Out of all my unhappy childhood memories, the one that continues to haunt me relates to the classroom sing-along. Although my grade one primary school teacher did her best to inspire joy in the classroom, by encouraging us to sing songs like “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”, there were one or two gloomy types such as myself who refused to join in.
It’s not that I was an unhappy child. It’s just that institutionalised fun wasn’t my idea of a good time. It still isn’t. I don’t find “funny hat” days at work particularly fun, and I fail to the see the point in attending work-sponsored Karaoke nights. If I were to sing and clap on cue I’d do it, as Frank Sinatra famously put it, "My Way".
It was around the time the music video clip was emerging as a popular entertainment form in the '70s, when suburban misfits like myself encountered our counter-culture messiah in all his glory. The image of Sid Vicious dressed like an unruly high school debutant spitting out "My Way" with his trademark punk snarl, could not have been more out of step with the original French version that was first performed in 1967.
Sid’s act of cultural defiance convinced dissatisfied delinquents such as myself that the UK punk movement would deliver us from the banalities of middle-class sensibilities.
Punks like Vicious didn’t receive music awards. Why should they? They were nothing more than a bunch of sub-standard musicians behaving badly. The best thing that the mainstream music establishment could do was to ignore them. To do otherwise would have landed them a swag of music awards and public recognition to boot.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said for today’s “happy-clappers”. The fact that there’s a Grammy Award dedicated to "Contemporary/Pop Gospel" music shows just how much influence the American Religious Right has on popular culture. Let’s face it, “contemporary gospel music” (as opposed to authentic gospel) is the unofficial soundtrack to ultraconservative America—just as the term “family values” has become code for conservative Christian values in Australia.
Many within the conservative Christian camp have come to accept music as an effective means of spreading the gospel. It’s a purist view that harks back to a time when Martin Luther recognised music as a valuable proselytising tool. As he put it, “I would gladly see all arts, especially music,