Stunt 2009: Week 8 – The Pogues

*This is a companion piece to a similarly-themed article on Karen’s site which, all things being equal, should be published at roughly the same time.*

Karen and I have both, to all intents and purposes, taken a week off from the stunt this week, as after listening to this playlist once through, we both agreed that we didn’t need to listen to it again.

It has, however, got me thinking about the state of music. Again. When the Music Industry has completed its long, protracted suicide, and the Noise Levels At Work Regulations 2016 prohibit public music performances using amplified musical instruments or other amplified sound sources, there won’t be pop music any more. Pop music’s existence was made possible by the invention of the audio amplifier in 1906. Previously, there was (loosely speaking) two broad genres of music: classical music and folk music. Classical music was something you consumed. Folk music was something that you got involved in. There was a void in the middle, which was filled by pop music, which could be seen as a sociable form of classical music, or a form of folk music with more complexity in its structures. Classical music doesn’t need amplifiers because people sit in silence and listen to it. Folk music doesn’t need amplifiers because everyone in the pub is singing along, by design. But without amplifiers, pop music (and dance music) can’t be sustained in a live environment.

So in 10 years time (and this is entirely my hypothesis) you will have the following three options, if you want to listen to some music:

1. After clicking on the necessary EULA and paying the suitable fee, you will be granted a temporary license to listen to your music collection for the evening. Your locally-cached copies of the files will self-delete at midnight. If you want to listen with friends, you will have to pay extra.
2. Go to a concert. Remember that there’s no amplifiers, though, so you won’t be permitted to speak with your friends. If you speak during the performance, your Concert-Goers License will be suspended for three months.
3. Go to the pub, get drunk, sing along to folk music.

Options 2 and 3 are basically the same choices that you had before the 20th Century.

I suppose my point is that when (if! if!) all this comes to pass, then we will all be singing along to The Pogues, and probably enjoying it.

Here’s that spotify playlist again, if you really want it.

The next week’s playlist

Random number: 95
Only one playlist on this page – Peter Shapiro’s **Disco**. The book says:

> Peter Shapiro is author of the acclaimed *Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History Of Disco* (Faber, 2005). The book is, in his words, a trawl through the roots, development and excesses of “the music that taste forgot”. It’s an amazing story. Shapiro asserts that “although disco may be the most maligned genre in human history, these are ten records no one should be ashamed of owning.”

Incomplete Spotify playlist