviced, their users eschewed leather suits and ballistic crash-helmets for flasher macs, sou’westers, and curious brimmed crash-hats with goggles mounted atop.

Nowadays these kind of machines are usually associated with third-world countries, and their mass re-appearance on British roads should be taken as confirmation that, yes, Britain is indeed becoming a third-world country.


Hairdryers



"Hairdryers" was the derisive term given to the kind of low-powered motorbike (100-125cc) chosen by many working-class adolescents as their first mode of personal transport. Looking and sounding like feeble impersonations of standard motorbikes, their users would often attempt to infuse the bike with an intimidatory presence by removing the exhaust silencer, resulting in a piercing, rasping sound that would induce belly-laughs from onlookers as they cruised around provincial market squares.


Three-wheeled cars



The Reliant Robin (always called the Robin Reliant in the popular discourse of the time) was of course given iconic status in the sitcom "Only Fools And Horses", and the fact that it was the Trotter’s mode of transport was deeply symbolic. As an icon of a kind of hopeless British crapness, its adoption by the Trotters as their mode of transport was an indication that for all their striving, these guys were going nowhere.

It may be a baffling concept to us now, but at the time it made a certain kind of sense. Having only three wheels, it was classed as a motorbike for road tax rates, but could be driven by the holder of a car licence. Its lightweight construction and small engine were also of great advantage in terms of fuel consumption, a precious advantage in the fuel-starved 70’s. During the great oil glut of the last twenty years, gleeful "petrol-heads" like Jeremy Clarkson have taken great joy in destroying old Robins in weirdly atavistic acts of sacrifice - as though the car represented a kind of ancestral stain that had to be ritually repudiated so that the gods of Neoliberalism would ensure the endless bountiful flow of BMW’s and the magical mana-juice to power them.



Jeremy, expect some kind of three-wheeler to return as fuel prices steepen and road taxes escalate. Only EU crash-test standards can possibly stop them.


Dray Horses



You might think these disappeared sometime in the late 19th Century, but they were still an occasional sight in the 1970’s. Horses are of course deeply magical animals with a strange and mysterious affinity to humans, and the reappearance of working horses on our streets is something that I expect will have a profoundly uncanny affect. It will effectively signal that our Faustian delusions of boundless growth into infinity are over, and the re-enchantment of the world has begun.


Rag And Bone Men

Very common in the 1970’s, and already starting to make a re-appearance as far as I can tell. When they switch from white vans to flat-bed carts pulled by an old horse that has been reprieved from the knacker’s yard, then you will know that the new 70’s have begun.


Bus Conductors



See Carl’s post below. Up until the late 70’s, the vast majority of people would travel to work either by bicycle or bus, and factories and offices would often have bus bays where they now (if they still exist) have vast floodlit car parks. As public transport once more becomes the prime mode of mobility in the economy, the Government will be forced to reluctantly admit that it is too important to be left to the inefficiencies of the private sector, and it will gradually come back under either national or regional government control. One important increase in efficiency will result from the realisation that it’s much quicker to sell people tickets once they’re on the bus than making them queue to buy them off the driver.


Sunday Closing

As British people find that increased fuel and food costs erode their disposable income, they will have fewer opportunities to visit out-of-town superstores and buy cheap Chinese-made tat. The result will be an epic contraction in the retail sector, followed by a realisation amongst the surviving outlets that it simply isn’t cost-effective to be open morning-to-evening, seven days a week. Sunday closing will therefore quietly and surreptitiously return with perhaps the only people noticing being pious Christians, who will attribute the phenomenon to God’s wisdom.

Days Of Future Passed

For the British aviation industry, as with British industry in general, the 1970’s were to prove a traumatic period in which the all the hubristic schemes of the previous decades were to unravel in a nemesis that they had long sought to avoid.

Throughout the Second World War, Britain had managed to maintain a slight technological edge over her American allies in aviation, but with victory in Europe achieved, it became clear that Nazi Germany was almost in another league when it came to advanced aeronautical design. The months subsequent to the surrender saw teams of scientists and engineers from all the major Allied countries scouring the former Reich in order to scavenge whatever facilities, tooling, and finished or part-finished designs they could get their hands on. The Americans, with their almost limitless funding, took the cream of the Nazi scientific and engineering personnel for their air and space programmes, while the British, French and Russians hoovered up whatever was left over.

Aviation held a privileged place in British Government economy strategy throughout the post-war years. Partly this was pragmatic, and took into account the contribution aerospace made to the national defence, but it also had an undeniably irrational aspect. Aviation was romantic in the sense that it had deep roots in the mythology of progress and expansion, and in many ways was a projection of the national need for greatness as it experienced the loss of empire, and the sense of impotence and decline that this engendered. If Britannia was no longer to rule the waves, then at the very least it could rule the skies.

The aviation industry itself entered the post-war years full of optimism about its capabilities and destiny. Certainly the giant American aerospace industry offered daunting competition, but British engineers felt more than confident that they could surpass any innovations the Americans could offer. In many ways they were proved correct, for the Americans rarely offered anything technologically superior to the British, despite their vast facilities. What the Americans did do better than the British was to understand the market requirements for new designs, and offer sturdier, less innovative designs that were more tailored to their customers’ expectations. The result was that the British commercial airliner designs would often be spectacular technological successes, and yet equally spectacular commercial failures.



Perhaps the first example of this trend was the Bristol Britannia. Like most commercial aircraft of the period, it was designed to a specification issued by the Ministry Of Supply to service designated imperial routes flown by the British Overseas Air Corporation, the nationalised carrier that had been formed from the pre-war Imperial Airways. This method of procurement, in which BOAC was always the lead customer for new British designs, was problematical in that British manufacturers were ultimately designing to a Government requirement that was often idiosyncratic, and not translatable to the needs of other commercial customers. The aviation industry did itself no favours in offering its services to almost any Government project, no matter how outlandish, that came its way, meaning that it was invariably overstretched. This resulted in many projects being completed long after their scheduled in-service date, and such a delay in the Britannia ultimately proved fatal. Easily the best turboprop airliner in the world when it arrived in service, its era had already been superceded by the jet age.



The next debacle was to be the world’s first jet airliner, the DeHavilland Comet. The DeHavilland company was in many ways the darling of the British aviation industry. It’s designs were noted for their experimentalism and flair, but they were also frequently dangerous. When the Comet entered service it was seen as the first step in a world-beating export drive. It wasn’t long though before Comets were disintegrating in mid-air. The problem was traced, after much expensive testing, to the corners of the square "picture windows" that the company had installed to give passengers a better view, acting as stress-raisers. With this problem solved, the Comet proved to be an excellent design with a long service life, but the precious early lead had been lost to Boeing’s capable 707.



The next important indigenous airliner design was the Vickers VC10, and it was with this aircraft (along with the military TSR2) that the relationship between the Government and the aviation industry began to sour, and become increasingly mired in political strife. Designed to an exacting BOAC specification, the production of the aircraft was delayed when in 1961 BOAC itself requested a reduction in the order number due to an undershot in their predictions of revenue growth. The Government took over part of the contract, and bought VC10’s as liaison and transport aircraft for the RAF, while BOAC chairman Gerald d’Erlanger and managing director Basil Smallpeice (sic) resigned in protest at having to accept even a reduced number of VC10’s. Their rationale, that the national airline was there to make a profit and not support national industry, was an early manifestation of what would later be termed Thatcherite sentiment, and a significant harbinger of events that would enfold over the ensuing decades.

Finally, of course, we come to Concorde. By now the British aviation industry was entering its rationalising stage, as the smaller companies were merged into two large conglomerates, Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Concorde was developed jointly by BAC and the French Aerospatiale company throughout the 1960’s, and was subject to the usual process of delays, technical problems and vertiginously escalating costs. Indeed it was this uncomfortable marriage between Britain and France that kept Concorde on track, despite on occasions one or other of the partners wanting to pull out of the project, just as the Americans and Russians had perhaps sensibly pulled out of their own Supersonic Transport (SST) projects.



When it was finally ready for delivery in the early 1970’s it emerged into a market scarred by the 1973 oil crisis. National airlines that had initially shown an interest in the machine backed off one by one, encouraged by local movements opposed to the alleged danger posed by the aircraft’s sonic booms as it broke the sound barrier after take off. Localised banning of the aircraft at key U.S. airports up until the late 1970’s was a source of severe diplomatic friction between America and the Europeans during this period, with the French in particular suspecting that this was a jealous attempt to destroy the aircraft’s prospects. Nevertheless, regardless of being a technological marvel, Concorde was to remain a grevious commercial flop.

Although in hindsight there is a temptation to regard the history of the British Aviation industry as a characteristically gallant failure, the reality is that a great deal of money was ultimately squandered that could have been better spent on health, education and welfare. The aviation industry was cosseted while other key industries were allowed to go to the dogs, not least shipbuilding. These vainglorous projects were a major part of the reason that areas such as Clydeside, Wearside, Merseyside and Belfast are mired in poverty to this very day. There was an air of unreality in the dreams of the UK’s aerospace engineers, dreams that governments, both Conservative and Labour, were far too keen to indulge. The final result was a severely diminished aviation industry itself, with BAC merging with Hawker Siddeley to form the unloveable British Aerospace (now the even more unloveable BAe Systems), and BOAC merging with British European Airways (BEA) to form the mean organisation we now know as British Airways. True to the spirit of their long-lost ancestors, both BAe Systems and British Airways frequently give the impression of being far more trouble than they're worth.

Back To The Future

For those of you of tender age the device above is called a Slide Rule. It is a mechanical device that was used to make complex calculations before the age of computers, and, unimpressive though it may appear, it was these contraptions that put men on the moon and built Concorde.

I was a member of probably the very last generation of schoolchildren who were taught how to use a slide rule, but even in our day they were seen as a curiosity, as the new-fangled pocket calculators started to appear. Nevertheless, quaint as this item may appear, not only is it the technology of the past, it is also the technology of the future.

As the world's oil resources enter the depletion stage, there will be greater pressure to convert other types of fossil fuel resource, such as coal and natural gas, into forms suitable for the maintenance of our transport infrastructure. This increased demand burden will be felt most heavily in the domestic sphere, especially with regard to heating and electricity production, and the tariffs charged for their provision. We're starting to see this even now, although the trend is partly hidden by private monopoly price-gouging.

This crisis in the provision of energy will also result in a re-assessment of what aspects of our complex society we can safely jettison and still maintain a reasonable quality of life. Almost certainly the first victim will be the internet, as Western civilisation will reluctantly recall that such trivial activities as sending thank you letters, ordering bargain clothes and perusing pornography can just as easily be done on paper. Home computers and even business computers will follow thereafter, as our spheres of activity necessarily become more localised, and the economies of scale needed to build and ship these items make their production prohibitively expensive. Eventually, this squeeze will even reduce the availability of more utilitarian plastic items such as the humble pocket calculator.

If you're a gadget fan, or rather what Morris Berman terms a techno-buffoon, you are going to find the future at best somewhat disappointing, at worst an incomprehensible nightmare. If you're the sort of person who likes collecting antiquated machinery and putting it back in working order again, you are going to find yourself very much in demand in the years to come.